Dec 10, 2007

Gift-givers share area’s culture with locally made goodsBy Daniel WallaceDemocratandChronicle.com

Joyce Bledsoe has got a thing for Rochester. The 64-year-old resident of Jacksonville, Fla., has been enthralled with the area ever since shopping at a Wegmans store in October while visiting her daughter and son-in-law, Wendy and Mark Haglin, who recently moved to Fairport.

Bledsoe is back in town to help her daughter through her pregnancy. “I’ve been holding off my Christmas shopping for this trip,” she said, and she was delighted when she walked into the Penfield Wegmans on Wednesday and saw a tall, festive display of Rochester-themed gift baskets and boxes.

“I was trying to figure out how many I could buy to send home as gifts,” she said.

Gift boxes created exclusively of items made in the Rochester area are hot this holiday season. Food, artwork, books, wines, even neckties that say “Rochester” are big this year, according to area merchants.

At Stever’s Candies on Park Avenue, the store is again offering its signature Rochester-themed chocolate molds. Solid milk chocolate and dark chocolate pieces are sculpted with Rochester’s skyline or the Erie Canal, and the store sells a photo box of chocolates adorned with a Rochester postcard.

Giving the gift of Rochester is nothing new for Barbra Kelley, who does most of her holiday shopping at The Creator’s Hands in the High Falls district.

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