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

The Great New York State Fair — Wednesday, August 26 through Labor Day, September 7 Open 9 AM to 11 PM daily, last entry 9 PM — NYS Fairgrounds, 581 State Fair Blvd. $8.32 at the gate, free every day for anyone 65 and over and 12 and under; parking $12.41, card only at the lot — Details

The first 2 nights (August 26 and 27), free with admission: a 300-plus drone show over Suburban Park, about 9:45 PM, after the 8 PM concert. Details

Every concert on both stages is free with admission, the whole run — check the full lineups for Chevy Court and Suburban Park.

New this year, also free once you're in: a three-ring circus and corgi races in the Exposition Center, and a jet-ski stunt show on the pond by Suburban Park. If you'd rather not park, Centro runs a free shuttle from the Orange Lot, 10 AM to 11 PM, and Amtrak stops right at the fairgrounds. (The Willis Ave lot and its shuttle only run Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Labor Day.) Details

Tuesday, August 25

Cameron Alexzander, artist-in-residence open studio — Brewer Harris Projects, 138 Bank Alley, 1 to 4 PM, daily through Saturday. Details

Baldwinsville Farmers Market — Baldwin Square, 3 to 7 PM, free. Details

Wednesday, August 26

Pay-what-you-wish all day at the Everson — 401 Harrison St, 11 AM to 5 PM. Eight shows up, including A Long Look, a documentary photography survey spanning 1888 to 2016. Details

Syracuse Eastside Farmers Market — Westcott Community Center, 826 Euclid Ave, 2 to 6 PM, free. Details

Thursday, August 27

CNY Regional Market Thursday Night Market — 2100 Park St, 4 to 8 PM, free, SNAP and EBT accepted. Details

Syracuse Chargers Thursday Night Fun Run — Onondaga Lake Park, 106 Lake Dr, Liverpool. 6 PM, free. Details

Friday, August 28

Food Truck Fridays — Everson Community Plaza, from 11 AM. Details

Saturday, August 29

Apple Grove Adventure Park opens — Beak & Skiff, 2708 Lords Hill Rd, LaFayette. Day pass $20. Details

CNY Regional Market — 2100 Park St, 7 AM to 2 PM, free, also Sunday. Details

Yoga with the Elephants — Rosamond Gifford Zoo, 1 Conservation Pl. 8:30 to 10 AM, $30, registration required, also Sunday. Register

For The Love Of: A Tattoo Celebration — The Song & Dance, 115 E Jefferson St, 11 AM. Tickets

Monday, August 31

ArtRage fundraiser at Harvey's Garden — 1200 E Water St, 5 to 8 PM. No cover, DJ Robby Zee, and the bar puts 30% of drink sales toward the gallery's next season. Details

Tuesday, August 25

443 Night School: songwriting with Bob Halligan Jr. — The 443 Social Club, 443 Burnet Ave, 6 to 8 PM, $30. Details

Wednesday, August 26

Island Takeover: Night Market — Paper Mill Island, Spensieri Ave, Baldwinsville. Gates 5 PM, to 8 PM, free, all ages, acoustic set from Hold the Air. Details

Pitbull, with Lil Jon — Empower FCU Amphitheater, 490 Restoration Way, 8 PM. The one arena-size show in town this week. Tickets

Harmonic Dirt & Friends, with Beautiful Losers — The Whiskey Coop, 120 Walton St, 7 to 10 PM, no cover listed. Their weekly "curated hootenanny" of bluegrass and folk. Details

Open mic — Shifty's, 1401 Burnet Ave, 8 PM to midnight, no cover listed. Details

Thursday, August 27

Sophistafunk at Hanover Thursdays — Hanover Square, E Water St. 5 to 9 PM, free. DJ Joey D at 5, the RnB Band at 6, Sophistafunk at 7:30. The series moves to Westcott and Dell on Thursdays in September. Details

Hadden Sayers — The 443 Social Club. Doors 5:30 PM, show 7 to 9 PM. Texas blues guitarist. Details

Andy Thomas — Funk 'n Waffles, 307 S Clinton St, 6 PM. Free, 18 and over. Tickets

Friday, August 28

Professor Louie & the Crowmatix — The 443 Social Club, 7 to 9 PM. Roots-rock led by Aaron Hurwitz, who produced The Band's last three albums and got the nickname from Rick Danko. Details

Aaron Ruiz & JazzLink — The Fitz, 321 S Salina St, 8:30 to 11:30 PM, never a cover. Details

Island Takeover movie night: Back to the Future — Paper Mill Island. Gates 7 PM, film at 8 PM, free, all ages. Details

2000's Rave — The Song & Dance, 9 PM, 18 and over with ID. LimeWire-era hits remixed by EDM DJs — party like it's 2003. Tickets

Saturday, August 29

Sarah Borges — The 443 Social Club. Doors 5:30 PM, show 7 PM. Boston-area rock and roll, on the line between punk and country. Details

