Rochester Archives - Page 4 of 6

Size Doesn’t Matter

By Chris Carosa on April 12, 2012

It may have been my father’s greatest embarrassment, but it was my greatest loss, a loss erased only by 25 years and a chance plumbing mishap.

How my family sees my long lost 1970 trophy.

It all started on a day which lives in “famy” (as opposed to“infamy”). No, I’m not exaggerating. It really was a famous day.

On Saturday, March 7, 1970, I found myself bowling three games at Leisure Lanes in Hamburg, New York, among several dozen participants in the first Bowling Tournament my Cub Scout Pack ever had. The rest of the Northern Hemisphere spent the bulk of that sunny midday experiencing the greatest total eclipse of the sun our corner of the Earth will have until April 8, 2024. (For my own account of that day, see “Solar Eclipse, 1970 – A True Story,” Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel, August 17, 2017.)

I had won the Big Tree Cub Scout Pack 489 Bowling Tournament that day. My father, the Pack’s Cubmaster, bought a nice bowling trophy and a brass plate to etch the name of the winner. He didn’t expect his son to take the trophy home.

That’s what embarrassed him.

So struck by the genuine joy I showed in winning it, he couldn’t bear telling me of his Continue Reading “Size Doesn’t Matter”

Posted in Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged 1970 Total Eclipse of the Sun, Big Tree Cub Scout Pack 489, Blasdell, Blasdell Bowling Academy, bowling, Brongo Bowl, Buffalo, Chili, Cub Scout, Dynamo, erie county fair, Estes rockets, hamburg, Honeoye Falls, Leisure Lanes, March 7 1970, Mendon, Rochester, Solar Eclipse

The Heroes of the Hyatt

By Chris Carosa on May 5, 2011

[This Commentary originally appeared in the May 3, 1990 issue of The Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel.]

Not since the go-go days of the hot summer of 1987 has the city of Rochester buzzed with constructive excitement. In those hazy days of innocence and youth, we glorified the exotic developer who dared erect a high-rise hotel where once existed nothing more than a Burger King and Don’s Arcade.

Yet within that maelstrom of enthusiasm lay the seeds of greed, ego and gross mismanagement. Turner took off and Pull pulled Continue Reading “The Heroes of the Hyatt”

Posted in The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Hyatt, Rochester

“Back to the Future” or “Goodbye to our Future”

By Chris Carosa on January 25, 2011

While we’ve been listening to a good game from our various leaders, Western New York’s best and brightest have been buying one way tickets to better climes. According to a recent editorial (“The plight of upstate,” The Buffalo News, January 20, 2011), over the past twenty years, the job growth in our state as occurred mainly downstate. Indeed, a national magazine (“If You Need A Job, Move To New York!” Forbes, January 10, 2011) lists New York City (the “New York” referred to in the title) as among the best places to go look for a job. This emphasis on the Big Apple isn’t lost on The Buffalo News editorial writer, who suggests state lawmakers “drive twice each year along the Thruway from Schenectady to Niagara Falls.” Maybe that’s the only way for them to see our plight.

Worse, this ignorance has mortgaged our future. We are losing our brightest young Continue Reading ““Back to the Future” or “Goodbye to our Future””

Posted in Western New York State of Mind Tagged Buffalo, high speed rail, Rochester

A New Metric for Elected Officials

By Chris Carosa on November 23, 2010

Quick, off the top of your head, what is the fourth (soon to be third) largest city in New York State? I’ll give you a hint. It’s not Syracuse.

G. Scott Thomas wrote a story (“Buffalo slips to 70th in city population,” Business First, November 22, 2010) that both concisely states the problem and suggests the single most important metric we should hold elected officials accountable for.

But first, the story, and how it defines the problem.

Some, as the Business First article intimates, say Buffalo hit its highpoint in 1900 when it ranked as the 8^th largest city in the nation. This figure, however, misleads. The nation had not yet quite filled itself out and some of the western cities were just getting started. These western cities had natural growth advantages and one could argue the 1900 ranking placed Buffalo too high.

The more accurate apex would be July 1951, when Fortune magazine featured “Made Continue Reading “A New Metric for Elected Officials”

Posted in Western New York State of Mind Tagged Buffalo, politics, population, Rochester, Western New York

Misleading Headline? Baseless Buffalo Bills Bashing? Or Both?

By Chris Carosa on September 20, 2010

With friends like these, who needs enemies? It’s bad enough we find our region at the butt end of many late night comics’ monologues, but why does the local media have to gratuitously chime in, too?

Did you see the article “Buffalo Bills struggle to make dent on national TV map” in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle in Sunday, September 19^th? Placed on the cover of the sports section, it featured a map of the continental United States. The country, bathed in red, was speckled with smaller splotches of various other colors. A beautiful graphic, you would think the D&C would have been proud to have included it in the on-line version of the article. Alas, they didn’t and the article suffers.

But this isn’t about vivid art in a hometown newspaper. This is about the reckless Continue Reading “Misleading Headline? Baseless Buffalo Bills Bashing? Or Both?”

Posted in Western New York State of Mind Tagged Buffalo Bills, Democrat and Chronicle, NFL, Rochester, Western New York

What Are These Mysterious Blue Boxes?

By Chris Carosa on July 12, 2010

I saw the first one a few weeks ago on the way back from Chili. Hidden in a tree along the telephone wires on Lehigh Station Road hung what appeared to be a blue jacket. Since I was the only one in the car, I didn’t get much of a look. I figured it was something left over from the many recent graduations. You know, like those crazy sneakers-hanging-from-the-telephone-wire things you used to see everywhere.

