Fall started yesterday, and Central New York mornings have turned crisp. Westcott Street has the last free 315 Thursdays show of the series Thursday night and the Cultural Fair on Sunday, the 33rd one.
One to set an alarm for: tickets for Enchanted Beaver Lake go on sale tonight at 8 PM (Wednesday, Sept. 23). It runs Oct. 22 to 25. $35 plus fees covers everyone in one car. The Friends of Beaver Lake say it sells out, and that Friday and Saturday go first. Tickets
Image from Beaver Lake Nature Center
Here's what's on our radar:
TL;DR:
The Lineup: The Westcott Street Cultural Fair Sunday with the parade at noon, 315 Thursdays on Westcott Street Thursday, Taste of B'ville on Paper Mill Island and Manlius Swan Fest Saturday, and Syracuse Vegfest at the Fairgrounds Sunday.
Live Music: Will Hoge at The 443 Wednesday, The Suitcase Junket at The 443 and a free Sons of Grunge show at Funk 'n Waffles Thursday, Dermot Kennedy at the Amphitheater Saturday, and Los Blancos on the Loading Dock Sunday.
The Tab: Red Chili on Erie Boulevard, where a full Szechuan menu runs alongside the takeout standards.
The Spotlight: American High, the studio in a shuttered Liverpool school, put a cast member on Saturday Night Live this week and has a 28-episode Netflix series shot here landing Oct. 26.
The Build: Harborview Aquarium memberships are on sale with no opening date set, and the county, not the operator, carries the risk if people don't come.
The Block: Strathmore, the neighborhood built around Onondaga Park and Hiawatha Lake, 107 years after it was sold as "nothing but homes."
The Scoreboard: The Mets lost the finale in 11 innings and missed the playoffs, but 81 wins is the most since they became the Mets; the Orange are off this week.
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THE LINEUP
Events this week — what's on, where, and how to get in.
Featured Event
Westcott Street Cultural Fair — Westcott St. from Concord Pl. to Dell St., Sunday, Sept. 27. Parade at noon, music and performances 12:30 to 6:30 PM. Free, rain or shine.
This is the 33rd one: booths, food, and performers from the neighborhood filling Westcott Street and the side streets for one afternoon, and every booth space is already taken. The streets close at 9 AM and reopen at 8 PM, the parade lines up between Euclid and Lennox at 11:30, and a shuttle bus runs from Fayette Street. Cars parked against the rules get ticketed and towed, so use the shuttle or the Thornden Park lot. Details
Poster by Bharati Mahajan
This Week
Thursday, September 24
315 Thursdays: The Rollin Rust — Westcott St. at Dell St., 5 to 9 PM. Free. The September series' last outdoor show: DJ Joey D at 5, Brian Thomas & The Strikes at 6, The Rollin Rust at 7:30. Details
Syracuse International Film Festival kickoff: By George — Manlius Library Community Room, 6 PM. Free, registration preferred. The festival's 23rd year opens with H. Paul Moon's documentary on New York's King George III statue, 250 years after it came down. Moon will be there. Register
Friday, September 25
Empty Bowls — Everson Museum of Art, 401 Harrison St., 11 AM to 2 PM. $25 buys a handmade bowl from local potters and students, plus the soup in it. You keep the bowl. Details
Opening reception, three exhibitions — The Warehouse Gallery, 350 W. Fayette St., 5:30 to 7:30 PM. The Pride of the Orange, on 125 years of the SU marching band, plus new work from Cali M. Banks and Salt City Responds. All up through Nov. 7. Details
Saturday, September 26
Taste of B'ville — Paper Mill Island, 136 Spensieri Ave., Baldwinsville, noon to 10 PM. $2, free for 12 and under. Music all day on the island stage: Ashley Cox at noon, Diana Jacobs Band at 2:30, Country Justice at 5, Infinity at 7:30. Bring a lawn chair. Details
Manlius Swan Fest — Village Centre, Manlius, 1 to 4 PM. Free. Vendors around the Lower Swan Pond, music at the amphitheater, food trucks and an art show. The library runs a swan story time at 10:30 AM.
