It’s a good thing the RIT Big Shot took place earlier in the evening because shortly after it was all over a storm moved through the area so quickly and forcefully it felt like a hurricane.
I took the (rare) opportunity of being out alone and with my camera to attempt some lightning shots.
Boy am I glad I did!
This past Tuesday A semi filled with corn tipped over on interstate 490 downtown. Since the news didn’t have any up to date pictures I went searching for webcams that showed it. Soon enough I found 2 that had decent shots of the incedent. It took about 6 hours from the time of the accident before traffic resumed. Just in time for rush hour. So much for a speedy cleanup. Since I’ve been in the mood for some timelapses lately, I used the WebCam Tracker I wrote a while back to grab some shots throughout the day.
Kinda interesting. In the process I found a few things I need to do to the app to fix some annoyances.
The plans to rip up Broad Street and reconstruct the original Canal Aqueduct over the river are progressing. I’ve mentioned the plans before and I’ve always thought it was kind of a neat idea but never thought it would get anywhere. Now that it seems to be getting some traction it deserves more thought.
I for one think it’s completely ridiculous, and the City has more important things to do with its money.
The following is a letter I sent to:
Regardless of how you stand on the issue, I suggest you do the same.
Broad St Closure – A Concerned Citizen
The closing of the broad street bridge this week has me frustrated. It’s something I cross on the bus at least once a day and has increased my bus commute time by about 5-10 minutes in each direction. In the morning due to the detour, and in the afternoon due to the additional build up of traffic on Exchange st. Even in the past two days, the inconvenience this has created has been significant. This has also been during a week of school closures and lighter than usual traffic. I’m concerned how the effects would be during events at the Convention Center and War Memorial.
Why is the bridge closed anyway? Are we really going to tear out the bridge and flood the original aqueduct to create a POND over the RIVER? Or are we just going to blow millions of dollars planning it and studying the effects of possibly doing it and then do nothing?
Rochester citizens have watched many other big projects fail and cost them millions of dollars with no gain. Sure we got a new port building from the Fast Ferry debacle, but now it sits mostly unused and unoccupied. One of the few ideas (The Casino) which stood to bring in direct revenue for the city was even voted down. Now we plan on sinking millions into a plan to create another Manhatten square Park or another Genesee Crossroads with a manmade water feature in the middle instead of a river.
Rochester has proven time and time again that it can’t deliver on ideas like this. Therefor we need to spend the money on things like better public transportation systems, Better education, maintaining (or improving) the parks we do have.
We don’t need another money pit, we need something with some real return on investment.
Stop wasting our money and end the study of the Broad St bridge closure early.
A Concerned Citizen,
Randy Aldrich
I love seeing old pictures of Downtown Rochester. Historical photos of places we see all the time are just so interesting. On top of that I work in one of the most historical buildings in the city, the old Aqueduct Building, with the statue of Mercury on top close to it’s original place. The building is located near main street on the Genesee River. As such, our building is almost always visible in these old photos.
The following is a Panoramic picture from 1906 of the Genesee River area. You can see Mercury in it’s original position above the Cigar factory. Just across the canal (what later became broad street) you can see the Aqueduct Building. I found the picture (amongst others) on the Rochester Subway site.
So damn cool.
Those who make peaceful revolution protest impossible, make violent revolution protest inevitable ~JFK
I’m not sure how I missed this but it seems last Wednesday October 7th there was a protest by the Students for a Democratic Society in Downtown Rochester NY that ended in a lot of violence and brutality.
If you read section 240.20 of the New York State Penal Code it’s pretty clear that the protesters broke the law. To me it’s also pretty clear that the police overstepped their bounds.
Although it’s pretty hard to tell exactly what happened, it’s pretty easy to see the police were excessively violent. Two protesters were even sent to the hospital and 12 were arrested by brutal means like throwing them to the ground. The video clearly shows several officers pushing and shoving, yelling, screaming and pulling out their billy clubs.
Frankly, I don’t see how this type of blatant power trip can be tolerated. They should all be fired.
The following is a press conference the SDS gave after the protest. There’s tons more interviews and articles about the SDS protest online if you’re interested in reading more.
We slept in a bit on Thursday since we didn’t have anything planned until 2pm and we were driving all day Wednesday. We started off the day by visiting the Portland Rose Test Garden. I had no idea there were so many roses, wierd ones too. They were all in full Bloom and so gorgeous! Rachel got a few ideas and we found our Portland Magnet. It was then time to head into the city to grab a bite to eat before our Portland Underground Tour.
After spending a fortune for parking ($12, there are much cheaper places but we didn’t find any right away) we headed to the Old Town Pizza, the first stop on the Underground Tour, to grab lunch and get tickets for the tour. While I placed our order (a thin house special) Rachel called Portland Walking Tours to book it. Unfortunately the Underground Portland tour was booked, something we hadn’t planned for. Because we had plans for tomorrow we decided to take the Beyond Bizarre tour instead.
Since we didn’t have anything to do for about 5 hours we decided to walk around and see a few things, the first being the Tom McCall Waterfront Park. As we were walking along Rachel said something, my eyes glazed over, the skies opened and it seemed like there was a chorus of angels. We walked right onto Portland’s Brewers Fest.
