ithaca and the finger lakes

Ithaca is gorges, as they say. It is very nice but I've only gone to visit a friend there. But he's great and the scenery is purty so therefore I like the Finger Lakes.

Mary you're the best. Marry me and we'll totally take a trip where we start at, say, Rome. Drive on down to Ithaca. Have a blast. Drive over to Utica. Do the whole "utica outlet store" thing. THen, we'll drive up to fucking Saratoga. Just fucking chill out there like the cool people we are. We'll probably put some mone down on whatever Bill Shoemaker is riding, cuz we roll that way!!

I-80.

All upstaters in the hizzouse!!!!

Like, Utica, Amsterdam, Schenectady = DEFINES me. God I love upstate.

Big fucking props; and Mohawk River, haha I lurve you.

Regarding FOOD: Three things - 1) Spiedies in nearby Binghamton. 2) Moosewood. 3) Thai Cuisine.

Sciencenter - go and watch that ball machine.

Cornell Cinema: unbelievably good film program. It was probably the best thing about my Cornell experience.

I actually just got a postcard in the mail from my mother today! This week, she's visiting my dear grandmother in Spencerport, NY, mere minutes outside of beautiful downtown Rochester.

She sent me a postcard of the main street in Spencerport as it passes over the Erie Canal, framing one of those beautiful, green-painted, steel-girded bridges that define the Erie Canal and upstate New York. God, the memories.

I live about 20 minutes from Watkins Glen and I am very fond of it, mostly because of the lake, which is ALWAYS very cold. Avoid it when NASCAR is in town. Then the racing fans descend like locusts.

I haven't been able to visit the wineries, since being under the legal drinking age takes away most of the fun. They're very easy to find, since they are the area's main attraction.

Corning is okay. They remodeled the museum of glass, the main attraction there, and now it is all shiny and fancy.

I flew to Ithaca last weekend to find a place and sign a lease for this fall, when I start grad school at Cornell.

I was really excited about moving there, but I was left a little disillusioned about Ithaca. There seemed to be a disturbingly high rate of burnt out hippies living there. I don't mind normal hippies that much, and the burn outs are sometimes amusing, but they were EVERYWHERE! I haven't seen so many tie-dyed shirts in my entire life. Someone cheer me up!

http://www.ithacafestival.org/

I was just there, during the festival!
Actually, the parade was pretty awesome, until a thunderstorm broke out in the middle of it.

Inlaws live near Syracuse. On vacation, I took my bike from CO and rode it all around the area between there, Skaneanteles, and Cazenovia. After global warming, this should be a popular place, because it's really really beautiful. Lots of big hills of 300 to 500 feet of vertical. Tons of abandoned, perfect roads. Not much traffic at all. In mid-May, temps of 65 to 70 and no bugs. At the top of the westbound hill on route 20 near Pompey Hollow Rd--a SNOW BANK. Also, many collapsed barns. Mmm, and on a big ridgeline maybe 12 miles east of Caz, an hypnotic array of about 20 wind turbines.

The wineries I've visited were south of Geneva, another beautiful area. Wine is little sketchy.

I flew to Ithaca last weekend to find a place and sign a lease for this fall, when I start grad school at Cornell.

I was really excited about moving there, but I was left a little disillusioned about Ithaca. There seemed to be a disturbingly high rate of burnt out hippies living there. I don't mind normal hippies that much, and the burn outs are sometimes amusing, but they were EVERYWHERE! I haven't seen so many tie-dyed shirts in my entire life. Someone cheer me up!

I go to Cornell (just finished undergrad, starting my Master's there in a couple weeks). There are a bunch of dirty burnt-out old hippies, but by the time you get 20k college students in there, it starts to even itself out. I was there two summers ago and yeah, it can get bad when school isn't in session. But it's a great place to go to school, there's just enough to do that you won't be bored when you actually have free time (which isn't that often at Cornell). Winters can blow, but it makes the spring feel that much better when it finally comes. Make sure you get hockey tickets; you'll have fun even if you have no prior interest in hockey.

If you're into a music scene, Cornell has the Fanclub Collective, a student group that puts on some good indie and local rock shows. Their output has been lacking lately in the last year or two (shows my first two years included Q And Not U, Ted Leo (twice), the Arcade Fire, the Decemberists, the Rapture, the Walkmen, Broken Social Scene, Secret Machines, etc. and has been reduced to just a few good shows like Art Brut/Tokyo Police Club and Caribou/Junior Boys in recent years) but can still put together a decent show for cheap. The Cornell Concert Commission brings one or two big-name acts every semester. Their output is generally horrible (All American Rejects, Dashboard Confessional, Jimmy Eat World) but can sometimes put together some great shows like Franz Ferdinand, the Strokes, and (one that I wish I didn't miss) Mos Def. Plus there's all the classical/world/jazz music that comes with going to a big university, which is pretty nice.

There are a bunch of dirty burnt-out old hippies, but by the time you get 20k college students in there, it starts to even itself out.

I figured that would be true, but it's nice to hear someone else confirm it.

How about the local music scene? Any good bands/artists? The bands that played during the festival were uniformly terrible, classic rock throwbacks, but I suppose that's true of a lot of small town festivals.

