Funkier than funk
A young girl seductively swings her hips between two zip codes while a long-haired cat does an interpretive dance that looks like he’s swatting mosquitoes or driving a bus. A bar back does the camel walk weaving in and out of pockets of people undulating in unison, diggin’ and dancin’ to Giant Panda Guerilla Dub…
Hitting the lecture circuit
OK, all you nerds out there, it’s time to get down to work. Stock your pencil boxes, pull out your literary anthologies, and check the batteries in your tape recorders: fall is bursting with enough lectures and literary events to make us all feel like we’re back in school again. Listen to authors and scientists,…
Wanna Tijuana?
A couple of Thursdays back The Badenovs paced and raged on The Bug Jar stage with lots of textbook crazy and new-wave cool. Badenov carrot-top newbie and ex-Profile Greg Hassett dwarfed his Telecaster while still making it roar. It’s good to see the big man back, slingin’ on the bandstand. Frontman Stan “The Man” led…
City’s choice: family theater
Theater is not just for grownups. Besides the magical tradition of The Nutcracker, during the fall there are other performances around town for the family to enjoy. These are inexpensive, low-key, and sometimes interactive shows — made just for the little ones. Rochester Children’s Theatre continues its residency at Nazareth College with The Miracle Worker,…
Restoring The Spirit
We may learn, soon, whether The Spirit of Ontario will be back in operation, and if so, whether it’ll be in service this fall. Critics and the media are still speculating on the causes of the ferry fiasco — and, despite its terrific start-up bookings, on whether Spirit is viable. Sellouts in August aren’t a…
InterFaith Forum essay contest
Virtue is its own reward, but a little scholarship money wouldn’t hurt either, right? If you’re a secondary school student in grades 9-12 and you live or go to school in Monroe County, here’s your chance. The InterFaith Forum of Rochester sponsors an annual essay contest honoring the memory of the Rev. James A. Rice.…
All about the song
Songs used to matter. And to some they still do. Rochester singer-songwriter Brian Coughlin wants to put the song first, and has for the past three years with his monthly Songwriters In The Round series. On every third Thursday of the month, folks pile into Daily Perks Coffee House to hear an ever-revolving and always…
Reader feedback 9.22.04
Election talk: Bush, Kerry, and Nader
Body count 9.22.04
To honor the war dead and fill an information gap in US mass media, City Newspaper will run weekly lists of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians killed during the occupation of Iraq. The totals: 1028 American soldiers, 135 Coalition soldiers, and approximately 12,800 to 14,843 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq from the beginning…
To market with downtown
It’s been a little more than a year since Bill Pritchard was sworn in to City Council, filling a seat vacated by Nancy Griswold. While spending much of the past year learning the ropes of his new post, Pritchard has also placed his focus on downtown development. Much of that is an outgrowth of Pritchard’s…
Blind date
It’s about accountability. That’s what some 30 residents told county legislators at their meeting on September 14. The speakers were opposing a Republican plan to move the county executive’s deadline for submitting a budget from mid-October to mid-November. That would leave only a month for the legislature to deliberate on a budget and adopt it.…
Fall Guide 2004
Fall with grace It leads us into the grip of colder, darker winter, but fall is a gentle warden. The colors are rich, the temperature is comfortable, and everything smells good. And best of all, fall brings with it a boom of cultural events. Autumn is theater, dance, and art shows! It’s movies and live…
Third Simon a charm
Geva has treated Neil Simon awfully well in its now-complete trilogy of Simon’s autobiographical “BB-plays,” Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and Broadway Bound. The last is the best, because the script and characters, as well as the actors, director and designers, have all matured and grown in the process. Biloxi took Eugene Morris Jerome to…
Seeking the artful bounty
Members of the Rochester Association of Art Dealers already inaugurated the new season; they strutted their stuff during Galleries Week, which started the second weekend of September. Most of their exhibits will remain up for several weeks, giving you plenty to see. And that’s just the beginning of what’s on tap for the Greater Rochester…
Hard riding
The emcee has the audience going. But then again, it is a willing audience, already charged. The 250-member crowd laughs easily, cheers easier, and talks back. At one point he calls out, “All the females that ride raise your hand.” All the women — just about half of the audience — raise an arm and…
Putting on a good show
It is, in my opinion, the best moment in the world: after the lights go down and before the show starts. Voices hush, bodies settle, and you wait. There is so much possibility in the air that breathing feels better. In fall, local theater and dance groups start performing in earnest. Rochester and the surrounding…
World’s Greatest Garage Sale,
We’re lowering prices over here!” calls a garage sale huckster in a leopard-print shirt. “That’s what we like to hear,” comes the reply from a group of five women with bulging shopping bags, swarming to a potential deal like piranhas. Savannah Acker, 7, wiggles nearby in a hula-hoop she just bought for a whopping 25…
Searching for the Holy Grail (of fruit)
The fall harvest season is one of my favorites, with cool nights and an almost endless variety of fruits and vegetables to sample, some more well-known than others. Lately, I have fallen in love with the heirloom tomato “Brandywine” — which is not very red, is impossible to slice for the perfect sandwich, and has…
Eel, eggplant, and octopus, oh my!
It’s fascinating how an ethnic cuisine becomes part of the American fabric. It usually starts with a small place run by a native (think Ly Lou’s Pearl of the Orient for Philippine food). If it catches on, others open, and an Americanized version of the food develops. With Chinese food, for example, it’s now difficult…
Only the movies you want to see
As I was thinking about how to structure this piece on the films of autumn, I became hung up on the notion of film criticism versus movie reviewing. Film criticism is an art that seems to require a thorough steeping in film history, astute reasoning, an extremely keen eye, and the ability to concisely convey…
Boys vs. girls
The Olympic gold medal-winning US women’s soccer team, featuring superstar and Rochester-native Abby Wambach, plays Iceland on Saturday night, September 25, at Frontier Field as part of a 10-city “Fan Celebration Tour.” Iceland is ranked 17th in the FIFA world rankings, and obviously needs a spark, like Björk showing up in a swan suit to…
Lack not music’s pleasures
It may be years, decades, centuries, before the Olympics come to Rochester. While you’re waiting, enjoy the abundant classical music Rochester offers every year, all year round. This fall is no exception. There’s something for nearly every taste: standard repertoire; early music from the Renaissance to the Baroque; a wealth of 20th-century modernist classics and…
The spectacle of the 1930s
The appearance of the highly publicized Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow suggests some of the peculiar problems troubling the familiar combination of the technology and the art of film. Ideally, of course, the two should meld seamlessly, supporting each other in the expression of subject and theme, but in the real world of…
Failure is so possible
Fall arrives in Rochester with a flurry of colorful brochures announcing dance, music, and theater events. It’s an exciting time of year for arts lovers — authors start arriving, film festivals hit town, and art exhibitions open. But for some, all is not well in the cultural calendar. For creative types who haven’t met their…
Murder and mayhem equals quality — who knew?
For whatever reason, most of the best films I saw at the Toronto Film festival this year were also the creepiest. Les Revenants, a French film, tries out the zombie movie as an intellectual exercise. Well, zombies may be putting it a bit strongly, since the “returnees” (as the title puts it, though look for…
Hear your live delights
I figure since we got screwed out of summer we deserve a cool fall. And I’m not talking about the mercury either. I’m talking about lots of groovy bands to shake our bodies to in order to work up the sweat we were supposed to have spilled in the last few months. Here are a…
