Goodbye, Binghamton
How I Grew to Love a Rundown Rust Belt Town.
When my son went to college at SUNY Binghamton in the fall of 2019, I didn’t know many people who could tell me much about the place. But those who did know this small New York State city, which sits in a valley along two rivers near the Pennsylvania border, didn’t have anything good to say. A writer of my acquaintance grew up there and expressed no wish to ever return. A bartender with experience of the town happily disparaged it.
Four years later, I’ll defend Binghamton to them, as well as to any and all comers.
I’ve traveled to Binghamton perhaps 20 times over the past few years, staying at a dozen of its not-spectacular hotels. (Tip: if you’re going, stay at the Doubletree or Holiday Inn downtown and forget all the rest.) My son graduated from college last Saturday. So, very soon, I will no longer have a standing reason to visit.
And, quite frankly, that makes me sad.
My longing for Binghamton is not merely the natural affection one accrues for the town or city where one’s kid attends college—though it is partly that. It’s more than that. You can’t fake the feeling I have for this weird, misfit, tumbledown city with its glorious industrial past, intrinsic natural beauty, sleepy rivers, oddball eating traditions and hidden secret attractions.
My love for Binghamton built slowly over time. For the city is like an onion. The more you look, the more layers you find beneath what seems, at first glance, a roughhewn metropolis whose glory days are well behind it. There wasn’t a single visit that didn’t reveal a new aspect of the town that caused me to pause and reconsider the place all over again.