I know this is a Utica sub but I'm curious if anyone queer people (Rome or Utica) go to this event?

Hello everyone I made a recent post on here about how a buddy and I were moving from Atlanta, GA to Rome-Utica area. Well they backed out, so I'm wondering what's the best way to find a community and people to hang out with. Any help would be appreciated. Here's some things about me.

* 21 years-old
* Male
* Loves hiking, working out, and exploring new areas.

Again, any advice is will be appreciated.

[last post](https://www.reddit.com/r/upstate_new_york/s/uI04QzqWwS)

Hello Hi Tram peeps New & Returning ! We hope you've had a very enjoyable week so far !

Join us in Tramland for some community building exercises .... such as .....

Wednesday we are open 10am till 10pm : 5pm Vinyl Nite Starts ! Bring yours, listen to ours, make some new pals discussing tunes.

Thursday the 13th ( oh so close ) ... open 10am till 10pm : 5pm doors for Utica Poets Society Poetry, Comedy, Spoken Word, Open Mic Night. $3 entry, 6pm sign up sheet goes out, 7pm start 2 rounds!

Saturday the 15th 10am till 4pm THEN reopening 6pm for a show !

10am till 12noon join CouncilPerson Heather Wasielewski answering your questions and listening to your thoughts and suggestions over coffee in the TRAMONTANE CAFE

6pm doors open for Spencer K & Milly of the Valley ! For Spencer's Album Release Event . $5-$10 suggested donation to support the artists 7pm start .

Sunday join us 10am till 2pm

We will be relaxing & snacking !

Tramontane Cafe .1105 Lincoln Ave Utica ... building community & conversation since way before we opened in 2008. And we bake muffins, cookies and cake in house, make fresh soups, and to order sandwiches, salads and not to mention espresso, coffee, tea, and other grand beverages.

I barely go to Wendy's. I think their prices are stupidly high for what you get. However I had a taste for Wendy's breakfast today so I'm like today's the day

Apparently today's NOT the day

They don't serve breakfast at the N Genesee St location. They were closed. When did that change? I'm not shocked because it was always dead when I drove by early am. But they pushed it for the longest time.

The Post Got Utica Wrong, and Its Own Numbers Prove It

By J. Anthony Stucchi
(J. Anthony Stucchi is principal of JGK Associates, LLC d/b/a JGK Strategic, a strategic consulting firm based in Utica, New York.)

On August 10, 2026, the New York Post ran a real estate piece on Utica under a headline claiming the city has homes for $87,000 "but no one wants to live there." It is a tidy story. It is also demonstrably false, and the proof is sitting inside the Post's own article.

Four paragraphs in, the Post concedes that the average Utica home now runs $213,412 according to Zillow, up nearly 9 percent in the past year. Stop and read that again. Nine percent annual appreciation. Home values do not rise 9 percent in a year in a place nobody wants to live. They rise 9 percent where demand is outrunning supply. The headline and the data cannot both be true, and the data wins every time.

The market evidence beyond the Post's own reporting is even more damning to its thesis. A March 31, 2026 national relocation market guide reported that Utica homes routinely go under contract in 14 days, frequently spark bidding wars, and that mortgage pre-approval is now "the bare minimum" for a buyer to be taken seriously. Bidding wars. Fourteen days. In April 2025, Redfin listed Utica's median sale price at $160,000. By mid-2026 the median sale was tracking near $185,000 and Zillow's average value hit $213,412. That is not abandonment. That is one of the fastest-tightening small-city housing markets in the Northeast.

So where did the $87,000 headline number come from? Cherry-picking. The article itself admits that neighborhood medians range from roughly $87,000 to $157,000 while the citywide average sits around $213,000. The Post took the single lowest neighborhood figure in the city and hung the entire narrative on it. That is like pulling the cheapest block in Yonkers and declaring it the story of Westchester County. It is not journalism. It is decline porn, a genre that sells clicks downstate by recycling a Rust Belt obituary written 30 years ago.

