Cover Story
The Eastman engine
It’s fitting that the fate of Kodak’s massive industrial complex on West Ridge Road, at least for the foreseeable future, will be tied to film.
Braddock Bay project gets funding
The US Environmental Protection Agency will provide $9.5 million for an Army Corps of Engineers project to restore wetlands in Braddock Bay in the Town of Greece. Senator Chuck Schumer announced the funding during a press conference this morning. The money will cover the cost of building an artificial barrier at the mouth of the…
Week Ahead: Events for the week of Monday, August 10
The Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council might release its draft Upstate Revitalization Initiative application on Wednesday. Seven Upstate regions will compete for one of three $500 million economic development awards through the URI. Last month, the council’s consultants set August 12 as the public release date for the draft application. Once the draft is…
First Friday: August 7
It’s shaping up to be a lovely, mild day, and weather seems like it’ll hold steady through the evening. The following highlights are just a few of the art openings offered tonight for First Friday; check out more options listed at firstfridayrochester.org and in our calendar. All events run 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., and…
Major expansion desired for convention center
The City of Rochester will most likely look to a state competition to fund a $100 million expansion of the Joseph A. Floreano Rochester Riverside Convention Center on East Main Street. Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Upstate Revitalization Initiative will award $500 million each to three regions in Upstate New York. Regions have to submit their revitalization…
City Celebration comes to East End
Following the end of the East End Music Festival’s 25-year run, a smaller City Celebration event is set to step in as a replacement on Friday, August 14. The event will feature live music from local acts Dave Matthews tribute band Big Eyed Phish, roots rock group The Barry Brothers, and The Zac Brown Tribute…
Urban Action 8/5
This week’s calls to action include the following events and activities. All are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted. Vigil for Hiroshima anniversary Genesee Valley Citizens for Peace will mark the 70th anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. The event marked the first use of a nuclear weapon. For…
SURF | Los Straitjackets
International men of mystery, those loveable, guitar wielding, surfing Luchadores, Los Straitjackets has played in front of huge crowds — 50,000 people in Mexico City, for instance. So let’s make sure we pack the joint so the band doesn’t feel out of place. The band seems up to new challenges, though. The new LSJ album…
Charming cocktails
When you see the large wooden doors from the congested Village Gate parking lot, Nox already has a distinct feel that is markedly different from other cocktail bars in the Rochester area. As a self-proclaimed “nerd pub,” the names of the drinks, food, and even the name of the business come from different literary and…
BLUES | Carolyn Wonderland
That ain’t red hair you see atop Carolyn Wonderland’s head, it’s fire. She has to be seen live to be believed. And if you can’t pick your lazy ass up off of the couch when she comes to town this week, you can hear what you’re missing on her brand new live album, “Live Texas Trio.” The…
HIP-HOP | Diabolic
First gaining recognition rapping alongside Immortal Technique on new school classics like “Dance With the Devil” and “Peruvian Cocaine,” Long Island’s Diabolic is anything but a simple side act, “featured” artist. His flow, drenched in pop culture references, American history, and radical politics, balances sharp articulation with sheer aggression, every bar coming with a vicious…
SPECIAL EVENT | Walnut Hill Farm Driving Competition
The Walnut Hill Farm Driving Competition is the world’s largest horse-drawn carriage competition of its kind. This year, the five day event will celebrate the competition’s 44th anniversary with 100 competitive classes, spectator events, and demonstrations. Past festivals have drawn thousands of spectators checking out the different coaches and competitions. This year’s competition will feature…
METAL | Fear Factory
No metal band endorsement carries more weight these days than signing a deal with the world’s largest independent Heavy Metal record label, Nuclear Blast. Fear Factory’s ninth studio album and NB debut, “Genexus,” drops just 24 hours before the band’s show at Water Street Music Hall. “Genexus” is a concept album that explores singularity,…
FILM | Teen Film Festival
A partnership between Nazareth College, WXXI Public Broadcasting, and The Little Theatre, the Rochester Teen Film Festival, a collaborative juried media competition, will tackle issues like homelessness, environmentalism, friendship, and evolution, while taking inspiration from a plethora of styles and genres. The Little Theatre will screen the films of the 12 finalists of the Teen…
ROCK | Girls Rock! Rochester
After creating a band, and a week of writing and new collaborations, the little ladies of Girls Rock! Rochester are ready to hit their strings (and other instruments). This week-long summer camp is in its 4th year, hosting girls and trans youth ages 8 to 16 and teaching them all things music. This year’s showcase…
FESTIVAL | Brockport Arts Festival
Rubber ducks are prepping to flood the Erie Canal again, as the Brockport Arts Festival gears up for its 21st year. Sponsored by the Brockport Integrated Service & Community Organization (BISCO), the festival, held on Main Street in Brockport and running Saturday, August 8, through Sunday, August 9, features more than 100 artisanal vendors as…
COUNTRY | Dylan Scott
After winning two major talent competitions in Louisiana and Texas, resulting in a Walmart and FLW-sponsored tour, rookie country artist Dylan Scott’s upward trajectory seems paved before him. His progression from honky-tonk act to collaborative songwriter with Nashville’s newest class of musicians portrays a young talent steeped in the country tradition. His stage presence and…
FESTIVAL | Carifest
Celebrating Caribbean culture, the Rochester West Indian Festival Organization (RWIFO) will present the 31st annual Carifest and parade on Saturday, August 8. Beginning at 11 a.m., the parade will feature the vibrant colors and costumes indicative of the West Indies. The parade begins at the Liberty Pole (intersection of East Avenue and East Main Street)…
