Memories of Rochester.... (Penfield, Florida: buy, store, bills)

[louroclou]

Beachbum - if you were at East High between 1972 and 2002, it's quite possible you had me for English - Ken Wilson...

In 1970, just after returning from two years in the Peace Corps in India, my wife and I left our hometown of Louisville, Kentucky and moved to Rochester, New York. We lived in Rochester from 1970 to 2005. It is where we had our careers, made lifelong friends, bore and raised our two sons. But when our older son, Jonas, moved to Louisville with his wife and their two sons – and I retired – we decided to sell our house, fill the moving van with 35 years of memories, and return to where our family was.

In 1970 Rochester and Louisville were very similar mid-sized cities. Rochester was Kodak and Xerox; Louisville was GE and Ford, with some bourbon and tobacco thrown in. Downtown, Sibley’s and McCurdy’s in Rochester were Louisville’s Stewart’s and Kaufman’s (different from the Kaufmann’s that Sibley’s became). The East Side of Rochester was the Highlands of Louisville; Monroe Ave. was Bardstown Road. Rochester and Louisville jockeyed back and forth on the U.S. city population charts at about 63rd and 64th.

But there was one difference between the two cities that eventually turned them into two very different places – so much so that when we left Rochester in 2005, we felt as though we were jumping off a sinking ship and getting rescued by the Love Boat. That difference was political…

(to be continued if anyone is interested. I'm sort of composing a 'tale of two cities'... I do want to get to the encouraging news about PAETEC, but I feel compelled to talk about race and cultural division in Rochester and the '18 fiefdoms' and the difference with Louisville's more progressive Metro system and its sense of soul, style, and place)

[louroclou]

When I was a kid growing up in Louisville’s Jefferson County (Jefferson County and Rochester’s Monroe County have always been very close in population), there were two school districts: the county and the city. Diane Sawyer went to Seneca High in the county. Muhammed Ali (then Cassius Clay, of course) and Hunter S. Thompson – and I! – went to city schools. Though Louisville’s schools were the first in the South to integrate peacefully, white, suburban flight in the 60s led the Supreme Court to force a merger of the county and city schools in order to restore racial balance. The combined Jefferson County School District created a busing plan that met with protests and some violence, but in time Louisville came to appreciate what they had created and the district became a model of integration and educational innovation. In the 70s Louisville was forced to do the right thing; in the 90s federal oversight was ended and Louisville was told basically it didn’t have to do the right thing if it didn’t want to. But it did. Now a more progressive and enlightened city, it voted to continue its diversity and busing programs. In 2007 the Bush-altered court told Louisville it couldn’t do the right thing. Now they are trying to find ways to do it anyway.

Rochester’s education history is, from my first-hand, informed perspective, a more dismal one. In the 60s there was a devastating race riot in Rochester. By the time I began teaching at Ben Franklin High in 1970, things were seething. I remember vicious confrontations: white kids, mostly Italian, on one side of Kilmar St., black kids on the other. I remember a riot of the Black Student Union, naming teachers to get at, then pouring out, running through halls, breaking in classes. (I was told later a kid had gotten on the stage in the auditorium and said, “Leave Mr. Wilson alone.” Thank God.) The white kids thought I was on the black kids’ side ( I was really just fair to everyone, as best I could be). I won over some kids just by saying my wife was Italian. It was that insane.
The Rochester City Schools began a slow emptying out of white students over the next decades. They fled to the suburbs, suburbs that fed off the city, and whined about the little help they did give. Thanks to laws enacted in the early part of the twentieth century, New York cities cannot annex adjacent suburban municipalities. Monroe County now has 18 of those, each with a separate and sacrosanct school district (some whole districts are not much bigger that East High), often its own police and fire departments. And those districts could be funded in ways the city could not be. The result is what is sometimes called a ‘donut’: prosperous suburbs surrounding an empty hole – a place where the suburbs can leave behind its poor, its minorities – and its cultural unity. I call it apartheid.

Meanwhile, jumping ahead to 2003, Louisville and Jefferson County, already united into one school district, voted to complete that union and create a single Metro government. The plan as it is now leaves some vestigial tiny governmental bodies and 6th class cities ( I live in one such area, St. Matthews) within the blanket Metro government, but essentially and practically, Jefferson County is Louisville. What that union, and even the previous culture of greater Louisville, creates is a sense of place, a sense of ownership of the whole region, particularly downtown, which is now, despite the recent U.S. economic gloominess, booming gloriously. There is now over 2.1 billion dollars of (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=93980 ) construction (scroll slowly down. Also, at arena cg image, scroll over) going on downtown, including (http://www.museumplaza.net/) (broken link) Museum Plaza, which the WSJ called one of the 3 most important architectural projects of the next five years in the world.

hmmm... why doesn't vB work?

(to be continued unless there are protestations. I'm trying not to indulge in boosterism. I'm going to be fair and constructive. Honest.)

[just_sayin']

I've always though that the city of Rochester should annex the entire towns of Irondequoit and Brighton, and the Northeastern section of Greece (Barnard area). I am NOT at ALL an advocate for a county wide school system; we had that in Raleigh, NC and it was a nightmare.

