Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

I've got the new tourism slogan for Syracuse: Come to Syracuse! We've got one of everything!

Buffalo isn't a particularly big city, but it was big enough to have more than one Barnes&Noble, more than one really nice mall, more than one Outback Steakhouse, more than one independent bookstore, et cetera. I got spoiled a bit by that aspect of the town, and I suspect in a bigger city it's a luxury really taken for granted. If I wanted to shop for CDs, I had a number of choices of where to go for good selection.

Syracuse, on the other hand, is only about half Buffalo's size, and thus the choices really don't exist. There is one Borders and one Barnes&Noble, and that's it. Not to complain, because that's the way it is (as Stephen King might say, "Tough titty said the kitty"); but moving from a large city to a significantly smaller city can reveal ways in which we're spoiled that we had never considered.

(Here's a strange thing, though: Syracuse has at least four Thai restaurants and three Japanese steakhouses that I've noticed, and yet in my travels around town I have yet to see any significant Oriental population. In fact, there are more Oriental eateries here than there are Applebee's outlets.)