“Why I like living in Rochester:

• It really does have four seasons with the opportunities around to take advantage of each—skiing and ice fishing in winter, sailing and swimming during the summer.
• It has the backbone of a very technological workforce, skilled in engineering and science. The industry in Rochester from the end of WWII lived off of it. In addition, there are great universities from the U of R to RIT and more that together graduate more skilled employees to feed the pipeline.
• There are beautiful parks and lakes in and around Rochester. Niagara Falls is only 90 minutes away and Letchworth State Park is one hour away and is an unknown gem called “The Grand Canyon of the East.” Rochester also sits on Lake Ontario, a world-class fishery for trout and salmon alike. South of Rochester sit the Finger Lakes with great opportunities for summer boating, swimming, and water skiing.

“Some of my favorite places to go and things to do:

• I enjoy going to the Dryden Theatre at the Eastman House. The Dryden houses an impressive collection of films dating back to the inception of movies themselves. They periodically show some of the best films over the last 80 years, both foreign and domestic. The Eastman House, modeled after a French chateau, and its Museum of Photography are wonders unto themselves.
• I particularly enjoy the Finger Lakes. I have visited and fished in several of them—from lake and rainbow trout in Canandaigua Lake to Northern Pike in Conesus Lake. Not to mention Lake Ontario, which is a world-class fishery for trout and salmon all year long.
• Not far from Rochester is excellent skiing at Bristol Mountain and Swain, both within 75 minutes of Rochester. Within six hours of Rochester is world-class skiing in Vermont, the Adirondacks, and Canada, including two-time Olympic destination, Lake Placid.
• The museums in Rochester deserve special mention. From the National Museum of Play, rated second in its genre nationwide, to the Rochester Museum and Science Center (with the Strasenburgh Planetarium) to the Susan B. Anthony House and the [Memorial] Art Gallery, Rochester also supports a wide variety of music-related activities including the Rochester Jazz Festival, the Rochester Philharmonic, and the world-class Eastman Music School.

“Except for time away in college at Clarkson or in Paris, I’ve always lived in Rochester. I grew up near the corner of Waring and Culver Roads, but after coming back from Paris in 1969, I lived almost exclusively in the Park Avenue or Monroe Avenue neighborhoods. In 1992, we moved out to Penfield.”

—Ray Griswold, Penfield