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.
My journey of discovery began with my first visit. Asher and I were college shopping and I drove him there to tour the campus. We had time to kill before our appointment and went to grab lunch, randomly, at a place called the Lost Dog Cafe. It was a large restaurant in an old brick building that used to be a cigar factory. Cigar-making, I was to learn, was one of Binghamton’s bygone industries, of which there were many, including: shoe manufacturing, computers, defense contracting, cameras and Dr. Kilmer’s Swamp Root Tonic (look it up). Dick’s Sporting Goods, IBM and Valvoline all started here. The town had many nicknames over the years, including Valley of Opportunity and Parlor City, owing to its many stately homes.
Lost Dog, with its eclectic menu and decor, has a hip, vaguely Brooklyn feel to it. There was a reason for that. It was founded by two Binghamton natives who had spent a decade in Brooklyn working in the hospitality trade.
Asher decided to attend SUNY Binghamton, so my second trip was for orientation weekend. There were no trains to the city. Though it was once a transportation hub, the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad has long since ceased service. The last passenger train to pull in at Binghamton’s still-standing train station was in 1970. So we took a Greyhound bus, which deposited us at an improbably gorgeous Art Deco bus station. It was built in 1938 in Streamline Moderne style by Louisville architect William S. Arrasmith, who designed more than sixty Greyhound terminals. Binghamton’s is one of the last of these gems to survive. I would later find out that Rod Serling, who grew up in Binghamton, set one of his early “Twilight Zone” episodes in the station. (It’s the one where a woman meets her doppelgänger.)
While my son attended orientation, I surfed my phone looking for dinner options. A place called Sharkey’s, founded in 1947, looked interesting. On the ride over, I asked the cab driver what there was to do in Binghamton. She rattled off a few things I can’t remember and ended with, “and, of course, you’ll have to try our spiedies.”
Spiedies are a local food delicacy. So local that I had never heard of them until that moment. Turned out it was a sort of sandwich, made of cubes of either lamb, chicken or pork, marinated in a kind of Italian salad dressing, then charcoal-grilled and served on a bun.
I sat down in an old wooden booth at Sharkey’s and looked over the menu. There they were: spiedies. Of course I had to have one. I also had clams, which—strangely enough for a saloon in a land-locked town—were another Sharkey’s specialty.
Everything at Shakey’s seemed super old. The bar, the wooden booths, the old bowling-pin machine. I glimpsed something on the wall that looked like an illustration from the comic strip “The Wizard of Id.” I thought that was strange until I later discovered that the comic’s creator, Johnny Hart, grew up in the area and never really left. A hometown booster, Hart lent artwork to businesses and events all over town. After that, I noticed Hart drawings everywhere and in the oddest places.
One morning, needing breakfast, Asher, Mary Kate and I found Rolando’s Diner, a hole-in-the-wall joint near the court house square where nothing on the menu cost more than a few dollars. Binghamton prices, I learned, were the gift that kept on giving.
This was to be my first Binghamton diner. Binghamtonites don’t eat fancy. There are no fine-dining establishments. The best steak house in town, called The Beef (originally named What’s Your Beef?), performs like a small Midwestern supper club. This is the kind of town where most restaurants don’t have a website; they have a Facebook page. The most common form of restaurant, aside from red sauce joints—of which there are many—is the humble diner, and Binghamton has every sort.
There’s the Park Diner (in operation since 1967), which is perhaps the swankiest. It’s clean and family-oriented and commands an excellent view of the Susquehanna River. Chris’ Diner (1996) is downtown and is a no-frills box favored by locals and hungover frat boys. Danny’s (in business since 1938, though at current location from 1970s) is a small railway-car diner, painted yellow. It has an older clientele and older waitresses and cooks to match. They serve something called the Garbage omelette. (It has everything in it.)
The Red Robin (since 1959 at its final location) was a streamline beauty with a gorgeous red neon sign. It was a favorite of Mary Kate’s and mine until it closed in 2021, a victim of Covid. My first time there, I had two eggs, bacon, home fries, toast and coffee, all for $5. (Hugh Grant paid a visit to the Red Robin once when his 2014 movie, The Rewrite, filmed in Binghamton. It is, perhaps, the only major movie to have filmed here.)