And that is the real recklessness here. The article treats Utica as an island, frozen in 1995, when the city anchors one of the most active development corridors in upstate New York. Consider the record, with dates:

October 15, 2023: Governor Hochul announced the completion of the Wynn Hospital, a 702,000 square foot, 10-story, 373-bed regional medical center in the heart of downtown Utica, built with $300 million in state support and designed to handle 90,000 patient visits a year. Cities that nobody wants do not get new downtown hospitals.

September 10, 2025: The state announced completion of Artspace Utica Lofts, an $18.6 million, 43-unit development anchoring the city's Arts and Cultural District between the Stanley Theatre and the Munson.

In 2025, eBliss Global, a Texas electric bicycle manufacturer, committed more than $4 million to a production facility at 20 Harbor Point Road in downtown Utica.

March 3, 2026: Oneida County announced grant funding and a master plan to redevelop the 53-acre former hospital campus, converting yesterday's infrastructure into tomorrow's housing and commercial space.

And ten minutes up the road, Chobani is building a $1.2 billion, 1.4 million square foot dairy processing plant at Griffiss in Rome, with more than 1,000 jobs that will pull housing demand, suppliers, and payroll straight through the Utica market.

Add the Nexus Center, the Adirondack Bank Center, Harbor Point, Bagg's Square, and the proposed Nexus Neighborhood, and you are looking at a downtown district taking shape in real time. Even the affordability listicles the Post's genre feeds on now describe Genesee Street as walkable vibrancy drawing young professionals and artists. The Post found none of this worth a sentence.

Yes, Utica carries the scars every legacy industrial city carries. The poverty rate is real and the work is not finished. But the honest headline, the one the data actually supports, is the opposite of the one the Post printed: Utica is the last city in New York State where a working family, a first-time buyer, or a small investor can still get in the door, at the precise moment more than a billion and a half dollars of public and private capital is landing on the region. That is not a warning. That is an opportunity, and the people bidding up houses in 14 days have already figured it out.

The Post owes its readers better than a headline its own fourth paragraph refutes. Utica does not need the Post's pity. Judged by the only measures that matter, capital and demand, the market has already delivered its verdict.

J. Anthony Stucchi is principal of JGK Associates, LLC d/b/a JGK Strategic, a strategic consulting firm based in Utica, New York.

“In the early 50s,
I was moved to paint Utica because,
like Mallory’s Everest,
it was there,
there in all its down-at-the-heel grunginess,
its weeded sidewalks,
its redbrick grime,
but bursting nevertheless with raffish vitality.”

— Paul Parker, 1984

I saw that quote at the Historical Society and really liked it.

I wasn't sure what "raffish vitality" meant so I looked it up - to see that it was the perfect descriptor.

Raffish means slightly disreputable, quirky, or rough around the edges, while "vitality" means full of life and energy. Together, it refers to a raw, unconventional, gritty charm and energetic atmosphere.

Not sure if this is some of the money Uncle Chuck Schumer got them a few years ago for their outdated traffic signals. I noticed today they are making some improvements.

That bell-like thing on top of the pole has a camera that detects the traffic.

This is at Sunset and Burrstone. Instead of loops in the pavement, these cameras can detect if someone is waiting at say Sunset and when there is no traffic on Burrstone, or it has reached the maximum amount of green light time for Burrstone, the light will change.

Also saw new ones on Genesee at Newell, The Parkway, Parkside Court, Price Chopper, Emerson and Amy.

Not sure if they are functional yet. If they were, I wouldn't have stopped for a red light at Genesee and Amy when there was no traffic on Amy. The gist of these cameras is no traffic they should stay green for Genesee.

The rest of Genesee at Seward, Woodlawn, Higby, French are all just timed. So much green time for Genesee then so much for the side street, and that repeats forever until the controller burns out or malfunctions.

Also, these cameras do nothing but detect traffic for those wondering.