[louroclou]

The Museum Plaza link above doesn’t work. Try these: http://www.museumplaza.net Museum Plaza and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisville_Museum_Plaza]Wikipedia

Sorry about the font size. I cut and pasted from Word, and, try as I might, can't get the font larger here.

The U.S. has pretty much abandoned integration as a worthy goal. Even African-American thinkers and politicians seem to have argued their way into a neo-“separate but equal” stance. But to my mind separation undermines all sense of ‘community.’ We have redefined community to mean a set of like-minded individuals (the gun-owning community, the vegan community, the s & m community…) rather than what it should be: a set of widely diverse individuals who, because of physical proximity, work towards harmony and a sense of place. Otherwise, we end up with warring neighborhoods: Sunis and Shi-ites.

So what I believe about Louisville is that its fortuitous sequence of external and internal decisions and circumstances has made it a true community.

Such a sense of community does come with sacrifices. Some kids have some long bus rides; some schools may have somewhat lowered standards. Obviously, schools like Brighton High, one of the best in the country, could not exist as such. Brighton’s concentration of professionals, upper-middle class, Jewish and East Indian families is what makes the schools so successful. I know first-hand their teachers are no better, their administrators no better than what we had at East High. Brighton is lucky and smugly happy about their circumstances. Louisville may have slipped a bit in a few schools. But Louisville does not have the alarming concentration of violence, youth drug use, teen pregnancy, child poverty that the city of Rochester has. There are trade-offs true communities make. I don’t know about Raleigh. I did find a thread here on City-data about Raleigh schools that did not seem so dismal…



But not to worry: Brighton, Pittsford, etc. are safe. In order for them to be annexed by the city, there would have to be a state constitutional amendment and that will never – ever – happen. My only real hope is that there begin to be some enlightening of the suburban mentality and make them realize how critical it is that the city thrive, that the ghetto be addressed, that downtown become a true center again (I pray for the PAETEC project to work).

I remember a few years ago attending a public forum about inter-district cooperation among schools – not merger, not metro government, just cooperation. In the middle of the meeting local weatherman Kevin Williams got up and said, “When I moved to Pittsford (or Perinton or wherever) I did it to build a wall around my family. I’m not going to allow that wall to be torn down now.” The audiences applauded. The idea of a Rochester community is a long way off.

[TN Tin Man]

Lived in Greece from late 71-75.... yes White Hots!! and Jenny.... Remember the Tale of the Whale East View Mall.... Great Pizza just about any where !!! Lived off Latta & Long Pond for several years... Italian Fest at the Ridge Mall...... and House of Guitars. And the ice cream place at end of Lake Ave Abbotts....? And one at the airport. What was the name of the amusement part down by the air port? On Jefferson? Many years have gone by...... I moved too Florida what a mistake!!!

[just_sayin']

We're still here! Come on up! I feel like a blasphemer for saying this and fear being run out of Rochester....but I really don't like white hots; they kind of weird me out. And they don't really have any special taste! Won't get near a garbage plate either, at least not anymore. But don't worry, I still respect wegmans, and my wife was estatic when she realized they were opening up a brand new one here in Greece when we moved back this past August.

[louroclou]

Okay - a break from my serious stuff. Here are things I miss about Rochester:

The Little Theatre: My wife and I went to the Little almost every Friday night. A civilized place for food and independent film. What a gem.

The Dryden: Another amazing source of delight for film buffs. Comfortable, reverential and widely varied in its offerings. A big, big city resource.

Aja Noodle and Sinbad's: Louisville is an amazing food town, with world class cuisine, and many, many ethnic restaurants. But I do miss the rice and noodle bowls at Aja and the pita pizzas and that wonderful fish dish at Sinbad's.

Balsam Bagels and Wegman's Jewish rye bread: Louisville has a Jewish mayor - 'Mayor for Life' Jerry Abramson - and a large Jewish population - but nobody gets bagels done as well as Balsam and nobody makes rye as well as Wegman's (nobody in Rochester does either! And in Louisville the closest thing to good rye is from Kroger's - not one of the artisan bakers).

Cohoes: I know - it's gone, so Rochester misses it, too. I got some great deals on designer clothes there. A lost gem.

Okay, I have to say it - Wegman's: I can get everything I need and want - and then some - within 2 or three miles of where I live. I can go to Whole Foods, Kroger's and a bunch of boutique food shops that I want to support. Louisville is a haven for entrepeneurs and independents. There's a whole "Keep Louisville Weird" consortium of local small business. I love the diversity and... weirdness.

But sometimes, damn it, I wish I could just go to Wegman's.

[louroclou]

And Writers & Books: I taught there and learned there. Joe created a magic resource for literature there.

[TN Tin Man]

Originally Posted by I'minformed2

We're still here! Come on up! I feel like a blasphemer for saying this and fear being run out of Rochester....but I really don't like white hots; they kind of weird me out. And they don't really have any special taste! Won't get near a garbage plate either, at least not anymore. But don't worry, I still respect wegmans, and my wife was estatic when she realized they were opening up a brand new one here in Greece when we moved back this past August.

Need too put them on the grill and use hard wood...... with spicy mustard and a cold Jenny......

[just_sayin']

I guess I could try that this summer!