Awed in Rochester
How residents experienced a total solar eclipse of 2024
When darkness retreated in Rochester for the first time on April 8, the grass felt alive and dewy under the feet and robins made pronouncements in the shining treetops.
It was the start of what promised to be a magical day.
People zipped by in their cars with purpose or rose from their slumber in search of coffee and shared greetings: “Happy Eclipse Day!”
This is also how the sun graced us at 6:24 a.m. Monday in western New York — strong and warm and cheerful. Big news, it said. The show is today. Be safe and watchful in the coming hours under my light.
The upper troposphere over Rochester had other ideas, though. Cloud cover vied for the stage and won.
Anticipated throngs of people never quite materialized. And the celestial dance was hidden from us.
Still, people in every square mile of Monroe County and adjacent counties came together, pausing their lives, and mingling with friends and strangers.
It was monumental, and the Democrat and Chronicle recorded much of it. Here’s what we saw.
BY FOOT, BIKE, TRAIN, PLANE, CAR
By mid-morning, the South Wedge was finally waking up. The skateboarders had passed through, the delivery trucks had left and the line started to snake around for coffee inside LGBTQ+ hangout and coffee shop Equal Grounds. Nearby, Gregory Alan Rogers, 71, walked off a tidy street and past a statue of the city’s namesake, Nathaniel Rochester, who had purchased land here after the Revolutionary War and laid out the orderly grid of early avenues. Rogers sat on cold stone, like Rochester, and unlike him was eating a blueberry muffin. The birds noticed. He had ridden Amtrak 550 miles from Indiana to visit a friend in town and see the eclipse. And he was ready. Tourists packed in our favorite haunts and most scenic open areas in the parks and by Lake Ontario. No single wave of looky-loos flooded into town during the day Monday. It was steady and progressive. The energy at Ontario Beach Park was strong. Footballs were flying, children were laughing and longtime Rochester friends Salvadora Guzman and Arinda Molina-Collins were cranking out late-1970s tunes while sipping red wine. The two arrived by 10:30 a.m. “We wanted to get a nice spot to experience this,” said Arinda Molina-Collins, 57.
“And it’s great people watching,” added Guzman, 59, as Michael Jackson’s “Rock With You” played. “It’s gonna clear up.”
The optimism dissipated with every passing hour — with every new layer of clouds.
Lunch was an event, if you were out and about. The line at Dogtown, “where the best hot dogs live,” stretched more than 37 people before noon on Monday.
Logistics and, well, weiners were on their minds. Eclipse-goers in cars jammed the area. Parking was a mess — “I forgot my f--ing wallet” — lamented one man stepping out of a minivan. On the patio, a group of collegeage men and women piled into garbage plates, a Hawaiian dog, a Golden Retriever.
Of course, the hots got the best reviews. “The bread is so good,” exulted a student wearing pink anime ears. “This is what my parents worked so hard for,” she said, with a giggle.
A shih tzu — a visitor not a lunch order — waited patiently for its bun. Every seat and open space inside was filled with people. The Dogtown cashier sent back order after order. Saturday night had set records for the business.
To Ramon Rayford, though, the day was just another Monday. He has owned Mass Appeal barber shop on East Main Street for about a decade. April 8 was made special only by his father’s 81st birthday.
“I think it’s overhyped,” he said of the eclipse. “I don’t think it’s going to change much of anything going on. I think people are making a big deal out of nothing.”
PREPARED FOR THE ECLIPSE
Savannah Cook of Rochester has been here 10 years, from Corning originally. Ryan Der from Baltimore was with her at midday Monday and later at Highland Park stretched out on a blanket.
“She’s my tour guide,” he said as they smiled and tightly held hands. “The best tour guide. The prettiest.”
More smiles.
Eighty Monroe County residents gathered at the Henrietta Senior Center. They were at the center for the lunch it offers regularly, but everyone was talking about the day’s unusual happenings. Florence Brown and Julie Adams sat together at a table, where they examined eclipse-themed artwork from students.
In downtown Rochester, Maze Pelham of Baltimore arrived with his family. When he was a fifth-grader, he watched news of the 2017 solar eclipse and vowed he would be present in person for the next solar eclipse of note. That eclipse, and that day, had come. And this is why he and his parents, Janice and Sonney Pelham, left Maryland around 1 a.m. Monday to make the long drive.
Why did the Pelhams choose Rochester as their viewing spot? The 17-year-old Maze did his research and found the city’s Parcel 5 eclipse-watching plans. “It’s got all the amenities,” he said, referring to temporary bathrooms and food trucks. And the view of Monday afternoon’s eclipse looking to the south would be ideal, he said, speaking at a time when the sun was still shining.
In the hour leading up to the eclipse, a teen strummed folksy tunes on his guitar at the Tinker Nature Center. Adults chatted around telescopes, hoping to catch a view of the eclipse in the coming minutes.
Laura Olivares, a high school Spanish teacher from New York City, traveled more than five hours to make the event at the Henrietta center. Olivares said she woke up in the middle of the night last week, did a deep YouTube dive on eclipses and became determined to see the total eclipse.
For Tony Kemmer, the outing marked the first time he has been in public since the pandemic.
“To me, it’s special because it’s my first
time out after COVID,” Kemmer said. “It’s very exciting to be a part of this.”
People planned where they would be on this day, either making a special gathering or at least stepping out of work, the grocery store or the barbershop to stand in communion under the sky, surrounded by the Rochesterness of it all.
YOU ARE THE SUN. I AM THE MOON.
Many people on University of Rochester’s Eastman Quadrangle actually did see the sun and the moon Monday afternoon. The moon’s name is Rianna Ehrenreich and the sun goes by Alexana Dubois. The pair each wore costumes and spent much of the afternoon “eclipsing” each other.