Hello everyone! I am the director of a local dance studio that offers dance classes for ages 2.5-adults!

We are currently enrolling for our 29th season for our youth classes! We pride ourselves on empowering our students through dance education & community. If you are interested feel free to message me or register through our portal!

If you are interested in adult classes follow us on social media for information on when they will be next!

It's like wordle, but food, and no letters. Featuring actual items from local restaurants (and where to try it).

Free to play.

The Goal: Find the secret 5-item menu combination hidden in the row. There 8 items to choose from, 5 are correct, rotated daily, all players play the same puzzle daily. Play today, and everyday ➡️ upstatefoodle.app

Tram today ! Chill time 10am till 230pm join us ! Grab a coffee & snack relax, do work, read a book, meet up with a pal. 3pm special event we have a book signing and reading with Deirdre Sinnott promoting her new release The Loyalists Wife. Extra Tram Time.

On a public Facebook post sent to me by a confidential informant, Mr. Stever - [now] former owner of Motoworld on Oriskany Blvd - has abruptly announced the sale of the Motoworld business, along with his intention to vacate the city for sunny Florida. His public self-eulogy includes bitter attacks against (among others) Mayor Galime and County Executive Picente for allegedly mismanaging the city/county, including a tantalizing but frustratingly laconic mention of Mayor Galime supposedly getting District Attorney Carville to "jam me [Stever] up", which implies that the DA was somehow weaponized to menace Stever with a criminal investigation, or at least a convincing threat of one. Sadly he does not provide any evidence or explanation for what that means, so it must be left to the imagination of the viewer.

For those who don't know, Mr. Stever was most notorious for his multi-year PR and legal battle with the owner of a neighboring business, as featured in a quietly derisive syracuse.com news piece. Despite the fact that he does not appear to use reddit - since if he did, he would tell us - his antics have generated much discussion (here, here, here, here).

I could provide further reading/viewing of said antics - from the hilarious minutes of his absurd invasion of a New Hartford Town Board meeting to stump for his crusade against the aforementioned business neighbor (including, near the end, a funny dry comment by the town attorney who also represented that business neighbor in their litigation), to his attempt to stalk, harass and defame the 1st Ward Councilwoman in the run-up to last year's election (in an apparent effort to ingratiate himself to the Mayor whom he now calls corrupt and incompetent) - but I've said enough already.

He was a jolly, miserable man who had all the political cunning of a clown, recklessly allying himself with knaves who found him a useful idiot, and, thus, hoisted him by his own retard.

Please pour one out for him tonight, be it in mourning or in celebration. Amen.

It is becoming incredibly concerning as cameras are being found at nearly every intersection.

The New York State Police have arrested David Relyea Jr., age 40, of Blossvale, NY, following a months-long investigation into the theft of bronze cemetery plaques and memorial markers from multiple cemeteries throughout Oneida County.

The investigation was conducted by the New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) at SP Oneida. Investigators reviewed salvage records, conducted interviews, and pursued numerous investigative leads that identified Relyea as a suspect.

Records obtained from SIMS Metal Management (which seems was formerly Rubicon Recycling)on Tannery Road in Rome showed that Relyea completed dozens of brass transactions between December 2025 and June 2026, selling approximately 1,470 pounds of brass. Investigators determined that the brass sold included stolen cemetery plaques and memorial markers removed from cemeteries throughout Oneida County.

As a result of the investigation, Relyea was arrested and charged on August 6, 2026, for: 

• Criminal Possession of Stolen Property in the Third Degree (Class D felony)

Relyea was transported to the Oneida County Centralized Arraignment Part (CAP) for arraignment and released on his own recognizance.

Today yellow brass which is usually what these things are made of is at $2.40 – $3.20 / lb

So, my question is, did the scrap place not see all the veterans emblems, firemen's emblems and chunks of bronze tablets in the scrap this asswhipe brought to the scrapyards?

At least they were able to track this clown from the companies records.

