Rich Creek COVID-FLEEING NEW YORKERS ARE MOVING UPSTATE IN RECORD NUMBERS, WRITES MATTHEW PHILLP. BUT WHEN THESE NEWCOMERS CAN’T ADJUST THEIR BIG CITY EXPECTATIONS TO SIMPLE COUNTRY LIVING, HILARITY ENSUES ILLUSTRATIONS BY CELYN BRAZIER
“P
ut it this way,” explains realtor Erin Flaherty, “there’s a two-to-threeyear waiting list to have contractors break ground on a swimming pool in Woodstock right now.” Sitting by the fishpond in her Woodstock backyard, the Halter Associates Realty agent marvels at the current property boom in the upstate counties nearest to New York City, which is unlike anything in living memory. According to the National Association of Realtors, Ulster County saw a second quarter increase of 17.6 percent in home prices between 2019 and 2020, the highest increase in any US metropolitan region; neighboring Dutchess and Putnam Counties saw a boost of 6 percent. “There are almost no rentals available either,” Flaherty says. “Scoring a desirable house upstate is like winning the lottery—and it’s a lottery you pay a lot of money to enter.” When Covid measures effectively shut down life in the five boroughs last year, many New York City residents made a snap decision to try full-time rural living. As a result, small towns are now bursting at the seams with New Yorkers in search of the simple life. The result has been scenes playing out like real-life versions of (depending on your generational frame of reference) Green Acres or Schitt’s Creek, with cashed-up city slickers confronted by pared-down country amenities that don’t always satisfy their metropolitan expectations. “Most restaurants up here don’t deliver,” says one frustrated Ulster restaurateur. “That hasn’t stopped the calls from people who want us to
deliver dishes that we don’t even make. One lady called the other night at closing, she wanted a platter of unseasoned, skinless, grilled chicken breasts. When I said we couldn’t help, she berated me for wasting the time she’d spent explaining her order. I wanted to say, ‘Calm down, it’s just dinner!’” Of course, upstate towns like Woodstock, Saugerties, Hudson, Phoenicia, and Rhinebeck have been popular escapes for New Yorkers for decades. The region has a robust cultural legacy— including the legendary three-day “Aquarian Exposition” of 1969, known around the world simply as Woodstock—that reaches back a century. Since 1903, the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild has attracted countless artists, among them Bob Dylan, sculptor Eva Hesse, painter Philip Guston, and the Broadway legend Helen Hayes, whose namesake hospital in West Haverstraw is still in operation. For this reason, along with its bucolic charms, the region is a magnet for the most successful among the city’s creative class. Iman and her late husband, David Bowie, purchased a 50acre Woodstock compound in 2011—on whose grounds the singer’s ashes were reportedly scattered following his 2016 death. From the Hollywood crowd, the actors Paul Rudd and Jeffrey Dean Morgan own Samuel’s Sweet Shop in Rhinebeck. Amanda Seyfried, Michelle Williams, and Blake Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, all have homes upstate, as does the photographer Terry Richardson. Flaherty, a former Harper’s Bazaar executive editor who owns homes on Manhattan’s East MARCH—APRIL 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE
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