It Feels Like the First Time

Thanks to Facebook's "People You May Know" feature, I feel so almost famous (circa 1980-something). I'm hot blooded. Unless I have double vision, or Facebook is playing head games, I have eleven friends in common with the lead singer of Foreigner. He's a juke box hero. A dirty white boy. He's probably waiting for a girl like me. It's urgent.

Check it and see . . .

In other news, I want to know what love is.

And Talk About the Weather

When you've got nothing to post, you can always talk about the weather.

Total snowfall this past season (assuming, correctly I hope, that it's over): 127 inches. Lucky us!

And now we're nearing the record for rainiest April EVER (breaking a record set in 1929) in a town that's already known for gray skies and dreary weather. Lucky us!

Tonight, we have a severe thunderstorm warning that could bring strong winds and hail. Yea!!

It's either time for Tears for Fears or the Weather Girls but God bless mother nature? Not right now.

Snow Monster

Every morning during the winter months I pass the incredible snow monsters on Highland Avenue. They're usually brightly colored (food coloring?) and awe inspiring. Yesterday, I finally stopped. The snow sculptor was on a ladder fixing the larger of the two so I grabbed a quick picture of the unadorned creature to his left.

Isn't he great?

I asked the dude on the ladder if he's an artist. Nope, he's the chef at Rooney's! (Yum!) Art in the kitchen; art in the world.

I'll have to walk up the street at lunchtime and see how the other leviathan turned out.

Photo Per Day #13: Public Market

This morning, my girlfriend Yams, the kids and I headed down to one of my favorite places in the city: the Rochester Public Market. This 105 year old establishment was recently voted the Best Farmers' Market in the U.S. narrowly beating my cousin Toni's market in Davis, CA. (Note: Let's go there when I come visit!)

I love the sights. The crowds. The people watching. The vendors. The colors. The fresh veggies. The fruits. Pretty much everything but the parking.

Be Very, Very Careful

I'm beginning to think that the National Weather Service has Rochester on a default mode of "hazardous" and they need to remind themselves to update the profile manually if on the off-chance it's, say, sunny. Otherwise, what would explain this?

Maybe they know that blazing sunshine is a hazard to our eyes which have now grown accustomed to winter darkness. Or perhaps they would like us to prepare for hammock-related accidents. It could happen.

Mangia Italiano

A few weeks ago, my bible study girlfriends and I went to see the Cooking with the Calamari Sisters: Mangia Italiano at the Downstairs Cabaret Theatre. It's a Wayne's World-esque, public access cable show, featuring two sisters (i.e., men in drag) who cook for the audience and sing everything from Doris Day to Devo. They even bring audience members on stage (including an Italian American dude actually named Carmelo: nice pick) and incorporate them into the act. As such, there's quite a lot of improv which was, at times, even better than some of the scripted materials. Definitely a fun night out. Rated R for racy.

Last night, thanks to a fabulous Christmas gift from my mom to the hubby, he and I went to an Italian Easter Dinner cooking class at Cibi Deliziozi, a converted church, where the food was prepared by a proper chef, Rosita. (Aside:  that name launches my brain into elementary school Spanish class, "Rosita, este es mi amigo Ramon." "Mucho gusto." "El gusto es mio.") Unlike the Calamari Sisters, this event was rated E for everyone; however, akin to Calamari Sisters, there was audience participation -- mainly between the chef and the in-season, locally grown, pesticide free, gluten free, non-stop chattering, free-range, organic foodie in the audience. Initially, I declined a glass of wine but after over an hour of said foodie yapping about what farms were bringing what produce to a location nearest you, or how to ensure your organic greens weren't coming from a gray market like China (and a serious, two-second, vertical nap from which I quickly recovered after being tapped on the shoulder, and shocked back to life, by the hubby), I caved. Yes. Merlot. Please.

Shortly thereafter, the older woman seated next to me turned her entire body toward me and moaned, "Please make her stop." And thus began the banter that turned a seemingly endless night into a lot of fun.

Rosita was a bit flighty but sweet and charming nonetheless and the food, in particular the salad with lemon pesto dressing and prosciutto, was yummy (technical term). I'm not a big fan of lamb (or salads!) but it was well prepared and delicious. Apparently lambkins was also young which presumably made it tender and less gamy. Ignorance is best: I prefer not to know the innocent age of my freshly mauled dinner.

Every time Rosita prepared a new dish, or picked up a new ingredient, she prefaced her comments with what she's doing (e.g., leaving the chunky vegetable droppings in the gravy for flavor) vs. what an top chef would do (e.g., strain it for aesthetics). And, each time, the hubby would quietly interject, "But for you slackers" or "But for you tourists" just to make us laugh.

In short, an interesting night out (thanks mom!) but I don't see a Throwdown with Bobby Flay happening anytime soon.