Cazenovia Art Trail — 23 studios around Cazenovia, Saturday and Sunday, 10 AM to 5 PM. Free. Forty artists open their studios: painters, potters, weavers, woodworkers. Self-guided, map online. Details
HumaneCNY Stock the Shelter — 4915 W. Taft Rd., Liverpool, 10 AM to 2 PM. Bring something off the shelter's wish list; a silent auction runs alongside. Details
Justin Willman — Oncenter Crouse Hinds Theater, 7 PM. The Magic for Humans magician. Tickets
Sunday, September 27
Syracuse Vegfest — Science & Industry Building, NYS Fairgrounds, noon to 5 PM. Free parking, $10 suggested donation. Plant-based food vendors, a DJ, and activities for all ages. Details
Classic Mystery Double Feature — Palace Theatre, 2384 James St., 2 PM. $10 at the door, cash only. Two 1939 pictures: Charlie Chan at Treasure Island and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Details
Live Music
Wednesday, September 23
Will Hoge — The 443 Social Club, 443 Burnet Ave., 7 PM, doors 5:30. The Grammy-nominated songwriter, touring his 15th album, Sweet Misery, a louder rock-band record than his usual. Tickets
Thursday, September 24
The Suitcase Junket — The 443 Social Club, 7 PM, doors 5:30. Matt Lorenz's one-man band: early blues, rock and roll, and throat singing on a homemade kit. Tickets
Sons of Grunge — Funk 'n Waffles, 307 S. Clinton St., 8 PM. Free, no cover. Details
Saturday, September 26
Gary Girzadas — the 1911 Tasting Room at Beak & Skiff, LaFayette, 2 to 4 PM. Free. Cider flights and Tavern food on Apple Hill; u-pick runs 10 AM to 5 PM. Details
Dermot Kennedy — Empower FCU Amphitheater, 8 PM. The Irish singer-songwriter, and the Amphitheater's last big show of the year after Treaty Oak Revival Thursday and Dan + Shay Friday. Tickets
Mike Powell — the Steeple Coffee House at United Church of Fayetteville, 310 E. Genesee St., 7:30 PM. Suggested $15 to $20 at the door, kids free. The songwriter opens the church's coffee-house season. Details
Sunday, September 27
Tom Chick — the 1911 Tasting Room at Beak & Skiff, LaFayette, 2 to 5 PM. Free. U-pick runs 10 AM to 5 PM. Details
Los Blancos — the Loading Dock at Middle Ages Brewing, 120 Wilkinson St., 4 to 7 PM. Free, no tickets needed. The blues and roots band outdoors, the night after they play Shifty's. Details
Coming Soon
Syracuse International Film Festival, Oct. 1 to 3 at Catherine Cummings Theatre in Caz, Sunday, Oct. 4 at the Palace. Fall Festival at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo, Oct. 3 and 4, 10 AM to 3 PM, free with admission. Chuck Hafner's Fall Festival, weekends from Oct. 3 through Oct. 25, North Syracuse. RetroGameCon at the Oncenter, Oct. 2 to 4. LaFayette Apple Festival, Oct. 10 and 11, $8 at the door, presale until Oct. 9.
THE TAB
One food or drink spot a week — what's new, what's worth the trip, and what to order.
Red Chili
Red Chili — 2740 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse — Szechuan, open to 9:15 most nights and 10:10 Friday and Saturday
Red Chili runs two menus out of one kitchen. One is the Americanized roster you'll want if you're not looking for authentic Szechuan: General Tso's, sesame chicken, lo mein. The other is a full Szechuan menu, organized by cooking method instead of by protein: garlic sauce style, dry pot, cumin, sizzling, whole fish.
The menu marks its own popular items: General Tso's and sweet and sour chicken sitting alongside Xiao Long Bao, Ma Po Tofu, Dan Dan Noodles and Chongqing-style diced chicken with dried chili. If the menu is feeling overwhelming, the staff are helpful in choosing what to order. Szechuan cooking runs spicy by tradition, and they'll make a dish milder if you ask.
We've been several times and always enjoyed it. The last round was wontons, spring rolls, scallion pancakes and chicken in garlic sauce, plus sesame chicken for the toddler. For dessert we had the pumpkin pies and sesame balls, two of each for $7.99. Both are glutinous rice flour, which is where the chewy, mochi-like texture comes from.
The dining room has a calm feel with live plants, and it's been quiet every time we've been.
Looking to make it a date night? Lucky Foot Spa is next door, so you can get foot massages before or after.
THE SPOTLIGHT
A deeper look at one person, place, or project in Syracuse.
The Liverpool Studio That Just Sent Someone to Saturday Night Live
A production company working out of a shuttered Liverpool school is putting one of its own on Saturday Night Live this Saturday. The company is American High. The building is the old A.V. Zogg school, which Jeremy Garelick bought in 2017.
Since then it has turned out a run of teen comedies for Hulu and others: Big Time Adolescence, The Binge, Plan B, Crush, and last year's Summer of 69. It also built a sketch team whose short videos found an audience well past Central New York.
That sketch work is now a Netflix series. In April, Netflix ordered Minimum Wage, 28 episodes built out of American High's shorts about teenagers running a pizzeria, which had drawn 30 million views across TikTok, Instagram and YouTube since May 2024. Episodes run about 12 and a half minutes, Randall Park plays the boss, and the 7 core cast members from the shorts carried over. It was shot in Liverpool. The first 14 episodes land Oct. 26.
Syracuse's film commissioner, Eric Vinal, has said the company turned local film work from gig-by-gig into full-time jobs, and it hires local college students.
