Binghamton is a working class town full of working class people. There’s a problem here with poverty and crime, as is the case with most upstate New York cities. I originally hail from Syracuse, I would know. The heroin epidemic has hit this city hard too. However, despite its flaws and its local flavor, if you will, Binghamton is a charming little city of 44,000 people nestled in a valley at the confluence of the Chenango and Susquehanna Rivers eleven miles from the Pennsylvania border. In the summertime, Binghamton is not sleepy, but certainly not as congested as other times of the year. The city has a feeling reminiscent of times long since passed, when life was simpler and easier. Locals attend the many little festivals and celebrations that dot the city. Policemen cruise by with somewhat ease and comfort. Roadworks and construction crews pop up to rebuild and repair the damage done the previous winter. Last but not least, the weather is gorgeous in the summertime, filled with sunshine and rolling clouds. The green foothills of the Pocono Mountains rise up above the city and give the area a certain completeness.
It’s now a Monday night in late August and I stand at the windows of my third floor apartment in downtown. I look down and what is see is not what I, or many have grown accustomed too over the last three months. Gone are the quiet, idyllic summer days. Gone is the almost quaint little city that I have grudgingly grown to love once the harsh winter winds ceded and I’ve accepted it for what it is. Instead I look down and what do I see? A silver SUV attempting in earnest to back into one of the angled parking spaces on Court Street. After seven tries, it finally parks and out stumbles a pack of young, drunk women screaming at the top of their lungs, donning miniskirts and tight jeans and tube tops and the likes. All of them were carrying tired-looking plastic water bottles filled with God only knows what except that I know with certainty that they are not filled with water. They stumble across Court Street, making a bee line for the bars on State Street and showing absolutely no regard for the cab that they just stepped out in front of.
Across the street, a group of freshman boys (I’m not being presumptive, I know they’re freshman and I use the term boys because you’re definitely not a man until you’ve made it through at least one winter in this city) are engaging in a drunk hand standing competition in front of the bank. Three more young men wander into the park on State Street to relieve themselves on a brick wall, completely unaware that a cop is watching them the entire time. What seems to be hundreds more people are gravitating towards State Street in groups of ten or eleven. The upperclassmen usually travel in smaller packs, having solidified their undergraduate social circles and walking in reunion towards yet another drunken night on the town.
Local teenage boys peddle around on small stunt bikes with expressions mixing amusement and concern. They are probably wondering what happened to their pleasant little city that sat innocuously in an upstate New York river valley. For the first time, I wonder alongside them; what has become of this city? The arrival of the students at the end of August always brings an abrupt change to the atmosphere and overall demeanor of Binghamton. However, this time I feel differently than in the years prior when I was an undergrad roaming these same streets. Is it because I’m older at the ripe age of twenty-three?
I think back to those nostalgic times when I wandered the city streets with people who were practically strangers. The frat parties and the bar hopping. Tonight I am in my apartment alone, watching downtown go through another inaugural welcome back week. I think to myself, I have absolutely no desire to be down there with everybody. I would much rather prefer to stay holed up in my apartment doing nothing incredibly productive and reminisce about the times when I was younger and less disillusioned about the world as I am today. The reason why is something I cannot put definitively. What is the point of it all? Why do I do this? Why do the people in the streets do what they are doing? Is this what we send kids off to school for? Is it to drink cheap beer and chain smoke Newport Lights and to wander around a weird city that you don’t know with a bunch of strangers you just met? Is it to rack up tens of thousands of dollars in debt and to spend four years of your life looking for meaning only to get out on the other side and realize there isn’t any? I don’t know. I just don’t know.
Perhaps I feel this way because I am older and supposedly more mature. I do not have the freedom that I once had, the lack of responsibility, and the feeling of liberation from parental supervision. I am no longer wondering what the best four years of my life are going to be like because they supposedly already passed and now I’m on the sidelines watching someone else go through it. Perhaps I’m just not excited about another year of school because it is just another thing that I have to do and I will wake up every morning to the same old drudgery. Now I am in graduate school and I have to be more serious. I have to focus on networking, academics, internships, and working too many hours a week so I can barely scrape by and make payments on my student loan interest. I have to focus on getting a real job, not just driving buses, and starting a career. In less than two years, I will have to enter the workforce and I will have to start making my way towards something. All of this reflection and introspection because I decided to pull back the curtains and look down into the street below.
It’s nearly one in the morning and the bars are closing down. The hordes of students come out once more, but this time they are heading towards home. The buses are not running tonight. There are only so many cabs available. There is no Uber or Lyft here in upstate New York. The same groups of ten or twelve underclassmen stand clumped together on Court Street. There have on their faces looks of bewilderment, maybe even looks of fear for they are in an unfamiliar place, in an unfamiliar time. What lies ahead is the best four years of their lives, or so they’re told. However, right now what lies ahead is uncertainty and the unknown. Uncertainty, anxiety, maybe some hunger, and the first creeping symptoms of a persistent hangover.
Welcome to Binghamton, Bearcats.
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