Garth
eyes new home

Staying
true to his promise to keep his dance company stationed in downtown Rochester, Garth Fagan is considering the
northwest corner of Main and Gibbs streets as a site worth developing for the
company’s new dance studio and performance space. Commonly referred to as the
old Rascal site, the northwest corner of Main and Gibbs is currently a surface
parking lot.

            Garth Fagan Dance is the recent
recipient of a combined $370,000 in state and federal funds, all of which will
be directed to development costs for a new studio. Shortly after receiving the
public money, Garth Fagan promised to keep his company downtown.

            Rachel DeGuzman, director of
development for GFD, will only say that the company “is always exploring the
possibility of finding a permanent home.”

            But during a February meeting of the
Cultural Center Commission, which owns the property, a request by Garth Fagan
Dance to commence an initial environmental study of the site, estimated to cost
$1,000, was reviewed. The environmental study will reveal if the site is free
from underground hazards and suitable for development.

From
health to hard knocks?

Recent
news that ViaHealth Inc. hired a
consultant to recommend new uses for the former Genesee Hospital made waves for all the wrong reasons. The Democrat and Chronicle reported that one
potential use for the building would be a prison, an adaptable reuse project
that doesn’t exactly thrill Mary Wells, executive director of the South East
Area Coalition. “My initial reaction to the possibility of having a prison in
our neighborhood is that no, it’s not a good idea.”

            So is ViaHealth for real?

            Diane Ewing, vice president of
marketing and public relations for the health system, will only say
“multiple scenarios have been considered,” but nothing has been
decided. The trick, she says, will be determining “how the value of that
property compares to others in Rochester.” “Any option… would have
to be economically viable,” she says.

Webster
plot in question

Webster
townspeople will soon have a chance to preserve a little corner of beauty. On
March 25, a town referendum is scheduled (hours of voting TBA) on a single
ballot question: whether to spend $1 million or so for four-plus acres at the
juncture of Irondequoit Bay and Lake
Ontario.

            Town commissioner of public works
Gary Kleist says the land lies next to the Hojack railroad right-of-way, which
now carries a public trail rather than trains. The land now is zoned for
“waterfront development,” says Kleist, and in fact there’s a proposal pending
to build a hotel and restaurant there. “We’re not talking a high-rise but a
condominium-style” two-story structure, he says.

            Local environmental groups have
catalogued the bay and lakeshore as “environmentally sensitive areas,” but they
have been overdeveloped regardless. So the Webster referendum is critical in
its own way.

Peace
maneuvers

Six
buses of Rochesterians (and 200 others traveling separately) joined around
400,000 peace demonstrators in
Midtown Manhattan February 15, says Metro
Justice organizer Jesse Lenney. This was the second time in a month that
hundreds of local people made a long trek to say no to an Iraq war. The first
trek was to Washington in January. The New York demo was part of a coordinated
worldwide effort that brought out several million people total, with perhaps
the largest turnout in London, fueled by Bush buddy Tony Blair’s bellicosity.

            But take it from those who went to
Manhattan: This one was special. Part of it was braving temperatures in the
teens and the brisk East River winds. But then there was the NYPD security
apparatus.

            Miriam Lerner, a local sign language
interpreter, tells what happened to some demonstrators stuck in pedestrian
gridlock, thanks to NYPD barricades placed blocks from the rally site. “Mounted
police who had been in the street ordering everyone to move along and get on
the sidewalks brought their horses onto the sidewalks and started riding them
right into us. I tried to get moving, but there really was nowhere to move —
there was a crush all around me, and the first few people they herded into me
pushed by and I was flattened against the wall.” She says others nearby were
shoved and subjected to arbitrary orders. (A City Newspaper staffer who attended the rally saw similar police
offenses.)

            Lerner came away with a good
attitude, though. She concludes: “No matter what you do or don’t read in the
press, please know that there were several hundreds of thousands of very
peaceful people in the streets… more in tune with what is needed in the world
than anyone.”

Colombia
comes north

Colombian
trade union leaderHector Giraldo came through Rochester recently and made public appearances in Buffalo and
other cities, hosted by the Communications Workers of America and the AFL-CIO.

            The snowy roads changed his
itinerary a little, but it’s doubtful Giraldo would see this as a hardship.
That’s because Colombia is probably the most dangerous place on earth for
labor. A CWA backgrounder says that in 2001, there were 223 union activists killed
worldwide; 201 of them were Colombian. That’s why the AFL-CIO is bringing
people like Giraldo to the US for year-long respites, during which they educate
Americans on the ruthlessness of “Plan Colombia.”

            The plan, which includes more than
$1 billion in military aid, helps the Colombian military and its paramilitary
allies do their worst. An Amnesty International report summed up the situation
last year: “Systematic and gross abuses of human rights and international
humanitarian law persisted. Paramilitary groups acting with the active or tacit
support of the security forces were responsible for the vast majority of
extrajudicial executions and ‘disappearances’… Armed opposition groups
[including the leftwing FARC] were responsible for violations of international
humanitarian law, including arbitrary or deliberate killings.” Giraldo told a
national CWA gathering: “We are fighting [the current regime] because it
restricts our rights, threatens democracy, increases unemployment, and
increases poverty. Because we are fighting it, we are targets of paramilitary
violence.”