There’s also the Broadway Diner, Union Diner and Skylark Diner, which I’ve never been to and may never get to now. Over the years, my son became an afficianado of Binghamton’s diners and I rarely paid him a call where we didn’t grab breakfast at one. If I were mayor of Binghamton, I’d rechristen the place Diner City.
About the Red Robin; it’s actually in Johnson City, not Binghamton. So is Sharkey’s. And Binghamton University is in Vestal, not Binghamton.
The confluence of the Susquehanna and Chenango Rivers is the site of a mash-up of cheek-by-bowl cities and towns so close together it’s difficult to ascertain where one ends and the other begins. The largest of these—Binghamton, Johnson City and Endicott—are known as the Triple Cities, even though the latter two are really villages.
Johnson City and Endicott were, in their heyday, true company towns. This is made clear by their very names. Johnson City is named after George F. Johnson, owner of the Johnson-Endicott Shoe Company, where nearly everyone in town worked. Endicott, once called The Magic City, was named after Henry B. Endicott, another owner of the same company.
When you enter Johnson City and Endicott, you’ll pass under a large cement arch that reads “Home of the Square Deal.” (The Triple Cities do love their nicknames.) These were erected by Johnson workers, who seemed to truly love their boss. They had good reason to. Johnson provided them with everything needed for a comfortable living, including housing, recreational facilities, medical clinics, libraries, parks, swimming pools, etc. Johnson wasn’t exactly selfless. These perks were meant to remove any reason for his 20,000 workers to unionize. Famous labor leader Samuel Gompers visited Johnson City many times, but never attempted to organize the workers, because he recognized that they already had more than what any union could offer them.
Johnson’s most ingenious initiative in currying worker favor was the donation of six carousels to the Triple Cities between 1919 and 1934. This led to yet another Binghamton nickname, Carousel Capital of the World. The amusements are still there.
During one weekend, Mary Kate and I visited all six, though we rode on not a single one. That’s because they were all closed during Covid. They are open now, but only between Memorial Day and Labor Day. So I still have’t taken a turn. Asher managed to catch a ride on the biggest one, in Recreation Park. In recent years, the panels of that merry-go-round were adorned with scenes from various “Twilight Zone” episodes. Serling surely enjoyed the carousel as a child.
Another carousel is part of the Ross Park Zoo, which has the distinction of being the fifth oldest zoo in the nation. It opened in 1875 and is named after Erastus Ross, a wealthy banker and builder who left a chunk of money to the city, his only instruction being that it be used to build a park for the community. Nearly 150 years later, the zoo and the park have certainly seen better days. But the locals love it.
The George C. Johnson Park Carousel is across from Red’s Kettle Inn, an 80-year-old tavern that is one of the last places in the area to serve Hot Pie, a variation of pizza that once rivaled spiedies in local popularity. The New York Triplets, a minor-league baseball team associated with the Yankees, played down the road from the 1920s to the 1960s and frequented Red’s often. The bar is filled with Yankees paraphernalia.
Another carousel, the C. Fred Johnson Park Carousel, stands opposite my favorite restaurant in the Triple Cities, Oaks Inn. I discovered it soon after Asher began attending classes. I always seek out the oldest restaurant in any town I visit. Binghamton didn’t seem to have any older than a few decades, aside from the diners. Then Oaks Inn, founded in 1930 and run by the Cerasaro family, popped up after many online searches. It appeared to be Italian and in a nearby town called Endicott, that I then had yet to visit.
We drove to the location. Getting out of the car, we seemed to be in the middle of a fair bit of nowhere. The Oaks Inn, its old neon sign aglow high above the street, was the only business around. It had been advertised as part of Endicott’s Little Italy. If so, this Little Italy was very little indeed. (I would later discover Consol’s, which makes the best Hot Pie in town; Jim Roma’s Bakery, which makes sheet-pan pizza; and the S&M Delicatessen. All told, there are probably a total of ten Italian businesses in Endicott. Research tells me that there were once many dozens more.)
We opened the door only to find steps. These led up to a second floor where the restaurant proper was. Stepping in was like entering a Scorcese film. There was a bar to the right and seating in the back. The lighting was dim. There was a coatrack and shutters on the windows so no one could see in. A clock advertised an extinct brand of ale. Oaks Inn was frozen in time. So were the prices.
The menu bore some surprises. They had Utica greens, an escarole dish with cheese, hot peppers and prosciutto, even though we were far from Utica. They made their own pasta, for which you selected one of many sauces. Everything I’ve ever had at Oaks has been excellent. But it’s possible I still haven’t had the best thing. As long as I’ve gone, they always run out of the ravioli early in the evening. That must be some excellent ravioli.
