News briefs 12.10.03

Pain
reliever

Hasaan
Mackey never stays in one place long. Since Mackey’s mom died 13 years ago, a
life of shuffling between relatives’ and friends’ homes has saddled the
24-year-old with an unsettled feeling.

            Just like his life, his music demands
constant adaptation. Mackey’s freestyle rap, in which he improvises rhymes to
changing hip-hop beats, is so polished it usually sounds rehearsed. Chuck
Cerankosky, a local DJ whose label Full Circle Records plans to release a
single by Mackey in January, says the rapper wins every freestyle contest he
enters. Mackey’s deep voice belies his slight build, and the verses he often
fires with a machine-gun cadence contradict his quiet disposition. At the
open-mic freestyle he hosts at Java’s (18 Gibbs Street, 232-4820), Mackey
usually sports a black Timberland coat and a long, Mingus-like goatee that
personify his fusion of hip-hop and jazz.

            The Rochester native’s rhymes range
from funny to ferocious, but his inspiration stays constant. Pain motivates
him. And he says he sometimes cries on the mic. Before he turned 13, Mackey
lost his family. His older sister was murdered when he was six, a tragedy that
Mackey says contributed to his mom’s alcoholism. Two years after his mom died
from sclerosis of the liver, Mackey’s father, a diabetic, died of heart
failure.

            This loss, as well as Mackey’s
experiences growing up in the city’s tough neighborhoods, will always fuel his
material, he says, even if musical aspirations take him beyond Rochester.
Cerankosky recalls a time when Mackey used his hometown advantage to outdo
nationally known rapper Common in a freestyle battle. After the Common asked
for challengers from the audience during a concert earlier this year, Mackey
traded rhymes in front of more than 1,000 people. The crowd exploded when
Mackey delivered the line, “I know this concert is at RIT, but this is for my
people at MCC.”

—
Geoff Graser

Made
for waiting

It
was a scene that might have pleased even Jan Wong: Thousands packed into the
Blue Cross Arena to watch the December 3
NCAA hoops game between St. Bonaventure and Syracuse University. Before
tip-off, downtown’s frigid streets were filled with eager college hoops fans
from across the region. And the game itself, despite SU’s overall dominance,
managed to stay close enough to keep folks enthralled until the final buzzer.

            And that’s when the trouble started.
It was as if Rochester just had to make a statement: We’ll never be a tourist town. To hell with the fast ferry, Cold Rush,
and whatever expensive slogans we dream up next.

            Anyone who parked in the Court Street Garage knows exactly what
we’re talking about: The nearly 90-minute wait to get back on the street. Cars
coiled in an endless spiral of frustration. Drivers laying on their horns in
bemused hopelessness.

            The problem? A garage full of cars,
all leaving at once, and all expected to pay on the way out.

            “You’ve got all these people who are
coming off the highway and they filled up the garage. And [Court Street Garage
operators] weren’t expecting that,” says Larry Seltzer, the city’s interim
manager of municipal parking. “They knew about the event, but they didn’t
realize the impact it would have on the garage. Otherwise, they would have made
you pre-pay and put the gates up. Us getting a sold-out athletic event like
that is probably not going to happen for a long time. But they’re gonna do
prepay for the next event. Court Street is a great location. And it will be
dealt with differently next time.”

            But will there be a next time? Ink wonders how many of those frustrated
drivers were suburbanites venturing downtown for the rare event. Perhaps
they’ll think twice before planning their next trip.

            So, in a sense, downtown managed to
achieve the impossible: It got people to come. If just couldn’t get them to
leave.

Waging
a battle

When
it comes to the minimum wage, New
York State is out of step with much of the neighborhood. State law sets the
minimum at $5.15 per hour, same as the current federal rate. Not all wage
earners are covered, of course: Food-service workers have a minimum wage of
$2.90 to $3.30 per hour; tips are supposed to bring them up to par.

            Pennsylvania and New Jersey follow
the fed rate, too. But most of New England is ahead of the pack. Here are the
federal Department of Labor statistics: Rhode Island and Maine, $6.15 minimum;
Vermont, $6.25; Massachusetts, $6.75. Connecticut, now at $6.90, will jump to
$7.10 on January 1. On the other hand, Ohio’s minimum is $4.25; this drops to
$2.80 for employers with gross annual sales under $150,000. (Luckily, the
federal rate supersedes that of individual states whose minimums are lower.)

            Now a new coalition has formed to
boost New York’s minimum to at least $6.75. The coalition — including ACORN,
NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice, Citizen Action, Fiscal Policy Institute,
Working Families Party, Jobs With Justice, and others — wants the state
legislature to act. The Assembly, says a coalition backgrounder, has passed
good bills in recent sessions, but there’s a chronic logjam in the Senate.

            Using employment figures for 2002,
the Albany-based Fiscal Policy Institute calculates that 6.1 percent of Monroe
County’s wage-earners would benefit from such a hike. Those are the more than
22,000 local workers who now make between $5.15 and $6.74, according to the
FPI. Remember that fact when you’re told that “everybody” around here
already makes around seven bucks an hour.

Hats
off to food group

Rochester
Food Not Bombs provides free
perishable foods to people in need; the group says it’s now distributing around
three tons of groceries to 240 people per week. It’s also part of a movement
that promotes peace and social justice through a vegetarian meals program.

            Now RFNB has struck gold — a
$25,000 grant from the UPS (United Parcel Service) Foundation, which focuses on
volunteerism, hunger, and literacy. The grant will be used to buy a
refrigerated truck, say RFNB organizers.

            The group, which also has
connections to the local hardcore music scene, is busy renovating a commercial
building on Lyell Avenue near West Broad Street. You can follow the action by
visiting www.geocities.com/rochesterfnb/.

Money
for the arts

Fourteen
mid-sized arts agencies are set to
receive a total of $45,000 from the county. The full legislature was due to
vote on the spending yesterday. The funding was approved in committee by a vote
of 11 to 0.

            The contracts provide funding to
agencies with revenues between $95,000 and $1.6 million to support their
efforts to encourage participation and education in the arts.

            The agencies are: Aesthetic
Education Institute; Blackfriars Theatre; BOA Editions Limited; Downstairs
Cabaret Theatre; Genesee Center for the Arts & New Ideas; Hochstein School
of Music; Landmark Society; Rochester Arts and Lectures; Rochester Association
of the Performing Arts; Rochester Children’s Theatre; Rochester City Ballet;
Visual Studies Workshop; Writers & Books; Young Audiences.

            The money is included in the 2003
county budget.

This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2003.