Events this week — what's on, where, and how to get in.

Syracuse Irish Festival — Clinton Square, Friday, Sept. 11 and Saturday, Sept. 12. Free.

Two days downtown. Friday, the music runs 5 to 9:30 PM on the main stage. Saturday opens with an 11 AM Irish Mass and runs to 9:35 PM, with the Glengarry Bhoys, Hadrian's Wall and Haggis X-1 on the main stage, and solo acts and 4 Irish dance schools on a second, smaller stage.

Chairs are allowed and encouraged, outside alcohol is not, and on-street parking downtown is free after 6 PM both nights. Schedule

Wednesday, September 9

Jersey Boys — Landmark Theatre, 362 S. Salina St., through Saturday, Sept. 12, 7:30 PM nightly plus a 2 PM Saturday matinee. Tickets

Friday, September 11

TAP into the MOST — the Museum of Science & Technology, Armory Square, 6 to 9 PM. $70, or $100 for a 5:30 VIP entry. More than 50 regional beers, wines, ciders and spirits, plus food from local restaurants. Tickets and details

Saturday, September 12

Art on the Porches — Ruskin Avenue, Strathmore, 11 AM to 5 PM. Free. Artists sell from the porches of one street, with bands and food trucks. Details

Golden Harvest Festival — Beaver Lake Nature Center, 8477 E. Mud Lake Rd., Baldwinsville, Saturday and Sunday, 10 AM to 5 PM. $5, kids 4 to 15 $1. Details

Haudenosaunee Wooden Stick Festival — Onondaga Lake Park, Saturday and Sunday. Free. Wooden-stick lacrosse on the lake where the game started. Details

Oktoberfest — Freight Yard Brewing, 4975 NY-31, Clay, Saturday 2 to 10 PM and Sunday 2 to 7. Free admission. Details

Island Movie Night: The Karate Kid — Paper Mill Island, Baldwinsville, gates 7 PM, film at 8. Free. Details

Sunday, September 13

Syracuse City Market — Everson Plaza, 401 Harrison St., 11 AM to 4 PM. Free. Details

Thursday, September 10

Irish Fest Kick Off Party with The Town Pants — Middle Ages Music Hall, 120 Wilkinson St., 8 PM, doors at 6. Details

Friday, September 11

Griffin House — The 443 Social Club, 443 Burnet Ave., 7 PM, doors at 5:30. Tickets

Saturday, September 12

Harmonic Dirt, 3 stages in one day. The Duo opens the Golden Harvest Festival at Beaver Lake at 11 AM, the full band plays Art on the Porches in Strathmore at 4 PM, and they close the night at The Fitz, the speakeasy inside oh my darling at 321 S. Salina St., at 8:30, free.

JW Jones — The 443 Social Club, 7 PM, doors at 5:30. Canadian blues guitarist. Tickets

Sam Vecchio — the 1911 Tasting Room at Beak & Skiff, LaFayette, 2 to 4 PM. Details

Sunday, September 13

Shakedown Sunday — The 443 Social Club, 1 to 3 PM, doors at noon. The monthly Grateful Dead afternoon. Tickets

The Jess Novak Band — Golden Harvest Festival, Beaver Lake, 2 PM, with festival admission. Details

Dave Hause — The 443 Social Club, 7 PM, doors at 5:30, 18+. Philadelphia-born punk songwriter. Tickets

Come From Away opens at Syracuse Stage Wednesday, Sept. 16. Tickets ·Festa Italiana in front of City Hall, Friday, Sept. 18 through Sunday, Sept. 20, 11 AM to 11 PM Friday and Saturday and noon to 7 Sunday. Details · Jason Aldean at the Empower FCU Amphitheater, Friday, Sept. 18, 7:30 PM. Tickets

One food or drink spot a week — what's new, what's worth the trip, and what to order.

534 Westcott St. — opens Wednesday, Sept. 9 — Wednesday through Saturday, 5 to 9 PM — iolipizza.com

It is pronounced yo-lee, and it opens today in the old Dorian's, next door to Alto Cinco. That building had been sitting closed and run down since 2024, an eyesore, so this is good news for the Westcott strip even before anyone has eaten a slice.

Traditional Neapolitan pizza, which the owners describe as light, tender, airy dough with a mix of classic and original recipes, in what they call a casual hang-out. Dine in or take out.

We have not been yet, but can't wait to try it. We heard from neighbors who attended soft openings and early Google reviews that the personal-size pies can easily feed 2, and the flavors are incredible.

We are looking forward to stopping in soon.

A deeper look at one person, place, or project in Syracuse.

Eddie Brennan made the call to remove six acres of apple trees at Beak & Skiff. "It's always nerve-wracking to rip out apple trees, because that's our livelihood," he says. He recalled Facebook comments asking for more for kids to do, feedback that stuck with him.

Brennan is the fifth generation to run the LaFayette orchard that George Skiff and Andrew Beak started in 1911, now 1,000 acres. He is on the Skiff side, through his mother, one of Marshall Skiff's five daughters. The family kept the farm and lost the name. "The Skiff name unfortunately dies off because it was all girls," he says. His cousin Pete Fleckenstein, also a Skiff, runs the farm operation.