Noisy Boys, 1911 Tasting Room — Beak & Skiff, LaFayette, 2 to 4 PM, free. Details

Mythorya, with PRAUN, Black Violet and Bull — Funk 'n Waffles. Doors 6 PM, show 7 PM, 16 and over with ID. Tickets

The Late Night Playlist — The Fitz, 8:30 to 11:30 PM, no cover. Details

Sunday, August 30

The New Service, Loading Dock Series — Middle Ages Brewing, 120 Wilkinson St, 4 to 7 PM. Free, all ages, outside on the dock. Details

Bill Ali, 1911 Tasting Room — Beak & Skiff, LaFayette, 2 to 4 PM, free. Details

Dominion Goth Night, with Spike Hellis — The Song & Dance. Doors 7 PM, show 8 to 11 PM, 16 and over with ID. Dark techno and EBM, headlined by the LA duo that has toured with Front 242. Tickets

The Fair closes Labor Day, September 7, with a 10:30 AM parade. Tuesday is Tasty Tuesday, signature Fair foods at $3 to $5; Wednesday morning, 9 AM to 1 PM, is a sensory-friendly window with the lights and sound down. Details

Reverend Horton Heat, with Messer Chups — Middle Ages Music Hall, Wednesday, September 2. Doors 7 PM, show 8 PM. Tickets

Island Takeover: End of Summer Party — Paper Mill Island, Saturday, September 5. Gates 6 PM, free, all ages, and the last of the series. Details

SU football opens at home Saturday, September 5, noon against New Hampshire. Details

Amy Lincoln: Fractured Light closes at the Everson Sunday, September 6. Details

Jersey Boys — Landmark Theatre, 362 S Salina St, September 8 through 12. Tickets

We track way more than we can squeeze into The Lineup. Refer 2 friends to the Club, and the full calendar unlocks:

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

Toss & Fire — at the Fair in Chevy Court daily 10 AM to 10:30 PM, August 26 through September 7. Year-round at 315 N Main St, North Syracuse; 190 Township Blvd, Camillus; and inside Harvey's Garden, 1200 E Water St — tossnfirepizza.com

Toss & Fire is back inside Chevy Court for year 10 at the Fair, and they built a Fair-only menu for the occasion: 3 new pizzas, 2 new wings, and a new appetizer.

The 3 new pies: the Girl Dinner (garlic and mozzarella, finished out of the oven with crisp Caesar salad, garlic parmesan fries, and shaved romano — our favorite), the Buzzer Beater Mac & Cheese (spicy mac, fried chicken, and caramelized onions), and the Fair Deli Gambino (meatballs, whipped ricotta, and Mike's Hot Honey). Returning from past years: the Spicy Vodka, the Chicago Beef, and the SummerCuse, the one with smashed salt potatoes, pulled pork, and Dinosaur BBQ sauce.

There are 2 new wing options, too: the Zab's Sweet Heat, tossed in a slow-burn datil-pepper sauce and drizzled with Zab's hot honey, and the new Parmesan Bacon Garlic, fried and tossed in garlic butter with romano and candied bacon. The Dill Pickle wings are back too.

Whatever you order, do not skip the new Deep-Fried Garlic Knots: tossed in garlic butter, topped with pecorino romano, and served on a stick with house-made vodka sauce for dipping. Catch us at the Fair with these in hand.

They're also giving away free pizza for a year. Snap a photo with one of the 3 limited-edition pizza boxes, post it, and tag @tossnfirepizza; 2 winners get a free pizza every week for a year starting October 1, with full rules at tossnfirepizza.com.

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

When Randy Sabourin started training clients downtown in 1995, he barely had any in their 60s. The 80-year-olds of that era, in his telling, "were rewarded with a rocking chair." He has two 90-year-olds on the schedule now, and he trained a 100-year-old for a while. "My teammates will tell you I'm the senior specialist here," he says. He likes them because they walk in already knowing what is going wrong: balance, muscle mass, weight, fatigue.

Sabourin owns Metro Fitness, the gym at 205 S. Salina Street, and it has been in that building since 1995. He grew up on a dairy farm in Vermont, one of four boys, and played sports mostly to get out of baling hay and milking cows. That turned into a physical education degree at SUNY Cortland and a plan to teach gym and coach, which ran into a job market with almost no opportunity: schools ran one gym teacher against four math teachers. He started in the basement of this building instead, personal training only.

The older clients came out of a detour. For 14 years he subleased space inside Crouse Hospital's outpatient physical therapy department, certifying as a post-rehab conditioning specialist and then a medical exercise specialist. That work bridges the gap between finishing physical therapy and being ready for a regular gym: past the one-dimensional treatment for the knee or the neck or the back, but still needing restrictions and guidance.

The stretch that he found the most challenging came later, when he was running two clubs at once. He gained weight, stopped working out, and spent his days behind a computer putting out fires. The trainers he had hired had never once seen him train. "I was wearing slacks and a button shirt," he says. "Now I'm in with my shorts and my sweatshirt, and I'm on the floor." Closing the second club is what put him back on the floor.