Then, on the same drive home, I noticed another blue jacket hanging from tree shrouded telephone wires on Mendon Center Road.

“Wow!” I thought to myself. “That must have been one big party!”

Again, I couldn’t take a good look. I arrived home and promptly forgot about these navy garments.

Until this past Sunday. While traveling on Gulick Road in Honeoye (that is the road leading to Cumming Nature Center), I saw no fewer than three of these unexplained cobalt (or deep purple) three-sided boxes. (It being an early Sunday morning, I was able to actually pull over and stare at these things.)

What are they? My mind reels with the possibilities. Could they be the onset of some alien invasion? They appear to have cryptic markings on at least one side, but my zoom lens failed to discern the language. Or perhaps, in placing them deep within leafy branches overhanging telephone wires, maybe they are camouflaged surveillance devices furtively planted by this now-apprehended Russian spy network.

If you have an idea what crazy story might explain the existence of these mysterious blue boxes, add your thoughts in the comment section below.

Alternatively, if you know what they really are, let us in on the secret.

Posted in Western New York State of Mind Tagged mystery, Rochester

The Search for the Slice

By Chris Carosa on July 8, 2010

[This Commentary originally appeared in the July 6, 1989 issue of The Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel.]

It rains an awful lot in New Haven. It even rains in the winter. Of course, any amount of snow makes it worse. They don’t use salt in New Haven. They use sand. The snow melts (with the help of rain), leaving the sidewalks a puddle of a gritty mud. Over the years, though, one builds an immunity of sorts and learns to cope with the constant precipitation. (Maybe that’s why I rarely Continue Reading “The Search for the Slice”

Posted in The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Buffalo, erie county fair, hamburg, New Have, pizza, Rochester, Western New York

Rumors Resolved

By Chris Carosa on April 1, 2010

[This Commentary originally appeared in the March 30, 1989 issue of The Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel.]

Why did we pick Easter week as our first week of publishing the Sentinel? Rumor has it we chose last week, which also happened to fall on the first week of Spring, because of the symbolism of rebirth and resurrection. Sure, the Sentinel represents both – a revitalization in the tradition of local hometown newspapers. This explanation makes a great story, but, unfortunately, it fails the truth test. Perhaps the best way to describe how we came up with our starting date is by showing why we didn’t choose other dates.

The week of March 16^th would have been an ideal starting date with the Village elections coming up and all. As luck would have it, I found myself away on business that week, and, besides, we saw no reason to place undue pressure on ourselves. We selected March 23^rd primarily for this reason, and because we definitely did not want to Continue Reading “Rumors Resolved”

Posted in The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Honeoye Falls, humor, Lima, Mendon, Monroe County, Rochester

D&C Writer Disses Western New Yorkers

By Chris Carosa on January 31, 2010

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. — Teddy Roosevelt

A few weeks ago, a columnist from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle wrote a piece titled “Winter as Metaphor for Community’s Woes.” If you’ve read the column and you’re a true-blue Western New Yorker, you’ll immediately see the column itself as a metaphor for our community’s woes.

The writer, while acknowledging the obvious diminution in our region’s stature, meekly states “The decline we’ve seen is not a character flaw; it’s the result of economic forces beyond our control.”

Actually, the statement reflects the major character flaw many die-hard residents of the western frontier of New York State see in our neighborhood – too many people, especially those floating merrily in the ether of high profile, fail by wallowing in self-pity rather than seizing the reins of self-improvement.

Continue Reading “D&C Writer Disses Western New Yorkers”

Posted in Western New York State of Mind Tagged Buffalo, Buffalo Bills, circle the wagons, D&C, Democrat & Chronicle, Democrat and Chronicle, ESPN, Kobayashi Maru, MacGyver, Mark Hare, Rochester, Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Western New York, Winter

Western New York Media Market: Whole Greater than Sum?

By Chris Carosa on January 18, 2010

A decade ago, before the financial crisis that opened the first decade of the new millennium, Adelphia Communications, in addition to a cable channel called the Empire Sports Network, owned a radio station with the call letters WNSA. The two worked in tandem and, at least until the falling stock market exposed the Regis family, this modest media juggernaut gained a respectful audience.

On the cusp of a content driven era, the small cable company had, together with the Buffalo Bills, successfully begun to build connections within a broader Western New York Region. This bigger footprint would include not only Buffalo and Niagara Falls, but also Rochester, Jamestown and several other cities within the roughly seventeen western-most counties of New York State. With a growing national market, Adelphia offered the allure of becoming the new century’s CNN (or at least ESPN). And with its intention to build an impressive headquarters in the state’s Queen City, Buffalo finally had a new hope – one that might bring it to rival Atlanta in cable communications.

But, as it seems to have happened to our region ever since Canada left us no choice but to build the Saint Lawrence Seaway, fate once again dealt a bad hand. Continue Reading “Western New York Media Market: Whole Greater than Sum?”

Posted in Western New York State of Mind Tagged 107.7, Adelphia, Bills, Buffalo, Buffalo Bills, Buffalo Sabres, Channel 2, CNN, D&C, Democrat & Chronicle, Democrat and Chronicle, Empire Sports Network, Enron, Entercom, ESPN, Jamestown, New York, New York State, Niagara Falls, Queen City, Regis, Rochester, Sabres, Saint Lawrence Seaway, Southern Tier, The Lake, Western New York, Western NY, Wethersfield, WGRZ, WGRZ-AM, WGRZ-TV, WLKK, WNSA, WNSA-FM, WROC-AM, Wyoming County