Where the heck is BINGHAMTON?

BDE (Binghamton Daily Epiphany): "New York City" does NOT equal "New York State."

People cannot seem to grasp that I don’t live anywhere near NYC. They also cannot grasp that that is a GOOD thing! People love to say, “Boy, you sure got that 27 inches of SNOW, didn’t you!?” No, we didn’t. Just like Fresno does not enjoy LA’s mudslides or wildfires in the same way, Binghamton does not share NYC’s same natural climate, nor transit system. You cannot take a train into NYC- you are stuck on a bus. That is, of course, unless you are cattle, in which case you can get a lot of places around upstate NY.

Binghamton, NY is in the "Southern tier" of New York state. It is about 3 hours drive from New York City, very close to the Pennsylvania border. Although Binghamton is the county seat for Broome County and therefore has a lot of government offices here, the nearest "big city" is probably Syracuse, about 60 miles to the North. The City of Binghamton (www.cityofbinghamton.com) has a population of about 40,000, which is about 1/2 the population it had in the 1950s, before IBM and so many other big companies left the area. Here is a really interesting history of the place: www.cityofbinghamton.com/binghamton_history.htm