I just got a job offer that would see me in the Rochester area 1-3 weekends a month. Fly in Friday, fly out Sunday night or Monday morning. I won't have a ton of free time, but I'm always looking for good regional food and drink.
Anything to gravitate towards? Any areas to stay away from?
Get yourself a garbage plate, preferably at like 2am while drunk. It's when they're best enjoyed. Nick Tahou Hots invented it, but every place puts their own spin on it.
Fly?
My guess is it is a 4 hour drive, door to door, for you. Going via airport will likely take longer, door to door.
Edit: the googling machine says its a 5 hour drive through Erie and nearly 6 hours through the middle. Now its a toss up.
In reply to John Welsh :
Probably drive it come summer. I don't like winter driving and get about 9 highway mpg currently.
Though I didn't realizeit was so close. I feel like when we went to Niagara falls buffalo wa 8 hours, but that was a long long time ago, memories are fuzzy.
Snow, rust, and drinking to forget about all the snow and the rust.
At least it's not Buffalo
I started with Rochester Airport (ROC). This link shows all the direct flights leaving ROC. Your airport, PIT, is not one of them. I then checked Southwest and ROC -> PIT or PIT -> ROC takes you through Baltimore. Shortest possible flight time gate to gate is 6 to 7 hours. And, you need to be to the airport an hour early, so 7-8 hours and you need to actually drive to the airport and park so 8-9 hours door to door to fly. And, if the flight times are not exactly convenient times you might be wasting/investing additional time.
5 to 6 hours to drive, door to door.
I used to be responsible for a 3 state area and it was illogical to fly from any city to another for similar reasons.
Wally (Forum Supporter) said:At least it's not Buffalo
You think Buffalo is bad, try Utica aka Shootica
Can confirm. Utica sucks. I lived there for a summer when I interned at Remington in ilion.
rochester is a fine place, I guess. It's a good place to raise kids if you can find work, but all the for companies have died or left. Lots of smart people though. I remember going to someone's house for a church bbq and staring at the homeowners Oscar for a while. He worked for Kodak and developed some new filming technique and got an Oscar.
I don't spend a lot of time defending anything I'm NY. Utica area is not bad. I've lived in Flint MI, rural SC, Houston, and a couple places in NC. Utica is small enough that you can live in the suburbs and it's nice and big enough that there are most things there. I won't try as hard to defend Ilion!
I agree on the garbage plate. And some Genny light
In reply to NY Nick :
Except a book store. I had drive towards Syracuse to buy books to read. This is pre kindle and at the start of amazon.
no book store = so silly.
I remember the machinists at Remington would tell me about how they hated going to the big city of Utica. Too many people they said.
haha
I moved back here 15 years ago. There has been a Barnes and Noble here since I got back. I loath the weather (although I find it more palatable now that I put my vehicle away for the winter). My work commute was 13 miles before I started work from home and I could do it in 12 minutes, every day at any time. I moved here from Raleigh Durham area and my commute to Duke was 15 miles. It could take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes. Same deal when I lived in Houston. A 20 mile ride could take an hour plus.
Rochester has a much larger feel to it than it's little brothers to the East. You may miss strange intersections, bridges everywhere, and hills though.
NickD beat me to the Garbage Plate.
The area around RIT had a lot of nice stuff (none of it was there when I went to school there). I think there is a kart track in the mall. Dibellas subs are awesome (now in MI too but started there).
All I know is visiting as a tourist, I never felt unsafe in downtown Buffalo, Rochester was a tough town, not a place to mess around, Reminded me of oakland, ca. Hoodlums on the streets, all the traffic leaving the city after work. The houses Kodak built are great, rest of place not so much. Just my impression.
In reply to benzbaronDaryn :
I interviewed at American axle in buffalo. The armed security guards escorted you from and to your car.
never went back to buffalo.
I'm a resident of Buffalo's greater metropolitan area, but have spent lots of time in Rochester for family/friends/work.
Buffalo is not bad these days plenty to see and do, and in all my travels have never felt unsafe.
But talking about Rochester...
