Skating in social circles

The Genessee Valley Park Ice Rink
offers adult skate times on weekday and Sunday mornings, and Frank Binsack is
usually there all six days. Binsack, who retired from Kodak in 1994, started
skating the same year to get in shape. He’s still skating 10 years later
because he loves the sport, and the regulars.

            “It’s
a good solid 15 people that I know and socialize with who come year after
year,” Binsack says. “Some come every day.”

            The
men and women, all in their late 50s and early 60s, are mostly retired or
part-timers. Binsack skates with other Kodak retirees, a former city
firefighter, and a retired banker. Binsack’s brother, a former employee of
Genessee Brewery, is also one of the gang.

            Some
of the women are working on getting certified in various levels of figure
skating, and others practice ice-dancing techniques. The men are mainly hockey
or racing skaters.

            Gene
Czerkas, in Binsack’s estimation, is the “hero of the group.” Czerkas, 83, was
a dominant speed skater in Rochester during the ’40s and ’50s. Now he is
something of a guru on the ice, giving impromptu lessons to adults like Binsack
who skate for weight loss, camaraderie, and entertainment.

            “Gene
took me under his wing and helped me with skating technique,” Binsack, a hockey
skater, says. “You work on your edges, and you work on the proper shift of the
body, your strides… The idea is to get a technique that maximizes every stride
you take, so that you skate sort of effortlessly and at a faster speed.”

            “Nobody
wants to fall at our age because the ice is hard,” he says. “It’s just a matter
of working on things.”

            Genesee Valley Park Ice Rink is located at
131 Elmwood Avenue. Call 428-7888 for skating times.

— Jennifer Weiss

Governor
Surcharge

There’s
never a good time to raise ticket prices,
but with Kodak layoffs pending and a new soccer stadium on the way, an increase
would be especially counterproductive, says state Assemblyman Joe Morelle.

            Governor George Pataki’s budget
proposal includes a new 4 percent surcharge on tickets to sporting events and
amusement parks. That brings the sales tax on those tickets to 12.25 percent.

            “It’s one of the highest in the
region,” says Morelle spokesman Will Dube. “We’re looking for ways to make
people want to come to Rochester with a fast ferry and everything. It’s going
to make it more difficult for people to come here.”

            Morelle is chair of the assembly
Tourism, Arts and Sports Development Committee. The assemblyman, Dube says, is
working with the state leadership and his fellow representatives to explore
options to the surcharge.

            “New York’s sports teams are
extremely important to our state’s economy and quality of life, and we should
thoroughly examine the effects of this surcharge on working families before
implementing increases in ticket prices,” Morelle says.

            The revenue from the surcharge,
according to Morelle, would go towards local emergency wireless telephone
services and other security initiatives.

            The surcharge would add $15.60 to a
Buffalo Bills season ticket, $11.40 to a Red Wings season ticket, and 72 cents
to the cost of an admission ticket to Seabreeze Amusement Park.

            A spokesman for Seabreeze would not
comment on the proposed surcharge, but did say he heard that it is a dead
issue.

Music
for the masses

Moms
call their college students for a number of reasons, but they’re usually armed
with cautionary tales. “They’re arresting people for downloading music, you know,” a mom might say. “I hope you aren’t doing that.”

            The University of Rochester recently
took a step to decrease these phone calls. Its deal with the re-launched and
reconfigured online music company Napster is the first of its kind between a
digital music provider and a private university. When the ball begins to roll
later this spring, students living in residence halls will be able to legally
download music from Napster’s 500,000-song collection.

            Under the agreement, the university
will pay a discounted monthly fee of $9.95 per subscriber for Napster’s premium
service. Students who simply want to download and listen to music will pay
nothing, while those wishing to burn CDs or create MP3s will be charged a fee.
When the academic year ends in 2005, this system will be evaluated and changed
based on student use and feedback.

