What do and don't you like about living in Rochester? (Maryland: real estate, new home)

[yiplong]

I lived in Roc from 2013 to mid 2018. I've since moved back to the NYC area.

Likes:
- Cost - Initial cost of housing is low. This doesn't mean your overall, long term cost of living is lower in Roc compared to other more "expensive" cities (the actual cost depends on a host of factors, including appreciation, wage, career growth, etc.) However, you will have an easier time coming up with the down payment for a house in Roc than in San Francisco.
- Size - Rochester is just about the right size to offer a variety of things to do without being overwhelming or stress inducing. Surely, Roc doesn't offer world-class amenity in any area, but it should be able to satisfy most basic needs.
- Traffic - Basically nonexistent for the most part. There are some trouble spots but those are few and far in between.
- Wegmans - Single handedly responsible for vastly improving the quality of life of many Rochesterians. At the end of my interview, my former employer made a point of taking me to visit the big Wegmans on Monroe Ave.
- Summer/Fall - Both seasons are very nice. Summer day time temp may be hot, but it cools off quickly after sunset. I bet the 24 hr avg temp is actually lower in Roc than many coastal cities with lower peak temp because those city stay hot well into the night.
- The Finger Lakes - Very scenic and relaxing, with great wine touring options. I enjoyed going down to places like Penn Yan on weekends.

Dislikes:
- Taxes - Ridiculously high for such a place. My current home in a Connecitcut suburb of NYC cost 3x more than my old home in Pittsford, and yet the tax is 1/3 lower.
- Jobs - Good jobs are hard to find in Roc. The flip side is also true: it's hard to recruit talented workers, especially compared to larger cities that are more attractive to domestic and international migrants. In fact, talented people tend to leave the area for greener pastures.
- Winter - Half the year is winter. During the winter the weather condition is either "currrently snowing" or "about to snow". This means it's almost always dark and gloomy for the whole time. I imagine many people would find this unacceptable.
- Restaurants - I found the quality of food tends to be one notch lower and the prices one notch higher than my expectation. Even the best restaurants in Roc are just adequate. Our firm's cafeteria has better food than probably 80% of restaurants in Roc.
- Geography - Its far from both the mountains and the ocean. Other than the Finger Lakes and some sections of the Ontario lakefront, this area tends to be flat and somewhat bland.

[FirebirdCamaro1220]

I was a native-Rochesterian who escaped the Grey Curtain back in 2001, never to return

Only likes=
-Great local burger and pizza restaurants, and a couple really good local Italian joints
-Summer is nice

Dislikes=
-Everything else, especially the climate outside of May-Sept

[db2797]

Originally Posted by FirebirdCamaro1220

I was a native-Rochesterian who escaped the Grey Curtain back in 2001, never to return

Only likes=
-Great local burger and pizza restaurants, and a couple really good local Italian joints
-Summer is nice

Dislikes=
-Everything else, especially the climate outside of May-Sept

What's wrong with April and October? April's average high is 56 and October's average high is 61. I find April and October to be amazing months. Rochester has 7 really nice months of mild to hot weather, 2 months of cool weather, and 3 months of cold weather.

[FirebirdCamaro1220]

Originally Posted by db2797

What's wrong with April and October? April's average high is 56 and October's average high is 61. I find April and October to be amazing months. Rochester has 7 really nice months of mild to hot weather, 2 months of cool weather, and 3 months of cold weather.

Average doesn't factor in deviations from the norm. I remember enough days with snow and 30s in April AND October, and still remember the Halloween that I got frostbite since it was snowing and a wet snow at that. That's not nice. And even April has its share of days that are rainy and don't get out of the 40s. Don't kid yourself. Yes there are some nice days both months as well, but there is crap to balance it out most years as well

I should add, that my final winter, the craptacular winter of 2000-2001 was just the kick I needed to get out. I still remember it. Turned COLD right on Veterans Day weekend in mid November, followed by the coldest December on record, then a fairly cold but seasonable January and February, and then the coup de grace, the only March the whole 18 years I lived in Rochester to NOT hit 50° once, coupled with 41" of snow, and finally, snowed on April 1st ffs before Spring finally decided to show up!

