Cost of war – 3.22.06
The totals: 2312 US soldiers, 207 Coalition soldiers, and approximately 33,679 to 37,795 Iraqicivilians have been killed in Iraq from the beginning of the war and occupation to March 15. 2994 Iraqi police and guardsmen have been killed since January 2005, according to an estimate compiled from news reports. 16,653 US soldiers have been wounded…
Your Rochester to-do list
Try to see what’s on TV on the ceiling of the Bug Jar. Board the Mary Jemison or the Sam Patch from Corn Hill Landing. Request the private viewing room at the Cinema Theater. Enjoy the view from the new ExchangeStreetBridge. Listen to Fred Costello rock the organ at Frontier Field. Get a white hot…
Take a closer look
You could easily spend your life in Greater Rochester driving between work, home, and Wegmans. Many people do. But we hope that you won’t. This area only gets more interesting the more you look, because some of the best things are under wraps. The big things are important, and we point you to those, too.…
1160 Routes 5 and 20 in Seneca
Cobblestone Masterpiece Town of Seneca Chartered in 1799 as the First Great Western Turnpike, the nearly 400-mile-long highway known as State Route 20 features some of the most outstanding architecture in New York State. One of the best examples is the cobblestone residence at 1160 Routes 5 and 20 in the town of Seneca, just…
The best parts are often hidden
“Cool” in Rochester is the youth-oriented Park Avenuearea, or the East End-Alexander area on a summer night, with crowds from clubs and bars spilling out onto the sidewalks. But there’s lots to experience in the city. And lots of development under way or in the planning stages. Alongside large-scale ventures, such as the HighFalls entertainment…
Welcome to the ‘burbs
Rochester owes much of its development and prosperity to the GeneseeRiver, which cuts a path right down the center of the city. In the early days, many of the neighborhoods in the city, as well as suburban villages, began as small settlements that depended on the river to receive and sell goods. Certain types of…
As American as pasta e fagiole
You can eat apple pie and hamburgers for only so long. If you’re seeking ingredients to build meals in honor of your (or someone else’s) culture, here’s a list of some independent ethnic grocery stores. In some cases you may have to look for on-street parking, and you may not be able to hit the…
Family valued – 3.22.06
“You are a menace.” Here at the Family Valued pixel playhouse and pastel pressroom, we are interested in anything that furthers socializing. Toward that end, we are experimenting with exposing small groups to dinner and a movie. Ideally, the movie is something no one in attendance has seen in a long time. The food should…
Are you there yet?
Got kids? You’ve come to the right place! Year-round in Rochester, there’s plenty of family-friendly fun to help you forget that your days of romantic candlelit dinners are pretty much over. Spring Springtime is when the skies along LakeOntario darken with something other than snow clouds: birds of prey. Braddock Bay Raptor Research hosts Bird…
Fiz – 3.22.06
A recovering Catholic’s shrine Classic Catholic icons, especially the statues, are so goddamn morose. Their sullen muted tones, their dead, guilt-inducing stares urged me — when the penguins and priests couldn’t — to say my prayers, obey my parents, and adhere to a whole buttload of thou-shalt-nots. When the reality of my teens superceded the…
Live and active culture
They say you shouldn’t talk religion or politics at the dinner table. Sound advice. But we think art falls in the same category. Ever bring a still-life lover to an art installation where doll parts hang from the ceiling? Chain a free-spirited drumming-circle dancer in front of a four-hour ballet? There are some very strongly…
A family in circles
It’s not a new story. A family grows up in the kind of rural Midwestern town believed to be held in God’s palm, where there are baseball games, nosy neighbors, and church on Sundays. It’s a family with one son, one daughter, one overbearing but well-meaning mother, one father who disappears as soon as anyone…
Eight days a week
You’ve only got seven, but there’s something to do eight days a week. Monday. Why not start the week large and in charge? Just take the mic on karaoke night at The Flipside Bar & Grill and prove once and for all that Isabella Rossellini’s version of “Blue Velvet” can actually be topped. The Bop…
Being watched
Withdrawing money from your ATM, driving on I-590, ordering fast food, making a quick stop at the liquor store on the way home: private moments are becoming more public than you might think. You’re being taped — and it’s happening so unobtrusively that you’re probably not aware of it. What’s more, it’s legal, and it’s…
The way the political land lays
