The Best Of Everything Issue (2019) by saratogalivingmagazine

THE STATE OF OUR WATER: A MUST-READ INVESTIGATIon

BY NATALIE MOORE

*{car wars: who snagged the million dollar mirage?}

f o t s e b e th thing issue! y r e ev

SEPTEMBER OCTOBER 2019

T H E CIT Y. THE CU LT U R E. TH E LIFE.

IVES S U L C X E

ultimate THE

OGA SARAT Z A2 GUIDE

DORINDA MEDLEY, FOR REAL

‘The Real Housewives Of New York City’ star spends a wild day talking love, fame and saratoga. And, yeah, she made it nice. By Richard Pérez-Feria photography by

Dori Fitzpatrick

Yaddo, All Access

Saratoga’s fabled artists’ colony is ready for its closeup—again. By Jeff Dingler photography by

Kyle Adams

art by

Robert RISKO

GE: Then, Now, Next

Schenectady’s corporate behemoth is facing YET another challenge. In business, is the past always prologue? By Will Levith

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inside

september | october 2019

EXCLUSIVES 38

DORINDA GETS REAL BY R IC HA R D P É R E Z- F E R I A

photography by

D O RI FITZ PAT RIC K

the best of everything! 49

THE OBVIOUS CHOICE

T H E 2 0 1 9 U LT I M AT E S A R AT O G A A 2 Z G U I D E photography by

M O RG A N RELY E A

YADDO, WITHOUT WORDS photography by

K Y LE A DA M S

YADDO, WITH WORDS BY J E F F D IN G L E R

art by

RO B ERT RIS KO

LIZZIE GILL’S BEAUTIFUL, STILL WORLD BY N I C O L E IA N N I E LLO

77 THE STORY YOU HAVE TO READ:

SARATOGA’S WATER BY N ATA L I E M O O R E

photography by

D O RI FITZ PAT RIC K

IN PLAIN SIGHT BY J E F F D IN G L E R

photography by

FR A N C ESC O D ’A M ICO

GE & ME

BY W ILL L E V I TH photography by

K Y LE A DA M S

brava! The Real Housewives Of New York City star, Dorinda Medley, lives it up in Saratoga. PHOTOGR A PHY BY D OR I FI TZPT R I CK

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inside september | october 2019

12 MVP 14 From The Editor 16 Preview 114

the front

106

SARATOGA WINE & FOOD FESTIVAL: BACK TO NATURE BY M ITC HE LL FA M U L A R E

photography by

K AT IE D O B IES

108

MAN, DO WE LOVE COVER BANDS OR WHAT? BY DA N IE L N E STE R

photography by

ERIC H U SS

114

IF YOU LOVE SARATOGA... BY M A RC O M E DR A N O

120

AFTER THE RACE: WHERE ARE THEY NOW? BY B R I E N B O U Y E A

photography by

FR A N C ES C O D ’A M IC O

126

THE BUSY SUMMER MEET AT SARATOGA RACE COURSE

with no wrinkles C

the back

136 Calendar:

Jerry Seinfeld

138 Beautiful Design: 90210 142 Horse Travel: Pegasus World Cup

There’s no better time.

CMY

146 Food: Hatties 148 Drink: Henry Street Taproom 150 Saratoga After Dark: St. Jude’s Gala 156 Star Gazing: Libras Tip The Scale 159 Play: Crossword Puzzle 159 Overheard

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Richard Pérez-Feria EDITOR IN CHIEF

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

MANAGING EDITOR SENIOR WRITER DESIGNER LUXURY EDITOR SPORTS EDITOR DESIGN EDITOR ARTS EDITOR ASSISTANT EDITOR SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS

ON THE COVER

The Real Housewives Of New York City star Dorinda Medley photographed by Dori Fitzpatrick exclusively for saratoga living. Hair: Desiree Carnibucci; Makeup: Rachael Lund, both at Complexions Spa for Beauty & Wellness, Saratoga Springs. Assistant: Hannah Sacks. Shot on location in Saratoga Springs.

EXECUTIVE EDITOR

EDITORS AT LARGE

Kathleen Gates Will Levith Natalie Moore Jeff Dingler Linda Gates Marco Medrano Brien Bouyea Beverly Tracy Bill Henning Hannah Kotler Dori Fitzpatrick Mitchell Famulare, David Feld Kelsey Fredricks, Chloe Knapp Olivia Mendlinger, Morgan Relyea Hannah Sacks, Katja Valz Greg Calejo, Susan Gates James Long

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Karen Bjornland, Tony Case, Colin Cowie, Kyan Douglas Arthur Gerunda, Kate Doyle Hooper, Cornelia Guest Simon Murray, Octavio Roca, Kevin Sessums, Zachary Weiss WRITERS

Jonah Bayliss, Rosie Case, Jennifer Cook, Zachary Gold Rebecca Hardiman, Nicole Ianniello, Jacqueline Kuron Sandy MacDonald, Maria McBride Bucciferro, Sarah Midani Lisa Mitzen, Melissa Morreale, Katie Navarra, Daniel Nester Tom Pedulla, Mitch Rustad, Joe “Woody” Wood ARTISTS / PHOTOGRAPHERS

Kyle Adams, Fahnon Bennett, Gabriella Boschetti, Tracey Buyce David Cowles, Francesco D’Amico, Katie Dobies Eric Huss, Keiko Kimura, Billy Francis LeRoux Anna Murray, Konrad Odhiambo, Terri-Lynn Pellegri Susie Raisher, Robert Risko, Myrna Suárez, TJ Tracy

saratoga living is published six times a year by Saratoga Living LLC. subscriptions: Domestic, $24.95 per year; Canadian, $44.95 per year (non-refundable). saratoga living 422 Broadway, Suite 203 Saratoga Springs, NY 12866

To Support Our Lend-A-Hand Grant Program

Through your generous support, we have distributed over 150 grants to local nonprofits whose programs have deeply impacted our community. With your help and support we can do even more. Tuesday, October 22, 2019 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. Longfellows Restaurant 500 Union Avenue Saratoga Springs

Purchase Tickets at Atccf.org/Events Adirondack Trust Company proudly matches all proceeds from this event.

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Volume 21, No. 5, September/October 2019 Copyright © 2019 Saratoga Living LLC All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted or otherwise reproduced without written permission from Saratoga Living LLC. All editorial queries should be directed to editorial@saratogaliving.com; or sent to 422 Broadway, Suite 203, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866. saratoga living assumes no responsibility for unsolicited submissions.

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10 saratoga living

⁄ SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2019

Special thanks to Longfellows Restaurant, our event sponsor.

Locally sourced ingredients, sustainable culinary practices, cultural experiences, and the finest wines curated from around the world, this year’s Wine and Food Festival on October 4-5, 2019, will be a tantalizing feast for the senses! The weekend destination event will feature mouth-watering gourmet tastings from the Capital Region’s best restaurants, a new exquisite farm-to-table dinner, art and performance, innovative pairings, chef demonstrations on sustainability and VIP experiences all presented in a beautiful setting overlooking the opulent Spa State Park reflecting pool.

October 4 - 5

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FRI, OCT 4 Farm-to-Table Harvest Dinner SAT, OCT 5 Grand Tasting

A harvest festival celebrating the culinary and cultural bounty of the Capital Region.

JEFF DINGLER saratoga living

www.adkgreatcamps.com • Info@adkgreatcamps.com

SENIOR WRITER

’ve always been the go-to literary guy among my circle of friends. Writing has been my passion since grade school, and working as a senior writer at saratoga living has afforded me the opportunity to interview everyone from established authors, including Pulitzer Prize winners Richard Russo and Anna Quindlen; to important up-and-comers such as Lauren Wilkinson, whose debut novel, American Spy, got a favorable review in The New York Times and made President Barack Obama’s latest summer reading list. As a Saratoga Springs area journalist, I’ve also had the chance to get a much closer look at one of the literary world’s (and city’s) more mysterious fixtures: Yaddo, the renowned artists’ retreat, which sits adjacent to Saratoga Race Course. While covering the secluded colony on saratogaliving.com has been incredibly enlightening, being assigned a face-to-face interview for the magazine with Yaddo’s president, Elaina Richardson, was the assignment of a lifetime. I know what you’re thinking: Did I get nervous before speaking with the equivalent to a literary king- or queenmaker? You bet. But Richardson was remarkably kind, friendly and a dream to interview. saratoga living is a gig I’m grateful to have.

Cultivate the Extraordinary

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Join Us Under the Stars!

from the editor

best

happy wife The Real Housewives Of New York City star Dorinda Medley cracks me up, as usual, at The Adelphi Hotel.

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14 saratoga living

⁄ SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2019

Serena Williams and Rafael Nadal— the two greatest competitors in sports—get it done, time and time again. Simply put, they’re the best at what they do, something I’ve always strived for myself. As I write this, with the din of 24-hour cable news in the background, it’s undeniable that we’re all living through complicated, tumultuous, divisive times, to say the least. Right now, even for the gentlest of souls amongst us, to be best presents myriad, nearly unsurmountable challenges. But, alas, we must try. I can still vividly remember when my second-grade teacher scolded me in front of my classmates, saying, “Just because you always know the answer, Richard,

DORI FITZPATRICK

or the past quarter century, without exception, I’ve spent the week leading up to Labor Day at the US Open tennis championships in New York City. And since my (and Beyoncé’s) birthday is on September 4, I consider my annual escape to Flushing Meadows a gift I give myself. After all, what could be better for a lifelong tennis player and obsessed fan than an all-access media pass with which I can bear witness, up close, to the world’s most exciting tournament and see just how

doesn’t mean you should always let everyone know.” I was confused by that, so when I went home and told my mother, herself a college professor, she was clearly furious and told me, “Honey, you’re not better than anyone on this planet, but no one—no one— is better than you. Don’t let anyone dim your light.” As a seven year old, I didn’t quite grasp what she meant, but I remember thinking that my Mom had my back, and that’s all I needed to know. That remains true to this day. When I moved to Saratoga nearly two years ago now, I was determined to reimagine saratoga living, making it into not only the best magazine Saratoga has ever seen, but also, truly, the magazine this great city always deserved, something I believe we’ve achieved. But how lucky all of us are to be surrounded by so many local institutions who share in that desire to be the best in class. We wouldn’t be Saratoga without boasting about having the greatest racetrack in the country (Saratoga Race Course); or possessing the greatest outdoor cultural arena anywhere (Saratoga Performing Arts Center); or hosting the greatest artists’ colony in America (Yaddo); or rebuilding the greatest small luxury hotel in the land (The Adelphi) and on and on and on. For a city with fewer than 30,000 residents, Saratoga Springs sure knows its way around demanding the best out of us. My mother was right, Saratoga. Don’t let anyone tell us we aren’t the best. Because at our best, the beauty of our city, the spirit of its people and the power of our natural resources come together in a place we’re all so fortunate to call home. Thanks, Mom.

Richard Pérez-Feria

EDITOR IN CHIEF

@RPerezFeria

preview

Holiday Issue Preview

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the front

car for the course The Saratoga Auto Auction saw a number of big-ticket cars fall on SPAC’s main stage this year; (inset) one of the classic cars up for bidding at this year’s auction.

sold!

Cars & Drivers

THE 2019 SARATOGA AUTO AUC T I O N DA ZZLE S AGA I N AT SPAC. n BY J E F F DI NG L ER p h otograp h y by KAT I E DO B I E S exc l u si vely fo r saratoga living

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18 saratoga living

September 20-21, once again on the main stage at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC). This year saw a record-number of lots go up for bidding—approximately 350, up from last year’s 300. The museum also orchestrated a series of exclusive day-after events, including a car show on its lawn and a postsale for vehicles that didn’t find a hammer price during the main auction. According to the museum’s executive director, Carly Connors, the average price of cars shot up by $10,000-$20,000—and the true gem of the auction was, without question, a 1969 John Wyer Gulf Mirage, valued at more than $1 million. The Mirage, driven by famed British

⁄ SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2019

race car driver and commentator David Hobbs, was one of only three produced for the ’69 World Sportscar Championship, and it’s the only one left in restored racing condition. Unfortunately, it proved too pricey for the collectors gathered at SPAC. One beauty that didn’t? A Pelham gray 1938 Cadillac Series 75 Fleetwood, which sold for $187,500. And one lucky couple from Marlboro, NY, celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary, walked away with a free 2017 Maserati Ghibli via a ticketed sweepstakes on the day after the event. Not a bad haul—or ride home— for a Sunday out in Saratoga. Maybe I can hitch a ride sometime?

CREDIT

s a Saratoga Springs transplant, it took me a while to get into horse racing. But it took me no time to become a car guy. For one, I got the chance to interview one of the world’s leading car collectors, Peter Mullin, last year for saratoga living, when he brought his priceless Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic and the American Bugatti Club to the Saratoga Wine & Food Festival (he’s the club’s president). And then I got to cover the Saratoga Auto Auction, which included a Batmobile replica, among other classic and collectible cars. I’d never seen so many cars I couldn’t afford in one place at the same time! This year’s auto auction, now in its third year and hosted by the Saratoga Automobile Museum, took place

million dollar baby (clockwise from bottom) The 1969 John Wyer Gulf Mirage, valued at more than $1 million, didn’t find a bidder; a volunteer keeping the cars rolling onto SPAC’s main stage; some cars needed a helping “push” to get onstage; a 2009 Dodge Viper hits the block; the auctioneer finding a bidder; one of two DeLoreans that sold; this 1934 Packard Victoria sold for $134,750.

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saratogaliving.com 19

• B R OA

CK A

TR ELIZABETH HAYNES

⁄ SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2019

and student counseling to health services, on campus religious/ spiritual life and the international student body. Sometimes, she has to make controversial decisions such as banning smoking and tobacco on campus, which she did last January (yes, puffing, vaping, hookah-ing and bong-ing are banned everywhere on campus, indoors and out). The job might sound like a lot to shoulder, but Banks has had a lot of

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20 saratoga living

job to running a household: “You’re in charge of making sure everyone’s healthy and happy and on task,” she says. And like any parent, she’s got a mind-blowing list of responsibilities. The big difference? She has 2500 kids, who leave the nest every four or so years and are replaced by another 2500, ad infinitum. The administrative duties that fall within Banks’ purview include everything from managing the residence halls, athletics department

SARATOGA’S ELEGANT & PEACEFUL

henever I find myself on the Skidmore College campus, I immediately feel better about the world. And after chatting with Cerri Banks, the college’s seemingly fearless dean of students and vice president for student affairs, I have faith that the future’s going to be a bright one. Banks compares her

•

STUDENTS TURN TO TH E CO LLE GE ’S F E A R LE SS DE A N . n BY KA R E N B J O R N L AND p h otograp h y by KONRA D O DH I A M B O exc l u si vely f o r saratoga living

• S PA C

• CU

Skidmore’s Cerri Banks Has It Covered

power player

students’ counsel Cerri Banks, Skidmore’s dean of students and vice president for student affairs, has 2500 students to mind, year in and year out.

practice: Before she landed in Saratoga Springs three years ago, she was Mount Holyoke College’s vice president for student affairs and dean of the college, and prior to that, dean at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. And she’s been a campus role model for even longer. Growing up in Rochester, NY, Banks started out as a part-time student at Monroe Community College, and cleaned houses and worked for Citibank’s Student Loan Corporation to make ends meet. With unwavering support from her family and a number of key mentors, she eventually earned a PhD in Education from Syracuse University. “I wanted to make a real difference in the world, and I knew that college was a pathway for me,” says Banks. “It altered the course of my life; it opened up doors and opportunities for me.” Even with the job at hand, she’s still an academic at heart: Banks taught a multicultural education class at “I wanted the college last year, to make a and her scholarly difference in publications include the world, a book, entitled and I knew Black Women that college Undergraduates: was a Cultural Capital And pathway College Success. for me.” Despite the rigors of the job, Banks has found ample time to enjoy Saratoga living. Off campus, you’ll find her browsing the latest fashions at Caroline & Main, Violet’s of Saratoga and Lifestyles of Saratoga. “I love shopping at the small boutiques downtown,” she says. You can also find her enjoying a meal at her favorite restaurant, The Mouzon House, or digging into a chopped salad at The West Side Sports Bar & Grill. But catch her on campus, and she’s all about the students, attending their concerts and athletic events. “I have 2500 young people who keep me very, very busy every day,” Banks says. She believes in her students. And that’s downright inspiring.