Grace Reiter joined the sketch cast in 2022. She is one of 2 new featured players for SNL's 52nd season, which opens Sept. 26 at 11:30 PM with Jalen Brunson hosting, and her credits since joining include a recurring part on HBO's The Chair Company and a Hunger Games parody she directed and starred in that has 13 million views on YouTube. She is from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. The work that got her to Studio 8H happened in Liverpool.
Coverage from CNY Central, NBC, Netflix, and The Hollywood Reporter.
THE BUILD
Construction and development around the city, in plain English.
The Aquarium Has a Price List Now
The Harborview Aquarium was aiming for September. The opening was delayed by a 60,000-pound acrylic shark-tank panel that arrived late from Italy. This week the county started selling memberships with no official open date.
County Executive Ryan McMahon recently announced the annual membership options. Each buys unlimited admission for 14 months, two months free, starting the day the aquarium opens:
$54 — one adult
$108 — two adults
$135 — grandparents, two adults over 55 plus two children, who don't have to be named in advance
$180 — two adults and up to four children
$243 — two adults and up to six children
The annual memberships are currently Founders prices: 10% off the regular annual price, with another 10% off for Zoo or MOST members. No blackout dates, and 15% off the cafe and gift shop. The county still has not set an opening date, calling it "soft openings in October" inside a window it has said runs to Dec. 21. They're on sale now at harborviewaquarium.com.
There's no single-day ticket price yet. The county hasn't announced one, so there's no way to tell how many visits it takes for a membership to pay for itself.
At last week's county budget hearing, Legislature Chair Nicole Watts and CFO Kristi Smiley walked through what happens if ticket sales don't cover costs. ZoOceanarium is paid a flat annual fee to run the place and shares in neither the revenue nor the expenses, so the money is the county's either way: it collects the admissions and it covers the bills. If that comes up short, McMahon's office would have to come back to the Legislature for an appropriation.
What it means: the $103.8 million building is done enough to sell memberships before it has an opening date, and the county, not the operator, carries the risk on whether people come.
Also this week: the Westcott Theater is still open: no vote Monday, a judge ruled the same day that it can keep operating, and the Council takes it up again Sept. 28.
Coverage from the budget hearing and the county's own operator contract briefing.
THE BLOCK
One neighborhood at a time — what's there, what's changing.
Strathmore
In 1919, a real estate firm called Clark & Porter put its new subdivision on the southwest side of the city up for sale with an ad that read, in part: "no smoke, no dirt, no fogs, no two-family or apartment houses, no business places of any kind, nothing but homes." The plan had been drawn by 1917 and waited out the war.
Onondaga Park came first. The city bought the old Wilkinson Reservoir land in 1892, opened it as a park in 1898, put in the stone walls and the island gazebo in the early 1900s, hired the planner George Kessler in 1907, and in 1911 reshaped the reservoir into the 17-acre Hiawatha Lake. Upper Onondaga Park is 67 acres, open dawn to dusk, with a pool, tennis and pickleball courts, a canoe launch, and the footbridge out to the gazebo.
Image from the Greater Strathmore Neighborhood Association
Strathmore kept its promise. Ward Wellington Ward designed nine of the houses here, and the streets are still Tudor, Colonial Revival and Arts and Crafts. Inside the lines it is almost entirely houses, plus a few schools and the country club on Glenwood Avenue. The events are the exception: Art on the Porches, the one-day art fair on Ruskin Avenue that ran again Sept. 12, and the Mountain Goat, which has run through the park since 1979.
What to look at if you stroll through:
Ward Wellington Ward's houses — nine of them, all on four streets. Robineau Road has 176, 225 and 255, all from 1919, plus 265 from 1926. Strathmore Drive has 106 from 1919 and 108 from after 1926. Summit Avenue has 206 from 1914 and 211 from 1913. Clairmonte Avenue has 111 from 1914. Ward is known for the tile work inside, and 225 Robineau is the only stone house he built.
Upper Onondaga Park, 301 Crossett St. — the lake loop, the gazebo bridge, and the pool in season.
Elmwood Park, 65 acres at the south edge — a brook, stone steps, and a pavilion.
Kirk Park — 33 acres and a nine-lane pool, linked to the two Onondaga parks by Onondaga Creek Boulevard in 1930.
History from the National Register nomination.
THE SCOREBOARD
Local sports — what just happened and what's next.
The Mets' season is over. They lost Sunday's finale to Lehigh Valley 5-4 in 11 innings at NBT Bank Stadium and missed the playoffs, after going 29-11 over the last 40 games. The final record is 81-68.
The Orange are off this week. Syracuse lost at Pittsburgh 27-13 last Thursday; next is at UConn, Saturday, Oct. 3, noon, on CBS Sports Network. Schedule
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— Salt City Club Team