The year is 1978. There’s disco glam, Grease playing at the drive-in, Jimmy Carter in the White House, Sony Walkmans blasting “Stayin’ Alive,” and nineteen-year-old Wayne Coyle serving drinks at the Ontario Center Hotel. “I drove my ten-speed to work,” Coyle says. Now sixty-seven, Coyle’s been a friendly face behind the bar for nearly fifty …

Black skinny jeans with home-cut holes in the knees, my mom’s vintage Levi’s jean jacket, and a pair of tattered Vans stomped me up the cement steps of Dicky’s Corner Pub on the night of my twenty-first birthday. It had to be the first stop—my best friend loved going there, and she was on a …

Asking your boss out for drinks is risky. Inviting them to a speakeasy with a secret bookshelf entrance? Now that’s just good career strategy. At least, that was my gamble visiting Vanni’s, the new jazz lounge inside the Inn on Broadway.  With two kids, visiting a bar that’s open only three days a week requires …

I’ve been painting wooden bunnies for so long that I can’t feel my fingertips. My little sister is right beside me at the kids’ table, running sandpaper across wood in a frenzy; beads of sweat hang off her nose. At the big table behind me, my aunt uses a miniature paint brush to dot the …

In 1990, Monroe County’s daytime television viewing habits were disrupted by a TV first: the live broadcast of The People v. Arthur J. Shawcross. Never before had home viewers anywhere been given access to gavel-to-gavel coverage of a sordid murder trial. The show lasted eleven weeks, September to December. Viewers who normally followed daytime dramas …

When the Rochester Broadway Theatre League (RBTL) embarked on a multi-year revitalization of the West Herr Performing Arts Center, the goal was never a simple face-lift. Known as Project Restouration, the effort seeks to preserve one of Rochester’s most architecturally significant buildings while also reimagining how it serves performers, patrons, and the city’s arts community …