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THIS Y E A R, SARATOGA’ S MODERN LU XE H OT E L I S C E LE B R AT I N G I TS HISTORIC NAMESAKE’ S 200TH BIRT H DAY. n BY KA R E N B J O R N LA N D

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SARATOGA ROOM/SARATOGA SPRINGS LIBRARY

The Pavilion Grand’s Bicentennial Origins

saratoga grand stand The old Pavilion Grand, pictured in a 19th century lithograph, burned down in 1843.

TOM STOCK/SARATOGAPHOTOGRAPHER.COM

legacy

f Mary Poppins were a guest at the Pavilion Grand Hotel, she’d probably float down on her umbrella from the clouds and land on the roof. I thought of Ms. Poppins the other day as I enjoyed a birds-eye view of Saratoga Springs—its lush canopy of trees and fabulous architecture—from one of the hotel’s top-of-the-town terraces. General Manager Susanne Simpson calls the upscale outdoor spaces, with their sunshine, fresh air, shrubs and flowers, “the softer side of Saratoga,” and each of the eight penthouse suites has a private rooftop terrace or garden. When the Pavilion Grand opened its Lake Avenue location five years ago, it was

named for the Pavilion Hotel, a deluxe establishment that debuted on Broadway two centuries ago this year, where City Hall now stands. Back then, men in top hats and women in gowns strolled through the hotel’s

gardens, sipping and bathing in the waters of the nearby spring. The old Pavilion burned down in 1843, but this year the Pavilion Grand is remembering and celebrating its 200th anniversary. “Everything

we do is based on the tradition of that hotel,” says Simpson. “Its form of opulence was caring for its guests.” The new Pavilion, a boutique luxury hotel with 54 accommodations, including the Fish at 30

Lake restaurant, The Blue Peacock Bistro and Make Me Fabulous Salon and Spa all under its roof, promises “simple European elegance.” Special guests? Why, of course. Bigtime Thoroughbred trainers, international dignitaries, entertainers, princes and other royals, orchestra soloists, governors and congressmen have all stayed within its walls. The names are hush-hush, except for a certain rock star: “[Aerosmith lead singer] Steven Tyler was here four days last winter,” says Simpson. Late polo star Sunny Hale was also a regular. And of course, there’s Mary Poppins, too— but she’s only a figment of my imagination. Or is she?

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Raising The Barr

N ATHA N BA R R I S A SKIDMORE G RA D —A N D O NE OF TELEVISION’ S M O ST IN -DE M AND COMPOSERS. H OW CO O L IS TH AT? BY JE FF DIN GLER

winning scores Nathan Barr is currently working on scores for shows on Amazon, Hulu and HBO.

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24 saratoga living

⁄ SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2019

(studio) WILLIAM SHORT; (The Americans) JEFFREY NEIRA

Barr’s come a long way in his nearly quartercentury on the job. In 2013, he became the first composer in Emmy history to be double-nominated in the Outstanding Original

la times Composer Nathan Barr in his 8500-squarefoot recording studio in Los Angeles; (inset) a scene from The Americans, which Barr wrote the score for.

application process was narrowed down to just three candidates and, in Barr’s words, he and Zimmer

simply “hit it off best.” “That was a crash course in the industry,” says Barr of his time working under Zimmer. “During that job, I landed my first agent— really, my only agent—and that launched my career.”

Main Title Theme category for his work on Netflix’s Hemlock Grove and the aforementioned The Americans. (For the latter show, Barr even got to write a song with legendary guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend of The Who.) And Barr’s star hasn’t stopped rising; currently, he’s composing music for shows on Amazon, Hulu and a brand-new drama called Uncle Frank from True Blood creator and Oscar-winning film writer/director Alan Ball. “It’s been an incredibly busy year in a great way,” says Barr. Music to his ears.

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hile I’ve been writing for saratoga living and its website, I’ve gained a new level of respect for my alma mater, Skidmore College. It’s even more of an inspirational place than I could’ve ever imagined. Case in point: It’s where Emmy-nominated film and TV composer Nathan Barr (class of ’95)—best known for his complex scores of hit series such as FX’s The Americans and HBO’s True Blood—wrote his first serious compositions as a music and English double major. (Editor’s note: When he was growing up, saratoga living Executive Editor Will Levith had the lesson after Barr’s with then-Skidmore cello teacher Ann Alton.) After finishing up at Skidmore, Barr’s graduation present to himself was a four-month road trip in a mid-size bus from New York City all the way down to Brazil. It may seem like a digression in Barr’s musical journey, but when the Skidmore graduate moved out to Los Angeles after the trip, the story of his odyssey through the Americas helped him score an interview for an auspicious assistantship with famed Hollywood composer Hans Zimmer, who won a Best Original Music Score Oscar in 1995 for The Lion King. “That caught Hans’ eye,” says Barr of his trip. “He told a friend of mine that anyone who does stuff like that was worth getting to know better.” The

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the front trend city

The CBD/Hemp Craze Hits Home

GNOME SERUM LE A DS T H E WAY I N T H E CA P I TA L R E GI O N .

BY H A N N A H KOT LE R

atcha (tea) might be having a moment, but it’s another green plantbased product that’s currently taking the health and wellness world by storm. Cannabidiol, or CBD, is one of more than 100 cannabinoids present in a marijuana plant and is being used around the world to treat conditions such as pain, insomnia and anxiety. While some people may be wary of CBD products because of the substance’s association with Mary Jane, CBD actually won’t get you high. Regardless, this year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began regulating the use of the term CBD on health products—including lattes, serums and supplements. In the face of these pesky new rules, many CBD companies have opted to use the term “hemp,” the plant from which CBD is extracted, on their CBD products. So the CBD craze has now become the hemp craze. And given gnome sweet gnome that it’s a multimillion-, and soon to be multibillion-dollar industry, Gnome Serum, one of it’s no surprise that our special corner of the globe has taken the oldest CBD (or hemp) notice; this past summer, in the span of just two months, four companies in the Capital CBD- (or shall we say hemp-) focused stores popped up in the Region, has opted for Capital Region. One of the oldest companies in the area, which a “more informational helped fuel our local boom, is the Johnsonville, NY-based Gnome packaging strategy” to Serum, whose products can be found in stores from Saratoga combat the FDA confusion Springs to Palo Alto, CA. “We saw the craze coming, so we surrounding the industry, CEO Greg Kerber says. planned for it well in advance when we started the company twoand-a-half years ago,” says Greg Kerber, Gnome Serum’s CEO. Kerber is no stranger to the confusion that’s come with the new FDA regulations, saying that Gnome Serum has opted for “a more informational packaging strategy this year.” As a wellness and holistic company, Gnome Serum also doesn’t mind shifting the focus away from just CBD to the hemp plant as a whole. “We see the value in all the plant has to offer and deliver that to the market,” Kerber says. It’s next to impossible to know precisely what the FDA’s next move will be, but Kerber’s hopeful that CBD will be more than just a passing fad in New York State. “The state government has been supportive of the hemp industry, and we’re optimistic of the future hemp crops that will be available,” he says. Here’s to the CBD/hemp industry’s demand growing higher and higher— even if its users won’t be.

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the front rock climb (clockwise from top) SPAC played host to the Lollapalooza music festival in the early ’90s; Dave Matthews Band first performed at SPAC as part of the ’94 H.O.R.D.E. Festival; Phish opened for Santana at SPAC in ’92.

(Musgraves) ALEXA KING; (Etheridge) LAUREN DUKOFF

played separate headlining dates at the Saratoga venue, with Phish actually playing two.

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Before They Were Stars

FRO M DAV E MATTH EWS TO MEL I SSA E T H E R I DGE , M A N Y GR E E N ACTS AT S PAC H AVE GONE ON TO L AST I N G GR E AT N E SS. BY W ILL LE V I TH

verybody loves to say they were fans of a band before they were famous. As in: I owned Radiohead’s debut album, Pablo Honey, in 1993, along with the rare “Stop Whispering” single, which includes the non-album UK

single “Pop Is Dead.” One venue Radiohead never played? The Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC). Had they been a little better known, they’d have probably opened for The Kinks (July 1993) or Peter Gabriel (September 1993) there. Throughout its

history, SPAC’s been a great proving ground for young bands. Here are five of the greatest green (or opening) acts that have played SPAC throughout the years.

PHISH In the early 1990s, the coast-to-coast jam band craze was just starting to catch on, even though OG jammers the Grateful Dead, and leader Jerry Garcia, were still very much alive and kicking. In ’92, SPAC crowds would’ve probably been wowed by the guitar heroics of Trey Anastasio from the Burlington, VTbased Phish, but would’ve likely been there to catch headliner Santana. Some 27 years later, both bands

DAVE MATTHEWS BAND It was a long way to the top for SPAC’s perennial darling, the Dave Matthews Band (DMB). With the alternative

(Lollapalooza) LARRY ABRAMS; (Phish) BRANTLEY GUTIERREZ

retrospac

A handful of years before their ’94 breakout, The Downward Spiral, and more than a decade before Johnny Cash covered “Hurt,” Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails (NIN) were just another group of poor, young industrialists, trying to get noticed. When 1991’s nascent Lollapalooza music festival rolled through SPAC that August, NIN was, without question, one of the lesser-known acts, with just a single tune, “Head Like A Hole," getting airplay on the radio. It would be 15 years before they’d headline SPAC on their “Live: With Teeth” tour in 2006.

rock and jam band scenes crossing over in the early ’90s, harmonica virtuoso John Popper, along with his band Blues Traveler, organized the Horizons Of Rock Developing Everywhere (H.O.R.D.E) Festival in ’92 to showcase some of his favorite bands. (Phish jumped on board that year.) By ’93, H.O.R.D.E.’s lineup had ballooned, including up-and-comers DMB, who, the following year, who were billed as headliners, when they landed at SPAC, supporting their then-brand-new record, Under The Table And Dreaming. During their set, DMB played a paltry 9 songs; over 2 headlining nights this past July, they ran through nearly 50!

grand opening Both Kacey Musgraves (left) and Melissa Etheridge performed at SPAC, pre-fame.

been sold out for a long, long time.

MELISSA ETHERIDGE

KACEY MUSGRAVES In 2013, the year Kacey Musgraves’ whip-smart debut album, Same Trailer Different Park, dropped and won her a pair of Grammys— and a six-spot before she took home Album Of The Year honors for her sublime Golden Hour—she was

part of the supporting cast of Farm Aid. That year, the lineup wowed SPAC audiences with headliners such as Willie Nelson and Neil Young. Good luck trying to get ahold of Musgraves’ “Oh, What A World” tour tickets these days; most of her headlining dates have

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All the way back in August 1988, a little more than three months after she released her eponymous debut album, a virtually unknown Melissa Etheridge opened for Bruce Hornsby and The Range at SPAC. That show pre-dated her colossal breakthrough album, Yes I Am, by five years, and Etheridge has since won a pair of Grammys, an Oscar and the adoration of millions of fans the world over.

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’ve been obsessed with fashion shows and the industry for as long as I can remember. When I was younger, I’d walk to my local corner store and buy the latest copy of Vogue, saying it was for my mother, when in reality, it was for me—and it would become my bible for the following month. When I was eventually granted access to the Internet, I browsed hundreds of collections on designer websites, picturing myself in all the clothes I could only wish to own myself. New York Fashion Week (NYFW) was, and still is, one of my favorite events of the year—Christmas included. While the shows of Paris, London and Milan typically consist of more traditional designs, NYFW attempts to break boundaries, experiment and, above all, make a spectacle of its fashion-forward shows. And while the garments that make

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ford model Designer Tom Ford’s electric NYFW collection combined the past with the future, pairing flowing pants with metallic tops.

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Yes, you read that right. This was most clearly seen in Marc Jacobs’ show, which took place at the Park Avenue Armory. It started, unconventionally, with all of the models stepping out at once: In other words, Jacobs began the show with the finale. When scanning the floor, ’60s/’70s flower power dominated. Bootleg and flare pants covered the runway with pops of yellow and blue, as well as colorful leather Chelsea boots. What made the collection so powerful was its youthful charm. Fashion isn’t supposed to be

Tom Ford’s electric collection combined the past with the future, pairing flowing pants with metallic tops. Silver, blue and cream jumpsuits decorated the runway, and sleek blazers decorated the jumpsuits. The takeaway? Blazers are everything. They can be used to dress up even the most casual of outfits. Play with color, and even if you feel dressed down, you’re actually the most powerful person in the room.

BE GEOMETRIC! Skirts or dresses that just fall can be so boring. Look around the room, and suddenly you’re a small fish in a big pond. The solution? Find skirts and dresses that keep your figure while, at the same time, play with gravity and traditionalism. (The Spring/Summer 2020 Oscar De La Renta collection displayed this, excellently.) Find ruched skirts or ones that have a bow, and look for asymmetry. This will not only accentuate your figure, but also show a flash of real personality.

ROCK THOSE FISHNETS! While tights and fishnets can look super corny, Stine Goya’s use of them was anything but. Each pair of tights in the collection was unique, from the texture and pattern to the overall design. If your outfit’s plain, like, say, a black dress, you could spice it up with a cute pair of tights. Now, I’m not saying be loud with this: The more subtle you are in your choice, the more confident you’ll be. (Not all of us are strutting around in the Garment District.)

STOP TAKING FASHION AND YOUR STYLE SO SERIOUSLY! All of the collections exhibited at NYFW were playful and experimental. “Business dress” as we know it is changing with every style season, so start testing those boundaries. I mean, who even put them there in the first place?

