Summer in Syracuse doesn't start on a date. It starts the first weekend everyone's outside at the same time — and this weekend, that's downtown, where Taste of Syracuse takes over Clinton Square with two days of $2 samples and free music.
The Mets are home all week, the orchards and lakefront villages are open, and the evenings are finally long enough to do something with. This edition's neighborhood walk heads out to one of those lakefront villages — Skaneateles.
Skaneateles Lake (photo by James Mirakian)
Here's what else is happening this week:
TL;DR:
The Lineup: Taste of Syracuse takes over Clinton Square this weekend, plus Paige's Butterfly Run, the free Salt Springs Springfest, and Jagged Little Pill opening at the Redhouse.
Live Music: Anvil at The Song & Dance, COLD and Hot Mulligan on Friday, a free local set at Funk 'n Waffles, the Steve Schad Memorial at Sharkey's, and Kid Cudi at Lakeview on Monday.
The Tab: Steve's Bar & Kitchen on Tipp Hill traded its burritos for Cajun — get the shrimp po'boy.
The Spotlight: After ten years, the Village of Camillus lands its first grant for a 5-mile walking and biking trail wired into the Empire State Trail.
The Build: Harborview Aquarium is set to open on the Inner Harbor later this summer — and 41 of its 42 donors are still anonymous, even after a new county transparency law.
The Block: Skaneateles — the clean-water lake village, a two-block walk, and Doug's, Rosalie's, and The Krebs.
The Scoreboard: Syracuse women's rowing posts a program-best 9th at NCAAs; the Mets open a six-game homestand with three straight fireworks nights.
…and more!
THE LINEUP
Events this week — what's on, where, and how to get in.
Featured Event
Taste of Syracuse — Clinton Square and the surrounding downtown streets. Friday and Saturday, June 5–6, 11 AM to 10 PM both days. Free to get in; food samples are $2 each. Details
Two days, 80-plus local bars and restaurants, three music stages, and somewhere north of 30 bands — Taste of Syracuse is the closest thing the city has to a summer kickoff. Bring cash for the $2 samples and graze your way across downtown. The Main Stage headliner is Fuel, the late-'90s alt-rock band behind "Shimmer" and "Hemorrhage," closing out Saturday night.
This Week
Thursday, June 4
Everson Ceramics Social — Everson Museum, 401 Harrison St. 6 to 9 PM. $150 ($250 patron). A ticketed evening of clay and cocktails benefiting the museum's ceramics programs. Tickets
Friday, June 5
"Jagged Little Pill" (opening weekend) — Redhouse Arts Center, 400 S Salina St. Runs June 5–14. $60. The Tony-nominated musical built on Alanis Morissette's 1995 breakthrough album — the one with "You Oughta Know" — with a book by Diablo Cody. Tickets
Saturday, June 6
Paige's Butterfly Run 5K — starts at Clinton Square, downtown. 9 AM. $50 ($55 day-of). The race turns 30 this year and benefits childhood-cancer programs at Upstate Golisano Children's Hospital; it finishes downtown just as Taste of Syracuse is ramping up. Register
Salt Springs Springfest — Soule Branch Library lawn, 101 Springfield Rd. Noon to 5 PM. Free. A first-ever neighborhood festival launching the Salt Springs Historical & Cultural Trail. Details
Juneteenth Kickoff Celebration — Salt City Market, 484 S Salina St. 6 to 9 PM. Free. An early kickoff to the month's Juneteenth programming, downtown at the market. Details
Live Music
Wednesday, June 3
Anvil — Pounding the Past Tour — The Song & Dance, 115 E Jefferson St. Doors 6 PM. The Canadian heavy-metal band immortalized in the 2008 cult documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil, with Midnite Hellion and Sentient VI. From $26.44. Tickets
Thursday, June 4
Kyle Smith — Funk 'n Waffles, downtown. 8 PM. The California reggae-rock singer-songwriter, with The Action! opening. Tickets
Photo: Kyle Smith
Friday, June 5
COLD — The Song & Dance, 115 E Jefferson St. Doors 6 PM, show 7 PM. The Florida alt-metal band playing The Red Album in full, with Sierra Swan and Kilter. From $32.62. Tickets
Hot Mulligan — Beak & Skiff, Lafayette. 6:30 PM. The Michigan emo / pop-punk band, part of the orchard's summer concert series. Tickets
Accountant & All-Thumbs — Funk 'n Waffles, downtown. 8 PM. Free. A local double bill, no cover. Details
Sunday, June 7
Steve Schad Memorial Concert — Sharkey's, Liverpool. 1 to 5 PM. $8 presale / $10 door. An afternoon of local bands — the Steppes, Prognosys, and Timeline among them — honoring Syracuse musician Steve Schad, the Syracuse Area Music Hall of Famer who died last November. Tickets
Monday, June 8
Kid Cudi — Rebel Ragers Tour — Empower FCU Amphitheater at Lakeview, 490 Restoration Way. Doors 6:30 PM. The Cleveland rapper and Man on the Moon hitmaker, the biggest touring stop of the week. Tickets
Coming Soon: St. Sophia's Greek Cultural Festival (June 11–14, DeWitt) — four days of food, music, and dancing. A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical (June 9–14, Landmark Theatre). The NYS Blues Festival (June 11–13, NYS Fairgrounds) — free, with Gary Clark Jr. headlining Saturday. CNY Pride Festival (June 13) — parade at 11 AM, festival noon to 5 PM.
