Marnie Eisenstadt

1 day ago | syracuse.com | Marnie Eisenstadt

Syracuse, N.Y. -- People hung from the top of a new chain-link fence at the end of Dickerson Street Wednesday morning. The homeless staying at the Rescue Mission could see downtown Syracuse and the Salt City Market, but they couldn’t get there. They fence locked them in. The street had been a well-traveled, and troubled, path between downtown and the Rescue Mission, Syracuse’s largest homeless shelter. Workers came early Wednesday morning and put up a series of chain-link fences.

4 days ago | syracuse.com | Marnie Eisenstadt

Syracuse, N.Y. — Chedy Hampson turned two fantasies into reality when he moved his TCGplayer into its downtown Syracuse office building. The first was the one everyone can see from the sidewalk on Warren Street: He transformed a gray office into a place where all sorts of geeky themes became life-sized. There’s the Hogwarts library, a Star Wars spaceship and Storm Troopers, a pirate ship, a castle.

1 week ago | syracuse.com | Marnie Eisenstadt

Murray Gould has a great smile. It stretches across his weathered face all the way to his bright blue eyes. He taps on his front teeth. “All fake,” he says. Then he laughs as he sits in the food pantry at St. Lucy’s Church on Syracuse’s Near West Side. Gould, 75, is the director of the pantry. His mouth was ripped apart one day while working at the pantry. An angry young man sucker punched Gould, according to Gould and the police report.

2 weeks ago | syracuse.com | Marnie Eisenstadt

Syracuse, N.Y. — When 100 Black Men of Syracuse proposed a charter school in Syracuse last year, it was the realization of nearly a decade of planning by the mentoring group that works with city youth. Instead of just visiting schools and helping out, they would have their own school where mentors were embedded into daily activities and leading the school. But at a public hearing for that same school Wednesday night, the group was notably absent.

3 weeks ago | syracuse.com | Marnie Eisenstadt

A truck driver from New Jersey was traveling the New York State Thruway in Utica Jan. 27 when he pulled off for a required inspection. What started with a routine check of his brakes, load and license by a state inspector landed the truck driver in an immigration process that would end with his swift deportation to El Salvador, according to court records. His brother-in-law was also detained and disappeared into the murky immigration enforcement system.