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grew up going to apple orchards. It’s just what you do in the fall, right? So I was really caught off guard when, while driving from Saratoga Springs up to Burlington, VT, a coworker, who’d recently moved to the area (and whose anonymity I will preserve), asked me if there were “a lot of apple farms up here.” Growing up in Upstate New York, you just know that apples grow in orchards, pumpkins in patches and corn in fields. Apple farms aren’t a thing. Here, farms are all about the bigger picture: They’re where a variety of crops are grown; horses, cows and pigs are raised; and you can find an assortment of fall classics, including apples, cider, apple cider doughnuts, pumpkins and pumpkin pies—and a slew of traditional fall experiences, such as corn mazes, hayrides and petting zoos. So button up your flannel shirts, Capital Region: We’re going to the farm.

fall classic Saratoga and the Capital Region come alive when the leaves begin to change.

SARATOGA APPLE Apples come first at Saratoga Apple, (well, second, if you’re talking about the name of the business), which is located just 20 minutes outside of Downtown

seasons

Apples, Pumpkins, Cider, Oh My! EXCITEMENT ABOUNDS WI T H T H E A R R I VA L O F FA LL I N O U R B AC KYA R D. BY NATALIE MO O R E n ph oto g r aph y by KAT I E DO B I E S

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Saratoga in Schuylerville. The orchard and farm stand—which have been family owned and operated for 5 generations—have nearly 30 apple varieties available for picking over the course of the fall, in addition to apple-centric baked goods (see: cider doughnuts), other fruits and vegetables, and Halloween-ready pumpkins, all available in its store. And then there’s Saratoga Apple’s cider. In the back of the farm store is a tasting room, which features 12 taps—6 New York hard ciders along with 6 New York beers. There’s indoor and outdoor seating, and you can get a flight of four beers or ciders if you can’t decide on just one. Plus, Saratoga Apple has two types of its own hard cider for sale in 750ml bottles—a slightly sparkling, semi-sweet version, and an oldschool, no-addedsweetness one. Decisions, decisions…

Ellms Family Farm

orchard, market and gift shop— as well as a cidery and brewery (with great food and small plates), baby animal barn and nature trail— the Altamont farm is a great place to bring the kids, a date or just go stag.

ELLMS FAMILY FARM

I grew up in Charlton, so Ellms was my neighborhood family farm. What this fall staple lacks in apples, Indian Ladder Farms it makes up for in, well, INDIAN LADDER FARMS everything else. Think pumpkins, At the ripe age (see what I did farm animals, cider, hayrides, a killer there?) of 103, Indian Ladder Farms corn maze and bushels of kids’ is a picker’s paradise. With an apple activities. Plus, when the temperatures fall, you can return there to grab your Christmas tree!

BOWMAN ORCHARDS

there’s an apple for that In the back of the Saratoga Apple farm store, there’s a tasting room with six New York beers and six New York ciders on tap.

As with Saratoga Apple, just one look at the name of “Bowman Orchards” tells you exactly what you need to know (unless you’re my colleague): Apples are in high supply, but Bowman Orchards so are berries, pumpkins and peaches. There’s also a kids’ play area with a place to feed and pet animals on the Rexford farm.

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the front YOUR PUMPKIN SPICE HOOKUP

COFFE E , ONLY BETTER.

hat would fall be without a little pumpkin spice? It’d be a crime, that’s what—and thankfully, the coffee-slingers of Saratoga Springs have jumped on the pumpkin spice bandwagon. From the classic PSL (Pumpkin Spice Latte) to other gourd-geous creations, here’s where to get your pumpkin spice fix in the Spa City this autumn. • • • • •

Saratoga Coffee Traders and Starbucks: Pumpkin Spice Latte Dunkin’: Cinnamon Sugar Pumpkin Signature Latte Stewart’s Shops: Pumpkin Spice Coffee Spot Coffee: Pumpkin Pie Latte Sweet Mimi’s Cafe & Bakery: Pumpkin Spice Affogato

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PLUS…The Adelphi Hotel has its own special Pumpkin Spice Espresso Martini on its fall menu. Make your own with the recipe below. Ingredients 2 oz. Death Wish “The Cauldron” coffee-flavored vodka 1/2 oz. St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram 1 1/2 oz. Pumpkin syrup (1 can pumpkin purée, 1 can condensed milk and 1 tbsp. pumpkin pie spice, blended with water until the mixture reaches a syrup-like consistency) 1/4 oz. Demerara Syrup 1 oz. Heavy cream 1 oz. Kru Coffee cold brew concentrate the spice is right The Adelphi Hotel’s Pumpkin Spice Espresso Martini features coffee-flavored vodka by Death Wish Coffee.

Instructions Combine ingredients and top with vanilla whipped cream, nutmeg, cinnamon and clove.

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Where Memories Begin...

talk to my cats. Big whoop, right? They don’t seem to mind. At Moxie Ridge Farm & Creamery in Argyle, NY, Owner Lee Hennessy likes to chat with his goats. “I firmly believe that the happier they are, the better the milk is,” he says. The millennial farmer makes good on his merry goats’ milk, turning it into traditional French-style cheeses— fluffy chèvre; a low-fat, spreadable “dream” cheese that’s heavenly on bagels; and various other seasonal, ripened fromage—that are snatched up everywhere from Saratoga’s Farmers’ Market to Troy’s Waterfront Farmers’ Market and the big one, New York City’s Union Square Greenmarket, which sees some 60,000 shoppers per day and has been going strong for more than 4 decades. Market-goers also pig out on Moxie’s whey-fed pork and milkfinished chicken (the birds are actually

america’s next top model Moxie Ridge Farm & Creamery Owner Lee Hennessy—with the help of his “smizing” goats—makes and sells traditional French-style cheeses.

fed goat’s milk in an adaptation of a 500-year-old chicken-raising method). A former cheese monger and sommelier, Hennessy’s all about the

terroir; he’s passionate about bringing food to market that has a taste unique to the Washington County pasture and woodland where his animals thrive. And this fall, locals won’t even have to get off the couch to purchase it: The farm will be debuting a home delivery service in the Capital Region. Now, if only I could get my cats to fetch me that chèvre from my doorstep…

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Dorinda C OV E R STO RY

EXCLUSIVE

GetsReal DORINDA MEDLEY , THE BREAKOUT STAR OF BRAVO’S THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF NEW YORK CITY, SPENDS A DAY TALKING ABOUT LIFE, LOVE, FAME AND HER SARATOGA MEMORIES. YOU’RE WELCOME.

BY RICHARD PÉREZ-FERIA

photography by

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Dori Fitzpatrick

⁄ SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2019

exclusively for

saratoga living

medley go round After a childhood spent daytripping to the Spa City from her home in the Berkshires, Dorinda Medley returns to take over Saratoga (for a day).

C OV E R STO RY

he moment Dorinda Medley and I locked eyes—as we were being introduced some seven years ago at a fancy soirée in lower Manhattan by our mutual best friend, Greg Calejo (more about him in a minute)—I felt an electric charge enter my body as I recognized a fellow mischievous, no-nonsense, straight-shooter: This gorgeous woman in front of me was my kind of people, and I wanted more. Greg, my closest friend since I was 14, who happens to be a big mucky-muck, fancy brands publicist, BFF with countless celebrities and possessor of a BS meter almost as finely-honed as mine, was blunt: “You two— oh boy!—should definitely know each other!” Dorinda looked at me for the first time with that now familiar glint in her eye and wry smile and said, “Let’s do this, Richard!” And have we ever. For the uninitiated, Dorinda Medley is one of the biggest stars in the fantastical galaxy known as unscripted (reality) television. She’s arguably the best-known current cast member of her massively popular show, The Real Housewives Of New York City (RHONY), on Bravo, reality TV’s Mecca. The network, home to some of the most-watched and buzzed-about reality shows in broadcasting history, including Project Runway, Queer Eye, Top Chef, Vanderpump Rules, Below Deck, Southern Charm and, of course, the defining guilty pleasure shows of our generation (alongside the Kardashians), The Real Housewives franchise. In that dysfunctional/I-can’t-take-my-eyes-off-of-it world of grown-ass women behaving, mostly, abominably, Dorinda is breathing rarefied air. She and a select handful of other ‘Housewives’— NeNe Leakes, Teresa Giudice, Lisa Vanderpump and, the Haley’s Comet known as Bethenny Frankel—have managed to separate themselves from the pack. Not only are they all undeniably alphas—flip any tables lately, Teresa?—but these women also don’t suffer fools, not for a moment. Bombastic conflict with heartfelt resolution is what I love about reality television and, as it happens, Dorinda, this funny, passionate, emotional girls’ girl, has that in spades. But who exactly is this wildly popular Bravolebrity and why, pray tell, is she gracing the cover of saratoga living? I’m so glad you asked.

Dorinda

Cinkala had a self-described very happy childhood growing up in the Berkshires of her native Massachusetts. After graduating from Franklin & Marshall

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College, she started working for Liz Claiborne in Manhattan, following through on an early interest in fashion. While in New York City, she married a Scot, Ralph Lynch, and relocated to London where she welcomed a daughter, Hannah, and launched a successful fashion business, DCL Cashmere (said to be a favorite of Dorinda’s exercise buddy, Princess Diana). After a decade abroad and a divorce, Dorinda returned to Gotham to begin life anew as a single mother. In 2005, Dorinda’s life would once again be rocked when she married financier Dr. Richard Medley, a former Washington, DC powerbroker and speechwriter for vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro. Only a few years later, in 2011, Dorinda’s soulmate passed away nearly devastating her. Eventually, she met her current love, John Mahdessian, owner of Manhattan’s fabled couture restoration operation, Madame Paulette.

Today

, Dorinda splits her time between her Manhattan apartment in the sky in tony Sutton Place and her beloved “Blue Stone Manor” in Great Barrington in the Berkshires. Blue Stone Manor is so frequently mentioned and inhabited on the show, it may be the best-known manse (along with Lisa Vanderpump’s “Villa Rosa”) in the Bravo zeitgeist. To know Dorinda is to understand how generous she is, not only with her time, but also her pocketbook, as evidenced by her numerous charitable endeavors, benefitting Beauty For Freedom, Ronald McDonald House, New York Loves Kids, Gabrielle’s Angel Foundation and, now, Saratoga Performing Arts Center’s (SPAC’s) educational programming. Not surprisingly, Dorinda’s philanthropic endeavors are less well known than, say, her previous run-ins with Countess Luann. So, yeah, Dorinda is notoriously feisty and quotable, quick to anger and just as fast to forgive and forget. Her are-youkidding-me?, jaw-dropping moments on camera are too many to list here, but some of the best bon mots emanating from her lips include the classic “Not well, bitch!” response she gave to a snarky Candace Bushnell (author of Sex And The City) in the Hamptons, post-brunch, when Bushnell asked how Dorinda was feeling after a fight Bushnell had just witnessed with a castmate; or when Albany native Sonja Morgan kept talking over her, and Dorinda stood up at a crowded restaurant and kept loudly repeating “Clip! Clip! Clip!” as she gestured with her extended arm while opening and closing her hand in the direction of Morgan’s face; or when frustrated by all the pettiness and fighting at Blue Stone Manor, Dorinda epically exclaimed, “I

i’m good enough, i’m smart enough “I feel like I’ve seen it all and done it all,” says Dorinda. “I’ve really gotten to the point where I’m very accepting of myself.”

C OV E R STO RY

“I think it’s very important for women to hear me and believe me when I say, to be in your 50s and 60s is no longer a dirty little secret.”

made it NICE!” All of it seems equal parts genius and silly, and undeniably unforgettable. As former RHONY castmate Carole Radziwill says, “When Dorinda’s bad, she’s sooo good!” A born entertainer, Dorinda takes great pride in being the consummate hostess, and in the numerous times I’ve been a weekend warrior as a houseguest in her stunning Berkshires home (and, yes, I’ve stayed in and loved the “fish room”), I can’t remember a single moment that the experience of being in her presence while there was anything short of joyous; in fact, we were more likely gasping for air from so much raucous laughter. Every detail in her home is perfect, not fussy. Blue Stone Manor is a genuine reflection of its proprietress: classy, beautiful, real. You never want to leave. So, I was curious what Dorinda’s reaction would be when I first floated the idea of her appearing on the cover of saratoga living. “I love Saratoga!” she said. “Richard, are you kidding me? I have so, so many memories of spending endless summer days there with my parents! My grandfather loved the track and we always stopped for ice cream at Stewart’s before we’d head back home to the Berkshires.” Perfect! My clandestine (and exciting) Operation #Dorinda❤Saratoga was now in full effect. We started making calls. As you may have heard, Dorinda is the guest of honor at saratoga living’s “Best Of Saratoga” event at Prime at Saratoga National on Sunday, October 6, with a portion of the ticket sales benefitting SPAC’s educational programming. But on a spectacular late summer day, I spent nearly 24 hours with Dorinda as the magazine pulled out all the stops in facilitating her very fun “takeover of Saratoga,” as we photographed and interviewed her all over town. Oh, look, there’s Dorinda getting gorgeous at Complexions! In Congress Park at the Carousel! Shopping on Broadway! Sipping martinis at The Adelphi! It was quite a long day (and night) for all of us, but the results speak for themselves.

And now, in her own words, let’s hear from my dear

friend, this formidable woman who still gives me that look with a glint in her eye and wry smile and who makes everything and everyone in her orbit better, kinder and, yeah, nicer. Dorinda Medley may indeed love Saratoga, even more so now, but knowing the kind-hearted people who inhabit this great city I’ve come to adore, I can now report that, Saratogians love Dorinda right back. After all, who can resist a reality star who keeps it really real—for real? Let’s jump right in? What stage of your life are you in? I was just talking about this to someone and I was saying it’s a funny thing when you spend your whole life creating titles, especially because I consider myself an ambitious woman. I’ve tried to take on these titles—being successful, relevant, well educated, becoming a wife, becoming a mother, exploring, trying to build businesses—and at my age you look back and you’re like, “Wow, I’ve done a lot of these titles.” And

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a wonderful life (clockwise from bottom left) A Christmas card from Dorinda and her daughter, Hannah; Dorinda and Hannah; a promotional photo from RHONY Season 11; Richard Medley and Dorinda at Christmastime; Dorinda’s yearbook photo from the Berkshire School in Sheffield, MA; Dorinda, with her mother and daughter at her wedding to Richard Medley.

when you’re Dorinda Cinkala who grew up in Massachusetts and Dorinda Lynch who lived in Hong Kong, London, Australia and who was married and had Hannah, to becoming a single mom—to Mrs. Medley as I always call it—and a widow, and then to start this Housewives gig...I realized, after Hannah finally moved out and I moved into a new apartment, that this was an exciting and new phase of my life. It’s also a scary time in my life because we’re in a different time now than when our mothers were 55. They were slowing down, waiting for what the next step would be—probably grandchildren and retirement—and that’s not how it is anymore. I feel I have another good 30 years under my belt. You’re ramping up. It’s now about you—finally. Yes! I feel it’s all about me now. It’s a funny thing: People are

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always asking, “Will you?” “Could you?” “Do you?” and I think for the first time in my life, I’m really letting things present themselves and do what’s right for me, as a mother, as a wife—not as a young person trying to constantly push herself into a new position. Now, at last, I’m very comfortable with the world coming to me and knowing the real me. Your authenticity is palpable, Dorinda, and you come across so naturally. You’re just completely you. You know, Richard, I feel like I’ve seen it all and done it all. I’ve really gotten to a point where I’m very accepting of myself, the good and the bad. I think it’s important for viewers and to people with whom I engage to know that I don’t want to present myself as perfect. I made a commitment to myself when I started the show that I wanted to come across as seamless. My goal is that when someone meets me, they think “she’s just what she’s like on TV—I can relate to her.” It’s important to always keep it real, because there are days that you feel great, and don’t mind being someone who’s nurturing, giving, entertaining, always traveling and building brands. But there are also days that aren’t so great, and I have to be OK with saying, “Wow, you know what, I’m tired today; I don’t feel like doing that. I feel a little down; I’m struggling with this; I don’t feel like putting on makeup right now.” And I think it’s so important, especially when trying to engage, that the relatability is what people expect from me.