[db2797]

Originally Posted by FirebirdCamaro1220

Average doesn't factor in deviations from the norm. I remember enough days with snow and 30s in April AND October, and still remember the Halloween that I got frostbite since it was snowing and a wet snow at that. That's not nice. And even April has its share of days that are rainy and don't get out of the 40s. Don't kid yourself. Yes there are some nice days both months as well, but there is crap to balance it out most years as well

I should add, that my final winter, the craptacular winter of 2000-2001 was just the kick I needed to get out. I still remember it. Turned COLD right on Veterans Day weekend in mid November, followed by the coldest December on record, then a fairly cold but seasonable January and February, and then the coup de grace, the only March the whole 18 years I lived in Rochester to NOT hit 50° once, coupled with 41" of snow, and finally, snowed on April 1st ffs before Spring finally decided to show up!

Oh big deal. It was cold for 3 months one winter and we had trace snowfall in April and October one year you remember.

I was mowing my lawn last year the first week of Dec. in 54 degree weather. That's why they are called averages. I'd rather have 7 months of weather that is on average pretty amazing vs 7 months of brutal heat.

You're in Phoenix now? It was 103 degrees today there and it's Sept 19th for god's sake. And don't give me that line that it's "dry heat". I have friends who moved here from Phoenix and they told me the going joke in Phoenix is that even though it gets sun all year long, the citizens are the most pale in the country because they can rarely go outside. That's not my joke. It's from a native Arizonian.

People just love to exaggerate Rochester weather as if it's the only city in the Northeast to get a winter. Yes we get a decent amount of snowfall which I absolutely love, but the temperatures are right on par with pretty much every other city in the Northeast.

[FirebirdCamaro1220]

Originally Posted by db2797

Oh big deal. It was cold for 3 months one winter and we had trace snowfall in April and October one year you remember.

I was mowing my lawn last year the first week of Dec. in 54 degree weather. That's why they are called averages. I'd rather have 7 months of weather that is on average pretty amazing vs 7 months of brutal heat.

You're in Phoenix now? It was 103 degrees today there and it's Sept 19th for god's sake. And don't give me that line that it's "dry heat". I have friends who moved here from Phoenix and they told me the going joke in Phoenix is that even though it gets sun all year long, the citizens are the most pale in the country because they can rarely go outside. That's not my joke. It's from a native Arizonian.

People just love to exaggerate Rochester weather as if it's the only city in the Northeast to get a winter. Yes we get a decent amount of snowfall which I absolutely love, but the temperatures are right on par with pretty much every other city in the Northeast.

I spend plenty of times outdoors here, and am quite tan. Honestly, the only true bad months here are July and August, those two I could do without. June and September aren't as bad, due to lower humidity and some cooler days usually mixed in. This September is close to our warmest on Record, so don't use it as a gauge for the typical September here. And, October through May are awesome here

The bolded is not factually correct if you're talking the major cities/95 corridor. Boston is on average 5 degrees warmer than Rochester in the winter, NYC is about 9 degrees warmer on average for winter, 11 warmer for Philadelphia and 13 warmer for Baltimore and DC; and the 95 corridor is less "laggy" in February and March, due to not having Lake Ontario to keep it cold like Rochester

[db2797]

Originally Posted by FirebirdCamaro1220

I spend plenty of times outdoors here, and am quite tan. Honestly, the only true bad months here are July and August, those two I could do without. June and September aren't as bad, due to lower humidity and some cooler days usually mixed in. This September is close to our warmest on Record, so don't use it as a gauge for the typical September here. And, October through May are awesome here

The bolded is not factually correct if you're talking the major cities/95 corridor. Boston is on average 5 degrees warmer than Rochester in the winter, NYC is about 9 degrees warmer on average for winter, 11 warmer for Philadelphia and 13 warmer for Baltimore and DC; and the 95 corridor is less "laggy" in February and March, due to not having Lake Ontario to keep it cold like Rochester

umm I've lived in Boston through multiple years. Do you know what Boston winters feel like? They feel just like Rochester winters. There was no difference in feeling. The only difference I saw was actually the size of the blizzards. Rochester gets a lot of snow. But it's an inch here, an inch there in a few days of fluffy lake snow. Boston gets heavy wet snow in large dump ons from the ocean and Nor'easter's. I've driven through them. I was driving back from Rochester to Boston one year and got stuck in a blizzard on the Mass Turnpike. It took me 6 hours to travel a distance that normally took me 2 hours.

