An Excursion

There's always this weird stigma to starting a new blog or journal. I always feel so obligated to share all the little stats about me--- I'm 5 foot 4 on a tall day, I'm from New Jersey, I am a Creative Writing major who finds it hard to study without red Swedish Fish. But as I'm writing these long-winded entries in which I desperately try to make myself look good to the harsh pages of a new blog, there's this little voice inside my head screaming "FOOL! Forget your identity and get down to business!"

This time, I've decided to listen to the little devil.

So. Ever since I got to campus, everyone's been telling me that as a burned-out city built on the Kodak Film empire, Rochester is not a safe place for a college student to wander. My roommate in particular enjoys telling stories of the black hole that is Rochester beyond the boundaries of campus security. As a result, I had not been off campus in a month until this morning. Finally, I snapped. I am a person who explores, who loves to get lost and find new things and meet new people, and hates hates hates tracing the same steps every day. So I put on my baggiest, warmest clothes, left all my valuables in my room, put on my helmet, and got on my bike.

I wandered the streets of Rochester for two hours, and I still couldn't find The Hood.

The Rochester I saw has all the charm of a slightly burned out city, complete with blocks of shabby yet tidy houses, winter-proofed cars coated with salt from the street, and little coffeeshops with cheesy names and faded paint. I saw lots of gas stations and auto repair shops, and a few people that I wouldn't want to meet in an alley at night, but for every one of those was a mother with a secondhand carriage, a church, and a house with wind chimes hanging off the porch roof. It was a blue-collar neighborhood, and reminded me of something Yoda and I noticed while we were touring in Pennsylvania: that every blue collar street, every burned-out city struggling to survive, and every corner with a gas station on one side of the street and a church on the other has the same vibe. There is more pride on a street with houses off of which all the paint is peeling than there is in a neighborhood with vast lawns and cookie-cutter homes. There isn't enough personality in a McMansion for any sense of pride to come through. Even in Gulfport and Biloxi, I remember seeing streets of ramshackle houses, brand-new or dilapidated but still standing, and no matter how depressed or exasperated or poor the inhabitants were, there was a sense of home there that I have just never felt in the Post-Levittown neighborhoods of Somerset County, NJ.

I ended up getting pretty lost. I crossed the river twice, flirted with the outskirts of a lovely, hilly park covered in snow and boulders that I would love to find again, huffed my way up hills and whizzed back down them, stopped to ask for directions from people who had no idea where the University is, and finally found myself at an intersection that I recognized, for it was the one that Yoda and I hit the night before I moved in, as we searched in vain to find campus and get a first glimpse of the place where I would be living for the next few years. In the end, I was able to wend my way back to campus, squinting against the wind to remember exactly where we drove that night, when the car was so packed with my stuff that Yoda had to sit in the back seat and his frantic directions from Google Maps did more to confuse me than anything else.

Ultimately, I hope to get to know Rochester better. I miss New York City bitterly, and don't think I'll survive up here if I can't do some urban exploring of my own. The other night, I saw L'Auberge Espagnole, a French film about a group of students studying abroad who share an apartment in Barcelona. At the opening of the film, the narrator meditates on how, when coming to a new place, it is odd to think that one day you will know it enough for it to become your home. I still don't feel like Rochester is my home, but I have to at least know it if I am to last up here in the cold winter of my discontent.