Being on television has reinforced two big things for me: houses, stop at a museum and have lunch at some local diner. One, that the audience is very forgiving and so is the world; And we’d go to the Saratoga Race Course and see all the and two, that the audience feels they know you—that you’re jockeys, and you felt like you were transported into a different a kindred spirit. One of the most powerful moments for me world. I remember going to this very famous Italian place— after the first season was when I was at a fruit stand in front of Siro’s!—and we’d go with 25 people and on the way home my building getting a banana, and this woman walked up to we’d stop at Stewart’s for some ice cream. It was the best day, me and said, “Can I just say how powerful it is that you spoke because I really was transported into a different world. And I about Richard and his passing, that you spoke about becoming could step out of my life for a day and be a part of it. The other a widow.” I was considered a very thing about Saratoga I sensed and loved was that even though it young widow. And one of the things was a fancy place, it appeared to I said the first season was that it’s have an all-inclusive attitude, and not a label that fits. Because as a everyone was welcome. I loved it. society, we’ve compartmentalized people with the title of widow as Do you see any similarities someone who’s 80 years old, between Great Barrington and who’s had a full life with his or her Saratoga Springs? partner. It inspired me so much, Oh, absolutely! They both have because I realized, as a widow that old, traditional feel. Back at a young 50, I can still be a part then, Saratoga Springs was very of life. What I thought might show connected to Great Barrington, weakness initially, actually came because we had the Great out being very powerful. Because Barrington Fair Grounds, and there I just said it the way I was feeling was a lot of horse racing, and a lot it. So, I think it’s very important for of the horses that were racing in women to hear me and believe me Great Barrington were also racing when I say, to be in your 50s and in Saratoga. And that mentality 60s is no longer a dirty little secret. of getting dressed to go to the I embrace it, I’m proud of it. You racetrack and the local places—it’s mentally change, you physically very old school. So, yeah. Similar change, you spiritually change. power of love “When Richard died, I was for sure, but not exactly the same. Because in a weird way, you’re in considered a very young widow. And one of the the last quarter of your life. I’m not things I said the first season was that it’s not a label Tell me a little about your home, so crazy ambitious, but yet I am that fits. What I thought might show weakness Blue Stone Manor. ambitious. I still want to enjoy my initially, actually came out being very powerful.” So, my great-grandfather came life. I’ve given a lot, I’ve seen a lot, to America from Italy as a very I’ve done a lot and I’ve become a accomplished mason. Back then, Great Barrington was bit selfish with my time. I think the best thing you learn in your sectored and the Italian quarter was where all the masons 50s is the word “no.” With no excuses. I just say, “I can't do that lived. My great grandfather had his own mason business, and because I'm tired.” I want to take care of myself. I would rather when physicist William Stanley [whose company was bought be my best self for someone than just be present and not my by GE] came up and had this beautiful home built by Stanford whole self. That wisdom only came with age. White, all his men did the stonework. They called it “Blue Stone Let’s talk Saratoga. Tell me about your childhood memories. Manor” because the stone was taken from the grounds. My Oh my god! I have so many great memories of Saratoga! Going great-grandfather worked on it, my grandfather worked on it, to Saratoga was a whole vacation. Even if we were only going and they rolled part of the original house down the hill. It’s still for a day trip, it was a vacation. We never had enough money on my property line. So, the house had a lot of history for me. to stay in hotels or anything, but, literally, the day would start My Dad would drive us by the house, and I would say “One at 5am. I remember there used to be a Howard Johnson’s on day, Dad, I’m going to get really rich, and I’m going to buy the way with a conveyer belt of food, and I was completely the house for us. I’m never going to get married, Mom and fascinated by it. On these day trips, I used to get so excited. I you are going to live there, and we’re never going to leave remember all kinds of great events in Saratoga. It was where Great Barrington!” And he said, “Yes we are, princess,” and it all the fancy people used to live. We’d enter town and drive became this fabled, “there’s your house on the hill, Dorinda.” around and go to the rich neighborhoods and see all the big So I told Richard this story over and over again, and it was

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always this house that no one wanted, because it was old. So about a month before I got married to Richard, we drove up to the Berkshires and he said, “Let’s go by that house you like.” And there was no gate there, and we were going up the driveway and I said, “We can’t go in there,” and he said, “Yes you can; this is your house now, and I want you to have something from me that’s not part of our marriage, that’s just yours.” So, a month before our wedding, Richard Medley bought me the house of my childhood dreams. What were your impressions of The Real Housewives Of New York City before you joined the cast? I didn’t come on the cast in a manufactured way. I had appeared in numerous cameos, since I was at all the parties anyway. I didn’t come on slowly. I vividly remember [Bravo Programming Executive] Andy Cohen saying to me, “Do you have any skeletons in your closet? Because they’re coming out. Also, this experience can either make you or break you.” I didn’t believe that; I believe a person makes or breaks you. I think a lot of these women come on and use it as a platform for narcissism and that’s not what it’s about. It can be therapeutic, though, because you can actually work things out and see things more clearly by being on this show. My biggest reservation was Hannah. What I didn’t realize was how much of myself I’d be exposing. Hannah’s very private, but even she’s come around because she’s seen me grow so much. After Richard died, she didn’t let me go, and I didn’t let her go—it was as if time had stopped. The first season of RHONY was very hard on her—the total loss of control. Now she enjoys the process and knows how to manage it. But I’ll be honest with you: When we’re filming the show, I have that same feeling you have when you go back to college.

Have your boyfriend John and daughter Hannah changed significantly since you became the darling of reality television? I think Hannah is proud of me, happy for me. She’s sort of like the unicorn when she comes on the show. She said to me, “Can you just do me a favor and just be Mom to me?” She’s very respectful when I’m filming. She said, “Do me a favor—don’t get tired out.” For John, the process is very different. He’s had to grow up a little bit. I think it’s really helped him to grow up and take responsibility, and that’s the side of John most people don’t see. He’s very loving and nurturing and protective of me. What are your thoughts about being on the cover of saratoga living’s ‘Best Of Everything’ issue? I simply cannot believe it—and I can’t believe I’m going to meet the mayor at the Best Of Everything party! Who would have thought that the little girl from Great Barrington would meet the mayor of Saratoga Springs? I think Saratoga is perfect; and I think saratoga living fits me perfectly, it represents everything I am. It’s completely my brand. I’m also excited about the event on October 6. You know who we should invite? Sonja. Because Sonja is from Albany. She spent her childhood going to Saratoga. She’s very excited, too.

“My goal this season is to take the high road; there’s less traffic up there.”

What was the biggest surprise after you joined the show? How it bleeds into all parts of your life. You’re totally immersed. You have to run this job like your personal life. My goal this season is to take the high road; there’s less traffic up there. How has Bethenny leaving the show affected you? When I found out Bethenny was leaving, I was sad. I actually wanted to cry. There’s sort of a good old-fashioned aspect to her I love. She’s a true original ‘Housewife.’ It takes a brave and fearless person to do what we do. And the great thing about Bethenny is that off camera, she’s exactly like she is on camera. We’re very good, true friends. And we’re two alphas. The minute we realized we could run together in the pack, there was relief. She’ll always be one of the OGs.

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Given this issue’s theme, what do you believe you’re the ‘best’ at? Entertaining. I’m very good at it; I enjoy it. And I love creating. I love people to feel like they’re totally incorporated in the process.

What’s the biggest misconception about you, Dorinda? I don’t allow people to know that I’m actually very vulnerable, and I hurt very easily. Usually, what I’ve done in the past is, I retreat, I blow up and then I retreat again. But I’m also very quick to forgive. My mother said to me once when I was young, “You know what, Dorinda? People are mean for two reasons and for two reasons only: either it’s because they’re very sad, or they’re very angry. It’s not about you. It’s about being sad or angry.” And every time I realize I’ve been quick to anger, I realize it’s frustration, and it comes off stunted. Anger is easy. Fear and sadness are hard. Some parting thoughts about Saratoga Springs? I think the biggest observation for me is that Saratoga Springs still has its great personality off-season. It’s nice to see it a little quieter, but it kind of has this really nice hustle and bustle, and it’s alive, and people are very committed and devoted to being Saratogians. So, I love the fact that it has a very strong personality and I love that about Upstate New York in general. So, yeah, I love Saratoga. How could you not?

closet queens “I vividly remember [Bravo Programming Executive] Andy Cohen saying to me, ‘Do you have any skeletons in your closet? Because they’re coming out. Also, this experience can either make you or break you,’” Dorinda says.

t s e b

the

F R O M A R C H I T E C T U R E T O Z E N S PA S , WE REVE AL YOUR

2 0 1 9 U LT I M AT E A2Z GUIDE.

g n i h t y r e v e of

lot can change in a year. Just look at saratoga living’s 2018 Best Of Everything Issue: Since the magazine first hit newsstands last September, three out of eight of the chefs in our cover feature—Roslyn Riggi, Tracey Kwiecien and Brien Bowden—have left their posts at their respective restaurants (and Bowden’s former post, R&R Kitchen and Bar, closed this past September); Jackson, the canine star of the Instagram account @jacksonsjourneys (and our story), has lost a leg to bone cancer, though he’s undergoing therapy and is slowly getting back to hiking; and the Doughboy, Esperanto’s signature savory treat—and one of our reasons to #LoveWhereYouLive—has been officially rebranded the “Oboy” (though most locals still call it by its old name). One constant? saratoga living’s Ultimate A2Z Guide, in which our readership—a.k.a. you—were able to vote from June to July on your favorite Saratoga Springs restaurants, bars, boutiques and more. But we wanted to make it better the second time around, so we made a few key changes. For one, this year, readers were able to vote once a day for

two solid months. As a result, we saw a 150 percent jump, year-over-year, in the number of responses we got and ultimately, tallied more than 2500 votes! We also tweaked a few of the category headings—look out for newbies such as “Architecture,” “Kids’ Activities” and “Pizza”— to highlight more of what makes Saratoga so special. And instead of awarding categoryspecific winners based on the highest percentage of votes, we decided to present the top three vote-getters with gold, silver and bronze medals, Olympics-style. Of course, one major change that none of us at saratoga living had any control over was people’s opinions—so you’ll be seeing quite a few new winners this year compared to last. (If you disagree with the results, well, then that gives you even more of an incentive to rock the vote in 2020.) Fundamentally, being a Saratogian means being proud of this great city—from its mineral waters and its storied arts establishments to its status as a world-class vacation/wedding destination. So, without further ado, we’re proud to present your 2019 Ultimate A2Z Guide. –NATALIE MOORE

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ARCHITECTURE

GOLD:

The Adelphi Hotel

One of Saratoga’s oldest and grandest hotels, The Adelphi upped its street appeal tenfold when it underwent a 5-year, estimated $32 million renovation, completed in the fall of 2017. Now that the iconic hotel’s original splendor has been restored—and upgraded, with modern flourishes—it’s truly an unstoppable force in Saratoga’s hospitality business. SILVER: CANFIELD CASINO / HALL OF SPRINGS (TIE) BRONZE: ADIRONDACK TRUST COMPANY

B R E A K FA S T

GOLD:

Sweet Mimi’s Café and Bakery

Sweet Mimi’s, located on Phila Street in Downtown Saratoga, is a real crowd-pleaser. While the café-bakery’s name alludes to its crave-worthy sweet treats (Cinnamon Roll Pancakes—OMG!), it’s savory breakfast options are just as unforgettable. SILVER: TRIANGLE DINER BRONZE: COUNTRY CORNER CAFE

COFFEE

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Uncommon Grounds really is the heart of Saratoga. Known for its bagels, breakfast sandwiches and, of course, its impressive coffee selection, it’s established itself as the OG coffeehouse in town. Oh, and just try rolling in there around 10am on a Saturday during track season. (You’ll see what we mean.) SILVER: KRU COFFEE BRONZE: SARATOGA COFFEE TRADERS

DINNER ($$)

DINNER ($$$)

GOLD:

Druthers

Cantina

15 Church

Saratoga’s Druthers flagship—there are also locations in Albany and Schenectady—has casual dining down to a science. From its extensive craft beer list (it’s a brewery after all!) to its comfort-food stocked menu (Druthers Mac, Buffalo Chicken Wrap, wood-fired pizzas, Beer Cheese Dip…the list goes on), Druthers is like no other.

For a dressed-to-the-nines night out on the town, 15 Church is a nobrainer. Dine on some of Saratoga’s finest, most imaginative dishes in a beautifully restored historic building located at, you guessed it, 15 Church Street. Seriously, somebody needs to give Chef Michael Manstrantuono a medal—or a Michelin star—of his own.

SILVER:

After a marathon afternoon at Uncommon Grounds—assuming you weren’t scared away by the Saturday morning line—look no further than neighbor Cantina for one of the hottest dinners in town. Upscale Mexican and Southwestern cuisine, margaritas and, most importantly, the best chips and salsa in the area, await at the alwayshopping restaurant.

