Fountain of youth
Brad Welker and Ernest Orlando playing Peter Pan at
Seabreeze.
Wife, kids, job, foot fungus, life in general got you down?
Find yourself praying you won’t wake up in the morning? Baptize yourself in
chlorinated redemption and be saved.
Water
parks can cure your blues and ease the heat. And no matter how much snow you’ve
got on the roof, nobody’s too old for
this. These slides offer the same titillation you got as a kid rolling down a
hill or washing down Pop Rocks with Pepsi.
This
is family fun at its wet best — but it’s not exclusively for families. My
posse and I visited Irondequoit’s Seabreeze Park — nine slides and a
265,000-gallon wave pool. And we weren’t the only ones not pushing strollers or
leading a brood around with the pained expression of a parental life sentence
painted across our mugs.
“It’s
not unusual to see adults, without little ones, acting like kids, having fun,”
says marketing manager Jeff Bailey.
A
water park is a great place for a date. And what better way to see your date in
a bikini or banana hammock?
“So
you’re 38. So what? It helps keep you young,” said Ernest Orlando prior to
flying down the Zoom Tube with a blood-curdling “cock-a-doodle-do.”
You
gotta be in shape when you’re in a wave pool littered with rambunctious
9-year-olds splashing and screaming and throwing elbows … or they’ll kill you.
You
can spend all day recharging your batteries in the sun, turning your fingers
and toes into raisins, and smiling so much, you’ll tan your gums.
Where
to find them? Seabreeze Raging
Rivers Waterpark: 4600 Culver Road; info, 323-1900 or www.seabreeze.com. Roseland Water Park: Routes 5 & 20,
downtown Canandaigua; info, 396-2000 or www.roselandwaterpark.com. Six Flags Darien Lake: 9993 Allegheny
Road in Darien Center; info, 599-4641 or www.sixflags.com.
— Frank De Blase
Studying metro?
It’s the political equivalent of the Red Sox versus the
Yankees: County Executive Jack Doyle and Rochester Mayor Bill Johnson going head-to-head on the contentious issue of consolidating regional
governments or services. Unfortunately, the Monroe County Council of Governments won’t be selling tickets to
meetings of the subcommittee on Intergovernmental Cooperation and Consolidation
of Services. In fact, curious citizens won’t even be allowed to peek at the
action through a knot in the fence; the meetings will be closed to the public.
“The
belief is that this group can make some progress if we are not doing it in the
public eye,” says Johnson. Council Chair William
Carpenter, town supervisor of Pittsford, says the committee’s work will be
made public in the form of reports presented to the full council. The committee
is expected to wrap up its discussions by the end of the year.
The
mayor has advocated taking a hard look at the pros and cons of merging local
governments. Local government expense has grown, he says, while the region’s
population has not. And with the economy depressed and the tax base shrinking,
he says, “it seems to me something has to give.” Doyle has been highly critical
of the concept of merging governments.
Johnson
recently appointed former County Executive Lucien Morin and former Rochester Mayor
Tom Ryan to join him on the
nine-member committee. Doyle has yet to announce his appointees.
The
participation of Morin and Ryan is significant. In the mid-1980s, the pair
crafted an innovative county sales-tax sharing plan that’s still on the books
today.
Given
its members’ differing views on the value of merging governments, the
committee’s conclusions “may be a report with varied opinions,” Johnson says.
And if those opinions are left out of the report, he adds, “there’s nothing to
preclude a minority faction from putting out its views.”
The
mayor also has some pro-merger pitchers in the bullpen. Though he says he’s
“not at liberty to disclose” who they are yet, Johnson adds: “I can say with assurance
that there are other coalitions that will come out with the announced intention
to explore this.” The work of these as-yet-unknown coalitions “can run
concurrently with what the Council of Governments is trying to do, or be a
viable alternative,” he says.
Knowing
he has such backup gives Johnson “a comfort level” that the idea of
consolidating governments “is not going to suppressed,” he says.
Music festing
With fans still raving about this year’s two successful
summer music festivals, promoters are already gearing up for next year.
Attendance
at the Rochester MusicFest (July
14-21) hit 71,000, Mayor Bill Johnson announced on Monday. Two days of
performances in Genesee Valley Park drew 27,000. Other big draws: the East End
Festival (20,000), Garth Fagan Dance (6000), the Gospel Celebration (6000), and
a standing-room-only RPO concert (3100). Next year’s dates: July 13-20.
Meanwhile,
John Nugent, promoter of the Rochester International Jazz Festival,
will be back in Rochester next week to meet with Mayor Johnson, business
leaders, and others to discuss next year’s jazz fest.
Ink tracked down Nugent in Scotland,
where he was relaxing after a successful Stockholm Jazz Festival (which his
company, New York Jam, also produces). He hasn’t started booking acts for a
2003 festival but, he said, “I certainly have plans to continue the event.” He
won’t announce bookings until March, he said.
Addressing Middle East
By its nature, the Mediation
Center of Rochester is a fitting place to explore solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And a
group of local peacemakers is doing just that.
With
the help of professional mediator Jack Heister, a group of Christians, Jews,
Quakers, and others have formed Citizens for a Just Peace in the Middle East.
The group has been meeting monthly to hammer out a consensus mission statement.
But
it’s not just talk. The group has begun circulating the statement as a
petition; when enough signatures are gathered, the statements will go to
federal elected officials. The effort addresses what the group feels is an
unfortunate reality: “The Congress and President of the United States,” says
the statement, “have not provided leadership resulting in a just peace.”
The
heart of the statement is a declaration that “there need to be two distinct
nations, Israel and Palestine, with [mutual] recognition of statehood.” Both
nations, says the statement, are to be assured “safety and security,” and
“human rights and dignity” must be guaranteed across the board. The statement
also calls for equitable access to Jerusalem, sharing of water resources, and
“adequate compensation for Palestinians and Jews who have been displaced
against their will.”
The
group makes a special appeal to US hegemony, calling on the government to work
with other nations to resolve the conflict and the differences that fuel it.
Significantly, the group also demands a new “Marshall Plan” for Palestine
funded by redirected US military aid.
The
next meeting is scheduled for August 14. For information, contact Jack Heister,
272-1990, or e-mail heister@mediationctr.com.
Urban action
This week’s call to citizenship:
The
local chapter of the International
Socialist Organization will sponsor a public meeting on “The Corporate Crime
Wave: the Rot at the Root of the System,” Thursday, August 1, 7:30 p.m.,
Rochester Central Library (Basement/SUNY Resource Center), 115 South Avenue.
Free. Information: ISO, 436-3886; e-mail rochiso@yahoo.com.
This article appears in Jul 31 – Aug 6, 2002.