Oh yeah, and what about book stores and record shops? Any you recommend?

Local music scene? Hmm... I never really cared enough to pay attention in the last four years. There are a couple of good local bands, as far as I can tell, actually, but the local scene overall isn't much to shout about. I remember seeing a band called Marathon that opened for some other show I saw a few years ago; they were local and seemed good at the time. Some of my friends swore by a local band called SpaceDawg that I never saw or heard, so I can't tell you much about them, but to sum it up, Ithaca bands are designed with the local demographic in mind, aka people who just smoked a ton of grass and may/may not remember the sixties.

Record shops: No Radio Records on Seneca St. is a great little record store, about a year old, specializing mostly in CDs, and there's another called Volume Records on the Commons that has a mix of CDs and vinyl. There are also some used record shops near the Commons where you can find some decent old vinyl but I don't have a turntable so I don't make use of them.

As for book stores, there are a ton, but I'm an engineer and I don't get to read too much, so sadly I can't recommend any. But it always seems like there's a book shop within stone's throw of wherever you are downtown.

I can, however, recommend to you my favorite place in Ithaca: the Chapter House, located on Stewart Ave. at the bottom of Williams St. It's probably my favorite bar in the world. 40+ beers on tap, great atmosphere (grad student friendly, no annoying fake-ID types, free popcorn, amiable & knowledgeable bartenders, semi-competitive billiards & foosball). I'd recommend going there both on a Friday when it's packed and on a Tuesday when it's dead; both are great times to grab a beer with some friends.

You know, when I was there for a few days I stayed in what must be the worst hotel in the city (Hillside Inn), also on Stewart Ave, and I passed by the Chapter House every night. I noted that it seemed pretty decent at the time.

Thanks for the advice!

That reminds me, on the morning after my last night I stayed at that inn, I found BLOOD on the other side of the pillow I had been using! Not wet, it looked like it had been through the wash a thousand times, but still disturbing.

Yeah... don't stay there. It's a prime location, but it might as well be the Bates Motel.

previous mention on ILX...

GET IN YOUR DAMN CAR MAN.

dRIVE TO ROCHESTER.

BUT ME A FIVE AND DIME RING..AND LETS GO TO THE JUDGE...
MARRY ME...LIKE YOU WANT TO..

AND SATURATE ME WITH YOUR LOVE AND TENDERNESS...

CARRY UP THE STAIRS...WE WILL FIND OUR HOTEL SOMEWHERE NEAR THE FINGER LAKES.
QUIT YOUR JOB. I HAVE A HOUSE.

HAVE A CAR.
I WANT YOU TO COME HERE..
UNLESS YOU HAVE A QUIET HOUSE THERE..

GET IN YOUR DAMN CAR NOW!!!!!!!!!!!
PACK YOUR BAGS.

DON'T TURN BACK.

I WILL BUY YOU A FIVE AND DIME RING ..LATER i WILL BUY YOU THE REAL THING..
THE ANSWER IS YES...I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-- marissa, Sunday, 1 April 2007 00:52 (4 months ago) Bookmark Link

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Finger Lakes?

G'night!
-- Mark G, Sunday, 1 April 2007 01:14 (4 months ago) Bookmark Link

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Finger Lakes are real lakes in Upstate New York USA>
-- marissa, Sunday, 1 April 2007 01:16 (4 months ago) Bookmark Link

......I think I'll stay away from Rochester.

Wait a second. How many ilxors live in Ithaca?

This thread suggests there are others besides me.

I'm getting used to how screwed up this place is. When I came here last May/June to get a lease on an apt, I was a little freaked out. Now that I've been confined within city limits for almost all of the last six or seven months, I'm almost getting used to it.

was there last weekend to visit my cousin. awesome waterfall there. walked around the commons, there was an anit war demo on. i hear the 2nd Floor Bar is nice but was closed when we tried to get in there. ended up drinking micro brews at some other palce cant remember the name of it.

go to club semesters and mack on the IC football groupies!

prolly good cycling roads in ithacaaaa

never seen this thread before. i grew up in the finger lakes area (well from ages 5-12 or so), near keuka lake (it's the smallish y-shaped one). i love that region. we had a vineyard next to our house. i imagine there's still an awful lot of cheap real estate around there. i think that's what attracted my parents and some of their back-to-the-country contingent. the lakes are beautiful, great swimming and boating in the summer. the wine was still kind of a punchline when i was a kid, but its reputation has improved a lot. there are supposed to be at least a few decent wineries.

there are bed and breakfasts and the like too. probably lake houses to rent as well, although i don't know what they go for. anyway, a good cheap summer vacation.

planning to stop in watkins glen to hike, hit some wineries & maybe do the glass museum right after labor day

tho just saw this come across my feed - wuts up w the agua

https://variety.com/2018/music/news/phish-curveball-festival-canceled-flooding-fans-onsite-1202908110/

I went to school near there for a couple years. Watkins Glen is so pretty. Also, Farm Sanctuary is there!!

https://www.farmsanctuary.org/the-sanctuaries/watkins-glen-ny/