INDUSTRIAL | KMFDM
Seminal electronic and heavy metal crossover act KMFDM created an iconic sound, then spent the next 30 years testing what other directions it could be pushed. That sound, now often referred to as Industrial, has had a pervasive and wide-ranging influence. Once the pride of Wax Trax record label during its mid- and late-80’s peak,…
ART | “Seeing the City, One Drawing At a Time”
From the dozens of eyes locked onto phone screens to the passengers fast asleep in their seats, few bus riders stare around at the other commuters. Local illustrator Mark Payton, however, has a different thought. The story of “Seeing the City” begins with Payton’s arrival in Rochester, which brought with it a bout of unemployment.…
Squeezing into the spotlight
A musician put his accordion on the back seat of his car, drove for a while, and stopped to eat before heading to his gig. He was halfway through dinner when he realized he’d forgotten to lock his car door. He ran out to his car, but it was too late. There, on the back…
THEATER | “Rope”
First produced in London in 1929, Patrick Hamilton’s “Rope” still stands as a classic thriller. It is remembered, in the US at least, as a 1948 Alfred Hitchcock movie starring Jimmy Stewart as a professor whose theories about committing the perfect murder, “passionless, motiveless, faultless, clueless, bloodless, and noiseless,” inspire two of his students to…
“Labor” of love
Singer-songwriter Christopher Paul Stelling is on the road to the Newport Folk Festival in a recently purchased, unassuming white touring van he has affectionately named Walt Whitman. As he recounts the various jobs he held throughout his 20’s — grocery store worker, luthier’s assistant, bookstore employee, sushi chef, dishwasher — a male blowup sex doll…
Regional range and reach
The selections for the 65th Rochester-Finger Lakes Exhibition, now on view at the Memorial Art Gallery, showcase an impressive skillset, a cross-section of how and what our regional artists are creating, and what is weighing on their minds. Evidently, these concerns range widely, from lofty meditations on religious tradition and explorations on the nature of…
ALBUM REVIEW: “The Story of Our Storm”
The Prickers “The Story of Our Storm” Hope Alive Media theprickers.com Within the first few revolutions of “Die in Bloom” off of The Prickers’ latest, “The Story of Our Storm,” the band successfully suggest and adopts every emotion you can think of — well, joy mostly. It’s just that the band’s simple complexity washes over the listener…
Opening the gates
Classical music boasts some stellar African-American names: composers Scott Joplin, William Grant Still, and George Walker; singers Leontyne Price, Shirley Verrett, and William Warfield; and pianist André Watts, not to mention the many black musicians in our symphony orchestras. For 22 years, Gateways Music Festival’s aim has always been the same: to “increase the visibility…
ALBUM REVIEW: “Electric Fog Machine”
Jovontaes “Electric Fog Machine” Self-released Jovontaes.bandcamp.com Totally on a whim, I went and caught Jovontaes’s in-store set at The Record Archive the other night. This spectacular instrumental outfit is from Lexington, Kentucky, and its music is from out of this world. If you missed it, you can dig the band’s dreamy new CD (its previous…
SPECIAL EVENT | City Newspaper’s South Wedge-Ucation
It’s time to get Wedge-Ucated again. Make a stop in the South Wedge neighborhood on Thursday, September 10, 5 p.m.-7 p.m., where City Newspaper will be putting on its annual South Wedge-Ucation event. If you’re like every person ever and you like a good deal, this is one event you don’t want to miss. Check…
Feedback 8/5
We welcome your comments. Send them to themail@rochester-citynews.com, or post them on our website, rochestercitynewspaper.com, our Facebook page, or our Twitter feed, @roccitynews. Comments of fewer than 350 words have a greater chance of being published, and we do edit selections for publication in print. We don’t publish comments sent to other media. Buchanan’s right…
The impossible woman
Jamie Romeo has a difficult — some might say impossible — job ahead of her. She was elected last week to lead a deeply divided, financially strapped county Democratic Party just as the election season kicks into high gear. “I know exactly what our challenges are,” she says. “I wouldn’t be stepping into a black…
Center for Youth expands west
The Center for Youth is expanding into the Buffalo area to provide social-emotional support programs to the Kenmore-Tonawanda School District, says Elaine Spaull, the agency’s executive director. “The Kenmore-Tonawanda School District, which is comprised of many excellent administrators and teachers, found they needed some triaging and some alternative support for their middle-school youth,” she says.…
The future of Rochester’s past
One look at the organ’s arthritic keys and crumbling casing tells you that this old instrument has hummed its last hallelujah. The entire chapel, known as the 1912 chapel at Mount Hope Cemetery, is a gorgeous, decayed thing — a survival-horror movie set waiting for a location scout. It’s one of two defunct chapels in…
Film Review: “Irrational Man”
Here we are once again: another year, another Woody Allen film. The prolific director’s latest cinematic endeavor comes packed with the filmmaker’s trademarks: erudite intellectuals sit around conversing about philosophy and morality until an ill-conceived scheme (or two) comes along to shake up the snow-globe sized world they inhabit. But as in Allen’s past few…
Seligman’s very big plan for the very big deal
The University of Rochester president has done what too many community leaders have failed to do over the years.
Film Review: “Dark Places”
Acting is sort of an unspoken agreement between the thespian and the audience: He or she pretends to be someone else, and we pretend we don’t know about the pretending. Unfortunately, however, there are some actors whose stratospheric celebrity is making it increasingly difficult for us to hold up our end of the bargain. George…
Film Review: “The Frontier”
Take a bunch of people with questionable morals (or preferably no morals at all), toss them in an isolated spot, add a sprinkle of stolen cash, and wait to see who gets stabbed in the back (or shot, or strangled … you get the idea): It’s a classic film noir setup and one that director…