THE LOCAL PUB AND TEAHOUSE

SILVER:

BRONZE:

BOCA BISTRO

DIZZY CHICKEN WOODFIRED ROTISSERIE

SILVER:

PRIME AT SARATOGA NATIONAL / SOLEVO KITCHEN & SOCIAL (TIE)

BRONZE:

THE BROOK TAVERN / OLDE BRYAN INN (TIE)

CHIANTI IL RISTORANTE / OSTERIA DANNY (TIE)

(Druthers, Cantina) MORGAN RELYEA

Uncommon Grounds (Adelphi) GREG CEO; (Uncommon Grounds) NATHANIEL MURPHY

GOLD:

DINNER ($)

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ESCAPE

GOLD:

Lake Placid

Saratoga may be a sought-after vacation destination all by itself, but sometimes you need a vacation from your vacation! Less than two hours north of the city is picturesque Lake Placid, home of the 1932 and 1980 Olympic Games (see: the “Miracle on Ice”), as well as a number of award-winning restaurants, hotels, scenic lakes and a great shopping scene. SILVER: BOSTON BRONZE: MONTRÉAL

HAPPY HOUR

GOLD: F E S T I VA L

GOLD:

15 Church

JEWELER

GOLD:

Saratoga Peak Performance

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A Saratoga classic, Dairy Häus, located on West Avenue, has been serving up homemade ice cream from its walkup window for more than three decades. Don’t go there just expecting your typical chocolate, vanilla and strawberry options: Dairy Häus’ rotating cast of hard ice creams includes standouts such as Caramel Cookie Dough, Coconut Pistachio and even Bubble Gum. SILVER: BEN AND JERRY’S BRONZE: STEWART’S SHOPS

Silverado Jewelry Gallery

(Dairy Häus) MORGAN RELYEA

(Lake Placid) LAKEPLACID.COM; (Peak Performance) ALICE COREY

GOLD:

Saratoga Peak Performance, owned and directed by top sports conditioning expert Dr. Bryan Briddell, is the place in town for serious athletes—whether you consider yourself a jock or not. Dr. Briddell has some legit chops, too; he’s trained a number of top sportspeople from the area, including former Los Angeles Kings hockey player Brad Chartrand. SILVER: EVOLUTION STRENGTH & PERFORMANCE BRONZE: SARATOGA SPRINGS YMCA

Dairy Häus

Silverado’s a goldmine. The family-run jewelry gallery, which welcomes Broadway foot traffic with its gorgeous maple floors and exposed century-old brick walls, features handmade jewelry from top designers from all over the world, including Anna Beck, Chan Luu, Jamie Joseph, Peyote Bird Designs and Suzanne Kalan. SILVER: DEJONGHE ORIGINAL JEWELRY BRONZE: N. FOX JEWELERS

GYM

GOLD:

In addition to its to-die-for dinner, 15 Church also has a can’t-miss happy hour during the Saratoga summer season. The Patio at 15 Church is the perfect place to grab a few small plates (think tapas, avocado toast and tempura fish tacos), as well as $3 select draft beers, $6 select wines by the glass and half-off cocktails every day from 4:30-6pm (only available in-season). SILVER: CANTINA BRONZE: HENRY STREET TAPROOM

Chowderfest

Though it consistently falls on one of the chilliest days of the year, Chowderfest is one of Saratoga’s best reasons to get outdoors. For 20 years, the festival has been challenging local restaurants to create their best chowder for a chance to win a slew of awards, voted on by the people of Saratoga (sorta like this list). SILVER: VICTORIAN STREETWALK BRONZE: RESTAURANT WEEK

ICE CREAM

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NIGHTLIFE

OUTDOOR DINING

K I D S’ AC T I V I T I E S

The Children’s Museum at Saratoga Springs

GOLD:

GOLD: LUNCH

GOLD:

Boca Bistro

Saratoga’s lone Spanish-themed restaurant has you covered when tienes hambre (Spanish for “you’re hungry”). Its extensive lunch menu is filled with sandwiches, salads and tapas, and in season, its front patio seating is a top Broadway-people-watching hangout. SILVER: DRUTHERS BRONZE: CANTINA MARKET

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The Fresh Market

Fancy a good fresh sesh? Located just outside of downtown, The Fresh Market is Saratoga’s go-to spot for stocking up on fruits, veggies, meats—and more— with a range of organic options and prepared foods available. It’s also got a fully stocked cheese counter— in other words, heaven on Earth. SILVER: HEALTHY LIVING BRONZE: PUTNAM MARKET

(Fresh Market) MORGAN RELYEA

GOLD:

(9 Maple) DORI FITZPATRICK; (Prime) THE HARRIS COMPANY; (Caputo’s) MORGAN RELYEA

Saratoga’s Children’s Museum is fun defined. Check out its educational exhibit on Congress Park or its Science, Technology, Engineering And Math (STEM) room for your future RPI graduate. Plus, the museum’s goal is to forge connections between whip-smart kids and their parents, so it's fun for the entire family. SILVER: CONGRESS PARK CAROUSEL BRONZE: BOWTIE CINEMAS

9 Maple Ave.

Prime at Saratoga National GOLD:

Nestled between Saratoga City Tavern and the Night Owl dance club, 9 Maple Ave. is an intimate, 40-seat jazz bar known for having the largest selection of single malt scotches between Manhattan and Montréal, as well as a simply biblical martini list. A weekend-night peek through the street-side window will almost certainly reveal a grooving jazz band—and shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. SILVER: HENRY STREET TAPROOM BRONZE: HAMLET & GHOST

If you frequent Saratoga’s top summer parties or galas, you’ve surely experienced the magic that is the Prime patio. (Don’t miss saratoga living’s Best Of Saratoga event there on October 6!) The patio, which overlooks the 18th hole of the Saratoga National Golf Club, is simply Edenic when it comes to al fresco dining. Prime also hosts a bumpin’ Sunday live jazz brunch there, too. SILVER: 15 CHURCH BRONZE: DRUTHERS

PIZZA

GOLD:

Caputo’s Pizzeria

The short drive from Downtown Saratoga to get to the best pizza place in the city is oh so worth it. With more than 20 delicious pies to choose from— including Chicken Parm, Greek and Eggplant Rollatini—Caputo’s is a pizza-lover’s paradise. And all pizzas come in three sizes, catering to your level of hunger. Stomach growling, anyone? SILVER: HARVEST AND HEARTH BRONZE: MAMA MIA’S PIZZA & CAFE

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TOURIST TRAP

UNISEX SALON

Q U I C K E AT S

GOLD:

Spring Street Deli and Pizzeria

For 23 years, Spring Street Deli has been offering soups, salads, pizzas and made-to-order sandwiches— named after famous racehorses—on Saratoga’s east side. Did we mention that Spring Street’s entire menu is available all day long? Breakfast for dinner, it is! SILVER: BURGERFI BRONZE: FOUR SEASONS NATURAL FOODS

Saratoga Race Course

R E TA I L ( C L O T H I N G )

Piper Boutique

GOLD:

For Downtown Saratoga’s fashionista set, Piper Boutique offers a carefully curated inventory of high-quality, trendy women’s clothing and accessories—all priced at under $100! It’s literally the real deal. SILVER: YELLOW BOUTIQUE BRONZE: ROCKABELLA BOUTIQUE

G. Willikers Toys & Games

G. Willikers might as well be a classic Manhattan storefront cut and pasted into Downtown Saratoga. The shop has become an essential stop for all things kids, with myriad whimsical items for sale, including toys, clothing, books, games and stuffed animals. SILVER: NORTHSHIRE BOOKSTORE BRONZE: SARATOGA OLIVE OIL SPORTS BAR

GOLD:

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Saratoga Stadium

If you’re a live sports fanatic, with a hankering for bountiful beer and bar food, Saratoga Stadium’s your place. With weekly specials, including 25-cent wing Wednesdays and all-you-can-eat prime rib Fridays—not to mention TVs perched on every wall—the Stadium’s a must for football season and beyond. SILVER: THE WEST SIDE SPORTS BAR AND GRILLE BRONZE: PEABODY’S

(Spring Street) MORGAN RELYEA; (Piper) FRANCESCO D'AMICO; (Stadium) KATIE DOBIES

GOLD:

R E TA I L ( O T H E R )

(Saratoga Race Course) BILLY FRANCIS LEROUX; (Blended) MORGAN RELYEA; (Canfield Casino) TRACEY BUYCE

GOLD:

Surprise, surprise: Saratoga Race Course is the most popular tourist trap in town. Sure, you may have to deal with throngs of out-of-towners, oppressive heat and/ or the threat of a summer thunderstorm, but c’mon! Watching world-class Thoroughbreds while inhaling a Shake Shack burger? Sign us up. SILVER: BROADWAY BRONZE: SARATOGA PERFORMING ARTS CENTER

GOLD (Tie):

Blended Hair Studio

At Blended Hair Studio, located just outside of Downtown Saratoga, destressing is the name of the game. Blended offers a variety of hair-styling services for men, women and children—at affordable prices. And as far as your voting’s concerned, Blended’s a cut above all but one of the rest.

GOLD (Tie):

Classical Concepts Salon

Downtown Saratoga’s Classical Concepts Salon tied for gold in this category— and for good reason. It’s one of the only Aveda Concept Salon and Spas in town, and besides top haircare for men, women and children, it also offers a bounty of other services, including nail care, facials, waxing and massages. SILVER: COMPLEXIONS SPA FOR BEAUTY & WELLNESS BRONZE: HAIR CREATIONS / LOCKETTES THE SALON (TIE) VENUE (WEDDING)

GOLD:

Canfield Casino

It doesn’t get more Saratoga than a wedding at the historic Canfield Casino. Smack dab in the middle of the postcard-perfect Congress Park, the wedding venue has been a popular option for the “I do” set for decades. Plus, it’s just a short walk from Caroline Street… after-afterparty, anyone? SILVER: SARATOGA NATIONAL GOLF CLUB BRONZE: HALL OF SPRINGS

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A RCH I TE CTU R E

THE ADELPHI HOTEL “saratoga living holds its Design Issue party there every year for a reason!” –Abby Tegnelia, Publisher BR E A KFAST

COMPTON’S RESTAUR ANT “Saratoga’s OG diner. My stomach has so much history there!” –Will Levith, Executive Editor

WEEKEND BRUNCH

GOLD:

Max London’s

You know it’s the weekend when the Max London’s patio is packed around 11am. (Even during the offseason, it’s a traffic jam inside.) The upscale restaurant serves weekend brunch FridaySunday, offering a wide range of dishes, from pizza to French toast. And don’t forget to try Max’s delicious Bloody Mary! SILVER: PRIME AT SARATOGA NATIONAL BRONZE: SWEET MIMI’S CAFÉ AND BAKERY

COF F E E UNCOMMON GROUNDS “Good coffee, great bagels, best location—what’s not to love?” –Richard Pérez-Feria, Editor in Chief

X M A S D I S P L AY

GOLD:

G. Willikers Toys & Games

PJ’S BAR-B-QSA “The only place I’ve eaten at more times than Compton’s.” –Will

DINNER ($)

Every holiday season, Downtown Saratoga’s storefronts come alive with string lights and holiday decorations. But the true belle of the ball is always G. Willikers’ Miracle On 34th Street-esque window display. Think: paper snowflakes, nutcracker dolls and all things seasonal splendor. SILVER: ADIRONDACK TRUST COMPANY BRONZE: THE ADELPHI HOTEL

O L D E B R YA N I N N “Not only is the food delish, but the old-style tavern has the best ambiance.” –Tina Galante, Operations Director

DINNER ($$)

OSTERIA DANNY “One could argue that Osteria Danny is Saratoga’s only world-class restaurant experience.” –Richard DINNER ($$$)

HUDSON “I love Hudson because it’s where I grew up, but now there are so many eclectic restaurants, shops and galleries, too.” –Tara Buffa, Account Executive ESCAPE

YOG A

GOLD:

The Hot Yoga Spot

Before you get lost in your next relaxing shavasana, know that all of those votes you cast, mindfully, for The Hot Yoga Spot in Saratoga won it category gold. With 200-plus weekly yoga and barre sessions to offer budding yogis in its 5 Capital Region locations, this spot is as hot as its yoga. Ohm my! SILVER: YOGA MANDALI BRONZE: BLOOM FITNESS / NAMASTE YOGA (TIE)

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Z E N S PA

GOLD:

Saratoga Dermatology and Medical Spa

In the realm of med-spas, Saratoga Dermatology rules the roost. Offering services such as BOTOX, dermal fillers and laser hair/tattoo removal, as well as medical dermatology and skin cancer/Mohs micrographic surgery, Saratoga Derm’s Drs. Jean Buhac and Jennifer Smith have served the Saratoga community well. And then some. SILVER: ROOSEVELT BATHS & SPA BRONZE: COMPLEXIONS SPA FOR BEAUTY & WELLNESS

(Hot Yoga Spot) JASON VALENTINE; (Saratoga Dermatology) MORGAN RELYEA

F E S T I VA L

F I R S T N I G H T S A R AT O G A “Best NYE party ever.” –Will PEAK PERFORMANCE “My muscles are sore just thinking about it!” –James McDonough, Account Executive

GYM

W H E AT F I E L D S “Nothing beats happy hour at Wheatfields! BOGO wine and free cheese...yes please!” –Chelsea Moore, Senior Account Executive

HAPPY HOUR

I C E C R E A M K I LW I N S “Sometimes, you just need to splurge on a totally-worth-it $8 ice cream cone.” –Natalie Moore, Managing Editor

A2Z GUIDE: our picks THE

saratoga living S TA F F W E I G H S I N .

J E W E L RY D E J O N G H E O R I G I N A L J E W E L RY “I can’t go into deJonghe without finding my next must-have piece of jewelry.” –Chelsea K I D S’ AC T I V I T I E S

THE CHILDREN’S MUSEUM AT S A R AT O G A S P R I N G S “The Children’s Museum is the best place to entertain kids…and yourself!” –Hannah Sacks, Editorial Assistant L U N C H WA S A B I “All-you-can-eat sushi at Wasabi is the best use of $15 in town.” –Natalie

FOUR SEASONS N AT U R A L F O O D S “For a small health food store, Four Seasons has everything you could possibly need!” –Chelsea

MARKET

NIGHT LIFE P U T N A M P L AC E “I love seeing the reaction old-time Saratogians have as they lay eyes on the new Putnam Place. It’s justified amazement.” –Richard OUTDOOR DINING

P R I M E AT S A R AT O G A N AT I O N A L “Prime’s patio is the best of the best. Two musts: a specialty cocktail and a surf-and-turf roll to share.” –Abby

PIZZA

M A M A M I A’ S P I Z Z A & C A F E “Mama Mia’s pizza is to die for, but so is the homey atmosphere!” –James Q U I C K E AT S E S P E R A N T O ’ S “Doughboys, oh boy! You can’t end a night out without one.” –Chelsea R E TA I L ( C L O T H I N G )

V I O L E T ’ S O F S A R AT O G A “Violet’s has the best BOGO shoe sale, hands down.” –Tina LY R I C A L BALL AD BOOKSTORE “Lyrical Ballad is this book-lover’s corn maze: I love getting lost in it.” –Will

R E TA I L ( O T H E R )

SPORTS BAR DA N G O ’S “Dango’s checks every box: friendly bartenders, generous pours, loud TVs, casual vibe and a bit of trash talkin’.” –Richard TOURIST TRAP

S A R ATO G A S PA S TAT E PA R K “Mineral springs, museums, the farmers’ market…what doesn’t the state park have?” –Natalie UNISEX SALON

THE CUTTING EDGE “JoMarie Gallo is going rocking it at her new salon, The Cutting Edge.” –Abby VENUE (WEDDING)

THE ADELPHI HOTEL “What’s more elegant than getting married at The Adelphi?” –Natalie WEEKEND BRUNCH

THE BLUE HEN “Bubbly, live music and a killer coffee cake to start—perfection!” –Abby X M A S D I S P L AY S A N TA’ S H O U S E “I’m literally obsessed with Saratoga’s perfect home: Santa’s House on Broadway.” –Richard YOG A H O T YO G A S P O T “Clear my mind and get my daily sweat in? Count me in.” –James

Z E N S PA C O M P L E X I O N S S PA FOR BE AUTY & WELLNESS “Relaxation rules at Complexions.” –Chelsea

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An exclusive look inside Saratoga’s iconic—and still mysterious—literary and cultural colony.