Ehrenreich, an astrophysics and history double major and senior from Silver Springs, Maryland, realized when she toured UR four years ago that the eclipse would occur during her senior year.
“I kind of forgot about the day for a while, but then I remembered,” said the president of the campus Astronomy Club.
Like many others, the clouds didn’t hinder her enthusiasm amid all the posing for photos she did with Dubois, a senior and English major from California.
“It’s going to be an eerie experience,” she said about 20 minutes before totality, referring to the cooling of the air, the picking up of a breeze and, in nature, the stirring of nocturnal animals.
A few miles away, Jack Ryan and Rebecca Lassey were getting married at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in downtown Rochester during the eclipse window.
They said vows and then all 85 people came out to watch the day darken. The couple has been dating for two years since they met in a musical at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where they were students.
The wedding reception was at the modern, glass-roofed The Wintergarden, so they could see the sky on the day of their nuptials.
At the Plush Wig Room a neighborhood away, Asia Fadlelmula worked on her 17-yearold sister, London Jones, as her mother looked on. It will be prom soon.
Fadlelmula, who runs her own three-chair salon, works hard to keep a small business going.
“Rochester has a lot of great talent and great potential for success,” said her mother, Chavon Manor, a real estate agent and a nurse.
“As long as you are searching, there is always an opportunity to grow, to evolve, to be educated, to find success for yourself.”
Fadlelmula was done with the teasing and oiling — her sister is getting ready for extensions now that she is grown.
“If you go down the side streets and the back alleyways, Rochester has a lot of beauty and depth you don’t see on the surface,” she said. They hoped visitors would keep an open mind and embrace the city.
IT’S HAPPENING
When the eclipse began, excitement heightened. Yes, this is happening.
Bob Bogwicz is a freelance engineer who lives for super-modified racing and the car he has poured tens of thousand of dollars into. He was sitting alone in an empty lot on the rough part of Monroe Avenue by the boarded-up Monroe Theater. His lawn chair was facing the sky where the eclipse would be happening behind the clouds.
As he sat, more people arrived — just a few.
A guy named Laser and his sister and his niece pulled up in cars on the lawn and brought out the bottles and music. An RIT professor set up next to Bob and graded papers while they waited.
A neighbor named Samantha, with a nervous rescue/support dog named Baxter wandered over, talking with jittery energy. Baxter shivered and got held in a warm embrace during the rest of the eclipse event.
Down the street, two men had been sitting outside the coin laundry while a third man dozed upright with his eyes mostly closed.
Mark Sanders, who has lived here since 1978, and Fred Daniel, who has lived here a decade, shared eclipse information and talked about craters and meteors and dinosaurs. Sanders was eager for the eclipse. He spoke, also, of the street drug scene on Monroe Avenue: Powdered coke, crack, heroin, fentanyl, ice.
“You name it, they got it,” drawled Daniel. “Or they can find it.”
Sanders saw the partial eclipse — threequarters — in 2017. “Outside of the sun, you could see fireburst and you could see just like layers, pulses of sun coming around the moon. That was cool.”
Lydia Ramos stood outside her Higher
Level Smoke Shop with a friend.
For Ramos, it was a mystical day. Somewhere, this has been written, she said in a hushed tone.
DARKNESS DROPS IN
As 3:20 p.m. approached, the sky looked as if it would burst open with rain. It darkened through the clouds. When the light vanished, gasps and cheers went up around town. People yelled at the heavens and encouraged the moon’s solo performance.
When totality came, of course, cloud cover meant all those eclipse glasses we all bought were of no use. If other parts of the country could look up and see the round moon blocking the sun, Rochesterians and our visitors could not.
Pets quivered and a baby cried in the distance. Any crowd that was lighting up or drinking began to holler.
At UR, it was more about quiet and a shared moment of awe and solemnity. Some gasps could be heard as everyone experienced nighttime in daytime. In a generation where life is documented on Instagram and TikTok, phones were raised to record what was occurring.
The breeze picked up a bit. A chill floated through the air. Lights went on along the exterior of Rush Rhees Library.
In Henrietta, frogs croaked and birds sang. People clamored to take photos of a sky as dark as midnight.
There was time to draw a breath and listen and look around. Other people pulled at our eyes as much as any manmade lighting in the frame.
We were together.
END OF THE PLAY
Darkness drained away in Rochester for the second time on April 8, grass felt cool and still under our feet and seagulls cawed their amazement overhead.
Aiden Abruzzino of the goth clothing and accessories store called Eclipse on Monroe Avenue in Rochester stepped out to watch the sky.
Abruzzino said seeing the community come together was fantastic. “People of all types hanging out and bonding over one thing,” he said.
He was still outside for the post-total eclipse, ultra-rapid, unreal second dawn on one of the most memorable days of our lifetimes.
Time started again. People looked around and shared reactions.
Across town, Kelly Douglass, a UR professor of physics and astronomy, reflected. “I was deeply moved. I didn’t expect it to be so powerful.”
At Lake Ontario, Arinda Molina-Collins raised her arms in triumph.
“It’s one of those things you can’t imagine,” she said. “You can’t fully capture it on camera. It was amazing. We obviously didn’t get the full experience, but we actually did. The whole darkness and how everyone was feeling, the vibe, it was incredible.”
This is how the sun surprised us at 3:24 p.m. Monday in western New York, hiding behind its dancing partner. Although it was secreted behind the clouds, we saw its presence through the incredibly rare chiaroscuro.
And if we listened closely, we might have heard it laughing.
— Sarah Taddeo, Mike Kilian, Alex Gladden, David Osborn and David Robinson contributed to this article.