The Rochester-Jamestown Vortex

I've lived in Jamestown, NY for nearly 15 years now. A few years after I moved here, I started realizing all these odd connections between people who had moved to Rochester or people who came here from my hometown. I've jokingly called it the "Rochester-Jamestown Vortex," saying it's like our own little Twilight Zone or Bermuda Triangle.

My favorite experience with this was taking Matt, before we knew he had a seafood allergy, to my preferred sushi joint in Rochester for the first time. I had mentioned to Matt that one of the Sushi Chefs at the time had lived in Jamestown once. As we sat down at the bar and I started to make introductions, Matt says,

"Barry??"

Turns out Barry and Matt had taken a critical thinking class together at Jamestown Community College. What I thought would have been a possible "Oh, do you know so and so from back there?" conversation was more of a, "Remember in class when this happened?" and "Remember that professor?" situation.

Research has backed me up at least on the number of people moving to Chautauqua County from Monroe County, NY. WROC's Rachel Barnhart posted about her blog about the inbound/outbound migration for Monroe County, noting that 375 people moved from there to our fair corner of Western New York. If you want to see where people have move to or from for your county, you can research that info here.