The Great Cupcake Chase

I agreed to bring cupcakes to my small group tonight to celebrate a girlfriend's birthday. Not at all my suggestion; however, with Karley at Chic and Green roaming our little city in search of the best(est) cupcake ever, the craving for cupcakes has definitely been haunting me for days.

Stop #1 last night on the way back to work for a client: Sugar Mountain Bake Shoppe. D'oh! Ye olde shoppe sadly closed on Monday.

Stop #2 this a.m. after coffee with a client: Dolce Cupcakery. D'oh! Not open until 10:00 a.m. Not quite as sad as my mom bought a big box of these for my birthday last December and they were dry as a bone. Decidedly gorgeous but not the moist, sweet life, taste explosion one would hope for in a shop that specializes in cupcakes. And it's hard to frame cupcakes.

Stop #3 at noon today: Goodness Cakes. D'oh! Closed on Tuesday.

Call #1 (finally thinking ahead for obvious reasons): The Little Bakery. D'oh! I kid you not when I tell you, the woman over the phone just said, "We have never run out of cupcakes before but a man just came in and bought 50." I asked, "Any idea where he was going?" and she laughed. "You planning to chase him down?" Maybe . . .

Finally, through calls #2 and #3, I found the elusive cupcake hiding places:  The Baker Street Bakery (which is actually windin' your way down on Park Ave.) and Leo's Bakery. Since both close at 6:00 p.m., Baker Street it is. Proximity is key.

I'm leaving (for) there too soon, leaving there too soon. 

BlogHer Roc!

Riding in the car a moment ago, we heard "Rock the Casbah." Son #1 said, "This is one band that can always put me in a good mood."

A nine year old boy after my own heart.

* * * * *

In other news, I bookmarked this fun blog, Chic and Green, a while back and just last month noticed that the blogger is a local Irondequoit chick. How cool is that?


More recently, I stumbled upon this beautiful letterpress shop, Pistachio Press, located right here in the Roch. Of course, the artist also writes a blog: Which Ones Are Weeds.

One thing led to another and, lookee here, two more Upstate NY bloggers: Two Brunettes and The Sweetest Occasion. 

I'm starting to think that there's an entire subculture of local bloggers that I may want to meet!

Let it Snow Let it Snow Let it Snow

The good news: it's warmed up since yesterday.

Safe but Not Sound

Winter mornings in Rochester consist of driving along the highway, steering your car quickly around large clumps of hardened snow that the semi in front of you just deposited on the road, and passing car after car after car that somehow ended up in a ditch on the side of the road or backwards/upside-down in the median. Police cars lit up. Tow trucks everywhere.

But that doesn't slow us down. Nope. It doesn't matter that the speed limit is 65, the roads are covered in black ice, 40 mile per hour howling winds are blowing snow across your windscreen and there's a hazardous weather outlook in place: you still need to drive as fast as possible, pass, cut people off and slam on your breaks when some idiot in front of you is doing the speed limit. No need to put down the cell phone. Multitasking is cool.

Come on people, you're going to make me late for that critical meeting that, this time next week, I'll have forgotten all about.

As I approached my office, the car in front of me was doing 25 in a 40 mph zone. Hey, what's with the caution? Can't see the road through the sleet? Then I noticed the out-of-state plates and I wondered what it must be like for someone unaccustomed to extreme driving to be thrown into the lunacy here. Would it be like lacing up my ice skates and trying to compete in an Olympic speed skating event? No, because at least they're all headed in the same direction.

Maybe I would understand more clearly if I was battling asteroids from a single passenger spacecraft. Or if I was suddenly thrown, without warning, into a Rugby game, say the Barbarians vs. New Zealand, and I had the ball.

It's all so very Norman Rockwell around here in the wintertime.

Ghetto Gifts!

My co-worker Jennifer and I just drove past Juan's Ghetto Nick-Naks (sic). Colorful storefront. Awesome name. And it's just up the street from Effen Haute*. Two birds/one stone! How on earth did I not notice it ever before?

Now I'm burning with curiosity to know what Juan sells in there . . . seriously. Any guesses?

I may have to stop next time I'm in the (neighbor)hood.

*Effen Haute is not, as it turns out, boarded up. It was open for business today. Thanks for all your concern.

Upper Falls

I "borrowed" (a.k.a. stole) the image below from a friend's Facebook photo album. It makes the industrial side of Rochester look, dare I say, pretty! This may have been taken from the bridge at Pont du Rennes where we used to eat lunch while I worked at Kodak office. If only I wore glasses back then. Maybe I would have seen this more clearly each day.



And in other breaking news: I figured out how to make images larger without distortion. Amazing what you can discover if you take two seconds to Google it.