He took the rest of what makes up his current space a piece at a time. Five expansions took the club from about 5,000 square feet to almost 20,000: the former Fortunato's Men's Shop on the street level, where he and his landlord (an architect) blew a hole through the floor to connect the two levels, which is how the gym finally got windows; the old FDIC office; Fletcher Associates, and then the Ida Benderson senior center's space downstairs after it closed. That landlord has been a client since the beginning.

Ask what the reward is, and he skips the business entirely. It is a client coming in to say a doctor just took them off a medication, or that they got cleared to restart an activity they previously enjoyed.

Metro is a hybrid boutique health club for all ages, not the low-price, high-volume model. Randy is on the floor at 205 S. Salina.

Check out everything Metro Fitness has to offer at getmetrofit.com.

Construction and development around the city, in plain English.

Crouse Health put up $1.5 million over three years to be the principal sponsor, which buys the hospital its name on the façade and its health messaging in front of roughly 490,000 visitors a year (the county's feasibility study projection). Crouse Hospital CEO Paul Kronenberg's reasoning, per WAER: it's important to put information about stroke care, cardiac care, women's health and mother-and-baby resources where people visit rather than only "confined to the four walls of the hospital."

Deputy County Executive Brian Donnelly says it will open sometime after September 21 and possibly as late as December 21. The reason is a single piece of acrylic: a 60,000-pound viewing panel shipped from Italy showed up late, and every construction step scheduled after its installation was delayed.

The project cost is up to $103.9 million, up from an $85 million estimate. And the county's own financial study projects the operation at roughly break-even: about $12 million a year to run it against $12.7 million coming in. A projected margin of just $700,000. A lot is riding on those attendance estimates.

A private operator, ZoOceanarium, handles staffing, exhibits and operations; the county keeps the building. Legislator Maurice Brown, per CNY Central: "We just have so many other needs. As government, we are obligated to take care of the people that live here, and our money should go to that." Brown's cautionary example is the Virginia Aquarium in Virginia Beach, which costs its city about $6.4 million a year in government support. That is the outcome he wants the county to avoid here.

On the other hand, Legislator Kevin Meeker says there is no plan for additional county funding, and that if it ever came to that, "economic development and tourism are a very important piece of the future of Onondaga County, so those two would be considered."

Opening day lands somewhere in the county's September-to-December window. Whenever it comes, the sign out front will read Crouse Health Harborview Aquarium — and after a summer of watching construction updates, we're just ready to get in line.

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

Armory Square is named for the armory at Jefferson and Franklin — the building that is now the MOST, and the third military building to stand on that lot.

The first was an arsenal, built in 1858 by Horatio Nelson White, the architect behind a lot of nineteenth-century Syracuse in stone and brick. Fire took it in 1873. White drew its replacement that same year. That second armory came down on purpose: demolished in 1906 to make way for a new armory with a drill hall, rifle and pistol ranges, a riding shed, and a stable for the horses.

The building you see today is that third one: 1906 to 1907, by George L. Heins, 119,541 square feet on two and a half acres, and the National Guard held it until the 1990s.

In the early days it was surrounded by a warehouse district, built out between 1860 and 1890 because the canal and the rail lines made this the place to stack freight. The trains brought people too: the Lackawanna's passenger depot sat right on West Jefferson, and by the turn of the century more than 20 hotels had grown up around it serving rail travelers. When the railroads faded in the 1930s the hotels went with them, the factories emptied, and by the 1970s the district was mostly vacant warehouses. One hotel from that era is still at it — the 1927 Jefferson Clinton, at Jefferson and Clinton.

Two people turned that around: Bob Doucette, a local real estate developer, and George Curry, a professor of landscape architecture. Doucette traces it to a dinner-table lament between the two of them — that "the lively city life available in places like Boston and New York City should, and could, be available in Syracuse." They bought the 1887 Labor Temple building on South Franklin in the early '80s, renovated it, and recruited a young pasta restaurant as the anchor tenant: Pastabilities, open since 1982. The district went on the National Register in 1984.

The newest arrival on the block is the shot clock. The monument honors Danny Biasone and Leo Ferris — the Syracuse Nationals owner and GM who invented the 24-second shot clock in the 1950s and changed the NBA — and it had stood in the pocket park across Jefferson Street since 2005. Crooked Cattle is expanding its patio into that park, so in May the city moved the clock to the MOST's front door, where it counts down and resets all day.

Biasone's niece Danielle Pires and Ferris's great-nephew Christian Figueroa cut the ribbon with Mayor Sharon Owens. MOST president Lauren Kochian's case for the new spot: the museum already tells the story of CNY inventions — "If you walk inside, you'll learn about the Brannock device, traffic lights, the Franklin automobile, and the drone corridor." The shot clock now sits with them.

Where to go:

If you only do one thing: the shot clock is free, it is outside, and it is a couple of minutes from everything on this list.

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— Salt City Club Team