Wanderin' Round....
Oct. 19th, 2022 02:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogTuesday evening, around the corner from the concert theater in Rochester:
It's not quite an hour before the show, the first of now three I am looking forward to in the coming week. Tonight and Friday are both in town here, but next week closer to home, by Carbon Leaf, a band I've lost touch with but really want to see.
Today began early and will end late (with this probably posting tomorrow). Friends in Niagara County got well and truly hosed on a home improvement job a couple of months ago, and today they were scheduled to meet with a higher-up from the company to try to resolve it. I think we did, but the devil is in the details and we now wait to see if he sticks his Satanic horns out before the deal gets done. That got me to Rochester by early afternoon, for a little catchup, some checking in with other clients, and finally off to the Little for the show by Dayna Kurtz, who is written up here if I hadn't already posted a link about her.
I wound up with a little dead time, so I grabbed dinner in our last home town here of Brighton and then came into the city via my even older Park Avenue neighborhood here.
I did not break into The Old Apartment. But I did walk up its steps:
Looks pretty much the same from the outside. Porch is a little scruffier, I don't remember us having a gas grill out there. Still four units inside; my old #4's mailbox had something in it. I thought of buzzing and asking round, but decided not to. Best to remember its fiberglass drapes and doilied endtables the way the old paisan lady set the furnished apartment up.
Around it, ghosts. Jines the corner diner and the Park Avenue Pub are about the only institutions that remain. The bank on the corner, five removed from Security Trust. Charlie's Frog Pond, drained. The Big Apple Cafe now an Asian joint. The original Nathan's, long gone to the burbs. My corner deli, laundromat and Bells supermarket, all traceless.
Down the street, the church we met and married in, now essentially the cathedral of liberal Methodism in all of Western New York. One of its outbuildings, now scaffolded. My church is now the temple of music, wherever it holds services. Tonight, it's in an almost century-old auditorium.
----
Finishing up at my desk the next afternoon:
Ninety-three years old, actually. Opening Night at the Little Theatre was October 17, 1929, so I attended the night after the original restored auditorium's birthday. That wasn't the only restored history on the block, though; the Little's own renowned cafe was closed when I arrived well before showtime, so I headed around the corner to this piece of local and personal history:
It now holds the lone Rochester (and recently unionized) outpost of the Buffalo SPoT coffee chain, but I originally knew the building as Hallman Chevrolet, which once sold cars from that Art Deco showroom. Eleanor and I bought our first couple-car Corsica from them in 1988, and they held on there for a few years after that, the last of a once-proud string of major dealerships along East Avenue.SPoT kept the Super Service clock with the Chevy logo atop the door, although like many GM products of that era, the clock isn't working these days:P
But showtime arrived, my phone sufficiently charged off SPoT A/C power to display my ticket. I headed for the merch table to pick up one of the artist's CDs, and realized that before I came in, I'd walked right by Scott Regan, the local radio legend who first introduced me to her music on the air. Scott graciously gifted me the album which contained that song, since I was having trouble paying for my purchase with their mobile money app. It's the second straight Tuesday I've been given a CD I had every intention of buying; last week at Sportsmen's, my friend Maria did the same with hers (which I'd already purchased a digital copy of) as thanks for my coming out to her gigs.
(I also didn't recognize a fellow bankruptcy attorney in the row in front of me, since she was out of "uniform" and I haven't seen her in court in almost three years. I guess I'm now back to running into bankruptcy practitioners at folk concerts and art film houses.)
The concert itself deserves its own writeup, and I think I'll come back tomorrow (or whenever) and give it one, but here's my benefactor Scott introducing the duo before they went on:
It's not quite an hour before the show, the first of now three I am looking forward to in the coming week. Tonight and Friday are both in town here, but next week closer to home, by Carbon Leaf, a band I've lost touch with but really want to see.
Today began early and will end late (with this probably posting tomorrow). Friends in Niagara County got well and truly hosed on a home improvement job a couple of months ago, and today they were scheduled to meet with a higher-up from the company to try to resolve it. I think we did, but the devil is in the details and we now wait to see if he sticks his Satanic horns out before the deal gets done. That got me to Rochester by early afternoon, for a little catchup, some checking in with other clients, and finally off to the Little for the show by Dayna Kurtz, who is written up here if I hadn't already posted a link about her.
I wound up with a little dead time, so I grabbed dinner in our last home town here of Brighton and then came into the city via my even older Park Avenue neighborhood here.
I did not break into The Old Apartment. But I did walk up its steps:
Looks pretty much the same from the outside. Porch is a little scruffier, I don't remember us having a gas grill out there. Still four units inside; my old #4's mailbox had something in it. I thought of buzzing and asking round, but decided not to. Best to remember its fiberglass drapes and doilied endtables the way the old paisan lady set the furnished apartment up.
Around it, ghosts. Jines the corner diner and the Park Avenue Pub are about the only institutions that remain. The bank on the corner, five removed from Security Trust. Charlie's Frog Pond, drained. The Big Apple Cafe now an Asian joint. The original Nathan's, long gone to the burbs. My corner deli, laundromat and Bells supermarket, all traceless.
Down the street, the church we met and married in, now essentially the cathedral of liberal Methodism in all of Western New York. One of its outbuildings, now scaffolded. My church is now the temple of music, wherever it holds services. Tonight, it's in an almost century-old auditorium.
----
Finishing up at my desk the next afternoon:
Ninety-three years old, actually. Opening Night at the Little Theatre was October 17, 1929, so I attended the night after the original restored auditorium's birthday. That wasn't the only restored history on the block, though; the Little's own renowned cafe was closed when I arrived well before showtime, so I headed around the corner to this piece of local and personal history:
It now holds the lone Rochester (and recently unionized) outpost of the Buffalo SPoT coffee chain, but I originally knew the building as Hallman Chevrolet, which once sold cars from that Art Deco showroom. Eleanor and I bought our first couple-car Corsica from them in 1988, and they held on there for a few years after that, the last of a once-proud string of major dealerships along East Avenue.SPoT kept the Super Service clock with the Chevy logo atop the door, although like many GM products of that era, the clock isn't working these days:P
But showtime arrived, my phone sufficiently charged off SPoT A/C power to display my ticket. I headed for the merch table to pick up one of the artist's CDs, and realized that before I came in, I'd walked right by Scott Regan, the local radio legend who first introduced me to her music on the air. Scott graciously gifted me the album which contained that song, since I was having trouble paying for my purchase with their mobile money app. It's the second straight Tuesday I've been given a CD I had every intention of buying; last week at Sportsmen's, my friend Maria did the same with hers (which I'd already purchased a digital copy of) as thanks for my coming out to her gigs.
(I also didn't recognize a fellow bankruptcy attorney in the row in front of me, since she was out of "uniform" and I haven't seen her in court in almost three years. I guess I'm now back to running into bankruptcy practitioners at folk concerts and art film houses.)
The concert itself deserves its own writeup, and I think I'll come back tomorrow (or whenever) and give it one, but here's my benefactor Scott introducing the duo before they went on:
