My sister doesn’t have all the answers…
Sometimes I think my memory is a collection of stories that I just plain made-up. Maybe I’ve re-written my childhood in the way I wish it had happened. One of those cloudy memories involved birthday dinners.
As I recall it, on a few birthdays, I had the opportunity to pick the restaurant that I wanted to have dinner at. And it was just me, my mom and my dad — no one else (there were six of us). I remember it as awesome. On one of these occasions, either real or imagined, I decided I wanted to have dinner at “The Revolving Restaurant.” I don’t know if it had a different name. As far as I was concerned its name was “The Revolving Restaurant.”
Who wouldn’t have chosen this place as the location for a birthday dinner? It was a restaurant that revolved! You could dine on a pleasant meal while enjoying a birds-eye-360-degree-view of the city of Rochester.
Does anyone else wonder whatever happened to “The Revolving Restaurant?”
Is there just not a demand for revolving while eating anymore?
Or is that birds-eye-view less appealing these days?
Either way, it makes me sad.
Rochester and its environs were really cool once. In today’s Democrat and Chronicle, I learned Ontario Beach Park was once the Coney Island of western New York. And Oklahoma Beach — down the street and across the Outlet Bridge to Webster — was a “favorite place for bootleggers to unload their cargo.”
Granted that was over 100 years ago. But still, the closest thing to a rum runner I’ve seen around here has been in a glass at Marge’s. (Don’t get me wrong– I LOVE Marge’s.)
The South Wedge has given me a little hope though. The latest revitalization project on the Weider Hall is another reminder that all of the good things from Rochester’s history are not completely gone yet.
But my question still remains: Where’s a girl to go if she wants to revolve?
UPDATE: JAY found a blog post that contains recent pictures from inside the “Rotating Restaurant” and another site with a photo gallery. And JAY is also sure that this memory was hers. She claims she went there along with our father on her birthday.
Filed under: Neighborhoods, Rochestarians, South Wedge
