I never thought we’d find another mechanic as good Ted was over at Jerome’s on Atlantic Boulevard but the guys over at B&B Auto on Saint Paul Boulevard are great. We rode our bikes over there to pickup our car and then continued downtown to the main library with the bikes in the back. We checked out art space in the lower level of the library, my basketball players are going up there next week, and we hopped on the bike trail that runs south along the river.
They’ve cleaned up the homeless area under the Freddy-Sue bridge, mostly by fencing it off, but there was still a row of tents. The multi-colored apartments that line the river looked pretty cozy and the UofR campus with the carloads of freshmen unpacking looked absolutely dreamy. Those long skinny crew boats were racing up and down the river and large gatherings of people, some looked like church groups, were cooking out in Genesee Valley Park. We rolled on to the intersection of the Erie Canal and the Genesee and hung out on one of those old arched concrete bridges that appear in so many of my father’s paintings.
We crossed the river there on a pedestrian bridge and rolled back in to town along the West Bank of the river. The area along Exchange has really come back and it was easy to see the synergy that Patrick Burke, a business columnist for the local paper was talking about in his recent piece “Copenhagen’s Lessons for Rochester“
Twenty years ago Chuck Cuminale was chanting, “Death to the Inner Loop” at his Colorblind James shows and that is now a reality. Let’s rewater the Erie Canal downtown!
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