            A panel discussion entitled
“What Part of Jailhouse Rock Don’t You Understand? Defining Rights in the
Digital Age” will take place in Hoyt Hall on the University of Rochester’s
River Campus February 16 at 8 p.m. Cary Sherman, president of the Recording
Industry Association of America (RIAA), will be among the panelists.

What
casino?

An
above-the-fold story on the front page of the Sunday, February 1, Democrat and Chronicle added yet another
wrinkle to the ever-changing future of downtown Rochester: the possibility that
a casino be opened in the largely
vacant Sibley Building. But aside from Governor George Pataki’s recent call to
expand gambling options throughout the state, the article didn’t point to much
momentum behind this particular notion.

            There’s been virtually no talk in
City Hall about locating a casino downtown. According to sources in City Hall,
the momentum for this project is being generated solely by Wilmorite, Inc.,
whose subsidiaries own the struggling Sibley Building. Those same sources say
Wilmorite Chairperson Thomas Wilmot has been eying the casino business for
years, and sees a casino as a way of breathing some life into the Sibley
Building. The sources add that Wilmot has been courting a branch of the Seneca
Nation in Oklahoma as a possible entrée into the casino business. (Wilmorite
officials did not return our calls for comment.)

            Land dealings with sovereign nations
are complicated procedures. Since Rochester was incorporated, there have been
no precedents set for involving a sovereign nation in land ownership downtown.
All of this makes the casino idea seem even more unlikely. But stay tuned to
Metro Ink for any future developments.

Attacking
metastasis

Especially
for people with cancer, “metastasis” is a Greek- and Latin-derived
word for terror. But now the Breast
Cancer Coalition of Rochester is aiding the struggle to change that.

            The group recently announced it has
awarded a $35,000 grant to University of Rochester researcher Paul Okunieff,
MD, chair of radiation oncology at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
Okunieff, says the Coalition, is exploring the use of “Shaped Beam
Surgery” to treat certain metastases. The grant is the second one the
Coalition has awarded, in cooperation with the UR, Buffalo’s Roswell Park
Cancer Institute, Cornell University, and Syracuse’s Upstate Medical Center.

            “The coalition is small, but
we’re growing,” says program director Rebecca Solomon. She says the
group’s work falls into four categories: education, advocacy, breast-cancer
support groups (for women and men),
and fundraising for research. “It’s very unusual for a small organization
like ours to hand out research grants,” she says.

            Next up on the group’s agenda, says
Solomon, is a March 26 workshop for those with metastatic breast cancer.
“There’s never been [such a workshop] here, not for patients, to our
knowledge,” she says. (The workshop will be held at the Memorial Art
Gallery, 1-5 p.m. that day. Contact the coalition at 473-8177 for information,
or visit www.bccr.org.)

Canal
flow chart update

The
Western Erie Canal Heritage Corridor
Planning Commission — or at least its culminating project — will get a
shot in the arm, the Buffalo News reported January 30.

            Through the intervention of
Assemblymember Joe Morelle, the commission may soon get a $50,000 state
“stipend,” said the News. A
lesser amount already went into the pipeline; this will pay consultants to
complete a final report on boosting canal-oriented tourism and economic
development.

            This doesn’t mean the report’s
recommendations will bear fruit, of course.

            “I don’t hear anyone talking
about implementation,” says former Commission staffer Bill Condo, one of
two employees laid off last fall for lack of funds. “People want to see
bricks and mortar, things on the ground,” he says. He wonders about the
attitudes underlying public policy: “Is there urgency to revitalize these
46 canal communities?”

            It will be good to have a finished
plan, says Henry McCartney, director of the Landmark Society of Western New
York, the commission’s organizational “host.” McCartney thinks there
may need to be an “entity” to carry things out. “That’s being
discussed now,” he says.

            But as some have observed, budget
crunches may mean canal boosters will tread water for a long while.

Correcting ourselves

A concert preview for Big Bill
Morganfield (City Newspaper, February
4-11) highlighted the wrong bill. Another blues player, Bill Perry, played at
Dinosaur Bar-B-Que on Wednesday, February 4.

This article appears in Feb 11-17, 2004.