Yaddo, Without Words PHOTOGRAPHY BY

KYLE ADAMS EXCLUSIVELY FOR

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he first time I visited [that I was] being promoted and, in Saratoga was in a way, succeeding in journalism, but 2015 when I landed getting farther and farther away from a scholarship to the things I cared about. The job at Elle the Summer Writers was exciting and it was a certain kind Institute at Skidmore of glamour, but I realized that I didn’t College. The very first thing hands-on edit stories anymore. I didn’t I did in town? What any assign stories; I didn’t write very much respectable writer would: I myself. One of the things that appealed visited the public gardens to me about the Yaddo position was that I thought I’d get closer to the at Saratoga’s famed artists’ original moment of the work again. I’d retreat, Yaddo. I’ll never be back with people when they’re in forget standing next to one the idea stage, the failing stage, the of the estate’s fountains, staring at the I-have-no-idea-what-I’m-doing stage, Victorian-inspired Trask Mansion and which is the stage I actually thinking: “That’s like something like a lot. [Laughs] out of Harry Potter…or maybe even Scooby-Doo.” Tell me some of the most The mansion, which sits After nearly two decades at the helm memorable artists you’ve at the center of Yaddo’s of the legendary Saratoga-based had a chance to host during 400-acre wooded estate, is your tenure at Yaddo. looking a lot different these artists’ retreat, its president, Gosh, so many. We had days than when I first saw it. Elaina Richardson, speaks up about, Jayne Anne Phillips work It’s been given a $10 million on Lark & Termite, Jennifer face-lift, reopening just this well, everything—and it’s riveting. Egan on Manhattan Beach past June, along with some and all kinds of filmmakers— other nips and tucks to everybody from Dee Yaddo’s grounds. For a place Rees (Mudbound) to Noah that’s offered residencies to Baumbach (The Squid And authors, composers, artists and many other creatives The Whale). Also, big authors since 1926—76 of whom have such as Jonathan Franzen won a Pulitzer Prize; 68, a and Jeffrey Eugenides. National Book Award; and 1, a Nobel Prize for Literature—the Who do you think are the BY JEFF DINGLER | art by ROBERT RISKO money spent was certainly most important artists to EXCLUSIVELY FOR saratoga living worthwhile. One thing that have ever stayed at Yaddo? hasn’t changed since my visit? I think it’d depend on your Its president is still writer and taste and your lens. You former Elle magazine Editor could probably take a million in Chief Elaina Richardson, different approaches. If I were who’s been helming the colony for writing a book about Yaddo, I’d focus on nearly two decades. I sat down with just the summer of ’68, when there was a the charismatic Richardson to talk lot of cultural tension and chaos. You had everything Yaddo. It was a good day. artist Philip Guston and novelist Philip Roth in residence then, and they were You shocked the publishing world working together on a project, basically when you stepped down as editor cartooning the Vietnam War. It was never in chief of Elle in 2000 to become published, but Guston did the drawings Yaddo’s president. What was so and Roth did the text. So you could alluring about the position? take that approach. It’s hard to imagine I’d started to feel what I think many a more interesting conversation. I also journalists feel who begin as writers— think of Langston Hughes going into

Yaddo, With Words

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teamwork makes the dream work (clockwise from top left) Yaddo President Elaina Richardson with actor John Malkovich; Richardson making a public appearance; a group shot of residents at Yaddo: front row, left to right: Michael Torke, Joe Caldwell, Richard Danielpour second row: Anthony Gatto, Ushio Torkai, Jacki Lyden, Danny Mitarontondo. Magdalena Edwards third row: Charlotte Hallberg, Kora Radella, Glen Holland, Julia Bland fourth row: Elizabeth Kelly, Salvatore Scibona, John McManus, Lizzie Stark, Andrew Gorin back row: Susan Brynteson, Michael Snediker Elaina Richarddson, Andrew Ewell, Artis Henderson left stairs, bottom to top: Andreq Ginzel, Michelle Herman, Stephen O’Connor, Brian Rogers, Sadea Shiruzi right stairs, bottom to top: Stephen Burke, Camille Guthrie, Jay Shinn, Menza Qato

Historically, Yaddo’s been a pretty mysterious place—especially to Saratogians. Has that been intentional? It’s conscious in the sense that Yaddo and the whole idea of “retreat” led to the development of some core habits and roles. So, for example, we have quiet hours between 9am and 4pm and after 10pm, which means nobody can come visit your studio. No fellow artists will knock upon your door, and the staff won’t do anything either within quiet hours. We have to protect the idea

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“I remember feeling strongly that Yaddo was too well-kept a secret...but it really felt to me, especially as times became more charged politically and culturally, that Yaddo had to fill a bigger role in the cultural landscape.”

What’s motivated that decision to start opening up Yaddo to the community more? To have invested $10 million in the facility, it felt important to me that we were doing that not just for the 300 artists a year who are residents here, but also for the wider community as well, and especially Saratoga Springs and the Capital Region, which were very generous during the renovation campaign. We realized that because we’ve restored the mansion,

(Copland, Bernstein) LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; (Hughes) VAN VECHTEN COLLECTION/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Saratoga to have a beer. I wonder what that was like, getting to sit on a barstool next to Hughes.

of “retreat” and peace and quiet and uninterrupted thought time. But over the decades, what’s also become apparent is that, of course, there’s curiosity. People want to know what happens in these buildings. So we’ve realized the obvious truth that the better a neighbor we are and the more welcoming the public areas are, the more understood “retreat” is, and that you help both by paying equal attention to them. The gardens get more than 50,000 visitors a year. That’s the next stage for this big campaign we’ve been in: to do work on the access roads, the parking area and the gardens themselves. So we’re trying to keep in balance the necessity of “retreat” and that of public access, while also demystifying, in a sense, what happens here at Yaddo.

we have this incredible resource where we can do more year-round events and robust programming, such as concerts in the music room or a movie night on the lawn. And when we fix the access road and public area, it opens up all of these really exciting ideas about how these public areas can be used, perhaps even for mini-festivals. Also, when I first took the job, I remember feeling strongly that Yaddo was too well-kept a secret. It has a national reputation and a lot of status within a small world, but it really felt to me, especially as times became more charged politically and culturally, that Yaddo had to fill a bigger role in the cultural landscape. We have the history of having been around for 100 years, and we have the power of attracting the world’s greatest artists. You’re closing in on two decades at Yaddo. Would you say that these renovations have been your biggest accomplishment so far? Oh gosh, yes. I think, undoubtedly, this moment. We have five new live-work studios—the first new livable spaces ever built on Yaddo’s grounds—as well as a completely restored mansion. Before, the mansion was magnificent but under threat of falling into disrepair. So what makes me feel really proud is this feeling of having set Yaddo up both in terms of outreach and who comes here, as well as the stability of the infrastructure for at least the next 100 years. So we did it! All these years after leaving Elle, did you ever get back to that original work? I’m writing again, yes—nonfiction in my case. I went back to doing a lot of reviewing, but I’m working on a big mess of a project, which is about resilience. It’s about why we keep fighting when we’ve lost—a kind of investigation of lost causes. And when do you think that’ll publish? [Laughs] I can tell you it’s five years late. Does that help?

Yaddo’s All-Stars

HERE ARE FIVE OF THE BIGGEST NAMES TO SPEND TIME AT SARATOGA’S FAMED ARTISTS’ COLONY. It’s fair to say that many artists dream of being able to do a Yaddo residency. Housing everybody from Pulitzer Prize winners to Nobel laureates, Saratoga’s resident artists’ colony is one of the—if not the—most prestigious in the country. But who are the biggest of the big deals to have ever spent time there? saratoga living reveals our top five on this fascinating list.

AARON COPLAND One of America’s greatest composers, Copland garnered a Pulitzer Prize in 1945 for his masterwork Appalachian Spring. Fifteen years beforehand, he was working on one of his groundbreaking early works, Piano Variations, during a residency at Yaddo. During that visit, and on a subsequent one in 1932, Copland organized Yaddo’s Festival Of Contemporary American Music, a series which ran into the 1950s, too. LANGSTON HUGHES The quintessential poetic voice of the Jazz Age, Hughes broke down social and literary barriers with his lyrical poetry that embodied the African-American experience. During his stay at Yaddo in 1942, Hughes took part in some early civil disobedience in Saratoga, when he visited the New Worden, a popular bar and restaurant which, at the time, was still segregated. LEONARD BERNSTEIN The first time

Bernstein applied to Yaddo, he didn’t make the cut (and he even included Copland as a reference). But Bernstein got the call in 1952. While there, he worked on Trouble In Tahiti, the one-act opera that laid the groundwork for his next two much, much bigger musical scores, Candide (1956) and West Side Story (1957).

SYLVIA PLATH Revered as one of America’s most brilliant confessional poets and writers, Plath stayed at Yaddo with her husband, poet Ted Hughes, in 1959. On Yaddo’s grounds, the Boston-born Plath participated in an author’s reading and finished poems for The Colossus, the only collection of poetry that she ever published in her lifetime. SAUL BELLOW The only Yaddo resident to have been awarded a Nobel

Prize, Bellow was a regular colonist throughout the 1950s (along with his good friend, American novelist John Cheever). During a stay in 1959, Bellow worked on portions of Henderson The Rain King, one of the Canadian-American writer’s most enduring works. —JEFF DINGLER

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The Brooklyn-based artist credits Skidmore with her business chops in a creative field. B Y N I C O L E I A N N I E L L O blue’s clues Artist Lizzie Gill found inspiration, while attending Skidmore College, in Reruns, a long-closed shop on Phila Street.

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(Gill) JACQUELINE SILBERBUSH

Lizzie Gill’s Beautiful, Still World ThatTimeByThePool.Jpeg, 2019 30"x24"x1" Acrylic, Image Transfer, Silkscreen and Collage on panel

hile riding the My favorite place, which was crowded subway very formative during my studio to Borough Hall, then days at Skidmore, was the walking to Lizzie Gill’s [now-closed] shop Reruns in art studio in Downtown Saratoga. It was in a basement Brooklyn, I felt a wave of on the corner of Phila Street nostalgia come over me, and Broadway, and I’d be in knowing that I’d soon be there every week, looking talking about Saratoga Springs. through the old magazines, Although I’d spent most of my which the owner always life in Manhattan, I’d grown up replenished regularly. It was in Saratoga and was excited such a wonderful shop, with to speak with Gill, who had rooms of vintage clothes piled earned her degree in fine art high, knickknacks and tablefrom Skidmore College, a place top treasures. He always had I’d known well: I used to ride showtunes playing, and I’d horses there. Speaking with Gill spend hours poring over the would bring me back, I hoped stacks of 1950s magazines, to a period in my life that felt looking for my next subject. very far away; I was interested in reconnecting with Saratoga Saratoga Springs is a fun place vis-à-vis the artist and learning to visit. What are some of your how she’d been inspired by my favorite hangouts there? hometown. It really is a wonderful place! Gill is a self-described mixed During my most recent trip Miami Ready, 2017 media artist, whose retroto Saratoga, I stayed at the Oil and mixed media on canvas modern collage art nods to Brentwood Hotel, which I loved. 48"x60"x1" the American experience The rooms are in a renovated stable, where you can hear the through the use of mediums horses coming and going from the track. There’s a cozy bar, such as black-and-white 1950s advertisements integrated and juxtaposed with contemporary color schemes. where they serve classic cocktails and play vinyl records—you She’s also cofounder of the Brooklyn Collage Collective could definitely find me at a place like that nowadays. Back during school, though, it was all about Desperate Annie’s! (brooklyncollagecollective.com), an online gallery that showcases the artwork of an international group of collage In what ways do you feel Skidmore helped develop your artists. When I arrived at her studio, it was everything life as an artist? I’d imagined: We talked about her gorgeous work—and our I really feel that Skidmore helped me become an entrepreneur, shared Saratoga roots. which is something that can be difficult for an artist to be, Your works’ titles are terrific. At what point do you come while sustaining a living as one. up with their names: before or after you finish them? In what city do you feel most creative? It’s almost a simultaneous thing, which happens at the Brooklyn, when I’ve landed back home after a long flight from beginning of a piece. I’ll be flipping through a vintage either a good or bad trip. magazine, looking for a new subject, and a title will pop into my head when looking at an image—which provides the Amidst the instant gratification, swipe-right world we all inspiration for the rest of the piece. The title is what makes inhabit, Lizzie Gill has found inspiration from the stillness of me want to work with a certain image and tell a story. the past. Her work has a sense of tranquility that we often forget existed in the pre-smartphone era. I hope more people What’s the most interesting place you’ve found an item to discover that feeling through her incredible, timely artwork. include in one of your collage works?

busy lizzie (opposite, top) A look inside mixed media artist and Skidmore grad Lizzie Gill's Brooklyn Studio.

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Like Horses (Swipe Left), 2018 Collage, acrylic and graphite on paper 20"x15"

Off To The Races, 2018 Collage, acrylic and graphite on paper 20"x15"

We Can Lie About How We Met II, 2018 Collage on paper 15"x11"

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THE STORY YOU HAVE TO READ

SARATOGA’S

WATER AFTER AN EXHAUSTIVE, MONTHS-LONG INVESTIGATION, saratoga living GETS TO THE BOTTOM OF ALL THINGS WATER. WE SUGGEST YOU BUCKLE UP.