THE TAB
One food or drink spot this week — what to order and where to find it.
Steve's Bar & Kitchen — 401 Milton Ave, on Tipperary Hill. Cash only; the kitchen runs Monday through Wednesday and Friday through Saturday, 5 to 10 PM, with no food on Sundays or Thursdays.
For years, Steve's was the West Side's favorite contradiction: a Mexican kitchen inside an Irish pub owned by a Polish guy. After the cook who ran that kitchen, David Walker, died in 2024, a new cook took over and pointed the menu somewhere else entirely. Dennis Cahill, who'd cooked at Wheeler's Tavern, came back from trips to New Orleans and swapped the burritos for Southern Louisiana cooking.
The move is the shrimp po'boy — $15 with fries, six oversized Gulf shrimp breaded in cornmeal on a Harrison Bakery roll, with remoulade, lettuce, tomato, onion, and pickles. "This is one sandwich I didn't fool around with too much," Cahill told This is CNY. "You're getting more meat and more crunch."
It's a Tipp Hill spot, brand new, and exactly the kind of place we want to get into and report back on.
Read the full story at This is CNY.
THE SPOTLIGHT
A deeper look at one person, place, or project in Syracuse.
A First Step Toward Camillus's Trail
Dick Waterman has spent about ten years advocating for this trail. The Camillus mayor wanted a path that would let people walk and bike from the Erie Canal Park, through the village, and out to an old train depot — without ever getting in a car. For most of that decade it was an idea with no money behind it. This spring, that finally changed.
Camillus won its first real grant for the project: $180,000 from Onondaga County's Greenways & Blueways program, enough to pay for a feasibility study and a full design of the roughly five-mile route. It's an outsized award. By the program's own published guidelines, grants top out around $50,000 — or $120,000 for projects deemed "regionally significant" — so the village landed well above the usual ceiling. "It's going to be an extension, or a tributary, of the Erie Canal system," Waterman told This is CNY. "It's going to be a big deal. It's going to help the village."
Martisco Station Museum (photo by Dave Handley)
The planned route starts at the Sims Store Museum in the Erie Canal Park, runs through the village along Main Street, follows Ninemile Creek and an old rail bed, and ends at the Martisco Station Museum, an Italianate 1870 former train depot. It's been a grassroots effort as much as a government one. Volunteers started clearing brush along the route over the winter, and one of them — Scott Stearns, a retired engineer — is already sketching a 20-mile extension that would reach all the way to Otisco Lake.
What makes this more than a village footpath is where it connects. The route is designed to tie into the Erie Canalway Trail — the cross-state cycling route that already runs through Camillus — and through it the Empire State Trail, the 750-mile network linking New York City, Albany, and Buffalo. Finish it, and the village turns from a place you drive through into a stop on a statewide spine.
It won't be quick or cheap. The full build is estimated at around $2 million, most of it still unfunded, and the first mile alone crosses eight intersections, two Route 5 ramps, and a tangle of easements. Design work is expected to wrap by the end of the year, with construction a couple of years out.
For now, the grant buys a design and a line on a map. After ten years — and a winter of volunteers out clearing brush — that's the first time the trail is more than an idea.
If you go: The trailhead anchor, Camillus Erie Canal Park, is open May through October, and its Sims Store Museum runs narrated packet-boat rides over the 1842 Nine Mile Creek Aqueduct on Wednesdays and Sundays (1, 2, and 3 PM). On Main Street, the Green Gate Pub (2 Main St) is the on-route stop; just off it, The Mixing Bowl (103 Bennett Rd) handles breakfast and bakery and Charlee's (112 Kasson Rd) does ice cream. At the far end of the planned route, the Martisco Station Museum — the 1870 depot the trail is built to reach — is open Sundays, noon to 4, Memorial Day through Columbus Day.
Coverage from This is CNY.
THE BUILD
Construction and development around the city, in plain English.
