city of ithaca

STELLA | Ithaca Is The #4 College Town in America — Why?

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Many of you probably never knew that. Some might ask yourselves this very question every time Cornell makes us walk to class in negative 20 degree weather. To all of us, it might seem strange to find our little town just behind Madison, Wisconsin. Ithaca is the fourth best college town in America, according to people who have (obviously) never been here for more than a spring weekend. Behind only Boulder, Colorado, Ann-Arbor, Michigan and Madison, Wisconsin we hold our heads high above the likes of Berkeley, Bloomington, hell even Cambridge (take that Harvard, we’re the best of the Ivies in something).

Hai Hong

Hai Hong: The Steamboat to Freedom

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The entrance to the Collegetown favorite is recognizable by its yellow signage. Customers pass through its black doors into the eatery, arriving at wooden tables that stare into the restaurant’s open kitchen. A side wall divides the restaurant into two dining rooms co-serving Cantonese-influenced cuisine and Vietnamese specialties, and frequent patrons to the restaurant cross-order dishes from the two menus. The sidewalls are simply decorated with a Southeast Asian influence, exemplified by the woven bamboo patterns and the floor’s turmeric colored tiles. Here, owner Helen Wong serves a variety of authentic Vietnamese specialties created from her memories. Helen had left her home country of Vietnam to come to Ithaca as a refugee in 1979.