Oaks Inn became our place. Mary Kate and Asher and I dined there right before Covid closed it down and we were there the moment they opened back up. I know Asher took dates there on at least two occasions. And, of course, our official graduation dinner was held at Oaks. While ordering Negronis and Manhattans at the bar, I noticed that Oaks had recently introduced a short cocktail menu. There was a Boulevardier on it. I almost fell off my stool. Times were changing.
Times have even changed in the four short years since I began exploring Binghamton. Sharkey’s, like Red Robin Diner, has closed, sadly. So have a few other local institutions. I fear things may continue that way and that whenever I do return to Binghamton, fewer of my favorite places will still be around. IBM, which supported Endicott for decades, announced recently that it was going to pull its remaining few hundred jobs from the city, thus finally ending its century-long relationship with the area. The hulking white buildings that once formed the massive IBM campus are due to come down.
During graduation weekend, Mary Kate and I stopped at Tony’s Texas Hots, a narrow hot dog joint in Johnson City with a perfectly preserved lunch counter. Tony opened it in the 1950s or ‘60s. It’s now run by Tony’s graying son. Surrounding it are shuttered storefronts, including that of the old Red Robin Diner. It breaks your heart thinking how this was once the Home of the Square Deal. How long can this continue, I wondered. “This used to be a good town,” grumbled the owner. “It ain’t no more.”
Whatever happens to the Triple Cities, though, I’m grateful for having had the opportunity to know the place. New York State has a lot to offer, travel-wise, and Binghamton kind of gets lost in the shuffle. Though it is home to the leading school in the SUNY system, the city that surrounds the campus is given little thought. There is no single, overarching reason for the outsider to visit. Even the two rivers that define it—wide, shallow and slow-moving—are unprepossessing. I doubt I would have ever visited Binghamton had my son not gone to college there.
Knowing all I do about the place now, that would have been a shame.
Odds and Ends…
ALL TRIPLE CITIES EDITION! Five of the six old carousels in the Triple Cities will be open for business on May 27. The Ross Park carousel will be closed for 2023… Don’t miss the Vodka Flatbread or Buffalo Brussels sprouts at the Lost Dog Cafe. Also, this may be the only cocktail list in the nation where Dick Bradsell’s Espresso Martini is listed under its former name, Pharmaceutical Stimulant… Some of the best coffee to be had in the Triple Cities area is at the recently opened Batch… Give the homemade beer cheese a try at the Chenango Bridge Red & White Grocery… The WordPlace Poetry Open Mic will take place Thursday, May 18, at Bundy Museum Annex… The Kilmer Mansion, one of the last standing grand houses that used to line Binghamton, recently chose a new director, Alisha Swietzer… The macaroni salad at Belmar Pub and Grill is tip top. Yes, I said macaroni salad… The 5th Annual Brew & Food Fest will be held on Thursday, May 18, 6-9 pm, at the Endicott Visitors Center at 300 Lincoln Avenue… The Blue Velvet Big Band will play at the Phelps Mansion on May 21 from 2-4 pm… The 41st Anniversary of the Strawberry Festival in neighboring Owego will take place on June 16 & 17… If you’re in the mood for a craft cocktail, pretty much the only game in town is 205 Dry. On Tuesday, they have $6 French 75s. Be prepared to walk through a bookcase… Be sure to cross the South Washington Street Bridge, a historic pedestrian bridge that spans the Susquehanna River, and pay a call on the old Skirmisher statue, which honors the Spanish-American War.
Still so sad about the Red Robin. I wonder where the neon went?
This was a nice article to read. Some of the best places to eat that weren't mentioned: Caccitore's - you could drink the alfredo sauce it is that good, McCoy's Chophouse, and Remlik's. A cupcake shop that rivals Buttercup, without the line, Gabriella's. I like to remind my friends that the farm-to-table we ate in the city came from farmers and cheese farmers from upstate. Some of the cheese at Murray's in SoHo is sourced from https://livelyrun.com/. Do I miss NYC sometimes? Yeah, but I love being home.
https://visitbinghamton.org/
https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/3806/binghamton-university-led-battery-initiative-wins-113-million-to-bolster-domestic-battery-manufacturing-and-supply-chain-reinvigorate-region