            Giraldo, says Rochester labor
advocate Jeff Nieznanski, wants to return to Medellin, Colombia, to work on the
issues. There’s also the possibility, says Nieznanski, of building some kind of
“sister city” relationship between Rochester and Colombian unions.

Land
locked in

Not
far from the City of Rochester-owned Hemlock-Canadice lakes watershed, the Finger Lakes Land Trust has had another
success.

            The Trust, based in Ithaca, recently
announced the acquisition of a protective conservation easement on 434 acres of
forest and farmland, ponds and wetlands in the town of Springwater. Under the
terms of the easement, the property owners, John and Carol Krebs, have donated
the development rights to the Trust. According to a news release, the easement
will allow farming and timber management to go on, monitored by volunteers from
the Trust’s Western Lakes Chapter.

            With this transaction, says the news
release, the Trust has just under 7,000 acres under its protection in our
12-county region.

Timothy
Draper

It’s
shocking to hear that Timothy M. Draper,
founder and artistic director of the Rochester City Ballet, died Monday,
February 17, at 49. The report stated that he went into diabetic shock on a
flight from London to the United States, and died of cardiac arrest in a
hospital in Ireland, where the plane made an emergency landing.

            I knew that Tim was a diabetic; so
am I. But I never thought of him as ill or vulnerable; he was incredibly
healthy looking. Working seriously at gyms, Tim developed such a trim,
powerfully muscular body that I remember kidding him about where all those muscles
had come from. Tim looked stronger than he had when he returned to his native
Rochester from a career as a ballet dancer and began teaching here. First he
got his own school; then, in 1987, he founded Rochester City Ballet.

            It may sound insensitive, but I feel
that even more shocking than the tragically untimely death of this fine young
man is the disastrous loss to our region’s arts and culture. To be tactlessly
frank, I must say that though for decades many talented people made worthy
efforts to create a significant ballet company in this area, only Tim Draper
succeeded in doing so. He developed a ballet company good enough to appear with
the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra in their annual “Nutcracker”
performances, and to dance them better than the well-known professional
companies the RPO had brought in before.

            Furthermore, year after year, he
trained very young dancers to be such exceptionally beautiful, gracious artists
onstage that a significant number of his protégés are now performing in New
York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, the Joffrey Ballet, and several
other fine companies. World-famous teachers and artistic directors of major
ballet companies have commented on Draper’s extraordinary training abilities.
This year’s graduate, Sarah Lane, won a position with American Ballet Theatre’s
studio company and won top prizes in two international ballet competitions.

            What will become of ballet in
Rochester without Tim Draper? I have no idea.

—
Herbert M. Simpson

While
you were out

For
the second time this year, authorities have found unacceptable amounts of shit
in a Rochester bakery. But in this case, we’re talking about drugs, man, dope
— and lots of it. The feds have linked Carolina
Bakery, on North Clinton Avenue, to what they say is an international drug
ring trafficking cocaine, heroin, and pot in the Northeast. A search conducted
at the bakery on February 13 found about a pound of uncut heroin, 100 small
bags of the same, guns, and about $16,000 in cash. Considering the massive
amounts of illegal drugs sold and consumed in the area, the bust does little to
solve Rochester’s drug problem, but it may solve the mystery of why Carolina’s
powdered donuts and poppy seed bagels were in such high demand.

A
contingent of East End business owners has sent a formal complaint to city
officials expressing concern that the annual East End Nightlife Festivals have
become drunken bacchanals filled
with tens of thousands of beer-swilling 20-somethings who pee in the streets
and damage property. The complainers would rather the privately run events —
which also feature live bands and food — become more family-oriented affairs,
like the craft and corn-dog extravaganzas in Corn Hill and along Park Avenue.
Festival principal Bruce Miles, owner of Richmond’s bar, downplayed the
complainants’ concerns, pointing to the fact that the fests have helped
revitalize a previously depressed area of the city. Short of denying permits to
close off streets for the festivals, city officials seem at a loss to respond.

Attempts
to impregnate Genny C, the
26-year-old African elephant held captive in the Seneca Park Zoo, have failed.
Vets will try to artificially inseminate the pachyderm again in June. Our
suggestion: Take her down to one of the East End Fests and see if she hits it
off with one of her fellow 20-somethings who, perhaps, has had a few too many
drafts.

—
Compiled by Chris Busby from news reports, interviews, and copies of Trunk, a pachyderm porn mag.

Correcting
ourselves

In
last week’s cover story (“Porno 101,” February, 12, 2003), University of
Rochester spokesman Robert Kraus’s name was spelled incorrectly. And in last
week’s “While you were out,” it should have been made clear that interim
superintendent Manny Rivera proposed a four-day school week for at least one
high school, not all of the district’s high schools (sorry, kids). As if that
wasn’t enough, the local bar Elixir was misspelled “Elixer” in last week’s
Barfly column.

This article appears in Feb 19-25, 2003.