Cover Story
Three Green candidates think they can win
You might have assumed that the competition for the seats on City Council was locked up in the Democratic Primary in June. Rochester’s such a heavily Democratic city that the party’s primaries are considered the real election. But Green Party candidates Alex White, Chris Edes, and David Sutliff-Atias strongly disagree. White in particular bristles at…
Midtown Athletic renovation gets assist from taxpayers
Midtown Athletic Club isn’t for everybody. So why is everybody paying for its expansion?
Education forum tomorrow night for downtown residents
The Center City Community Coalition, an umbrella organization made up of downtown neighborhood associations, is hosting a forum on school options for downtown residents Wednesday night. C4 hopes to inform parents who live downtown (or those who are considering a move to downtown) that it’s a place where they can live and raise their children…
Vote coming on bike-lane parking law
City Council is considering legislation that would make it explicitly illegal to park in a bike lane, and Council members will most likely vote on the law during their meeting Tuesday night. Drivers who park in bike lanes are already breaking the law in most cases; the lanes typically are situated between vehicle travel lanes…
Former RPD officer Sippel gets probation in assault case
Michael Sippel, the former Rochester police officer convicted of assaulting Christopher Pate during a May 2018 arrest, was sentenced Monday to three years of probation. City Court Judge Thomas Rainbow Morse, who found Sippel guilty of third-degree misdemeanor assault at a bench trial, said during the sentencing that Sippel’s judgment the day of the confrontation…
Rochester diocese files for bankruptcy
Rochester has become the first of New York state’s eight dioceses to seek protection from creditors in bankruptcy court because of financial fallout from the church’s decades-long sex abuse scandal.
SPECIAL EVENT | Lebowski Fest
Bowling center and cutie pie bar Radio Social is hosting a Lebowski Fest this week, creating a ripe opportunity for fans to leave the house in a bathrobe, dressed as a Valkyrie, or in every New Yorker’s favorite hue: Nihilist Black. Honestly, the possibilities for costumes are endless. The evening entails a screening of the…
JAZZ | Gray Quartet
The Spirit Room has joined the ranks of Rochester-area venues including 80W and Via Girasole Wine Bar in hosting weekly jazz concerts featuring local musicians. Every Tuesday, The Spirit Room hosts the Jazz Session Series, featuring the talented Eastman School of Music students and alumni in the Gray Quartet. Consisting of pianist Max Greenberg, guitarist…
STEEL GUITAR | Susan Alcorn
This ain’t the typical home to roam for the pedal steel. There’s no country twang or deep dish blues. The sound Susan Alcorn gets out of her instrument can best be described as nouveau classical. The complex chord structures are brilliant. The way Alcorn plays, it’s as if she creates the notes she’ll play by…
FESTIVAL | Festival of Food
A few days a week, year round, The Rochester Public Market is filled with vendors offering produce, poultry, and other food for shoppers to take home and make into meals. But once a year, these raw materials are swapped out for vendors offering finished dishes. Foodlink’s annual fall fundraiser, the Festival of Food, returns the…
GRUNGE FOLK | Aaron DeRuyter and The Confluence
Former frontman of the late 90’s post-grunge band Pompous Pilate, local singer-guitarist Aaron DeRuyter expands the boundaries of Americana music by combining acoustic and electronic elements. He released his sophomore album “Astral” in 2016, and performs solo and with a rotating collective of musicians known as The Confluence. DeRuyter writes haunting soliloquies like Townes Van…
SPECIAL EVENT | Family Archaeology Weekend
Rochester Museum and Science Center’s annual outdoor, hands-on learning activity, Family Archaeology Weekend, returns this weekend to the Cumming Nature Center. Archaeology professors and students from The College at Brockport will be on hand to assist attendees with a guided excavation of an 18th-century farmhouse foundation on the center’s property. Citizen scientists of all ages…
BOSSA NOVA | Bossa Nova Bradley Brothers
Bossa nova’s kind of laid-back like a gentle breeze, but once it migrated from Brazil to our shores in the 1960’s, it never quite let go. Everyone knows “The Girl from Ipanema” and the songs of Antonio Carlos Jobim, but there’s so much more. And that’s where the Bossa Nova Bradley Brothers come in. With…
Food waste on city’s menu
Each year, Americans put billions of pounds of uneaten food and scraps in the trash. And they do so at hefty costs, not just to the local governments that have to haul residents’ garbage to landfills, but also in terms of the climate-disrupting greenhouse gases that food waste generates. To counter those problems, cities across…
Monroe County: school enrollment’s flat; budgets aren’t. Why?
