The CNY Reports, Part 2: The Life and Death of Salina Street
2009 April 21
Many of the old industrial and manufacturing towns in the U.S. have been in a steady state of decline for years. So the recession really isn’t anything new. In part two of the Unemploymentality’s CNY Reports this theme is explored on South Salina Street in Syracuse New York – A neighborhood that hasn’t seen better days for decades.
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What’s with this video? First of all, it’s more like an audio file with the occasional picture thrown in than a real video. It really started ticking me off, and I liked much of what the piece said. I grew up in Syracuse. Man, it is DEAD. Keep working on it. It has potential.
Thanks Kelli –
It’s actually not a video, per se, it’s more of an audio documentary – something like you’d hear on NPR…but i’ve been experimenting with adding simple video that compliment a radio story to make audio pieces more compelling on line…but I hear what you’re saying, I think I gave too much video to let people know that the focus should be on the audio, and too little to be clear that it’s a radio piece….
Great job and very interesting. I grew up in a burb outside Syracuse (Liverpool), they type of place white collar middle class families moved to for the good schools and incredibly cheap real estate. Still is that way but is quickly becoming more of a McMansion-infested strip-mall wasteland like every other suburb in America.
Syracuse was considered a wasteland. My friends and I used to call it Sorrycuse. We had a joke that Crayola was developing a new crayon called Syracuse Grey based on its depressed economy and cloudy overcast weather. After college, my parents asked me on two or three occasions if I ever thought about moving back to Syracuse. I always told them no, that nothing was going on, the weather sucked, and that I would never find a job outside of a grocery store or at the mall. If it wasn’t for the Syracuse University, the rest of the city probably wouldn’t exist. In fact the only time kids from the burbs ever went into the city proper was for a Syracuse game or to a strip bar.
While Salina St is in bad shape, other parts of Syracuse have sprung to life, namely the Armory Sq. section of town. Nice 2-3 block radius of boutiqy shops, restaurants, bars, etc. Other than that, the city is in sad shape. And with all the Destiny USA drama going on, it could get much worse.