A winged ambassador
When
a tiny bird lights upon your shoulder, you’re inclined to slow down, to move
with a bit more care. When this happens in a shop, you find yourself
downshifting to browse a few minutes longer.
Leave it to the animals to keep it
interesting on Monroe Avenue. And we’re not talking about the colorful kids who
stroll up and down the street. Nope, it’s the birds. One in particular: Gordon,
the eight-year old cockatiel at Mercury Posters.
“People come in, they’re here for
another reason, and then they encounter Gordon,” says Mercury owner Jim Malley.
“They have a little peaceful moment with him, and then they go off on their
busy day.”
So what’s this little bird’s allure?
“He’s just so agreeable,” Malley
says. “People are surprised at a bird being so friendly and actually giving
back something. He surprises just about everyone how he comes out and greets them.
They always come back to check on him.”
I’ve spent many afternoons shuffling
through Mercury Posters’ endless inventory for Russ Meyer, Frankenstein, or
B-movie posters with Gordon as my guide. He’s quite the little pal. So much so
that Malley risked his life to rescue the bird one day after he flew out the
Mercury door and into the blustery weather, landing on a roof across the
street.
No problem, Malley thought.
“I just shimmied up the gutter,” he
says. “I was just about to grab him when I slid on the ice, down the roof, hit
the driveway, and broke both my heels.” Malley got the bird, but was laid-up
for six months. Now, Malley keeps Gordon’s wings clipped, and the bird seems
content milling about the store, his jailbreak days over.
“I can’t believe how many people
have bought birds because of him,” Malley says.
—
Frank De Blase
Old
building revisited
In
our August 13 issue, we looked at some 19th century buildings at the corner of
Main and Clinton that are likely to be torn down for the new Rochester Central Station. (That’s bus
station to you — and definitely not, as the name may imply, a rail or
intermodal transportation facility.)
Soon after, we got a call that
alerted us to important parts of the buildings’ living history. The call came
from Bob Bauman of Weiss Jewelers at 222 East Main Street, a family-owned business
that’s been at this location for decades. Bob and his father, Sy Bauman, are
the proprietors of the store and owners of the building.
Now 83, Sy’s been at the helm for 61
years. He started in the jewelry business with his own father, he says. And
he’s been running Weiss’s at 222 East Main for 40 years. He’s not opposed to
the transit center plan — but he says he needs a fair deal for relocation.
Will he personally continue running the store? “As long as God lets me, yes,”
he says. “I feel good, and I like it here.”
He doesn’t like the political
struggle all around him, though. “It’s wrecked everything,” he says, “because
for the last five and a half years, they’ve been screwing around. You’re in
limbo.” On the other hand, he says, “the buildings are definitely beautiful,”
and number 220-222 is in fine fettle.
After he called, Bob Bauman took us
on a short tour of the second floor and basement, and we have to agree: Not
only is the building solid as a rock; it’s also got much of its original décor
beneath later additions. For example, the entire second floor has a tin ceiling
in good shape, as well as several Victorian wooden doors and doorframes.
(According to Bob, someone has already spoken for the tin ceiling and old doors
upstairs, which can be removed and used elsewhere.)
“All I know is, this is an
opportunity for relocating,” says Bob. “To where, I don’t know yet.” He
reflects on years of struggle over the transit center, as well as chronic
uncertainty for businesspeople on the proposed site. “They’ve done enough to
hurt our business already,” he says.
And what a pity: “It’s the little
guy like us,” says Bob, “that kept downtown going.”
Urban
re-thinking
You
couldn’t have found a better venue for brainstorming a greener future for downtown Rochester: a warm (though
mosquito-filled) evening on Sibley Place, in environmental activist Nancy
Watson Dean’s immaculate, oasis-like garden.
It was August 18, and local
political hopeful Harry L. Davis had brought dozens of people together to
consider what might be done to resurrect Genesee Hospital, rescue the
threatened buildings at Main and Clinton, and re-use the Inner Loop. Davis,
who’s running an independent write-in race for City Council (South District),
invited environmental architect Bill Reed to spark the discussion. Reed is with
Natural Logic, a consulting firm that specializes in “embedding sustainability”
while designing “high-performance buildings that enhance the environment and
cost less to operate.”
Davis believes the Inner Loop,
starting with the section near the Strong Museum, should be dismantled and
rebuilt as “a more natural environment” capable of “reconnecting the
neighborhoods which were divided [by the highway] 30 to 40 years ago.”
In his introductory remarks and
throughout a lengthy slide show, Reed kept things on a philosophical plane. His
advice? Reed’s firm’s stock in trade is “intuitive integration of systems,” the
creation of a “built environment” that balances economic and social concerns
with “natural ecology,” that is, human activities that “nourish and are
nourished by the living systems they are part of.”
Whew. We asked Reed what Rochester
and similar cities could do to implement such ideals — that is, throw off
their historical burdens of racism, abandonment and neglect, and corporate
flight. Though he was familiar with Rochester from his student days at Cornell,
including trips to the Eastman School of Music, he could offer no specifics.
Reed did refer several times to
Natural Logic’s ongoing work with the Brattleboro (Vermont) Food Co-op. There,
he said, his firm was working not just to redesign the store but to integrate
the cooperative with local food producers. Why truck in apples from Washington
State, he asked, when they can come from Vermont farms? He noted the job was
difficult; in fact, he said the firm was very nearly “fired.”
We followed up by calling the
Brattleboro Food Co-op, now a 16,000-square-foot, $11 million-a-year-grossing
operation with everything from organic produce to meats to wine and beer.
Assistant manager Dick Ernst said the co-op was in the early, tentative stages
of work with Natural Logic. “I’m not going to give a pro or con [on the firm],”
he said. “They’re very intelligent and forward-thinking people.” He said the firm
researched the “geological history” of the surrounding area, conceiving “a
sustainable community which goes beyond the actual building, going to the
actual source of our food, involving the [local] farms, and so forth.”
On the other hand, the firm’s advice
can seem “pretty out there and nebulous,” said Ernst. “I really didn’t
understand [at first] what they were trying to do.” He anticipates Brattleboro
Co-op members will learn more from reports the firm recently submitted.
This article appears in Aug 27 – Sep 2, 2003.