The farm almost did not make it to their generation. Two straight years of frost took more than 80% of the crop, Brennan says, and his father came home to help pull it out of trouble. Then he spent three years talking his son into leaving a decade at Bloomingdale's in New York City to come do the same. What Brennan came home to was a business making nearly all its money in six weeks. "We knew that there was no future in the family farm if we just relied on farming apples," he says. "That was a dead end."

So the family built around them. 1911 hard cider started in a garage and now runs out of a million-gallon plant that makes cider for other brands too. There is a cafe, a tavern, a general store, a distillery and a cold brew coffee line. Ayrloom, the cannabis brand Brennan started with Mack Hueber, is the largest in New York State by revenue.

The concert field had Noah Kahan in June 2023. He sold out Fenway 13 months later. And Beak & Skiff moved into the lodging side of hospitality as well: five houses on the property offer short-term stays now, several of them bought from neighbors around the field, so people can stay on the farm instead of driving home.

The apples are the brand and the primary reason anyone comes up the hill in the first place. They are not what makes the money. Everything built around them is what keeps a thousand acres in one piece.

His grandfather thought the whole idea was funny. When the family first let the public into the rows in the 1980s, "he always laughed at the fact that people would pay us to pick our apples."

Apple Grove Adventure Park opened in late August on those six acres: zip lines, an animal barn, a trike track, two giant jump pillows, and what Beak & Skiff bills as the largest farm mountain slide in the country. Ages 3 and up. We went on opening day and left with the family pack of season passes; our 3-year-old is already asking when we go back.

Per Beak & Skiff's Apple Grove page: open daily, 10 AM to 6 PM Monday through Thursday and to 8 PM Friday through Sunday. Day passes are $15 on weekdays and $20 on weekends.

Construction and development around the city, in plain English.

Amazon wants a second warehouse in Clay, and it wants to use drones to deliver packages from the one it already has.

The existing fulfillment center on Morgan Road is the 3.8-million-square-foot building that opened in 2022 for $350 million, where orders get packed and shipped. The new one would be 234,000 square feet less than a mile away, at 7526 and 7546 Morgan Road, built by Acquest Development.

What would happen inside it, nobody has said. Acquest told the Planning Board it is "a different operation" from the fulfillment center and promised to bring Amazon to the next meeting to explain. The board's own questions, from its July 22 minutes: whether Centro will run a bus that far out (service now ends at Steelway Drive), whether there are protected wetlands on the parcel, traffic on Morgan Road, and whether the site is Indiana bat habitat. Acquest says it is not seeking a tax break.

The drones are a separate request. Amazon wants to fly Prime Air deliveries out of the existing fulfillment center: packages under 5 pounds, to addresses within about 7 miles, in under an hour. That case has been adjourned twice and is now also set for Sept. 16, while Amazon works through the state environmental review.

No job count has been released for the new warehouse. Amazon is expected to bring the jobs and operations detail to the Planning Board on Wednesday, Sept. 16 at 7:30 PM.

Coverage from CNY Central in August, CNY Central in July and Spectrum News

One neighborhood at a time — what's there, what's changing.

There is exactly one upside-down traffic light in the United States. It is at Tompkins Street and Milton Avenue, on the west side of the city in the Tipp Hill neighborhood.

The Irish who dug the Erie Canal in the 1820s, many of them from County Tipperary, settled on the hill above it when the digging was done. Their parish came first: St. Patrick's said its first Mass in 1870 in a hall on the canal bank, and the church at 216 N. Lowell Ave. was dedicated in 1872. Until 1886 the hill was part of the Village of Geddes; that year it joined the city.

The light went up in 1925 with the red on top, and a neighborhood that read that as British red over Irish green would not have it. Boys between 11 and 17 threw stones at the red lens until it broke, and kept doing it every time the city replaced it. Alderman John "Huckle" Ryan got the light flipped; the state flipped it back, worried about color-blind drivers; and on St. Patrick's Day 1928 the city gave in for good. It has been green over red ever since.

In 1997 the neighborhood put a bronze on that corner, the Stone Throwers memorial: a 1930s immigrant family, the father pointing up at the light, the boy with a slingshot in his back pocket. On St. Patrick's Day eve, somebody paints a shamrock on the pavement underneath.

The other Tipp Hill traditions are younger. Peter Coleman started Green Beer Sunday at his pub in the 1960s, and it still opens St. Patrick's season on the last Sunday of February, now with a mini parade, live music and green beer poured straight from a tanker truck. The Shamrock Run, 4 miles through the neighborhood, ran for the 21st time this March.

Where to go in Tipp Hill and close by:

Local sports — what just happened and what's next.

Syracuse beat New Hampshire 66-3 on Saturday. Steve Angeli, back from the injury that ended his last season, threw for 263 yards and 3 touchdowns.

Next is the University of California, Berkeley, Saturday, Sept. 12, 3:30 PM at the Dome, on ACC Network. It is the conference opener for both teams. Tickets

The Mets' last home games of the year start Tuesday, September 15: Lehigh Valley, through Sunday, Sept. 20, at NBT Bank Stadium, 6:35 PM nightly and 1:05 on Sunday, which is the last game of the regular season. Schedule

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— Salt City Club Team