BY NATA LIE MOORE p h oto gra p h y by D O R I FIT Z PATR I C K exclusi v ely f o r saratoga living

irst, a quick and (somewhat) dirty history: The Saratoga region was originally a prime hunting ground for the Mohawk Indian tribe, whose members believed the waters that bubbled from the ground were a gift from the god Manitou. European settlers came in in the early 1700s, claimed

SARATOGA

WATER the numbers

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The number of springs in the Saratoga Spa State Park

250

The minimum number, in parts per million, of dissolved solids such as calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium that must be present in water for it to be considered mineral water

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the land and began developing it. In the 1800s, Saratoga was a destination for the rich and famous, who came to “take the waters” (drink from the mineral springs), but by the end of the century, private industry had begun extracting carbonic acid gas from the springs for use in soda, which was detrimental to the natural flow of the springs. The State of New York stepped in in the early 1900s, passing anti-pumping legislation, but not before many of the springs had been permanently damaged. Shortly after, in 1909, the State Reservation at Saratoga Springs was formed, which put the future of the springs solely in the state’s hands, followed by the creation of the “New Spa,” a Europeanstyle health center that became the first major project finished under Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, in 1935. The Saratoga Spa saw its finest hour between then and 1950, after which its funding was gradually cut, and it was transformed into the Saratoga Spa State Park we know today. I made several trips to the Spa State Park this past summer, the first of which was to explore the benefits of soaking in Saratoga’s mineral waters by way of a spa day—solely for research purposes, of course. Established in 1935, Roosevelt Baths & Spa is the last remaining historical bathhouse in Saratoga Springs, and bathing in the carbonated waters of the Lincoln Spring—just as guests did back in the days of the Saratoga Spa— is its signature treatment. Benefits of such mineral baths, Spa Director Jared Taisey tells me, are believed to include therapeutic effects on skin conditions such as psoriasis, increased blood circulation and cell oxygenation, stimulation of the immune system, production of endorphins, normalized gland function and promotion of feelings of physical and psychological well-being. “Of course, everything is a belief—we can’t say for certain,” Taisey says. That got me thinking: How do we not know for certain? Hasn’t there been some study that definitively proves (or, gasp!, disproves) bathing in mineral waters has medicinal value? It turns out, there hasn’t. Academic study after academic study I

750,000

The amount, in dollars, the new Lincoln Bath House cost to build (it opened in 1930)

The percentage of patients with arthritis and related conditions who showed definite improvement after taking part in a special treatment program which included the use of naturally carbonated mineral waters in the form of baths and other forms of spa therapy during a study at the Veterans Hospital at Saratoga Springs from 1943-1947

(13) DAVID GUEST; (250) FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION; (750,000, 92) SARATOGA QUEEN OF SPAS

n the opening scene of Ice Age: The Meltdown, Scrat, the acorn-obsessed saber-toothed squirrel, is hanging off the edge of a glacier where his acorn has become lodged. When he finally wedges it out, a stream of water springs from the hole. He plugs the leak with his paw, but another springs, followed by another and another until he runs out of body parts to plug the leaks with and is blown from the side of the glacier. That’s what writing about water is like. Every time you think you’ve done it—plugged the leak and contained the tsunami—another leak, or, in this case, lead, sprouts. There’s e. Coli in the lake. Great. On top of it. But, oh wait, it also has blue green algae and zebra mussels, and there are invasive water chestnuts in the creek that connects the lake to the river. There’s the water crisis in Africa, in California and in the Colorado River basin, and then there’s the drinking water crises in Flint, MI and Newark, NJ. There’s saltwater and fresh water, glacial water and rainwater and, in Saratoga Springs, there’s mineral water. In writing about all the waters of Saratoga, and actually, in writing about Saratoga in general, mineral waters come first. As Dr. Grace M. Swanner writes in her Saratoga Queen Of Spas (the book Saratoga Room Library Clerk Victoria Garlanda referred to as “The Bible” when she handed it to me), “It can realistically be said that the waters are the veritable ‘raison d’être’ of Saratoga Springs.” And so, in my quest to write as comprehensive a story on Saratoga water as possible, mineral water is where I’ll dive in first.

lake a boss Loughberry Lake, a shallow reservoir next to Route 50 between Saratoga and Wilton, is Saratoga’s main municipal water source; (opposite) Orenda Spring is one of 13 springs in the Saratoga Spa State Park.

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107,299

The number of treatments given at the Lincoln and Washington bath houses in 1927

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15,000-20,000 The approximate number of mineral baths given at Roosevelt Baths & Spa per year in recent years

2690

The amount of sodium, in milligrams per liter of water, in water from the Hathorn #3 Spring in the Spa State Park

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2300

The recommended maximum daily intake of sodium, in milligrams

147

The number of years Saratoga Spring Water has been in business

The number of states Saratoga Spring Water is sold in

(5) SARATOGA SPRING WATER; (28,000, 1,530, 219,000, 7,066,000, 1.72) CITY OF SARATOGA SPRINGS; (31) CBS

(bottle) NATALIE MOORE; (107,299) SARATOGA QUEEN OF SPAS; (15,000-20,000) JARED TAISEY; (2690) NEW YORK PARKS, RECREATION AND HISTORIC PRESERVATION; (2300) THE AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION; (147) SARATOGA SPRING WATER; (30) AC MADKOUR

reviewed all said some version of the same thing: There was wonders,” Dr. Swanner writes. “This concept is basic to spa “insufficient evidence” to support the fact that balneotherapy therapy. The mineral waters are not necessarily specific for (the treatment of disease by bathing in mineral springs) was any given disease. They contribute to the basic welfare of the effective. In reading these studies, I came across the name person by improving the general health and thereby aiding Arianne Verhagen quite a bit, and decided to reach out to her nature in the natural healing process.” The other explanation to see what the deal was. “I do not think that, at the moment, the for why people who came to the Saratoga Spa felt—and were, scientific world is able to state that balneotherapy is or is not according to many studies conducted in the era—healed, is effective,” says Verhagen, professor and head of the discipline that “spa therapy” also included a regiment of exercise, healthy of physiotherapy at University of diet, rest and recreation. Technology Sydney and whose research So, while I can’t say I felt healed in delves into the effect of balneotherapy any specific way by my mineral bath at on physiological impairments. “There Roosevelt (being in my 20s, I don’t have are just not enough studies done of a too many ailments in need of healing), it’s certain size and quality to be able to draw hard to imagine my relaxing soak, when these kinds of conclusions. I’m not sure paired with a healthy diet and exercise, why these studies are not performed, would do me any harm. If anything, for but I assume it’s a money problem, as the remainder of the day I went to the these studies cost a lot of money, and spa, I felt like I was still floating in that probably researchers cannot find the one-of-a-kind, effervescent water. funding for them.” So, without scientific evidence to back ut bathing in mineral waters is the legitimacy of balneotherapy, we’re only half of the equation; from left with anecdotal evidence, which, it Victorian Era tourists who came turns out, is in high supply. For starters, here to “take the waters,” to those you can’t ignore more than four centuries who, while at the Saratoga Spa, drank of Saratogians and visitors to the Spa from the Hathorn, Coesa and Geyser water we doing? Americans City who believe in the water’s healing springs, which were piped into the Hall purchase 2 billion plastic water qualities. One high-profile example is of Springs, Saratogians and visitors bottles a week. That’s 6 bottles per Zac Brown Band bassist Matt Mangano, alike have been drinking from the person, all 52 weeks of the year. who told saratoga living that “health-giving” mineral springs that dot running mineral water over his dislocated Saratoga Springs for hundreds of years. finger made it feel good enough to play a show at Saratoga So, I figured I’d see what all the fuss was about. Upon my arrival at the notoriously delicious State Seal Performing Arts Center (SPAC) that same night. Then there Spring across from the Saratoga Automobile Museum, I filled are the people who can speak to the increased feelings of my Nalgene and, too nervous to sip it in front of all the people psychological wellbeing: “We hear from a lot of our guests that standing around filling their five-gallon jugs, made like I was after they have a mineral bath, they didn’t care that their cell leaving. But that’s when I met Willow, a pup whose owner, 15-year phone was going off, or they shut it off because it was going Gansevoort resident David Dinallo, looked like a regular around off,” Taisey says. “Like, the world’s gonna survive for the couple those parts. “It’s the best water I’ve ever had,” Dinallo said about hours that they’re spending here at the spa.” the State Seal. “I consider Fiji the benchmark of water, and this That psychological wellbeing is key. “Given the right is right up there. The thing is, this water is free and Fiji costs environment and the psychological assurance that health will $39 at BJ’s.” (Ironically, and devastatingly, I found out later, Fiji, be restored, the salutary physiological effect of the waters and home of the trendy Fiji bottled water brand Dinallo mentioned, minerals necessary for rebuilding body tissues will accomplish

is actually one of the worst-off countries in the world when it mineral waters. “No, they’re not medicinal!” she flatly tells me. comes to water access—but more on that later.) “Twenty years “No, no, no, no!” She explains: “When we say mineral, it means ago, who would’ve ever bought water in bottles at the store?” he it’s got calcium and magnesium in it. It’s also gonna have a lot of asked. “Now, most people won’t drink water out of the tap. But sodium in it. So, anyone who’s concerned about their sodium water from bottles isn’t much better, I hear.” Willow likes the State consumption—you certainly don’t want to be taking mineral Seal water too: Several times, Dinallo put two bowls of water on water. They’re also radioactive. Not to the point where they would the ground, one filled from the tap and one filled with State Seal be dangerous, but I can’t imagine any reasonable argument to water, and eight times out of ten, Willow drank from the State just decide to consume a bunch of minerals, a bunch of salt and Seal bowl. a little bit of radioactivity. That’s crazy.” Halstead ventures that I broke the news to Dinallo that I’m a water-from-the-ground perhaps tourists in the Victorian Era saw improvements in their newb, and of course, he wanted me to try it, right then and there. health when they came to Saratoga not necessarily because of But by then I’d realized people the mineral springs, but because were waiting for a spigot and not of the regular drinking water. “Our getting water from the one I filled surface water may have been SARATOGA WATER my bottle with. That’s because the somewhat cleaner long, long ago Definitions one I chose was actually churning than if you were living in New York Spring Water: Water from an out good old-fashioned mineral City or Philadelphia, where it’s easy underground formation that flows water from the Geyser Spring. to see that surface water would’ve naturally to the surface. (The words “mineral water” are been heavily polluted.” actually engraved in the concrete There are some springs, Mineral Water: Water that has above the spigot—not sure how I though, that don’t have as much at least 250 parts per million of total missed that.) But Dinallo insisted I salt, radioactivity, calcium or dissolved solids and originates from a try that too. “It tastes like blood,” magnesium, or at least not in as geologically and physically protected an onlooker warned. I swished it high quantities, and are therefore underground water source. around in my mouth and spit it out. not classified as “mineral.” One It tasted like blood. is the State Seal (which actually Groundwater: Water found The blood taste comes from spews sand-filtered rain water) underground in cracks and spaces in iron in the water, I learned later. and another is the Sweet Water soil, sand and rock. But not all the springs taste like Spring, which, located across that. That’s because, while all the Route 50 from State Seal and the Surface Water: Water in rivers, mineral springs contain the same rest of Spa State Park, is the main streams, creeks, lakes and reservoirs. minerals—such as potassium, source for Saratoga Spring Water, calcium and magnesium and, the company behind those blue yes, iron—and are therefore glass bottles you see everywhere believed to be from the same source (though that source is around town. (Pristine Mountain Springs in Stockbridge, not officially known, Saratoga Spa State Park Manager David VT, which has very similar characteristics as Sweet Water Guest tells me), they have varying concentrations of those Spring, is the other source.) The identity of Saratoga Springs minerals. Historically, the health benefits of the springs were is undoubtedly tied to Saratoga Spring Water. Besides the also thought to vary. Congress Spring in Congress Park, obvious name-related similarities, Saratoga Spring Water is for example, is categorized as cathartic and was thought to the last remaining bottler of Saratoga’s spring waters, having benefit dyspepsia, gout and skin ailments. been in operation since 1872. Its iconic blue bottles have also, I ask Dr. Judy Halstead, a professor of chemistry at Skidmore in a way, become synonymous with Saratoga—not only are College, her thoughts on the medicinal value of Saratoga’s they sold in 30 states and 5 countries, which puts Saratoga

The number of countries Saratoga Spring Water is sold in

28,000

The approximate number of people the Saratoga Springs water system serves

1,530,219,000

The total amount of water, in gallons, produced in Saratoga Springs in 2018

7,066,000

The amount of water, in gallons, consumed in Saratoga Springs on July 2, 2018 (the year’s highest singleday consumption)

1.72

The approximate amount, in dollars, Saratoga residents paid per 1000 gallons of water in 2018

The percent water bills in the US have surged since 2012 (vastly outpacing US inflation)

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(15, 13,000) THE WASHINGTON POST; (.007) NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC; (30) UNITED NATIONS; (50) WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZAITON; (5000) THE BIG THIRST

on the map as a “water” destination even after the closing of the Saratoga Spa, but Saratoga Spring Water souvenirs are a signature item in shops up and down Broadway (I’m the proud owner of a candle holder made out of half a Saratoga Spring Water bottle). “I think right now we have a symbiotic relationship with Saratoga where people might have a nostalgic view of their visit to Saratoga,” says Saratoga Spring Water President Adam “AC” Madkour. “They see our bottle on the shelves, and it brings them back to that time they were here. We’re getting the name Saratoga out across the country and around the world, and then, at the same time, those people who have all those great memories of visiting this area can have a little piece of that when they see our bottle.” OK, time for a water break. Have you already had your two liters for the day?

ith the storied history of Saratoga’s spring waters, and the national and international attention its premier bottled water brand has garnered, it makes sense to assume its drinking water supply is equally noteworthy. Rumors even swirl in Manhattan that New York City’s water is as good as it is—and makes the city’s pizza dough and bagels as good as they are—because it gets water from Saratoga Springs. (The tasty NYC tap water actually comes from a watershed in the Catskill Mountains, which have very little limestone rock and therefore don’t taint the water with bitter-tasting calcium.) But in reality, Saratoga’s spring waters are a completely separate entity from its drinking water. Whereas the mineral springs arise from waters trapped in layers of impenetrable rock deep below the earth’s surface and rise along fault lines, Saratoga’s main municipal water source is Loughberry Lake, a shallow reservoir next to Route 50 between Saratoga and Wilton. The city also uses ground bottoms up (opposite, clockwise from top left) Congress Spring was once thought to benefit dyspepsia, gout and skin ailments; Lake George is home to the world’s most advanced environmental monitoring system, The Jefferson Project; Deer Park Spring is named for its proximity to what used to be a rustic lodge that housed tame deer; the Vale of Springs Trail at Saratoga Spa State Park.

