By Sabrina Völz

When I start­ed out as a teach­ing assis­tant at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty at the ripe old age of twen­ty, I instinc­tive­ly knew I should get to know my stu­dents bet­ter. The obvi­ous way to do that was to make small talk before or after class. My ques­tions were noth­ing too per­son­al or spe­cial, but the answers to one ques­tion puz­zled me. “Well, what are you doing this week­end?” The respons­es var­ied, but they all had some­thing in com­mon: “Going to THE bas­ket­ball game,” “Going to THE lake,” “Going to THE City” Okay. The first two were obvi­ous. Bas­ket­ball meant Syra­cuse University’s finest. THE lake meant Ononda­ga Lake, after all it was the clos­est one. But THE city? As if there is no oth­er. Where, for cry­ing out loud, is THE city? “Going to the City?” I asked meek­ly. “Yes, going to the City. You know, THE City.”

I felt like I was in the mid­dle of a Lau­rel and Hardy rou­tine. No, I real­ly didn’t know. So I had to muster up a large dose of courage. After all, some of the stu­dents were actu­al­ly old­er than me, and I, the new T.A. and grad­u­ate stu­dent from Iowa, obvi­ous­ly didn’t want to look stu­pid. After an excru­ci­at­ing­ly long minute of silence passed, I final­ly spit out my ques­tion. Try­ing to keep a straight face, my stu­dent respond­ed in slow motion, over enun­ci­at­ing his words: “New York City.”

Right then and there, I learned an impor­tant les­son: For most New York­ers, there was, is, and nev­er will be anoth­er city besides the Big Apple. Well, at least until now. Move over N.Y.C! Jamestown, N.Y., is on THE map. So what does Jamestown, a city with a pop­u­la­tion of rough­ly 30,000, have that THE City doesn’t? It has THE Nation­al Com­e­dy Cen­ter.

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By Sabrina Völz

When tourists from all over the world plan their vaca­tions to the Unit­ed States, they often stick to tried and true places to vis­it: Nation­al parks, Dis­ney attrac­tions, beach­es, mon­u­ments, out­let malls, and muse­ums. While they cer­tain­ly are wor­thy places to vis­it, they won’t bring vis­i­tors clos­er to the peo­ple, con­tem­po­rary cul­ture, and every­day life in Amer­i­ca like a good ole state fair. As an Iowan, I may be some­what biased, but I whole­heart­ed­ly agree: “Noth­ing Com­pares to the Iowa State Fair” (this year’s motto).

Although the Iowa State Fair is not the old­est – that hon­or goes to the New York State Fair first held in Syra­cuse in 1841 – it is one of the best state fairs in the nation and places in the top 10 of most rank­ings. The Iowa State Fair, locat­ed right in the mid­dle of the heart­land, has been in oper­a­tion con­tin­u­al­ly since 1854 except for a time dur­ing WWII. The first vis­i­tors trav­elled by cov­ered wag­on to the large­ly agri­cul­tur­al show­case held in Fair­field which includ­ed spec­tac­u­lar exhibits and enter­tain­ment, such as “female eques­tri­an­ism” oth­er­wise known as female horse­back rid­ing. The Fair is five years old­er than the state, which became the 29^th state in the Union on Decem­ber 28, 1846. Iowans like to point out that Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musi­cal, State Fair (1933), was inspired by their fair. Today, it draws over 1.1 mil­lion vis­i­tors from all over the world to its per­ma­nent fair­grounds in Des Moines each year. So now that you know the basic facts, let the fun begin.

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By Maria Moss

This almost Bauhaus-style vil­la, over­look­ing the Pacif­ic Ocean, is locat­ed in beau­ti­ful Pacif­ic Pal­isades, just off Sun­set Blvd. In 2016, it went up for sale – for a measly $16,000,000. And the Ger­man gov­ern­ment not only went right ahead and bought it, but also ren­o­vat­ed it for anoth­er $4,000,000. Now why would Ger­many buy real estate in Los Ange­les? Read more »