Cracker Soul

Every once in a while you score one of the best nights ever. Last night: Cracker. They played heaps o' hits including Eurotrash Girl, Low, Movie Star, Sweet Thistle Pie, Get Off This, Teen Angst, etc., and a fabulous new tune, "Turn on Tune in Drop out with Me," from their latest CD. If I had the chance, I would have run away with David Lowery right there and then. Shockingly enough, he didn't ask me to.

I, of course, picked up my girlfriend Ellen straight from work so I was wearing a black suit and heels. (Way to rock out.) Yet, at the end of the night, this guy that Priddy Mary thought was hot but looked more like a cuter version of Joey from Z Rock came up to me and said, "I'm not hitting on you but wanted you to know that you're the cutest thing -- dancing in the rain."

Seriously. For someone suffering from chronic low self-esteem, it was such an amazing compliment. Who ever you are and where ever you may be: thanks.

Much Ado About Nothing

A woman roughly my age recently began renting one of the offices downstairs from mine. A small but high tech space nested beside the elevator shaft. She runs a photo preservation business. Archiving, organizing and digital reconstruction of old photographs. Not necessarily an earth shattering concept in a city that boasts the internationally renowned George Eastman House, Eastman Kodak Company, RIT's famed photography school and long standing, reputable companies such as Lumiere that also preserve images.

Here's the rub: she held an official ribbon cutting ceremony yesterday in the lobby of our building--which is a beautiful old mansion turned into office space. She literally rolled out the red carpet. Music. Food and wine. The local media were here. Film crews. Mayor Duffy. Representatives from the regional economic development organization. People were giving long winded speeches left and right.

I need to take lessons in PR from this woman. Serious fanfare for a small start-up. Well executed from the invitations to the decor.

During her speech, she delivered a few comparisons between the life she left behind in LA and the life she's reportedly enjoying in Rochester. Sunny, mid-80s vs. gray and 40 degrees. Smog and congestion vs. the ability to be anywhere in ten minutes. She then sold us on the architecture, the big city culture and the friendliness of our own city. And the crème de la crème of her thesis on why Rochester trumps LA? We have a hot mayor. Stated aloud! With him standing mere inches behind her.

My hat is off to this woman for pulling off such a great publicity stunt and then having the balls to deliver a somewhat less-than-deferential compliment to our own mayor hottie pants.

She's my new hero!

Effen Demographics

Lately, when driving back to the office from one of my clients, I keep passing a boarded up store on Lyell Avenue that was once called Effen Haute.

On a city street that's known for prostitution and violence, the name smacks of ghetto couture.

Damn girl, that dress is effen haute!

They must have gone out of business because the neighborhood couldn't support as much Jean Paul Gaultier as the owner originally forecast . . .

It's an effen shame.

Fashion: Turn to the Left

I bought a pair of cute little glasses at a trunk show at 20/20 on Third Ave. when still living in NYC. Today I was once again shopping for glasses given that mine snapped in half. The frigid air in my car last winter proved to be too much. And, contrary to the claims of men everywhere, duct tape is not a miracle panacea. I know because, fashionista that I am, I tried.

While I am soooooooo over little glasses fashion trend (over a decade is a bit long, no?), my choices around here are slim. Other options include looking like bloody Sarah Palin or adopting a Harry Potter-esque style. Right now, I'm leaning towards Mr. Magoo.

What I really want to know is: what eyewear is in style in Paris? Milan? And when are these trends going to hit the hinterlands of America? Can't a cute pair of specs make their way across the lake from Toronto in a bottle for me? Not that it matters. Around here it's de rigueur to wear crocs vs. Stuart Weitzman stilettos. I guess my eyes can be poorly dressed, as well.

We are the goon squad and we're coming to town. Beep beep.

The Superfluous N

My girlfriend Melinda snapped this photo for me a couple of years ago during an event for kids where they could climb on big trucks and heavy equipment.

This was printed on the side of a City of Rochester garbage truck. By "in progress," I think they meant spell check. I only wish I had a Sharpie with me that day (^n).

Proposed new City of Rochester tagline: We put the mental in enviromental. Oh gosh, is that politically incorrect? I'm aiming low once again. We put the "pain" in Campaign Eleven?

On an unrelated note, albeit to a lesser degree than the rapture, I'm definitely looking forward to "the renaissance" in two years. I like all things heralded by my trash hauler.

Pursuit of Happiness

Over the past year, I have been on an ongoing Positive Psychology kick reading books like Learned Optimism (by University of Pennsylvania's Martin Seligman), Happier (by Harvard professor Tal Ben-Shahar) and, most recently, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World (the funniest of the three by NPR foreign correspondent Eric Weiner).

Many of the elements across all three books are consistent (although the approach varies widely); yet, the grump's guide concludes that relationships are one of the greatest contributors to happiness. In other words, the more money you accrue enables you to move to your McMansion with a larger yard in a gated community which, in turn, diminishes the time spent in community with -- and helping -- others. In so doing, contrary to popular opinion, your happiness actually decreases.