As for Phoenix heat, way to downplay the heat lol. These are other comments from a Phoenix forum in just the last day in a thread complaining about the heat. They seem to disagree with your assessments and state that it's completely normal to still be getting 100 degrees.

t isn't that they didn't know it would be 100 degrees still. It's just that they're tired of it by the time September rolls around. I've lived here 30+ years but I can still relate to this.

It always is, September comes in innthe 100's goes out in the 90's

October comes in the 90's goes out in the 80's

November comes in the 80's goes out in the 70's etc.

Ive only been here since 2016, and it seems I can recall it hitting 100 on Halloween.

I moved here December of 2016, I recall seeing highs in the 90's just a couple of weeks before I moved down and worrying that my horse was going to melt...

Mid November there used to be cold snaps, it’s been a while.

People elsewhere ***** about clouds and rain. I ***** about too much sun.

F u sun. Go away for a while

It normally is. It will start getting below 100 in September, but it wont get cool enough to enjoy outside until October or so.

After living here for 25 years, I’ve had enough of the sun and I’m eagerly awaiting a mad scientist creating a weather machine to create constant clouds or some kind of Storm from Xmen type situation.

I was born and raised here and after 30+ years, I start getting antsy in September for the sun to just chill out.

It's always "Sun this!" and "Sun that!"...

Always so smug with its big fat shiny face in Arizona's business like "look at me, I'm the sun! I'm a mass of incandescent gas!"

And then it gets lazy and just dumps out the whole bottle of Vitamin D on Phoenix.

[Crazy-Cat-Lady]

The winters in Rochester aren't that bad. For me, it's the summers that are unbearable. The heat and humidity this summer have made me ill. Most older buildings are simply not designed to be cool.

[FirebirdCamaro1220]

Originally Posted by db2797

umm I've lived in Boston through multiple years. Do you know what Boston winters feel like? They feel just like Rochester winters. There was no difference in feeling. The only difference I saw was actually the size of the blizzards. Rochester gets a lot of snow. But it's an inch here, an inch there in a few days of fluffy lake snow. Boston gets heavy wet snow in large dump ons from the ocean and Nor'easter's. I've driven through them. I was driving back from Rochester to Boston one year and got stuck in a blizzard on the Mass Turnpike. It took me 6 hours to travel a distance that normally took me 2 hours.

As for Phoenix heat, way to downplay the heat lol. These are other comments from a Phoenix forum in just the last day in a thread complaining about the heat. They seem to disagree with your assessments and state that it's completely normal to still be getting 100 degrees.

Yes our normal High is still 100°, but will be down to 97° by next Saturday, and by Halloween our normal high is down to 83°. Mornings are already noticeably cooler than in summer. Our normal low is now only 77° (was 86° in mid July), and will be down to 74° next Saturday and 60° by Halloween. Keep in mind that it doesn't feel near as hot as those temps would back east due to shorter days and lower sun angles here in October compared to July in the Northeast, as well as lower humidity. So I'm not downplaying anything. 95° here with low humidity feels the same as mid to upper 80's back east with the higher humidity. And you get used to the heat here too. Nobody swims in outdoor pools here after September even though it's still "hot"

[Delahanty]

I agree with most of the pluses mentioned. I really do like the change of seasons, too.

The obsession with weather reports around here is the pits. For example, the meteorologist broke into WOF and has been flapping his gums for 10 minutes (so far) because of a rainstorm. Every 10 minutes, there's a weather report on the radio, too.

And the gray skies...I don't even have SAD, but I can understand how some people are adversely affected. This summer was beautiful, though.

Oh, and the stink bugs arrived...Yuck.