Cover Story
Planting the seed
Community gardens and urban farms have some far-reaching benefits that are just as important as food, however. Each is unique, and what happens in the soil and around the plots often taps directly into community needs.
Film review: ‘Lost in Paris’
An affectionate ode to screwball and silent film-era comedy, “Lost in Paris” springs from the minds of Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon, a Brussels-based husband-and-wife burlesque duo. Tackling writing, directing, and starring duties, the pair turn a bittersweet romantic fable into an irresistibly charming slapstick confection. The film begins in a snowy mountain town in…
ROCK | The Who
Among the big progenitors in rock ‘n’ roll history, The Who ranks highest in staying true to its sound — or at least the spirit of that sound. You now that to be true when a band’s name get’s used as an adjective. Yes, they emerged from humble beginnings in the Mersey Beat garage, but…
Blind photographer Mohammed Saad lectures at Eastman Museum
Mohammed Saad may have learned English from watching “Titanic,” but he couldn’t tell you whether there was enough room for both Jack and Rose on the raft. Saad, a disability advocate, app developer, and photographer, is blind. Just shy of George Eastman’s 153rd birthday, Saad lectured at the Eastman Museum on Tuesday, June 11, the…
Idina Menzel navigates the stage
Tony Award-winner Idina Menzel is a little bit of everything. She’s a Broadway star (“Rent,” Wicked”), TV actor (“Beaches,” “Glee”), and she’s the one belting out “Let It Go” from Disney’s “Frozen.” At the root of Menzel’s drive is her amazing, sky-busting voice. Menzel is bringing it to the CMAC stage to amaze and delight…
Feedback 7/12
Send comments to themail@rochester-citynews.com, or post them on our website, rochestercitynewspaper.com, our Facebook page, or our Twitter feed, @roccitynews. Feedback includes comments from all these sources, and we edit selections. Taking the train As a lifelong rail enthusiast, maybe I can speak just a little bit to Tim Louis Macaluso’s piece, “New Train Station, Old…
Peter Albin was there at the Summer of Love
Fifty years ago, it was clear that something unusual was happening in San Francisco. Young people with long hair were arriving from all over the country to be part of the “Summer of Love.” Peter Albin was not only there, he was a founding member of one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll groups to…
Mike Birbiglia works out the story
Mike Birbiglia has mastered the art of telling a story. Whether it’s recapping the time he told religious jokes at a Christian college or explaining about that one time he accidentally swore in front of The Muppets, Birbiglia’s stand-up comedy showcases his ability to crush an anecdote. One particularly popular story — about sleep-diving out…
Program aims to boost supply of pathologists
Medical examiners’ offices across the country are facing a shortage of forensic pathologists, the key medical investigators who perform autopsies. The Monroe County medical examiner’s office is no exception. Like other agencies across the country, it’s been dealing with an increase in autopsy cases due to the opioid epidemic and related overdose deaths, the county…
Summer of Pride: Rochester Pride 2017 Preview
In the summer of 1967, nearly 75,000 people descended upon San Francisco in search of peace and free love and hoping to break away from the conservative ideals of their parents and other authority figures. This summer marks the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love, and the organizers of Rochester Pride found the themes…
In Grove Place and PLEX neighborhoods, hopes and fears of development
This is the second article in an occasional series on neighborhoods and the fall city elections. If you had talked to people living downtown 10 years ago, many would have said they were concerned about how to revive it. Now the worry is more about how to manage rapid redevelopment. The Grove Place neighborhood –…
INDIE ROCK | Ratboys
If a band identifies itself as “post-” something, I’m in. The Chicago-based, post-country band Ratboys is no different. On its just-released album, “GN,” Ratboys play straightforward indie songs with subtle country rock tendencies. There’s a dreamy, lo-fi ambience throughout, perpetuated by Julia Steiner’s irresistibly pleasant vocals and the constant jangle of Steiner and David Sagan’s…
Campaign focus will include Parcel 5
When retailing was at its peak in downtown Rochester, much of Midtown Plaza occupied what is known as Parcel 5. Right now, though, Parcel 5 – arguably downtown’s most important development site – is a vast vacant lot, hosting occasional outdoor events and waiting for the future. And that future has become the focus of…
SPECIAL EVENT | Rochester MusicFest
The Jazz Festival is behind us, but Rochester’s annual two-day MusicFest is just around the corner. This year’s event will feature headliners Bobby Rush, a blues icon and 2017 Grammy-winner, and R&B star Bobby Brown. Supporting acts include Lakeside, Nellie “Tiger” Travis, and Big Daddy Kane, among others. Friday will celebrate “Blues and BBQ Artists,”…
Henrietta sets solar ground rules
Henrietta is the latest Monroe County community to pass laws that regulate residential, business, and commercial solar projects. Solar is already alive and growing in Henrietta. Some residents have roof-mounted arrays; a few big-box retailers and warehouses have solar power systems; and the Rochester Institute of Technology has a 6,100-panel system next to its Henrietta…
GYPSY PUNK | Bella’s Bartok
If you need a danceable band with strong Eastern European feels in your life, Bella’s Bartok is the band for you. There’s a strong whiff of cabaret on the Massachusetts group’s most recent album, “Change Yer Life,” but the style is completely distinctive and impossible to box in. That said, this highly entertaining sextet describes…
VOCAL/POP | Idina Menzel
Tony Award-winner Idina Menzel is a little bit of everything: she’s a Broadway star (“Rent,” Wicked”), TV actor (“Beaches,” “Glee”), and she’s the one belting out “Let It Go” on Disney’s “Frozen.” At the root of Menzel’s drive is her amazing, sky-busting voice. Well, she’s bringing it to the concert stage to amaze and delight…
