Well, it’s that time of year again: time to trot out the best of the best, by readers’ choice, of all that is Rochester. I always enjoy reading the City Best of Rochester winners. City has such a great off-the-cuff sense of humor, it takes the pretention out of such a contest.
This year, The Buddhahood took the awards for both Best Band and Best Band Name, which is pretty cool. I hope they take this as a sign that folks around here want to keep seeing them at the Park Ave Fest! Close to my heart, Show World on Brighton-Henrietta TLR took best porn store, and if you don’t know that by now, you need to quit whacking off to PornoTube.com. Oh, of course you don’t.
On the political and media fronts, the Critic’s Choice awards makes a point to award Best Blatant Example of Nepotism award to Riga’s Pamela Moore. For more of the skin-diggity on Pam, check out RT’s coverage. Also appreciated was the Best Pointless Crusade award, granted to the D&C’s editorial department and The Inimitable James Lawrence for their bold stance on a long-dead Gansta Rap trend.
Now for the bad news:
Allow me to gently suggest to the good people at City Newspaper that “Best Website” is very 1997. It’s a bit like saying “Best Store,” . . best for what? It seems strange to have to say this in 2007, but the Internet has moved on exponentially in terms of both complexity and available content. I’m glad RocWiki.org got the nod, but really, without any kind of qualifying category beyond “website,” it’s basically pretty random. There are some great restaurant websites, some great blogs (eh-hem), alternative news, all kinds of things. Moreover, there is room to consider usability, features, layout, “cool factor,” and a host of other factors. You can’t tell me that Mustard Street and ToGoTaxi.com are in the same category, right?
The same argument could be made for other categories, it’s true. But, maybe what is required is that they display the “Best of the Best” in the paper and leave the rest for the “Online Extra.” That would save them expensive paper and give them an extra opportunity at exclusive web advertisement space.
But, that’s just my two cents on a dog-sick Thursday morning wishing I was home. Oh, did I mention I don’t feel good?
2 replies on “City News “Best of Rochester Awards” Out”
You know…
Next year they ought to have a best unknown for each topic. Because let’s face it, there’s plenty more in this city that just doesn’t get noticed and thus, nobody cares. Great songwriters and musicians, better cover-bands than the same 3 that everyone is I’m sure pretty familiar with by now, some amazing artists that you’d never know about unless you’re out there looking for it, some excellent restaurants that haven’t really gotten the word out yet…
… and of course really cool local websites like this one. Not that I’d have a personal stake in getting more people to read this page or check out (ehem) unknown musicians in the Rochester area.
😉
Yeah, I’d say that as much as the City News Best Of thing is an improvement over anything you’d expect the D&C to do, an accommodation of the lesser-known is in fact precisely what this town needs. Not a popularity contest.
But hey! All in good fun!