Fists of fury: Inductees into the boxing hall have a casting made of their fists, which are then displayed in Canastota. MICHAEL DAVIS PHOTO

Those who think that Central New York lacks a voice in professional sports most likely forget about an entity a short ride east on the Thruway. The International Boxing Hall of Fame (IBHOF) in Canastota has played host to legendary fighters including Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Joe Frazier and Lennox Lewis, with its spotlight moment being the annual Hall of Fame Induction weekend, scheduled to take place Thursday, June 10, through Sunday, June 13.

The 2010 class features living inductees Jung-Koo Chang (flyweight), Danny “Little Red” Lopez (featherweight), Shelly Finkel (manager), Larry Hazzard (referee-commissioner), Wilfried Sauerland (promoter), Bruce Trampler (matchmaker) and Ed Schuyler (journalist). Posthumous inductees include Lloyd Marshall (light heavyweight), Young Corbett II (featherweight), Rocky Kansas (lightweight), Billy Miske (heavyweight), Paddington Tom Jones (pioneer) and legendary broadcaster Howard Cosell.

Hot water: The old flaming faucet trick gets another workout in the hydrofracking flick Gasland, screening Friday at the Palace.

In between picking up an award at Sundance and seeing his film’s upcoming television premiere on pay cable’s HBO, director Josh Fox will be stopping off in Syracuse this week to attend a local screening of the documentary Gasland, the 37-year-old theater director and playwright’s take on the dangers of hydrofracking and natural gas drilling.

Fox is on a 24-city tour promoting the film and answering questions about hydrofracking. His documentary, which has some viewers comparing his style to that of Michael Moore, was inspired by a letter he received in 2008 from a gas company offering to lease his Pennsylvania property for drilling.

Good Week

. . . for Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner, who was named a Woman of Distinction by the New York state Senate. Nominated by Sen. David Valesky (D-Oneida), Miner is the first female mayor of the Salt City. And next week, on June 19, Miner will preside over the annual Pride Parade as grand marshal. A few good weeks, indeed, for Mizzhonor.

In a world worried about global warming, earth-friendly mantras are as abundant as air. According to Chuck McFadden, director of operations for the Downtown Committee, the 35-year-old downtown farmers’ market joined the sustainability movement with its own green theme. A collaboration between Onondaga County and Syracuse saw the market’s parking-lot home in May fenced, dug up and rejiggered as a way to ultimately give the farmers and their customers a greener place to convene.

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B-movie sirens get catty and chatty in Rarely Done’s cinema spoof musical Scream Queens

Shriek forever after: Clockwise from left, Korrie Strodel, Aubry Panek, Colleen Wager, Cruz Gonzalez Cadel, Dorothy Lennon and Erin Williamson in Rarely Done’s Scream Queens.

Until now Rarely Done Productions’ annual June offering of outrageousness has favored the East Coast. Starting with Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical (2007), artistic director Dan Tursi has ferreted out edge-busting little satirical revues that originated at the New York Fringe Festival. This year Tursi’s justly named Rarely Done is giving us the East Coast premiere of Scott Martin’s Scream Queens, the current tenant at Jazz Central, 441 E. Washington St. Martin’s show opened in Santa Monica in 1998 and served briefly as the basis of a VH1 reality series in 2008. Put side-by-side we see the difference. East Coast satire always comes with a certain bite, sometimes cutting deep. In La-La Land they not only love what they spoof, they revel in it.

A global marketplace means stiff competition for imperial beer lovers

Before mass travel and transportation, local beer reflected local conditions. There was no understanding of “beer styles” as we discuss them today, and most drinkers had little idea that what passed for “beer” in a neighboring country could be radically different from beer at home. The local ale that an Englishman quaffed—made from English barley and hops from the fields of Kent—was a different species of brew from that enjoyed by his counterpart in Prague, who drank crisp lager spiced with the distinctive Saaz hops of Bohemia.

While the main focus of the Shuan Luu Horror Fest has always been, and still is, the reels of gore screened during its annual run, the music is creeping ever close to being just as raucous as the cult flicks that glare from the projector—and this year they might just pull even.

Buckle your seatbelt and clear the passing lane: Reckless Drivin’ is back. The award-winning power twang quintet who rode roughshod over the Central New York club circuit in the 1990s, is again storming Syracuse stages with four returning members and a new kid.

To the Point

I would like to compliment Ed Griffin-Nolan for “Rock Opera,” his very even-handed and informative May 26 article about hydrofracking in Central New York.

—Michael Demmon, Manlius

Bus Stop

As a local-government watchdog since the 1970s, I battled Warren Frank’s Centro/Central New York Regional Transit Authority (CNYRTA) on its Joe Camel ads, lack of women and minorities on its board, no bus shelters at busy corners and no bus bike racks.

It was tough getting Frank to say “uncle,” since he was AWOL while living in California. In 1992, Centro refused to end the $50,000 yearly Joe Camel bus and shelter ads. After months of lobbying CNYRTA—which was negotiating a long-term tobacco ad—at a Common Council session, I stalled Centro’s $1 million budget grant for busing students to city schools. I then worked on a lawsuit charging Centro with violating its own ad decency rules by accepting tobacco ads. Frank caved in and removed the Camel ads for New York state lottery ads.

Centro eventually added women and minorities to CNYRTA, and bike racks on buses (1999, four years after Rochester), but to this day Centro lacks shelters or benches at busy corners on Westcott Street and Lancaster Avenue and still fails to hold public meetings to hear riders.

  —Austin Ted Paulnack,

Coordinator, The Accountability Project, Syracuse

  EDITOR’S NOTE: Warren Frank, former executive director of the Syracuse bus system Centro, passed away at age 85 on May 31.