Penn Can Mall 2002 “Dead Mall Tour” DVD

Here’s a video trailer I’ve recently made for the Penn Can Mall 2002 “Dead Mall Tour” DVD:

Click here to go directly to the “Dead Mall Tour” DVD section of the site for more information about the film.

Thanks,
HAM

Penn Can Mall
Syracuse Nostalgia

Penn Can Mall 1980s video posted

I’ve posted a video clip of Penn Can Mall from the mid-1980s in the video sections of both the Penn Can Mall and Syracuse Nostalgia sites. Thanks to Mike Warden for sending me the video and letting me post it! Mike used to work in various malls across the country drawing caricatures of people. He worked in Penn Can Mall several times and filmed some footage with his Beta Camcorder in the mid-1980s. What I enjoyed the most about this clip was hearing The Clock ring again. You can clearly hear the infamous tune followed by four clangs, indicating that it was 4pm. Here are the direct links to the video pages:

Penn Can Mall Video Clips
Syracuse Area Home Video

Thanks,
HAM

Mike Price & McDonalds destroyed sign

Usually I’d make a blog post to promote an update I had made to one of my sites (you know the ones, Penn Can Mall and Syracuse Nostalgia). This time I just had two random thoughts I wanted to write about.

1 - Mike Price
Mike Price ruled. He recently retired after being on Channel 9 News in Syracuse for 46 years. 46 years! Damn! He always made me laugh with his sometimes ridiculous on-location pieces. I can’t think of any other local newscaster that would do some of the silly things that he’s done. He was really nice when I met him in person at the NYS Fair and was the only local news person that I would wait in line to get my picture taken with.

2 - Destroyed McDonalds sign
I told you these were random thoughts. What the heck happened to the McDonalds sign on Route 11 in North Syracuse a couple of weeks ago?  It was broken, with only the bottom parts of the “M” still standing.


The rest of the sign was laying on the ground behind where it originally stood, surrounded by some “caution” tape.


That sign had been there for as long as I can remember, so it was quite an odd thing to see. Also odd was the fact that I saw nothing about this on the news or online. Anyway, about a week later the sign was back up. I know, it’s not that interesting of a story. I was just wondering if anyone heard what happened.

Peace and Chicken McNuggets,
HAM

WNYS Channel 9 News Clip from 1972

I just wanted to make a quick post to say that I just uploaded a great video to the Syracuse Nostalgia site. Like the title of this post states, it’s a clip from WNYS (Channel 9 News in Syracuse, NY) from 1972. Click here to go directly to that page, which also includes a brief description of how I got the video.

Thanks,
HAM

Syracuse Nostalgia

Penn Can Mall

Syracuse audio & video clips

Hello again.

I’ve made a couple of updates to the site. First, I added clips from a show called “3 Country”, which aired on WSTM in 1980 and 1981. Click here to see that page. If you think some of the clips on that page are a little odd, you should see the ones I didn’t post!

I’ve also added a new “Syracuse Radio Commercials” section, featuring ads from the 1950s to the 1970s. Click here to see that page. Also, on the Penn Can Mall site I’ve added a different theme song next to the one that was near the top of the main page. All of these audio clips, as well as the “3 Country” clips are from the collection of Jason Beard. I will hopefully be getting many more things to post from his great collection soon.

I also added page 2 to the Upstate NY Commercials section. Click here for that page. These commercials come from some old VHS tapes I received from Jimmy Lewis. If you have any old video tapes (prior to 1995) that were used to tape local channels please let me know. I will be glad to go through them and try to find any old local commercials, shows, or news footage. Send an e-mail to theaudacityny@lycos.com for more information.

I’m going to be posting something very rare and very cool soon. It’s so cool, I’m not even sure what it is, exactly. I don’t want to give too much away yet, but I’ll post a little hint (ok, a big hint)…

North Syracuse Historical Photos & other updates

I just thought I’d make a post about some of the updates that I’ve made to the site and some that are coming soon.

First off, I temporarily removed the “History Of Cicero” section. It was just an empty page anyway, so I figured I’d just take it down for now until I get permission to post the photos again. For those that don’t know what I’m talking about - for a short time I did have over 500 historical photos posted of the Cicero area, courtesy of the Cicero Historian. It turns out that there will soon be a book published which will include some of these photos so I was asked to take them down. I will hopefully be able to post the photos that are not to be included in the book soon.

