FuckYeahRochester

Jan 23

(Kodak Tower from Ambrose Street and Lake Avenue, image courtesy of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, location details courtesy of my friend Steve, who likes Rochester more than I do.)

This post represents a slight digression from the intended content of this blog, but one of my intermediate stops before arriving here in lovely southern California was the incredibly depressing (sorry, Rochester, but it’s true) Rust Belt city of Rochester, New York. Rochester enjoyed rapid growth in the mid-1800s thanks to the construction of the Erie Canal. At one point, the city was apparently not a decrepit wasteland, and owed this glory in no small part to the Eastman Kodak Company, established in 1889 by George Eastman. Along with Bausch & Lomb and Xerox, which were founded during the same era, Kodak provided thousands of jobs and spurred Rochester to a peak population of 332,488 in 1950¹. The influence of the three companies on the Rochester economy, and, in turn, the deleterious effect of their decline, cannot be underestimated. The New York Times notes that “twenty-five years ago, [Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, and Xerox] employed 60 percent of Rochester’s work force. Today, it is six percent.”²

So, Eastman Kodak filed for Chapter 11 today³, which I think means we can all stop speculating about when it’s going to happen. Even when I moved to Rochester in 2006, there were rumblings about the seemingly bleak future of the Kodak brand. In the same year, the University of Rochester surpassed Eastman Kodak as the largest employer in Rochester, thanks in no small part to the University of Rochester Medical Center⁴. While on an Amtrak train from Rochester to New York City in fall 2008, I spoke with a Kodak retiree who predicted that the company would file for bankruptcy within five years. There was discussion, he said, of eliminating pensions for some of the less recent retirees. If that ends up being the case, at least the poor guy has the satisfaction of being correct in his prediction?

Because it was so slow and withering, the demise of Kodak is perhaps most significant in an emotional sense. The economic damage is already done, as evidenced by the shrinking population and undeniably rampant poverty in the city. The New York Times calls the bankruptcy “the wrenching culmination of a slide over decades.”⁵ For more than a century, Rochester was its industry; the city was inextricably linked to the famous commercial goods it produced. Now, it is left to continue establishing a new identity based primarily around the research being conducted at its universities.⁶ ^,^7,⁸Most of this research is incredibly interesting on a global scale^{especially the enormous fucking laser}. Unfortunately, these jobs do not benefit unskilled workers, and with the absolutely dire state of public education in the city, research jobs are unattainable for a large portion of the population. A sea change is happening in Rochester, but probably at the expense of the already-marginalized, and a major reform will have to occur before a true improvement in quality of life there is seen. As a university student in Rochester, I often felt quite isolated from the rest of its residents, but now I can’t help but feel a great deal of sympathy for those who will be most affected by the bankruptcy and subsequent restructuring.

And yes, for the record, I did have Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome” on repeat while writing this even though they took his Kodachrome away in 2009.

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Because I’m fair and balanced, I’ll note that the Rochester metropolitan statistical area accounts for half of all job growth in upstate New York.