Saying Bye to Syracuse's Gem

I arrived at YNN (formerly News 10 Now) last night hoping for a good story to cover. I attended the monthly meeting with the entire staff, chatted with Joleene Des Rosiers for a bit since we hadn't seen each other in a few weeks. For the next couple of hours, I read up on the meeting we would be attending at 7pm.

In the Town of Dewitt, a law went into effect in January that prohibits people from parking large RVs or boats in their front lawns or driveways in a residential area. However, residents can petition to have their area exempt from the law as long as they have 50 signatures. We were to attend a meeting, detailing the process the zoning of these two potentially exempt areas in Dewitt.

Initially, we hadn't realized that people had already begun the petition process. When we learned the story was different than originally anticipated, we decided to just VOSOT and not package it.

We got shots of people with boats and RVs in their driveways, a few interviews with people from the Town Planning Board and Dewitt residents, shots of the meeting and headed back to the station. We had about an hour there before we left to go to Doc's Little Gem Diner, which Kat and I had previously covered.

A staple in Syracuse, Doc's Little Gem has been on the market for a few weeks but no one has made a formal offer to purchase the restaurant. Francis "Doc" Good told us if he had been able to get loans to expand the space, it would have remained open but he just didn't have the money.

"Doc" announced earlier yesterday that he would be closing the restaurant at 10pm. We went live outside the restaurant at 10pm, where Kat interviewed one of the last customers to eat at the restaurant. "Doc" had to keep the place open later because of all the people who came out last night to support him and say goodbye.

We stayed til 11pm to see if it would still be open, which it was. But the waitress had closed out the last check, and asked "Can we smoke now?"

"Light up!" Doc said, and he closed his gem forever.