Also, I will, unfortunately, not be receiving any more video tapes from WTVH. Frankly, I was surprised that I got the tapes that I did. I just hope that the station takes measures to preserve and archive those tapes. There’s a lot of local history there. Speaking of which…

I changed the introductory paragraph to the Syracuse Nostalgia page. I just wanted to stress to everyone to please send in their old VHS or Betamax video tapes that include programs taped off of local channels (meaning not HBO or other pay cable channels). Some of these tapes may include some priceless local commercials, shows, or news broadcasts. So, while I will not be getting any more tapes directly from WTVH, I can still post things I get from private collections. So, I will gladly go through whatever you have and then return your tapes when I’m done. Where applicable, I will also give you a copy of the DVD that I made from your footage. Send an e-mail to theaudacityny@lycos.com for more information.

Back to the updates - I recently received many photos from Robert Henry, the North Syracuse Historian. I added these photos to Page 1 and Page 2 of the History Of North Syracuse section. Some of the photos from this collection were also added to the Sweetheart Market page and the William Grocery page. These two pages were also redesigned to make them have a more chronological order. Previously the updates were just added to the bottom of these pages in the order that I received them, and I realized that it just made more sense to redesign the pages with more of a timeline in mind.

I recently met a man who has one of the most impressive collections of Syracuse memorabilia that I have ever seen. What’s great about his collection is that it spans several decades, and includes things in many different formats. There are photos, videos and audio recordings from many different eras. He’s been nice enough to allow me to post some of his collection on the site. I have transferred a couple of videos of his to DVD already, and will be getting some more things soon. I will start putting a page together of these things within the next couple of weeks. It may take awhile to get all of his collection transferred to a digital format but, believe me, it will be worth the wait!

Thanks for reading,
HAM

Chappell’s photo, Penn Can Mall video

I’ve added a couple of new things to the Penn Can Mall and Syracuse Nostalgia sites.

The WTVH Archive videos (that I mentioned in the previous post) have been posted on Syracuse Nostalgia. Click here to see the page. I know that page is looking a bit crowded now, so I might change all of the videos to links (instead of having them embedded) if I add any more clips to the page in the future.

On the Penn Can Mall site I’ve added a photo of Chappells from 1988 that was sent to me from Elizabeth Roberts. Right now I’ve only added this photo to the “Interactive Map” section. The picture is posted below, but you can click here to go to the page which features a larger version of the photo.

I’ve also uploaded a video to YouTube that aired on WSTM Action News Archive on April 1, 2008. The video is posted below but you can click here to go to the Penn Can Mall video clips page (which includes this video plus several home videos from the mall).

You’ll notice that Laura Hand mentions that this was a “viewer request”. I was the “viewer” in question. You’ll also notice that they used some photos from my NBC Peacock Shop commercial post. All in all, I thought the clip was pretty cool. It was nice to see that old footage. I would’ve prefered to have seen just the old clip by itself though, without Ms. Hand’s commentary. I actually wrote to her after this clip aired, asking if I could post the original clip on my site. She never responded. It’s interesting to me how some people will go out of their way to help preserve local history, and others seemingly don’t want to bother. I do appreciate WSTM and Ms. Hand finding this footage and putting this piece together, but I guess I just don’t understand why she ignored my request. If she even had written back and said no, and explained why, I would’ve felt better about it. To ignore me just seemed a bit rude. Oh well. Anyway, while watching the clip I was also waiting to hear the words, “Penn Can Mall dot com”, but she never said them. That also seemed a bit odd to me since I not only gave her the idea for the segment, but I gave her specific dates to help find the footage, and they used some pictures from my site. She did say that the link to the “fan site” was posted on WSTM.com. However, I noticed it took about two days for them to post my link (along with the story) on their page. So, if anyone saw the segment and tried to immediately go to their page to find the “fan site” they would not have found it. Again… oh well. I’m not really that upset about all of this but I figured this was a good a place as any to vent about it a little bit.

Thanks for reading!

HAM 

Plank Road and WTVH Archive videos

I’ve just recently made a major update to the Syracuse Nostalgia page, and will do another one soon.

Yesterday I added the History Of North Syracuse page. I recently received a video from the North Syracuse Historian, Robert Henry, which showed a photographic history of North Syracuse and Plank Road. I divided this video up into four parts, and posted them on the site. Robert was also nice enough to let me browse through his collection of pictures and pick out ones that I would want to post on the site. I chose a bunch of photos, trying to pick out ones that weren’t already included in the Plank Road video. He said he will be putting these photos on a CD for me soon, so hopefully I’ll be posting them in the next couple of weeks.

One thing I noticed from working with Robert, and also from working with the Cicero Historian, Thomas Mafrici, is that they both were really nice to work with and seemed eager to share their collection with the public. I think they just didn’t really have the means to get their collections online. Something else I noticed from their collections was that, for the most part, they would only include photos up until the 1950s. I know this isn’t either of their faults, but you would think that local history stopped at 1960. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s interested in seeing the history of the area from the 1960s through the 1980s (and beyond). So, I guess it’s up to all of us to try and gather as much photographic history (and video history) as we can. That’s why I always encourage people to send in whatever old photos of the local area they may have. I will share them online for free, so anyone can view or download them.

