The CMS I’m using is Wetpaint and I’m becoming a default power-user. I highly recommend this platform. It has pretty powerful photo-editing software built-in (Picnic), supports widgets for things like slideshows, makes internal linking really fast and easy and makes SEO a snap with constant reminders to add tags. When I launched the site on its own URL it only took two weeks to get to 55% of visitors coming from organic searches. My SEO peeps will appreciate what this means- basically that Google likes the site!

I’m already building another site on the platform that will soon reside at WaterfrontRochester.com. It features all of Rochester’s varied waterfront neighborhoods- we have a lot of water: Lake Ontario, Irondequoit Bay, the Erie Canal, the Genesee River. When I’m done some lucky Realtor will be invited to sponsor this thing. Then I’m on to WaterfrontFingerLakes.com. If you’ve never been to the Finger Lakes you have to go- absolutely spectacular wine country, beautiful properties, rolling hills with vineyards, boating, skiiing, all within 60 miles of our airport. People from Napa have been buying up acreage at quite a clip with prices quadrupling in the past few years.

That’s my summer activity- tomorrow I get on a train and go to visit the girl in Albany!

Her response was enlightening to me. As we walked by the dozens of restaurants, stores, theaters, galleries, coffee shops, loft developments and more that have opened in the last ten years she could not get over what a different city she was experiencing. It didn’t hurt that there were thousands of people enjoying free and paid jazz, eating and drinking in outdoor cafes and simply socializing in public. We ate at several great restaurants (Good Luck, One Ryan, 2Vine, Pier 45) and had a great time.

On Sunday, when the rain cleared away, we went to Turning Point Park in the Genesee River gorge and walked the amazing boardwalk all the way to the Lake Ontario outlet. There were sailboats everywhere for a big regatta. The city has done an amazing job with the entire Charlotte/River neighborhood. It felt like being on vacation in some hip city!

Rochesterians are known for poo-pooing our city’s ability to change or become a destination. Toni’s reaction was one of continual wonder at how much has changed in significant ways. Her impression was that we live in a very hip and happening place, not the boring and rundown Rochester she remembered. Her perspective cleared my perspective as I got excited showing her all the great things in this town. Sometimes when change is taking place gradually you lose perspective. Take some time to see things from a newcomer’s eyes and you may find that your world is a whole new place.

Shopping this way not only saves money and provides entertainment, it alerts you to what’s available locally and when. It’s still early but local asparagus is nearly over. There’s still plenty from New Jersey (The Garden State) which seems pretty local to me but Boo disagrees- she thinks there is a difference. 300 hundred miles of trucking I guess.

This past year we went almost every week, even in the dead of winter. The stalls morph into tents with propane heaters blasting and everyone has a chill somewhere. The local produce is things like cabbage, potatoes, apples-things that store well. You can still get nearly anything else from far off places. At least we’re thinking about the carbon cost when we pick up fruit from South America.

The food business in America amazes me. For low artificially low prices we can get virtually anything, anytime. When I was in Paris a few years ago we arrived early on a Saturday at the apartment we rented in Marais. Though lagged we wanted to wander and the first place we found was a weekly street market. I’d always heard about the quality of French fresh food but this was totally amazing. Perfect rows of glistening shrimp lovingly packed in ice, table after table of beautiful fruit and vegetables with literally dozens of varieties of each type. It was a cook’s paradise though I certainly was not planning on spending time cooking in the food capital of the Western world!

That night we had our first French meal in a restaurant in Place de Vosges, the amazing medieval plaza that fills an entire block. The highlight was incredible asparagus served with a lemony hollandaise. They were very thick and a pale green and melted in your mouth like no vegetable I’d eaten before. When Carol (my ex and still friend) bit into her order the expression on her face was priceless. Perhaps we’ll achieve that degree of subtlety and appreciation for our food in a few hundred years- though it may have taken a planetary crisis to force us down that path.

The Renaissance Square project, as it has been named, more familiarly Ren Square, has been brewing for 6 years with no visible physical progress. A major architect was hired (Moshe Saftie) and he came up with an impressive plan while running through a major chunk of the planning budget. He was fired and a consortium of local architects butchered his plan and somehow managed to glom a nineteenth century facade on the thing, an architectural curse that Rochester specializes in.

I used to think this whole thing was questionable but with $4/gallon gas on the horizon again, improving the public transportation experience is important, the college campus is an important project, making access to our excellent Monroe Community College a lot easier and the arts center is off the radar. We need to build the thing now.

Except more politicians have come forward including a Democratic Representative who is lobbying for a high speed rail line to pass through Rochester and somehow she believes that we have a choice of a new train station or a new bus station but not both, in spite of the fact that they have nothing, zero, zippo to do with each other. People ride the buses to work and school, people ride trains to get to other cities.

Now the mayor has joined the Representative in trying to kill the transit station right when the need for better public transit is critical.

I could go on and on without betraying any partisan stance (I’m a Democrat) because all of these politicians are acting deplorably, ignorantly and without thought of what is best for the community. This seems to be the case with politicians everywhere from the local school board to the Senate leadership. They are not competent people in general. I’m giving the President a pass because I think he is truly trying to herd these cats in the best interests of us. It must drive him crazy.