PUNK | Lydia Lunch’s Retrovirus
Pissed off punk progenitor and ex-Rochesterian Lydia Lunch delivers a seething, vitriolic set of spoken word gold. I first got hip to her poetry when she co-penned the book “Adulterers Anonymous.” I read that, and I began to understand punk as defined from within. It ruined me. And Lunch is going to ruin me again.…
CLASSICAL | LakeMusic Festival
Canandaigua’s LakeMusic Chamber Music Festival, around since 2005, gets more ambitious and more interesting each year. This summer’s featured performer is the Lithuanian pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute, who has performed at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium, London’s Wigmore Hall, and the Kennedy Center as well as in many festivals and with many orchestras. The LakeMusic Festival is…
JAZZ | ‘A Portrait of Marian McPartland’
Marian McPartland (1918-2013) was a nationally-known jazz giant, but she also had a special relationship with the Eastman School of Music. The school will honor McPartland in a concert featuring Tony Caramia, professor of piano, and Krista Seddon, who is not only a superb pianist but was also McPartland’s transcriber and copyist. Selections will includes…
KIDS | PlayROCs
PlayROCs Your Neighborhood is back this weekend for its second year, as Rochester parks, libraries, and community organizations prepare for a city-wide day of play. Healthi Kids — an organization that advocates for community and school policies to benefit children’s physical, mental, and emotional health — began this initiative last year when members recognized a…
SPECIAL EVENT | ‘Summer of Love’ celebration with Peter Albin
They say if you remember it, you weren’t there. That’s the bad marijuana joke about 1967, the “Summer of Love,” but Peter Albin remembers it well, and he’ll talk about that legendary time on Saturday at the Bop Shop. Fifty years ago, in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, Albin was not only there, he…
THEATER | ‘Torch Song Trilogy’
In Harvey Fierstein’s dramatic “Torch Song Trilogy,” protagonist Arnold Beckoff gives a glimpse into his life as a gay, Jewish, torch song-singing drag queen living in New York City during the 1970’s and 80’s. The play (really three plays told over three acts) takes you through different phases of Beckoff’s life, spanning several years, as…
Practicing WhichCraft
Riding a recent wave of new Rochester breweries, WhichCraft Brews (1900 Empire Boulevard) joined the local craft ranks when it opened on July 8. The brewery was the brainchild of owners Chris Prince, John Moscato, Scott Baxter, and Lori Weber-Baxter. Prince and Moscato already operated 585 Rochester Beer in Brockport, and the idea for WhichCraft…
FESTIVAL | Convention Days
Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the first women’s rights convention in July 1848. Now, 169 years later, Convention Days 2017 will begin on Friday, July 14, commemorating the day the 1848 convention was announced in Seneca Falls. This year’s theme is “We Are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For,” and will include keynote speaker…
Twenty-five years in the life of Arrested Development
Few bands have had a better start than Arrested Development did in 1992, when its debut album, “3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life of…,” sold four million copies and earned the group two Grammy Awards. Rolling Stone named Arrested Development its band of the year, and film director Spike Lee asked…
Album review: ‘Rand I Pronounced Rand-Eye’
Bob Bunce’s Rural Delivery “Rand I Pronounced Rand-Eye” Self-released bobbunce.com Being a musician means immortality, even if you no longer walk this Earth. Groveland’s off-the-grid cat, Bob Bunce, recently suffered the loss of his brother, Randy. And while resting up from a shoulder injury last winter, he started going through his brother’s journals full of…
THEATER | ‘Grease’
Leather jackets, Pink Ladies, and summer lovin’ have made their way to the Rochester stage for the Blackfriars Theatre’s summer production of “Grease.” Part of the Blackfriars Theatre Summer Intensive, the performance will feature the next generation of actors, artists, and performers. The six-week BTSI program launched in 2016 with the goal of providing professional-level…
Album review: ‘Rodeo Radio’
Mad Cow Tippers “Rodeo Radio” Self-released facebook.com/madcowtippers Mad Cow Tippers temper its rockabilly with hysterical misappropriation of the genre’s traditions. The band’s new album, “Rodeo Radio,” opens with a spot-on Scotty Moore, slap-back lament over a song about addiction to cable TV before morphing into singing praises of Amazon’s Kindle Fire. MCT will have you…
Urban action 7/12
This week’s calls to action include the following events and activities. (All are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted.) Racist image as teaching tool The Take It Down organization, the City of Rochester, and the Rochester Museum and Science Center will hold events focusing on the controversial Dentzel Carousel panel on Thursday,…
Italian getaway
The Italian Film Series has premiered a contemporary Italian film each month since April at The Little Theatre. These one-time-only screenings are dedicated to showing off the breadth of the country’s modern cinematic offerings, and Rochester audiences get a chance to view films that might otherwise have never made it to local theaters. The series’…
SPECIAL EVENT | Famous Women of Mount Hope Cemetery Tour
If you haven’t made the trip to Susan B. Anthony’s grave yet, now’s your chance. As a part of the Suffrage Centennial, the Friends of Mount Hope Cemetery and several local libraries will hold a guided tour of famous women in America’s first municipal Victorian cemetery. Dennis Carr, co-founder of the Friends of Mount Hope…
Health care is a right. Why is that debatable?
The tug of war over health care drags on and on in Washington, and some days it’s high comedy. Nobody knew health care could be so complicated. But in truth, a lot about health care is complicated. We’re living longer. Hooray for that, but longevity on a mass scale carries costs: for everything from joint…