Just like anyplace else, politics in Rochester are a complicated affair that, when you get right down to it, aren’t really all that complicated after all. Take a bunch of ambitious, outgoing men and women, add the lust for power, sprinkle generously with cash, and voila… you’ve got a crazy, quirky kind of world only…
Notes from a filmme fatale
As the ceiling wept into the bucket beside her bed, a million thoughts duked it out in her mind. She lazily poked at a succession of letters that might allow her to continue renting her porous palace but she daydreamed of an unlikely world in which her loved ones thrived and her enemies understood exactly…
From getting lost to finding your Irish
Wanna work off a few pounds? Gotta burn off some work-related frustration? Just need to get out? Participatory recreational opportunities abound in the city and county; if you’re eager to get physical, there are plenty of options. Let’s start with sporting clubs. If you’ve got the need for speed — on ice — try the…
Some subversive truths for our dark time
The latest movie to send the conservative crybabies sobbing into their bound copies of the Patriot Act originates in, of all places, a comic book, or as they like to call them in the higher literary circles, a graphic novel. For a political allegory to grow out of so apparently plebeian a form suggests not…
Sporting goods
Last year, Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal named Rochester the number one minor-league sports market in the country. The city boasts pro sports franchises that are both storied and cutting-edge, some steeped in tradition, others still growing out of their infancy. The granddaddy of them all is the Rochester Red Wings, a Triple-A baseball…
Women’s work
A couple of years ago, Sylvie Beaudette conducted an experiment. In her music history class at Eastman, she played pieces by male and female composers from each major era (baroque, classical, romantic, etc.) back to back without revealing the composers’ gender. She paired an opera excerpt by Monteverdi with a cantata excerpt by Francesca Caccini.…
Not above name dropping
Rochester can boast a fair number of interesting citizens who continue to walk among us, but many that have shuffled off this mortal coil remain the subject of endless fascination. These former Rochesterians may not be as well known as groundbreaking giants like abolitionist Frederick Douglass, activist Susan B. Anthony, and inventor George Eastman, but…
The echo’s perspective
Come on in, the jazz is fine. I’ve been dipping my big toe into uncharted waters more and more lately and brrrr, it’s cool. I can probably thank or blame Monk for all of this. Brooklyn experimental guitarist Adam Caine (who incidentally claims to have become a jazz musician at age 16, the night he…
Park it
From the beautiful Seneca and Highland Parks, both designed by 19th-century landscape genius Frederick Law Olmsted, to Durand-Eastman Park, where you can feel the immensity of that Great Lake, here is just a partial list of some of our favorite parks in the Monroe County (256-4950, www.monroecounty.gov) and City of Rochester (428-6767 or 428-6755, www.cityofrochester.gov)…
At long last, real hope for downtown?
It has been painful to watch, this slow deterioration of downtown Rochester over the past quarter-century. Many of us can still picture, vividly, MidtownPlaza filled with shops, Sibley’s decked out for Christmas, Main Street packed with shoppers. All of that is long gone, and it’s not coming back. Some will say the near-death of downtown…
A town in the know
One of Rochester’s most important assets is its academic community. There are over a dozen centers devoted to advanced education within the Rochester-Finger Lakes-Genesee Valley Region, and they add vibrancy to the area’s employment, culture, and quality of life. College students and faculty actively support community needs, particularly in the areas of education, healthcare, social…
Metro ink – 3.22.06
Love, Peace, & Hip-Hop
Sculptures, butterflies, and giants,oh my!
Anyone who complains about the traffic in Rochester has never driven in Boston or New York or Cleveland or Pittsburgh. Granted, more traffic means more population and more opportunities for diversion within those metropolises. The positive corollary is that leaving Rochester is a relatively painless experience. I know, I know, you just got here. But…
Reader feedback – 3.22.06
The Bush visit, ‘acting white’
Where’s the party?
Lakeside Winter Celebration Date: February Place: OntarioBeachPark Description: snow and ice sculpture contests, Chili Challenge, Polar Plunge Info: 865-3320 St. Patrick’s Day Parade Date: March Place: downtown Description: parade, family festival Info: www.rochesterparade.com Lilac Festival Dates: May 12-21 Place: Highland Park Description: 500 varieties of lilacs, live music, activities, food Info: 456-3070, www.lilacfestival.com Memorial Day…
