What is true of aircraft carriers is also true of the University of Rochester—it’s like a small, self-contained city, with everything you need on board.
Freshmen can find everything necessary to sustain themselves within a 15 minute walk from their dorm room, all without ever leaving the comfortable hemisphere of the River Campus. There’s a market (located in the first floor of Susan B. Anthony Residence Hall), two cafeterias, a post office, a Starbucks and even a hairdresser in Wilson Commons. The very few things that can’t be purchased on campus can be obtained on a excursion to Target or Walmart. To get off campus to those stores, you can take the Green Line on Saturday—which is really like not stepping off campus at all. Even if you’re feeling bored and want to go into the city, the same shuttle can be taken to the mall for an afternoon of fun, or to a movie theater.
But, just as fish aren’t meant to live in a box, college students aren’t meant to live in a bubble. There’s a lot going on in Rochester, although you might have to dig through several feet of snow to find it. For freshman seeking an escape from the River Campus, and a gateway to the exciting Rochester scene, College Town is a decent place to start. It’s convenient, and certainly one of the closest shopping centers. You can walk there in 20 minutes from the south end of campus, by following Elmwood Avenue alongside the cemetery, less than a mile to the intersection with Mount Hope Avenue.
Opened last October, the College Town Barnes and Noble is a two-story landmark on the corner of Elmwood and Mount Hope Avenues. Standard bookstore fare (that is to say…books) are available, but the store also offers a wide selection of Rochester apparel and memorabilia, including the ubiquitous blue-and-yellow UR hoodie.
The upper level is devoted to textbooks; offering all required and recommended texts for classes. The second floor also has many required items other than textbooks, such as engineering paper and circle templates. (However, anyone as smart as a UR student is of course smart enough to know the value of comparison shopping—and might save two or three hundred dollars by shopping elsewhere.)
Aside from the flagship bookstore, College Town also offers an assortment of new markets and other businesses. Saxbys Coffee, an alternative to the campus coffee shops, is located right next door to the bookstore.
Further down the street is The Beer Market, a bar and grill catering to students and the community. Inside the College Town center, the ‘breathe’ yoga studio offers beginner and advanced classes—handy for those students who were too late to sign up for Dance 114: Introduction to Yoga.
One unique joy of College Town is Insomnia Cookies. For all those times when you are staying up late to study, and savory snacks like pizza or wings just weren’t enough to sustain you, Insomnia Cookies is the answer you never knew you were looking for. Seven days a week, if you feel the urge, you can have cookies delivered right to your dorm between the hours of midnight and 3 a.m. The store also offers brownies, milk, ice cream and lots of toppings also available for delivery. (Editor’s note: Daily cookie consumption not endorsed by the FDA.)
Just down the street from the bookstore, a pair of restaurants offer easy alternatives for weekend dinner. Corner Bakery Cafe is just what it says in its name, even down to being located on the corner Elmwood Avenue and Mount Hope Avenue.
Next door, Moe’s Southwest Grill holds the distinction of being the only southwest-style eatery in the entire Monroe County region.
College Town occupies one entire corner of the busy Mt. Hope/Elmwood intersection, but it is far from the only thing going on in the area. Part of the reason the College Town location is so convenient is that it’s located in a busy (at least by Rochester standards) area. There’s a CVS on the opposite corner, and farther down Mt. Hope Avenue, students can find barbershops, Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, Bruegger’s Bagels, frozen yogurt, and local bar and grill Bunga Burger Bar.
Some other locations include The Creator’s Hand, an arts & crafts store; Texas de Brazil, a restaurant that “blends together the unique culture of Brazil, with the generous hospitality of Texas,” according to the College Town website; and Spitale Laser Spa Salon, a laser spa salon.
Some locations that are coming soon include Saha Med Grill, a Mediterranean restaurant, and Rochester Running Company, providing the “latest in athletic shoes and apparel, numerous carefully-designed running or walking routes originating from the store, weekly group runs, and a custom tailored shoe fitting service,” according to the website.
College Town is easily accessible by walking in the fall, and by cross-country skiing in the winter and “spring.”
Or, students may choose to get there via the College Town Express shuttle, which runs between Rush Rhees Library and Mount Hope Avenue on weekends; the Blue line after 6 p.m. on weekdays and all of the weekend; and the Green line on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 5 p.m. to 8:45 p.m.
Passanisi is a member of the class of 2017.
