New Gear and Lombardi’s Fruits and Imports represent the new and old, the hopes and ambitions, failures and frustrations of an entire community in the midst of change brought about by past and recent immigration.
New Gear is a clothing store specializing in contemporary fashions. Its customers tend to be young adults and they have plenty to choose from. New Gear stocks the kind of baggy jeans and oversize T-shirts favored by aficionados of the new urban contemporary fashions. A Sudanese immigrant who refers to himself as Isaac helps run the store. The owner, Ali, an Arab, has another store on Burnet Avenue, and leaves Isaac in charge when he is not at the store.
“Business is good. I can’t complain,” Isaac said
Lombardi Fruits and Imports offers a wide variety of merchandise, ranging from fresh produce to specialty oils and sauces, imported cheeses, cold cuts and pasta items to homemade sausages to gift items. In business for several decades, and has something of a dedicated customer base consisting mostly of Italian-Americans who live in the immediate vicinity. It also attracts customers from the suburbs, as well as other cities in the surrounding environs such as Utica, Cortland, Watertown and Binghamton.
“We have the biggest selection of sauces in Central New York,” Dominic Lombardi said. He is co-owner, with his brother John Lombardi, and helps to manage the store begun by his father 40 years ago.
These two businesses are located on Butternut Street. Typical of most neighborhood streets in Syracuse, Butternut Street is flanked on both sides by the usual mom and pop neighborhood stores, bars and restaurants, and a variety of franchises that have become popular in shopping areas in most neighborhoods. These include a Save A Lot grocery, Family Dollar, Dollar Tree, Subway, a Kentucky Fried Chicken, J-reck Subs and facing each other, separated by Butternut Street, two Rite Aid pharmacies.
The structures in which the storefronts are located show the wear and tear of age. By contrast, the two Rite Aid drug stores are huge, sprawling and brand new structures.
Why two Rite Aid stores across the street from each other?
It wasn’t planned that way, he said. It happened when the Rite Aid group acquired the Eckerd chain, and gained ownership of an Eckerd store located on the other side of Butternut Street.
If foot and vehicular traffic is any indication, Butternut Street qualifies to be described as one of the busier neighborhood streets in inner city Syracuse. No matter what time of day it is, a steady flow of traffic streams down towards South Salina Street from the north, with another stream going the opposite direction. Straddling a section of the city in an area once referred to as Little Italy, it provides a short cut for motorists headed to the northern suburbs of the city, or to downtown or the West side.
There is nothing unusual about Butternut Street, if looked at from the standpoint of what is happening in most neighborhoods in Syracuse. The new Rite Aid stores and a new store such as New Gear reflect the general trend of economic development that has been going on for some time in most parts of the city.
A closer look at the human traffic, though, reveals a striking difference between Butternut Street and other city streets. The Arab women wearing long gowns in the summer heat with their faces hidden behind veils, look more like apparitions from a movie than neighborhood residents in an American city on their way home from the corner store.
The Somali man with the beard and small cap tucked on his head, the Vietnamese woman with the Oriental skirt and sandals, the Sudanese girls with headgear all look out of place and eerily un-American.
Within a remarkably short period of time, a neighborhood has been transformed by the influx of immigrants and movement by city residents looking to live in areas that meet their needs. The result in the Butternuts Street area is the emergence of a community of neighborhood residents with different religions and faiths, fashions and culinary traditions. What remains of ‘’Little Italy are the stores and bars with Italian names. Today, Butternut and the north side have a decidedly mixed population with a whole lot of ‘tropical flavor.’
For a new immigrant such as Isaac, Butternut Street is where the action is. It has provided him the opportunity to begin life anew in America as an entrepreneur. There is a future to look forward to.
It is a different story for the Lombardi business. It’s more of a local institution sustained by memories of a bygone era when it did a thriving business catering to the needs of the Italian immigrants in the Little Italy section of Syracuse.
“We get a lot of customers that are Italian-Americans from the neighborhoods. There’s lot of them around here, that enjoy living in this area” Lombardi said.
According to him, his father set up the store recognizing the need for a neighborhood outfit in an area that had a large concentration of Italian-Americans.
Lombardi cites the current diverse ethnic mix as a major evidence of change.
“I see a lot of Africans now in this area. They come in here looking for specialty items. We also get a lot of African-Americans,” he said.
Photo is by Ellen Leahy: This woman was strolling West on Butternut Street toward Lodi Street on the North Side of Syracuse. She could not speak English (yet), but agreed to pose for this picture in her new home - Syracuse.