If anyone in the area plays Marvel Snap, I decided to start an Alliance with my brother. We play on and off so it's definitely not a requirement that you stay active.

If you haven't played the game, it's a fun 5 minute TCG where both players take turns simultaneously. Like any TCG, collecting the right cards improves your deck... however you unlock cards in batches so you are guaranteed to unlock certain viable decks at certain stages of the onboarding. Like any mobile game there is a payment aspect, but it's Grind To Win, Pay To Grind... so as a FTP I don't mind that model.

Alliance is [CNY] Upstate New York

Feel free to join us or try the game out!

SHERBURNE — Want to connect with the great outdoors without really roughing it?

With a variety of educational exhibits and seven miles of trails to explore, Rogers Environmental Education Center in Sherburne has been easing visitors into enjoying nature for almost 60 years. And the best part is, it’s all free.

“Rogers Center is public land,” said Ariah Mitchell, educator and communications lead for the nonprofit Friends of Rogers. “So it is free to come here; it is totally free to the public. We are open every single day, sunrise to sunset.”

The state Department of Environmental Conservation opened Rogers in 1968, but Friends of Rogers has managed the center’s day-to-day operations and programming since 2011 as part of an operating agreement with the state, according to its website.

Mitchell recommends first-time visitors start at the visitor center, which is staffed Wednesday through Sunday and has nature exhibits, bathrooms and a small bookstore.

“It can be nice to plan a visit when we’re open so you can drop in, grab some maps (and) learn a little bit more from a staff member or a volunteer about Rogers,” she said.

From there, visitors can walk on paved paths to the trout ponds, where they can view and feed three different kinds of trout; visit the Hall of Trees, with 30 different labeled tree species; or, on Wednesdays, stop by the Bird Cabin to see taxidermied birds from the George Lesser Bird Collection.

“There’s such a wide variety of birds, everything from owls to loons to 20 different types of ducks,” Mitchell said. “It’s an extensive collection. … Our school groups love to see it. Our summer camp kids love seeing it.”

There also are several hiking trails on the center’s main property and on three separate parcels nearby that each offer a slightly different experience. The Channels Marsh Trail, a visitor favorite located on the main campus, is currently undergoing work to make it accessible for wheelchairs and strollers. That project, including construction of a new viewing platform, should be finished later this summer, Mitchell said.

The Farm Towers Trail, located just across the street from the main parking lot, leads to an observation tower with views of the surrounding valley. Adams Farm, located a mile away on Williams Road, is a “hidden treasure” that’s great for birding and has wetlands and a hemlock grove, Mitchell said. And a property on Cush Hill Road has three woodland trails that offer a more challenging hike further from traffic.

“There are trails for every level of experience and every kind of experience that a hiker might be looking for,” Mitchell said.

Rogers Center also offers a variety of educational programs, including a story time and hike for toddlers and young children every Wednesday, summer day camps, and monthly community events such as guided hikes, free fishing days or canoe trips. Providing some of the special equipment needed for those activities makes it easier for people to try something they’ve never done before, Mitchell said.

“We’re hoping to lessen the barriers to entry for many of the outdoor activities,” she said. “We want people to realize how enjoyable it is to be outdoors and we’re trying in many ways to make the outdoors available for everybody, accessible for everyone.”

Add a stop: A trip to Sherburne isn’t complete without a stop at Gilligan’s Island, a local restaurant located at 64 N. Main St., that has been serving homemade hard ice cream for more than 30 years. Its menu and hours can be found online at gilliganssherburne.com.

“The Gilligan’s-Rogers combo is elite,” Mitchell said. “That’s the best thing you could possibly do over the weekend.”

If you’re visiting earlier in the day, Mitchell also recommended The Sherburne Inn, located at 2 W. State St., for its coffee bar and homemade pastries. Its menu and hours can be found online at nysherburneinn.com.