Admission was free so we went in (we would have anyway). You pay for a mug with a bunch of chips, each chip is worth a tasting, 4 is worth a pint, but their tastings turned out to be much bigger than 1/4th of a pint. They have a $10 mug which comes with 4 chips or a $20 mug which comes with 14 chips. We each got 14 chips, what’s the point in only tasting 4 beers? After all, we had 5 hours.
Most of the beers were delicious, but we didn’t realize until the end that the beers were all west coast, not necessarily Oregon like we had originally thought. Ahh well, still tasty. We took a short break in between our 14 beers to wander around, and find the worlds smallest park which was neat.
Afterwards we met George and Stacie for Happy hour at Three Degrees where we enjoyed some great deals and good food (thanks Stacie!). After that we took the MAX back to Old Town Pizza to catch our Beyond Bizzarre Tour.
Originally we thought the Beyond Bizarre tour was just the Underground Tour with some ghost stories and an EMF detector thrown in. We were horribly wrong, and the tour sucked. They hand out the EMF devices and it was mostly a ghost hunting exercise where they take you to these different locations and tell you why people think it’s ‘haunted’. It was incredibly lame and we don’t suggest anyone do it. I’m not sure if I would trust their Underground Tour either… Perhaps If we had a coupon.
Back to George and Stacies, a glance at some pictures and bed… Another good day, despite the Tour Failure, mostly due to all the drinking.
From a bicyclist somewhere along the Tom McCall Waterfront Park:
There are 3 things you need to tell everyone about Portland when you get back home
- Portland Sucks
- The Weather is Horrible
- The People are @$$ holes
I don’t think I can agree with the 3rd one. We met several different people today and all of them were some of the nicest people I’ve ever met anywhere.
The Bicyclist – What he said was all in good fun, but it stems from a reality. Portland is a victim of huge population growth. It’s probably one of the reasons Oregon has one of the worst unemployment rates in the country right now. From what I understand, people from southern california and other places with high taxes (*cough* NY *cough*) are flocking to Oregon in droves. People who live in Oregon now like it the way it is, and don’t want it to change. Naturally, the more people Oregon gets the less like the current wilderness it will become.
The Trick-Biker – We wandered the city a while until we happened upon the Ira Keller Fountain. It’s probably one of the coolest fountains I’ve ver seen. It’s very abstract and modern, with many different levels and cascades, as well as many different viewing platforms of various sizes, orientations and locations. Just as we were about to leave 2 kids showed up on trick bikes and started jumping from platform to platform while doing tricks. After chatting for a bit we learned that they like to come down at least once a week by bus just to ride around the city. Keller Fountain is one of their favorite spots. I asked if I could take their picture and they were ecstatic, especially after I showed them the result. I got their e-mail address and told them I’d send them copies.
Zweigles man – Zweigles hot dogs are definitely a local Rochester NY thing. I didn’t even think anyone outside of our area had heard of them, or would even care. However; for some reason SuperDog in downtown Potland OR carries them, claiming in their menu: “Zweigles white hot – direct from Rochester.” When we saw that it floored us, and naturally we had to eat there. While doing so I struck up a conversation with the cook who was just as shocked as we were to find out we were from Rochester NY.
We struck out with the goal of seeing Mills End Park, the worlds smallest park and we saw it (don’t blink, seriously, one square foot of park is easy to miss) however we saw and learned much more along the way. Just the way we like it.
Apparently there’s a new ad campaign for Rochester. I’m a fan. The city of Rochester seems to be doing a lot of things right lately, and making a lot of improvements.
They’ve also started placing signs around town marking major land marks and important buildings in Rochester. The signs also have an easy to understand system for navigating. It splits the city into 4 quadrants each a different color. The signs in the different quadrants match the color of the quadrant the sign is in. It’s not much but it’s the little things that matter the most.
A while ago I heard about plans to revitalize Broad street in downtown Rochester by converting it back into the Canal. This is what the aqueduct bridge was originally. When I first heard of the plan, I thought it was neat but didn’t think it would ever work. The biggest hurdle I can see to overcome is the traffic situation. Broad street is a main roadway and carries a lot of traffic.
I just found out that the plans didn’t die. In fact it seems like there are many proposals and that something may actually happen, although what exactly happens to broad st is still up in the air. It will be very interesting to see what happens. There’s a whole website dedicated to The Broad Street Corridor Renovations. The proposals are really quite interesting so take a look.
Until a recent trip to the Memorial Art Gallery – to take advantage of Free Museum Day – I had no idea that the Main Street Bridge in Rochester NY was originally covered in structures much like the original London Bridge. There’s an excellent history recap of Main St available on the RocWiki if you’d like even more of a history lesson. An archaic style of bridge like that somehow makes me think Rochester hasn’t always been as behind on the times as it is now. After all, they had the good sense to remove it. A small digital copy of a painting of the Bridge can be seen below or see the full version at the Memorial Art Gallery.
Rochester Main Street Bridge – Colin Campbell Cooper
It’s always impressive to go and view Artwork in your local city. Even a small city such as Rochester houses some famous Artwork by names you’ll recognize.
This next painting is one of my favorites at the Gallery from an Artist I’d previously not heard of.
Randy Aldrich 