Visiting the Forgotten Stars page recently, I see HEY ROGER!!! The post, based on a YouTube video, asks, Is Binghamton the ‘weirdest’ town in Upstate NY? Kelly knows that I originally hail from Binghamton, so he’s going to let me weigh in.
Okay then.
Gab Small posted the piece on July 8, 2026, and had already gotten over 50,000 views in two days.
Let me get some minor stuff out of the way. While she refers to Binghamton proper, she really means the city metro. This doesn’t bother me much. She noted that the Whittman Dam is “normal.”
She’s right to appreciate the MLK Park promenade that runs along the Chenango, as well as the bridge near the confluence of it with the Susquehanna, a place I used to hang out as a teen. However, Chenango, one of two rivers that converge in Binghamton proper, is pronounced as though it started with Sh. NOT WEIRD.
The area having the largest Dick’s Sporting Goods in the world is NOT WEIRD, since, as she notes, the store opened in the area, and I had been there several times growing up, long before the expansion. A full-turf running track.is unusual, to be sure.
The Lost Dog Cafe, where I have I have eaten, is a nice place but NOT WEIRD.
A great sandwich
Gab says, “They are weirdly obsessed with a local sandwich called the spiedie.” It’s delicious when made correctly. I’ve had sandwiches that purported to be spiedies, but they didn’t do the marinade right (2019 NYS Fair in Syracuse; dreadful!). NOT WEIRD, though her have a vegetarian one, instead of chicken or lamb, is a little weird; I did not know that was a thing.
I’ll admit that I had never heard of Binghamton Jellystone Park, which is in Endicott. It is a themed campground based on Yogi Bear. But there are Jellystone Parks in about 30 states and four Canadian provinces. So can’t be that weird.
The stinky corpse flowers at Binghamton University. Okay, SOMEWHAT WEIRD.
TZ
Of course, Binghamton is weird because Rod Serling, the creator of The Twilight Zone, lived there. There is no doubt of that in my mind. The first time I saw the episode Mirror Image (Season 1, Episode 21), I KNEW that the bus station where a young woman was waiting had to be the Greyhound station downtown. And I was only six. The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street (Season 1, episode 22) featured streets similar to those near Rod’s home on the West Side of the city.
Serling’s inspiration for The After Hours (Season 1, episode 34), when a store mannequin came to life, was inspired by the old Fowler’s department store. I frequented the place as a child; it had the first escalator I can remember! I wish that Gab Small, when mentioning the current store, Boscov’s, had given a touch more history.
And of course, Walking Distance (Season 1, Episode 5) has an overworked New York executive inexplicably transported back to his idyllic 1934 hometown, coming face-to-face with his younger self. I didn’t know that at the time, as I was more prone to go to the carousel at Ross Park than Recreation Park, which was very close to Serling’s home when he grew up in the city. The statue of him is is in Rec Park.
(I suppose I should mention, yet again, that I sort of introduced Rod Serling in 1970.)