As schools opened last week, school district enrollment in the Rochester area was pretty much holding steady: a small decline here, a small uptick there. There’s no significant difference between the 2016-2017 school year and 2018-2019, says Sherry Johnson, executive director of the Monroe County School Boards Association. You might assume, then, that school budgets…
Feedback 9/11
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Urban Action 9/11
This week’s call to action includes the following events and activities. (All are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.) A local view of climate change The Canandaigua Lake Watershed Association and the Canandaigua Chapter Citizens Climate Lobby will show the locally produced documentary “Comfort Zone: A Film About Change” on Tuesday, September…
JAM BAND-JAZZ | John Medeski’s Mad Skillet
If you thought you heard some NOLA sizzlin’ in John Medeski’s Mad Skillet, you’d be right. One-third of Medeski Martin & Wood, the wild keyboardist shoehorns some Big Easy guns – saxophonist Kirk Joseph and drummer Terence Higgins, both from Dirty Dozen Brass Band – into this side project. See? I told ya. The band…
My grim forecast for Rochester’s schools
If the Rochester School District’s internal problems were fixed, student achievement would increase. But then there are the external problems.
Album review: ‘False Pockets’
False Pockets ‘False Pockets’ Self-released falsepockets.bandcamp.com Formed in the summer of 2018, False Pockets features singer-guitarist Erik Happ, drummer Ben Chesnes, and bassist Zack Parker. The band is about to release its self-titled debut EP, a culmination of math rock songs created in less than two months. The album is an experimental story told mostly…
New pizzeria offers all-vegan menu and inclusiveness
After much anticipation, New Ethic Pizzeria & Café opened the doors to its own shop on September 4, offering all-vegan fare. In addition to pies with vegan cheese and meat replacements, New Ethic also offers vegan wings with a sugar cane “bone” in the center.
Peter Bagrov named new curator at Eastman Moving Image Department
The George Eastman Museum announced last month that Dr. Peter Bagrov has been appointed as the new curator in charge of its Moving Image Department. Relocating from Moscow to Rochester, he’ll be succeeding Paolo Cherchi Usai, who has taken a leadership position at Italy’s national film institute.
Review: ‘La Cage Aux Folles’
At its core, it’s a flashy, an undeniably fun night out — albeit difficult to pull off without a talented male cast. Fortunately, Geva’s cast is more than equipped to handle the high-heeled, leather- and feather-filled dance numbers.
Pegasus Early Music’s season opener features works for viol
The early string instrument known as the viol (rhymes with “smile”) can frequently be found in Renaissance and Baroque art, usually in the hands of princesses, saints, or angels. For Pegasus Early Music’s September 22 concert “Viol3,” however, three viols will be in the hands of musicians Beiliang Zhu, Lisa Terry, and David Morris.
Album review: ‘Krypton 88’
Krypton 88 ‘Krypton 88’ Self-released Krpyton 88 on facebook.com The Rochester rockabilly raconteurs of Krypton 88 have really gone and done it now. I ran into guitarist Jim Via and he handed me the trio’s new eponymous record, which he kind of dismissed as “three old guys playing honky-tonk in the basement.” Age is arbitrary,…
Dispatches from TIFF 2019
One of the best things about the Toronto International Film Festival is the diversity of its film lineup, which includes everything from Hollywood prestige pictures to independent foreign films looking for distribution.