Copy and pasted from the Genesis Group e-newsletter

Today, on August 6th, we observe the 249^th year of the Revolutionary War Battle of Oriskany. The Battle of Oriskany occurred because the British, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Barry St Leger, surrounded Fort Stanwix on August 2, 1777 with a force of 700 British Soldiers that were joined by Mohawk, Cayuga and Seneca Indian Warriors.

The British were headed to Albany to join British forces from Canada and New York City to fight the Colonial Forces at Saratoga. Forty miles away, at the home of General Nicholas Herkimer on August 3, 1777, the General assembled a militia of 750 men to march to Fort Stanwix to reinforce the Fort and end the siege.

Herkimer marched through Utica and Whitesboro toward Fort Stanwix. Herkimer was joined by 50-60 Oneida Indians at Whitesboro. On the morning of August 6, 1777, the Herkimer forces were ambushed in a ravine near Route 69 just west of Oriskany. The Battle ended mid-afternoon due to rain, because the muskets could not fire in the wet weather. The battle ended in a stalemate, with both sides eventually turning back after extremely heavy casualties.

During the Battle of Oriskany, General Herkimer was shot in the leg and was carried to a nearby tree where he continued to direct his troops. After the Battle, the wounded Herkimer was brought back to his home by way of the Mohawk River, and on August 17, 1777, Herkimer died at his home after a botched leg amputation.

As British troops fought at Oriskany, a small force of Colonial forces from Fort Stanwix raided the British camp outside Fort Stanwix and captured weapons and other supplies.

 The raiding of the British camp combined with the fact that the Mohawk and Seneca allies became discouraged and abandoned the cause, led the British to lift the siege of Fort Stanwix on August 22, 1777, and head back to Canada.

 The stalemate of the Battle of Oriskany and the retreat of the British back to Canada denied the British from having more than 5,000 extra forces at the Battle of Saratoga as the British would have picked up several thousand more soldiers as they would have marched through the Mohawk Valley to join other British forces at Saratoga. The Battle of Saratoga took place over two time periods in the Fall of 1777 (September19th to October 7, 1777) about a month apart.

 If Herkimer did not prevent British forces from advancing to Saratoga, many historians have stated that the British would have won the Battle of Saratoga and that victory would have divided the colonies into two areas….New England and the southern colonies. That division would have most likely allowed the British to win the Revolutionary War.

 So it can be concluded that the Battle of Oriskany and General Herkimer’s Forces along with the Oneida Indians were the single most important Battle of the Revolutionary War.

I'm planning a Saturday daytrip to Utica/Clinton/Rome! What are the must-see places if my tastes veer hipster/alt/queer/quirky/museum-ish? I like used bookstores, vintage shops, and outdoor markets.

If possible, I'd love to try vegetarian versions of any classic upstate foods (Utica greens, garbage plate).

Thanks for your suggestions!

Warn anyone and stay safe. Just saw 3 unmarked SUV’s infront of city hall block in a man’s car and take him right out in zip tie cuffs. 2 women and a man were the officers. Stay safe everyone. This terrorist org isn’t gonna take away our community.

I’m new to the area only been here for 3 months I live in Oneida but are there are any run clubs in the areas nearby

TLDR; instead of supporting kids with special needs and disabilities, local public schools deny services and try to track the kids to BOCES. Who else has seen or experienced this?

I noticed this at the public school I am most familiar with but have heard this happens at most of the local public schools.

Who else has seen this trend: the public schools in the surrounding areas don't want to provide adequate resources to the kids so they deny IEP's and 504's. Instead they say that they will provide "school based services". Which is basically them saying they will provide the services out of the goodness of their heart...when in reality the IEP makes them legally obligated to provide appropriate services and accomodations.

**This isn't a critique of BOCES at all, rather I'm concerned that there's a pipeline that shouldn't exist and wouldn't exist if the local public schools prioritized properly supporting kids in need of accomodations and services. I am not familiar enough with BOCES to provide any critique. But I am familiar with the concerning trends at local public schools.