As always, I continue to ponder how to make Rochester one of the happiest places on earth mainly because, as I've stated before, I honestly believe we have all of the raw materials (e.g., natural beauty, a talented workforce, strong educational system). Then, while reading this book I realized: wouldn't it be interesting to apply the "adopt a highway" program to our inner city?

Interested residents of each of the suburbs (Pittsford, Fairport, Gates-Chili, West Irondequoit, Brockport, etc.) could "adopt" a section of the city that may be struggling (e.g., 19th Ward, Jay Street, Avenue D) and work hand-in-hand with residents, as well as the city government, to envision AND enable a better future on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood or block-by-block basis (as each presumably has a unique culture and differing needs).

Not only might fostering these personal relationships create a real bridge between the residents of the city and the suburbs but, by reaching out and serving others to build a better community, the individual participants should essentially raise their levels of happiness. It's a win: win situation, no?

It's a personal form of "share the wealth" with wide-ranging benefits for the entire population. It's Rochester's successful ARTWalk program on steroids and with broad-based participation.

Might anyone else be interested in this?

Legal Tender

We’re in the basement, learning to print
All of it’s hot
$10–20–30 million, ready to be spent
We’re stackin’ them against the wall those gangster presidents
------------------------------

I posed a scenario, similar to the following, to my economist brother last fall.

What if, instead of spending millions of dollars on an ill-fated fast ferry to Toronto, Rochester did the following?

Hire 50 sharp, young thought-leaders/entrepreneurs and guarantee them a $90K annual salary for two years to move to Rochester. To gain entre to our glorious city, each is required to write a compelling business plan. For the next two years, each individual is given the resources to execute the idea including a $100K additional investment annually to start their business (i.e., while fully employed).

There would be say $500K in annual operating funds set aside for the building lease, maintenance, overhead, equipment, etc. And shared resources will be allocated (copiers, entrepreneur in residence).

Successful plans may be eligible for incremental investment (e.g., on average, an additional $2M in funding for the top 10% of the plans assuming they met pre-established metrics); others can attempt to limp along on their own, if they so desire, or pack it in (their choice).

Overall, $30M would be spent over two-plus years to gain what, if anything, in return? I wonder how many long-term successful businesses would be started.

My brother’s response: bad investment. In short (whereas his answer was actually long, detailed and well articulated), free markets (e.g., venture capitalists) tend to make much better decisions from determining what to fund to overall fiscal management and cutting funds as soon as necessary on under-performing ventures.

And now, hot off the presses, is a May 2008 working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research that backs up his claim: “The results indicate that enterprises financed by government-sponsored venture capitalists under-perform on a variety of criteria, including value-creation, as measured by the likelihood and size of IPOs and M&As, and innovation, as measured by patents.”

So where is the long-term hope for our fair city when our young talent is reportedly fleeing the area? Does it lie in what I term the “giant magnet effect” (i.e., where a great number of us, for whatever reason, come back years later)?

The problem as I see it with the magnet model is that, upon return, many of us are labeled “overqualified” and we trade in a high salary for a presumably better way of life or we leave again. For a city that boasts a talented workforce yet simultaneously decries the loss of talent, it’s a catch-22. Do you want the talent to stay in the area or don’t you?

For my uber-talented designer friend Todd who came back to Rochester after 25+ years in NYC and subsequently had to move to Dodge (seriously!) for a great job at Land’s End because he was “too talented for Rochester,” my sincere apologies on behalf of our entire city.

I don’t ever want to hear that phrase again. I would rather do everything in my power possible to change that commonly uttered phrase to “not talented enough for Rochester.”

But how?

The Answer My Friend

I realize that wind power, at this point in time, is expensive and doesn't yet justify a large investment -- at least economically speaking -- given that (even with government subsidies) the technology is insufficient and cannot cost effectively meet large scale production needs in a predictable fashion. Yet I do look forward to the day when wind turbines are economically viable and can provide safe, reliable, clean energy.

But I also think that people opposed to wind farms because they detract from the beauty of the landscape cannot see the forest through the windmills, so to speak. I personally think turbines are beautiful: clean lines, peaceful movement, dramatic presence.


(Image from Corus Group)

However, with all that said, I cannot help but ponder -- as I continually drive past what used to be Kodak Park and is now a barren landscape of leveled (i.e., imploded) buildings, empty parking lots and exposed pipes right in the heart of our city -- why do we need to put wind farms in areas of beauty? Why can't we put them in the midst of post-industrial urban decay? The answer may be as simple as the fact that underneath my proposed, ex-manufacturing landscape lies a sea of difficult-to-navigate, subsurface infrastructure (e.g., cables, pipes). Who knows.

I personally think an urban wind farm could redeem waste land that otherwise may remain neglected and an eyesore.