I've never understood the appeal of garbage plates, but Dinosaur BBQ and Sticky Lips are both Rochester native standout BBQ joints worth checking out. Genesee brewery makes average at best beer, but their restaurant/tasting room is a fun venue. Rochester Broadway Theater League has a full schedule of traveling Broadway shows, and the Blue Cross arena gets plenty of mainstream acts. Lots of smaller venues see more intimate-venue focused acts as well. Rochester museum of play is highly regarded for kids/families if that's relevant to you.
On a more GRM topic, Watkins Glen is only about two hours south East of Rochester, and is well worth the trip for any racing fan. Plus you'll pass dozens of wineries on the way.
andy_b said:I've never understood the appeal of garbage plates, but Dinosaur BBQ and Sticky Lips are both Rochester native standout BBQ joints worth checking out.
On a more GRM topic, Watkins Glen is only about two hours south East of Rochester, and is well worth the trip for any racing fan. Plus you'll pass dozens of wineries on the way.
Like I said, garbage plates are best enjoyed at 2am with some alcohol in your system. Dinosaur BBQ is amazing. There's a couple Parker's Bar & Grilles around the area in Auburn, Geneva, Seneca Falls, Penn Yan, that are all really good.
Nearly every Sunday throughout the summer, the Finger Lakes SCCA runs autocrosses out to Seneca Army Depot in Ovid (About an hour drive from Syracuse) which is a huge venue, and there's a lot of serious autocrossers in that region. They even host an SCCA Pro Tour event out there.
About an hour and a half south to Hammondsport is the Glenn Curtiss Museum, which is definitely worth the drive. Very impressive museum with some awesome exhibits related to Curtiss aircraft and motorcycles.
All I know is what I saw, Buffalo had the NY bar exam going on so was full of suits. Rochester was going through some transition, this was either 2017 or 2018. I saw the SWAT van, hoodlums in the street, but they were tearing up the major thouroughfair downtown and changing so I might have got the town on a bad day.
I liked visiting Upstate, Penn Yan, Watkins Glen, Ellicottville, Finger lakes, Ithaca, lockeport, even Buffalo. Think I went through a place, Westminster, right on lake Erie, few months later saw a picture of a car fossilized in ice, same place.
benzbaronDaryn said:
I liked visiting Upstate, Penn Yan, Watkins Glen, Ellicottville, Finger lakes, Ithaca...
Ithaca Is Gorges. All the bumper sticker say so.
So many of these places make me wonder if there's an easy train into and out of NYC. If not, what's the point?
Ithaca was trippy, wonder if Cornell would have sent me a proper rejection letter or just ignored me.
Corning Museum of Glass is overwhelmingly impressive. Like, don't try to see it all in a day. Not gonna happen. There's a reason that your entry ticket is good for two days. But however much you see will leave an impression.
I won't have much time for sight seeing. From the sounds of things it will be get to town Friday, meet up with other reps for dinner, Saturday and Sunday run the booths, then leave Sunday night or Monday. I just won't always be coming from home or leaving for home.
Sounds busy enough that there should be an uber/Lyft/grubhub system in the area, so that's a plus. From the wiki page anyway, it sounds like there's a reasonable sized Eastern European/western Asian/middle east population, does that translate to restaurants?
Come summer, when there's no lake effect snow to worry about or I won't have to spend half the drive in the dark (I can't see to drive in the dark at the best of times let alone during snow), I'll probably try to work in some touristy things or drag the family along and make a week out of it, if I'm not being sent around the country at that point.
I would never consider living there. Pittsburgh is too far north for my liking.
My comment about Buffalo had nothing to do with the crime, but that all the time I spent there was in the winter which was absolutely miserable. If I was told I only had a month to live I'd spend it in Buffalo in February. By Valentines Day I'd have had enough.
In reply to pres589 (djronnebaum) :
There's some but not much, most train service from Manhattan ends at Albany except the few going to Chicago or Niagra Falls. There have been proposals through the years but western New York likes to be cut off from the chunk of the state that supports them.
In reply to NickD :
I've been to Corning twice, it's a very impressive museum.
In reply to Wally (Forum Supporter) :
Two years ago, my parents and I took my oldest sister and her two daughters out there, and we weren't sure what to expect. We were a little concerned that we were going to make the two and a half hour drive out from Rome, only to stroll through the museum in like an hour, and then drive another two and a half hours home. Then we hit the front door and it was like "Oh, this place is massive." Every time we rounded a corner, we would see a hallway leading to a whole other huge section.
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