Harborview Aquarium
Syracuse is on track to open a major public aquarium this summer, and if you've driven the Inner Harbor lately you've watched it take shape. Harborview is an 80,000-square-foot county project on the water, with a main habitat about 33 feet deep and an underwater tunnel running through it — billed as the deepest underwater-tunnel walk of any public aquarium in the country.
Aquarium construction progress from April (photo by Emily Kenny/Spectrum News 1)
The opening is targeted for later this summer, with construction wrapping over the coming weeks. It's also gotten more expensive: the price tag is now around $103.8 million, up from the $85 million first projected.
The money is where it gets interesting. Private donors covered part of the cost through a Friends of the Aquarium fund — 42 donations in all, 41 of them anonymous, and the secrecy became its own story. In April, the one big source that surfaced was the county-affiliated Greater Syracuse Sound Stage Development Corporation, which had quietly given $5.7 million. In May, county lawmakers unanimously passed a transparency law, though the compromise still lets large donors stay publicly anonymous as long as a few legislative leaders know who they are.
Coverage from CNY Central and LocalSYR.
THE BLOCK
One neighborhood at a time — what's there, what's changing.
Skaneateles
This week, our neighborhood walk heads out of the city entirely. It's a destination: a lakefront village about 25 minutes southwest, worth building a whole afternoon, day, or weekend around.
Some places you visit. Skaneateles you drink, literally. The lake at the foot of the village's main street has long been considered one of the cleanest in the country — clean enough that Syracuse drinks straight from it. The city's water is pulled from the lake unfiltered, one of only a handful of unfiltered municipal supplies in the United States. Not much beats the view from the Clift Park gazebo at the foot of the main street during summertime. Sunshine, sailboats, clear water, open sky. The park's swimming area opens to the public from the end of June through the end of August.
A few of our favorites in and around the village:
Skaneateles Bakery — 19 Jordan St. Scones, donuts, and coffee; the morning start.
Doug's Fish Fry — 8 Jordan St. The institution. Get the haddock; expect a line out the door in summer.
Mid-Lakes Navigation — 3 W Genesee St. Sightseeing cruises on the lake, running since 1969.
DROOZ + Company — 36 E Genesee St. A modern general store and gift shop on the main drag.
Gilda's — 12 W Genesee St. Wood-fired pizza in the village core.
The Sherwood Inn — 26 W Genesee St. An 1807 stagecoach stop with a lakefront porch.
Rosalie's Cucina — 841 W Genesee St. The destination Italian a mile west; the one locals send you to.
The Krebs — 53 W Genesee St. Fine dining in an 1899 landmark.
The Fields — 1000 Mottville Rd. A resort and spa just outside the village, if you'd rather make a weekend of it.
If you want to time a trip to something bigger, the village's biggest weekends are the Antique & Classic Boat Show in late July and Dickens Christmas in December. But a clear-water lake and a two-block walk are reason enough to make the drive in June.
THE SCOREBOARD
Local sports — what just happened and what's next.
Syracuse women's rowing turned in the best NCAA finish in program history, placing 9th at the national championships that wrapped Sunday. For the first time ever, all three Orange boats reached the A/B semifinals. Texas won the team title.
The Mets are home all week. After splitting a road series in Rochester, Syracuse opens a six-game homestand against the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders (the Yankees' Triple-A club) at NBT Bank Stadium, Tuesday through Sunday. Fireworks three straight nights (Thursday through Saturday), a Loretto jersey giveaway to the first 1,500 fans Thursday, and Pirates & Princesses Day at Sunday's 1:05 matinee. Schedule
THE KEEPER
A local pet looking for a home.
Meet Buck! He's an 8-month-old Australian shepherd/hound mix, about 33 lbs, and he's been at Helping Hounds for six weeks. He's good with other dogs and already neutered, though he's still working on house-training, and how he does with cats or young kids is still unknown.
This week's Keeper is ready for adoption at Helping Hounds Dog Rescue.
Here's what the Helping Hounds team has to say about Buck: "Buck is a sweet and medium energy puppy who does well with adults and teenagers. He has not been around any small children, but should be fine with respectful kids. He gets along with other dogs but tends to keep to himself. As with all puppies Buck is still learning the way the world works. He will thrive in a home that will help him become his best self."
THE CLUB
Your space — reply and join the conversation.
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This week's question: Taste of Syracuse is back this weekend. What $2 sample are you making a beeline for this year? Hit reply — we'll run the best answers next edition.
THE VIEW
One photo from the week — from us, or from you.
Gorgeous weekend weather led to back yard s’mores
Every Tuesday, in your inbox and at saltcityclub.com.
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— Salt City Club Team