I am also working on another “WTVH Archives” update. I recently received another group of tapes from Keith Kobland at WTVH-5 News. I really appreciate Keith being nice enough to share some of these tapes. I have a feeling some of this footage would never be seen again if we weren’t doing this. For the most part, the tapes that he’s been giving me are 3/4″ tapes (also called U-Matic tapes). These tapes and the machine to play them on have not been made in a long time. Here is a picture of one of the huge 3/4″ tapes (next to a Ron Curtis VHS tape, for scale): 

Here is a picture of the humongous 3/4″ player that I recently got from eBay (again with the Ron Curtis VHS tape used for scale): 

You can see that the player is just about as tall as the average VHS tape.

A problem that I am having concerning these tapes is which clips to include on the site. These are just random tapes that Keith finds for me. They are not necessarily chosen for their exciting news stories. Meaning that, for example, they would just include a random week of news stories from 1987. While this would be interesting to me, I know it wouldn’t be interesting to most people. So, at the moment I’m trying to decide which clips to upload to the site. I’m also trying to just pick out clips of local interest, not national news. At the moment I have a couple of good ones that I think I’ll use - a meeting about the proposed Carousel Center (1987), St. Patricks Day Parade (1984) and some dumb guy from S.U. running around campus playing “Cupid” (1987). There will probably be more, but those are the best ones right now. I’m also trying to figure out which, if any, sports clips to use. I don’t really care about sports, so I’m trying to figure out which basketball footage might be of interest to the most people.

So look for a new bunch of WTVH Archive videos to be posted in the next week or so.

Thanks for reading!

HAM

Hi there

Hello. I run the Syracuse Nostalgia site as well as the Penn Can Mall site. I will post in this blog whenever I update either page. I will also post random thoughts or memories about certain things that have been posted on the sites. I already have a forum linked on the page, but it seems like this will be a better way to reach more people. I will still keep the forum active, but I will probably post here more often.

I guess I should post a little bit about myself, since that’s something I haven’t really done on either site. My name is Ham (ok, it’s Brian… but “Ham” has been my nickname since the late 1980s). I grew up in North Syracuse, NY, and graduated from Cicero-North Syracuse High School in January 1991. I was supposed to graduate in Fall of 1990, but I did not pass Gym Class and had to take it again for half a year. Let’s just say that I hated most things about Gym and did not participate and often did not not show up for class. You can also say that I’m prone to tangents. I guess that’s another thing this blog will be good for.

Anyway, if you’ve seen my Emmy-Award-Winning interview from WTVH-5 you already know why I started these sites. I have a lot of home video footage of the Syracuse area that I taped in the late 80s. At the time I was just goofing around with my new “toy” and trying to film funny footage of my friends. Years later, I realized I had some great footage of some local landmarks that either no longer existed or had drastically changed.

Fast forward to the start of “the internets” (as W says). I did a search for some of my favorite teenage hang-out spots - Penn Can Mall, Sweetheart Market, William Grocery, etc. - and could find nothing. So, I decided to start my own site, using my old video tapes as a starting point.

I actually started the Penn Can Mall site first. I had a ton of video footage of the mall, including a “Construction Tour” that I took in 2002, so that seemed like an obvious place to start. I thought perhaps myself and a few friends would enjoy the site but once I made a post about it in a syracuse.com forum, it was apparent that many people loved the old mall and were nostalgic about the area. The fact that it did receive so much interest inspired me to continue and design the Syracuse Nostalgia site.

I’ve gotten many great contributions from people and am always looking for more. If you have any photos, documents or other memorabilia from the area please either leave a comment below or send me an e-mail at theaudacityny@lycos.com . I’m also interested in getting old Beta or VHS video tapes containing programs taped on local Syracuse channels. Please let me know if you have any that you either want to get rid of or would be willing to let me borrow.

I also feel that I should note that I do not get paid to run these sites at all. This is just a hobby that I do in my spare time. I do have ads on the page and merchandise for sale to try and balance out the costs of running the site. However, as of writing this, they have not even covered half of the cost of the site. Anyway, my point in mentioning this is to please be understanding if you make a request and I am unable to help you. I don’t mind people making suggestions (in fact, I ask for suggestions whenever someone signs the Guestbook), but if I don’t have something all I can usually do is make a post asking for it and hope that someone will send in some photos or information. Sometimes this works, but often times I will get no response at all.

Anyway, I guess that’s enough of any introductory post. I have some new additions to the site coming up and will be posting about them soon!

HAM