Since the beginning of time the northern end of Lake Avenue in Rochester has been biker. Biker bars, bikers riding up and down, bikers in the restaurants. You want to stare at them and their “old ladies” but you’re sort of afraid. Only Diane Arbus could get away with that.
Lou Gramm’s (Grammatico) Band, Black Sheep, used to play the Penny Arcade, the hard rock club at the very end of Lake Avenue, more than forty years ago. The bar tenders there wore “Punk Rock Sucks” t-shirts when New Math played there in the seventies. Of course that may have been WCMF that put them up to that. Lou Gramm wrote a song about the gear-head sub culture here with the lines,
“Running all night on Lake Avenue
It’s a piece of cake
If you know what to do”
Charlotte, as this part of the city is known, is a magnet, though. The city meets the lake in dramatic fashion as Lake Avenue ends. Engineers plan to water the new marina next week. Condos in the Port of Rochester are on the horizon. And “Kneads & Wants” the artisan bakery on the east side, just north of the old Stutson Street bridge is an oasis. Olga told us about the place. We had driven by it many times but were never seduced by the sandwich sign.
We stopped after our Saturday morning yoga class and had coffee and cinnamon scones as we talked to the owner. We had been in the habit of stopping at Sips for coffee but the service there is so slow I started shopping at Herrama’s while Peggi waited for our iced lattes. I need and want to return here.
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