Spent my first 35 years of my life roughly in ROC. Moved 5 years ago.
Lived in and graduated from Fairport, and will say as others have said, east side is def better than west side. (I had heard that the wealthy people chose to settle on the east side originally so that when they were going to the city in the morning and leaving the city in the evening that the sun was always behind them, not sure if that is true though haha)
Most of my friends still live there, and my brother still lives there in Pittsford. When I was younger, the only real nightlife was downtown ROC, but have since heard that no one goes downtown anymore. In turn, I heard Fairport has a decent strip of bars and people tend to stay/go there for a night out now (wish that was the case when I was younger!)
My family has seasons for bills games for over 20+ years and it is doable from ROC, but it does take awhile to get home from games, cant imagine what it is like now with the drought long being over.