City Life Archives - Page 4 of 6

The circa-1978 Amshack facility is being replaced by a state-of-the-art, multi-modal station, boasting level-boarding platforms, space to service two trains simultaneously, and capacity to expand as necessary.

There’s really no debating that the new facility will be a wholesale improvement over what’s existed for over thirty years in The Flower City.

The Rochester “Amshack” awaits the wreckers in November 2015. Follow @CultofAmericana on Instagram and Twitter.

Yet I can’t help but wonder if the same talking points were used at the ceremonial groundbreaking for the new Madison Square Garden?

As you might recall, Pennsylvania Station in New York City was considered archaic, and passenger trains were on the way out in the face of the jet and superhighway age. So the Beaux-Arts icon was torn down and replaced with a maze underneath the current Knicks/Rangers/Billy-Joel-final-tour (he means it this time) arena, with the idea being that this underground area could quickly be converted to other uses when passenger trains died for good. That death was imminent in 1963. But passenger trains hung in there, thanks to the creation and nurturing of Amtrak.

Demand for more passenger trains, at higher speeds and frequency, is now greater than at any point in the 45-year history of government-operated intercity passenger rail service.

No one anticipates that the destruction of the Rochester station will be a high-water mark in architectural preservation. So what is the connection between glorious, martyred, decimated, Penn Station and the Rochester Amshack, as it were?

‘It happened’ is the tie that binds these two disparate facilities. The style/model of the Amtrak station being replaced in Rochester ‘happened’, in something close to kit form, all over the country in the past four decades. Albany-Rensselaer, NY, St. Louis, MO, Bloomington-Normal, IL, Carbondale, IL, Huntington, WV; all have or had this style of station. And in that way, as these stations fall or are replaced with newer structures, we have to begin looking at these kit stations as a fabric of our history as a traveling nation.

These are, after all, facilities that weathered the past 30-plus years of political upheaval that has seen the passenger rail network in America contracted, then slightly expanded, and now waiting for the next great push from a generation that can’t stand the experience of flying and are less-likely to own their own automobile or rely on a car for medium-distance trips.

These Amshacks played a role in bringing passenger rail to a point where it’s not ‘do we even need trains?’ but rather ‘we need more trains’.

And without fail or exception, the stations that replace the Amshacks are BIGGER; because that’s what’s happened over the past 30-plus years. Demand for passenger trains has risen dramatically, thanks in no small part to the enclosed, functional, heated/cooled, safe and secure if not spartan accommodations afforded by the Amtrak kit stations of the late seventies and early eighties.

Having seen stations all across the American passenger rail network, I can assure you there are dozens of communities that would do anything to have the kind of station that is currently being demolished in my hometown. And for me, the Rochester Amshack has spanned my lifetime (proof below); it’s where I learned to love passenger trains, first from a ‘choo-choo’ fanaticism, and more recently from a practical perspective.

It’s where I got on the train to go to school, cured my homesick-ness at holiday time, and head off to a new adventure in the far-away city of Chicago.

It’s an American classic that did its job admirably for better than three decades. Things will be better for Rochester, like so many other communities, because this station and its brethren existed in the first place.

a young charlie monte verde is one of those cute kids that love trains

The author at the then-new Rochester Amtrak station (circa 1985). Follow @CultofAmericana on Instagram and Twitter.

All images are copyright Cult of Americana

The second I spotted Dennis Bellisario’s cornicello around his neck, I knew there was a story to be told. Meant to protect against the malocchio (“evil eye”), wearing a cornicello doesn’t just mean you’re superstitious and approximately-Italian. It also means you’re tethered to tradition and unwavering beliefs.

And for Dennis, his tradition and beliefs center around family recipe pizza.

As far back as Dennis can remember, the little restaurant at the corner of of Memphis and 49th in Old Brooklyn, Ohio has been a pizzeria. The red, white and green awning of authenticity on the front of the building. Before Dennis’ father opened Bella Pizza in the early nineties it was a joint called Mama Mia’s, opened circa 1953. Tradition runs deep here; unchanged.

Bella doesn’t rewrite the book on what a restaraunt is, or is supposed to be, or even used to be. In fact, Google’s actual map listing for it lists it as “basic neighborhood pick for pies and wings” (right on the map, I kid you not). I think Dennis would probably approve of that description.

And that’s also why Dennis doesn’t have slices, which, admittedly was what we were hoping for when we set foot in the place. Quality over quantity means not selling pizza that’s been sitting under a lamp all day, losing heat and frequented by flies. That’s what Dennis told us.

I suppose the Old Brooklyn neighborhood is not incidentally named after the Italian-immigrant hotbed borough of New York City. As a resident of a city that’s lost a lot of it’s Italian heritage, it was refreshing for your author to see this little corner of far southwestern Cleveland holding the line for the paisans. This was capped off by the familiar red, white and green flag flying right at the same height as Old Glory high above the dining room at Bella Pizza. Tradition.

Cleveland feels like Buffalo in that Buffalo feels like real-deal, no B.S. people. And so it goes in all the cities that make no mistake in being by a Great Lake. When the reservoirs run dry out west and the traffic becomes too much, you all can just come back home to the most abundant fresh water availability in the known galaxy. Space available, here in reality.

Anyways.

We decided to set our high-brow, elitist/urban, greens-driven appetites aside and eat like we would’ve back in the old neighborhood. Pizza and wings: go.

Like so much of the lifestyle of true Clevelanders, Dennis couldn’t change the recipe for the pizza even if he wanted to. Tradition. “If I changed even the slightest thing about it, people would be all ‘what’d you do?‘” he tells us. The meat and cheese are all from the same sources (Dennis has got a ‘guy’) for many years now. They way ya done it got ya where ya are so far, and is that so bad? Tradition. No sense changin’ now.

And so maybe Dennis charges a little more for pizza than… the other guy. “Quality over quantity,” he says, and sort of sneers at the idea of folks paying less to get more of something that isn’t very good. Which I can support.

The secret to the award-winning garlic Parmesan wings is using Pecorino Romano cheese. It gives the wings more zip than using Parmigiano alone. If you think Dennis is worried about me exposing his craft secrets , don’t think it. His garlic Parm wings are people’s choice winners for the best in Old Brooklyn three years running. The secret’s out and there’s only room for followers at this point.

Dennis with the hardware and the pennant

And there’s one final tradition that …sails… past them all. Decades of award-winning pizza and wings, and successful transition of ownership within the family, and little nuances and everything red sauce pales in comparison to Dennis’ proudest moment as an Italian;

Playing Christopher Columbus in the Columbus Day parade every year.

That’s right.

Yes, for many years now, Dennis Bellisario has proudly portrayed the Italian of greatest historic prominence to Americans. The fingers extending towards the riches of the West Indies. The thousand-yard stare. Clevelanders can rest assured that the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria will find their way safely up Murray Hill Road to Holy Rosary Church under Dennis’ steady hand and watchful command.

It’s tradition.

About Bella Pizza

Of note and possibly great import: belisario loosely translates as ‘swordsman’.