The “action level” of lead, in parts per billion (the maximum concentration of lead allowed in drinking water before the system must take action to control corrosion in pipes)

13,000

The highest level of lead, in parts per billion, found in Flint, MI during its water crisis

0.007

The percentage of the planet’s water that’s available for human use and consumption

water from the Geyser Crest system, as well as from Bog Meadow Brook and three Bog Meadow ground water wells during the summer months when water is in higher demand. Drinking water is obviously a hot topic right now, given the crisis in Flint, MI and now Newark, NJ relating to lead in drinking water, as well as the water insecurity seen around the world from Africa to California and Fiji, where 53 percent of people don’t have access to safe drinking water. (It’s literally easier to get water from Fiji in any city in America than it is in Fiji itself.) “Flint has brought water to the forefront,” says Brett Johnson, chief water plant operator for the City of Saratoga Springs. “People are more educated because it’s been in the news. They’re worried their kids might get lead poisoning.” But Saratogians have nothing to worry about. Whereas contaminants such as chloride, nitrogen and mercury may be present in source water (i.e. Loughberry Lake) as a result of runoff from fertilizers, road salt or factory waste, and can therefore be treated at the plant, lead, which when ingested, severely affects mental and physical development, typically gets into drinking water after it leaves the treatment plant in the pipes that bring it to people’s homes. While most of the pipes transporting water under the City of Saratoga aren’t made of lead, there are a few, and in a routine water test in June 2017, lead levels were found to exceed the legal limit in 7 out of 60 homes in the city. As a result, the Department of Public Works worked with the New York State Department of Health and an engineering firm to test and subsequently introduce orthophosphate, a substance that prevents lead from leaching from pipes into water. (In Flint and Newark, many more homes are serviced by lead pipes, and both cities misused, or failed to use, corrosion inhibitors such as orthophosphate to prevent leaching.) Subsequent tests in November 2017, May 2018 and November 2018 in Saratoga found that lead had fallen below the maximum contaminant level. Water scarcity is another issue—actually, one of the biggest issues—that communities around the world face today. While about 70 percent of Earth is covered in water, only about 2.5 percent of that is fresh water. (Saratoga isn’t coastal, so, thankfully, I’ll be leaving the discussion of ocean pollution, coral reef depletion, water levels rising, etc. to some other lucky reporter.) Even then, only one percent of Earth’s fresh water is easily accessible—most of it is trapped in glaciers (another topic I won’t be touching on, aside from in that Ice

The percentage of people worldwide who didn’t have access to safe drinking water in 2015

The estimated percentage of people worldwide who will be living in waterstressed areas by the year 2025

5000

The number of children who die each day from lack of water or diseases they got from tainted drinking water

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9.6

The amount, in millions of dollars, the states of New York and Vermont have spent on controlling invasive water chestnuts over the last 29 years

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1.3

The amount, in millions of pounds, of Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that General Electric dumped into the Hudson River between 1947 and 1977

The percentage of students who correctly identified a tap water sample from Vermont Pure bottled water in a 2011 study

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100

The number of times more air and water pollution created by making a 16-ounce water bottle from plastic polyethylene terephthalate (PET) than are created by making it out of glass

3785

The number of times more expensive single-serve plastic water bottles are than tap water when priced by the gallon (some bottling companies, such as Dasani, actually draw on municipal water supplies)

(1.63, 4.9) MOTHER JONES; (2, 2, 18.5) CHARLES FISHMAN

(9.6) SARATOGA PLAN; (1.3) US ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY; (33) BOSTON UNIVERSITY; (100) BERKELEY PLASTICS TASK FORCE; (3785) MONEY CRASHERS

The obvious example of contamination of waters in the area Age metaphor in the intro) and snowfields. According to the United Nations, in 2015 three in ten people didn’t have access would be when General Electric dumped around 1.3 million to safe drinking water, including some in California, which was pounds of Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the Hudson in the midst of a seven-year drought. (It turns out, the water River in Hudson Falls, NY and Fort Edward, NY between shortage in California had less to do with the drought than it 1947 and 1977. The now-banned substance had unintended did with rich agriculture corporations hogging all the available impacts on human and environmental health, and can now be ground water, but again, I’ll abstain from getting into that.) By found in water, sediment, wildlife and people as far south as 2025, the World Health Organization estimates that half of the New York Harbor. Road salt is another contaminant, which the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas. affects aquatic life and decreases water clarity, as is E. coli, That’s in five years. which gets into water by way of animal feces or untreated sewage. This August, Brown’s Beach on Saratoga Lake was While Saratoga hasn’t had any real issues with water closed due to E. coli contamination from what was thought to scarcity in the past, the city is safeguarding against future be geese droppings from a flock that passed over the beach. problems. On a tour of the Saratoga water treatment plant Besides E. coli, feces also (which has been in operation since contain nutrients, which, when 1935, the same year the Saratoga they enter bodies of water, speed Spa and Roosevelt Baths & Spa “It can realistically be up eutrophication. “Natural were completed), Johnson pointed said that the waters eutrophication is the process out a 1.5 megawatt generator are the veritable by which a brand-new, pristine, that was installed in 2015 and is ‘raison d’être’ of geologically pure, young lake capable of running the facility at Saratoga Springs.” gradually and naturally becomes a full capacity, as well as a gauge monitoring the water level of a 5 swamp and then land,” Halstead tells million-gallon storage tank located me. “That’s a natural process. But behind Skidmore College (it’s almost full, FYI). He also told when we add certain things, particularly nutrients like nitrogen me the city has a bid out for a study of Loughberry Lake that and phosphorus, to a body of water, that can accelerate it will determine the long-term viability of its water quality and dramatically.” It happens like this: Nutrients, such as sewage or safe yield, or in other words, if it will continue to be a reliable fertilizers, get into a water body by way of rainwater runoff and water source for the city in the coming years. feed algae, creating algal blooms, which block sunlight causing plants to die. Then, bacteria digest the dead plants, using up oxygen in the process, and fish die, because they can’t survive hile Loughberry Lake just so happens to be Saratoga’s without oxygen. It goes without saying that the recent repeal drinking water source, it’s first and foremost a lake. of a major Obama-era clean water regulation that put limits on And as a lake, it’s susceptible to the same threats the use of polluting chemicals, such as fertilizers, near bodies as Saratoga’s other surface waters—threats such as invasive of water, is not good news for the health of surface water. species, contamination and eutrophication (when a body of Obviously, invasive species, contaminants and eutrophication water becomes overly enriched with nutrients). are important to the health of lakes and streams that aren’t Let’s break that down. Invasive species, ones that are a source of drinking water: When lakes are contaminated, not originally from the area and cause environmental and/ their water can make people or animals sick and negatively or economic damage, are a pretty straightforward problem. impact tourism. But drinking water is still a chief concern. As Zebra mussels and water chestnuts are the two main culprits of now, none of these issues pose a threat great enough in Saratoga County: The mussels compete with native fish that the Saratoga Springs water treatment plant can’t handle. for food and clog industrial water pipes, and the chestnuts When I was there, Johnson showed me all kinds of charts and develop into thick mats that block sunlight from native species meters that are constantly monitoring the levels of coliform, and hinder activities such as swimming, boating and kayaking.

turbidity, inorganic compounds, nitrate, nitrite, lead, copper, mentioned in the 2010 Post Star article Halstead was referring volatile organic compounds and many more things I can’t to, Guest tells me “The mineral spring water is collected and even pronounce, in the city’s water. And still, some residents taken to an outside lab for analysis monthly.”) don’t trust it. “You know how old the pipes are…they’re not too But tap water doesn’t taste good, some people will say (not hot,” says Saratoga Springs resident Justin Metzger. “Some of me—I have no problem gulping down Saratoga city water). them are still wood if I’m not mistaken.” (Johnson told me this Well, there are a couple of options. For one, you can buy a filter, is “highly unlikely.”) Nick LaRose is another city resident who such as a Brita, which a lot of Saratoga residents I talked with refuses to drink water from the tap (and who also happens to have. The issue there, Halstead says, is you’re putting extra be my boyfriend). “You don’t know what they’re putting in it,” responsibility on yourself that you were previously trusting the he says. “Fluoride? Fluoride’s not good for you. That Flint water water plant with to change the filter frequently enough so that crisis? The people were just drinking bacteria doesn’t grow in it. The other the water. And it had more lead in it option is to just put a pitcher of your tap than a Ticonderoga pencil factory.” water in the fridge for a while before (While the Centers for Disease Control drinking it. “If you give it 12 hours or and Prevention considers water something, most people, even if they fluoridation as one of the ten great don’t like the taste of the local water, public health achievements of the 20th will find it to be more agreeable the century because of its contribution to next day,” she says. the decline in the public’s tooth decay, Dr. Halstead, ever the tap water the relationship between fluoridated champion (though she does admit water and cancer has been debated things can get sloppy, as they did in for years. And Ticonderoga uses Flint), goes on to tell me that while tap graphite in its pencils, not lead.) water is regulated by the Environmental State Seal water, though, LaRose Protection Agency and State of New says, he’d drink. “That’s what people York, bottled water is regulated as a food did for thousands of years,” he says. by the Food and Drug Administration, “They didn’t put chemicals in the and has minimal testing requirements. water in ancient Rome.” (The average “Bottled water is something like 1000 life expectancy in ancient Rome was times more expensive than tap water,” tufa the show The iconic Geyser 25.) Dr. Halstead is not of the same she continues. (It’s actually 3785 times Island Spouter in Saratoga Spa State mindset. She tells me she came across more.) “You can get organics leaching Park is on an island of hardened a blog post by a woman who said she out of the plastic bottle, the contribution minerals called Tufa. saw someone letting their dog lick the to global climate change, the pollution spigot at the State Seal Spring. “How from having to get rid of the bottles, the do you know what anybody’s been environmental impact of transporting doing there?” Halstead says. “Honestly, really, I’m happy the those bottles, you’re making the plastic bottles…it’s just parks and recreation people test it. I think I found a Post Star ridiculous.” Madkour and Saratoga Spring Water recognize article that said they test it quarterly. Well that’s every three these environmental issues and are working to combat them. months. But really, do you want to drink water that’s been “We realize what industry we’re in, and by focusing our business tested for bacteria every single solitary day and is filtered and on glass containers, we believe that that is a more sustainable disinfected”—as Saratoga city water is—“or do you want to option. They have better recyclability, better durability and in be drinking your water from someplace a dog could’ve just conjunction with that, we offset all of our power usage with wind been licking the faucet?” (In addition to the quarterly tests power so that we can be a carbon neutral operation.”

1.63

The number of liters of water Coca-Cola bottling plants, which produce Dasani, use for every 1 liter of beverage produced

The number, in billions, of plastic water bottles purchased by Americans each week (that’s 6 bottles per person per week)

The amount of water, in tablespoons, used to complete one Google search (with 4 million searches conducted a minute, Google uses 45 million gallons of water a day)

4.9

The number of gallons of water it takes to grow one walnut

18.5

The amount of clean water, in gallons, flushed down the toilet by each American every day

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250

The amount of gallons of water it takes to provide electricity for one American each day (that’s 2.5 times more water than the average American actually uses in the kitchen and bathroom each day)

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The amount of Poland Spring and Dasani bottled water, in millions of gallons, Americans drink every hour

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The minimum number of terabytes of data generated by Jefferson Project computer models each year

The number of Jefferson Project sensor platforms in or around Lake George

(250, 1, 11) THE BIG THIRST; (73, 51) THE JEFFERSON PROJECT

he very first person I talked to when I started my water (which are often human caused), such as road salt, invasive investigation was Elizabeth Sobol, president and CEO of species and excess nutrients (or eutrophication), in order to SPAC. Not the most obvious choice, I know. But I knew create a global model for ecosystem resilience. “I think it’s she was passionate about water—mineral and drinking— incredible that all these people and organizations are getting as evidenced by her bringing a three-part series of talks together, seeing the responsibility they have to help create on water to SPAC this past summer. (I made it to the third templates for the future and for other people who are trying installment of the series, a talk by Charles Fishman, author of to stave off the same problem,” Sobol says. The Big Thirst: The Secret Life And Turbulent Future Of Water, I knew from previous interviews Sobol has done with at the very end of my months-long water exploration, and, saratoga living that when she moved here from Miami as expected, it sprouted countless more glacial leaks/leads, Beach to take over SPAC in 2016, she was at least, in part, from wastewater and gray water, to the swayed to come by the natural beauty innovative ways water scarcity issues of the area, so I asked her about it. are being solved around the world.) “That fateful, cool, June evening when I “People hear me talk about it all the came up here for the first time, I walked time: I look at SPAC as the perfect by Congress Park and the beauty of confluence of manmade beauty and the fountain and the springs…the water natural beauty,” Sobol says. “There there was just so riveting and beautiful are certainly many other summer and seeing the springs there made me festivals that are located in beautiful curious. I suppose Congress Park, and locations—Tanglewood is the obvious the water in it, was the first thing about example. But no other summer Saratoga Springs that really, totally music festival of this magnitude is arrested my attention.” so specifically located in a park that In my effort to wrap my head around was created around the presence of water—it’s just two hydrogens and an healing waters.” oxygen, after all—I asked Sobol where, Sobol is helping to further highlight in her opinion, the topic of Saratoga’s the presence of the springs in the mineral water meets drinking water Spa State Park with the renovation meets surface water. “At the end of of the long-vacant Roosevelt II the day, if we’re not working together raise your glass Saratoga Spring bathhouse. “Coesa [a wellness retreat and we’re not acknowledging the Water focuses its business on glass center] will go in there, we’ll have a interconnectedness of our own lives containers because of their recyclability gallery space and a black box theater and water and how we’re connected and durability; (opposite) Columbian space and teaching kitchen and to the earth, then it’s not a pretty Spring’s original mineral water vein workshop and classroom space,” she future,” she says. “I think it’s that has been lost, so today it dispenses says. “We’re essentially going to be interconnectedness piece that, for municipal drinking water. breathing new life and purpose into me, makes it all not just interesting a building that was originally built to and fascinating, but also critical take advantage of the waters and their healing properties.” and urgent.” It seems like some special sort of destiny Sobol also talked about The Jefferson Project, a partnership that, when Saratoga’s springs attracted the environmental, between the FUND for Lake George, IBM and Rensselaer artistic, civic force that is Elizabeth Sobol to our little city, Polytech Institute (RPI) that is the world’s most advanced we had no idea that in addition to transforming SPAC, she’d environmental monitoring system. The project’s goal is to be one of the most dominant voices advocating to save— and celebrate—our water. identify, understand and respond to ecological stressors

The number of gallons of water present in a 150-pound man’s body (that’s 90 pounds worth!)

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In Plain Sight Mills Entertainment, a division of Hollywood juggernaut CAA, is in Downtown Saratoga. Who knew? BY JEFF D I NGLER p h o t o g r a p h y b y FR ANCESCO D’AMICO e x c l u s i v e ly f o r saratoga living

ould you believe me if I told you that right here in Downtown Saratoga Springs, hidden practically in plain sight, in a nondescript, red-brick building on Broadway, just above Max London’s, is an arm of one of the world’s largest entertainment businesses? If you’re not familiar with Creative Artists Agency (CAA), you will be with its roster: CAA represents everybody from Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks to Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande. Also: Jane Fonda, David Beckham, Sean Penn…and James Bond himself, Daniel Craig. Stars. Big stars.

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88 saratoga living

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talent mills Mills Entertainment’s CEO and founder Michael Mills’ first gig was booking Penn & Teller at Proctors in Schenectady.

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While CAA’s currently headquartered in Los Angeles, it has a number of incorporated subsidiaries throughout the country, one of which is located in Saratoga. Mills Entertainment, as it’s known, acts as a live entertainment content studio, creating, financing, developing, distributing and marketing new shows and branded live experiences throughout the US. Speaking of Fonda, whom we honored in saratoga living’s 2019 Design Issue, Mills has worked with her; as well as Star Trek’s Captain James T. Kirk, William Shatner; comedy legend Mel Brooks; and

“The diversity of our portfolio is really fun and exciting for me and the team. One night, it’s John Cleese onstage doing a one-man show; the next night, it might be an original musical that we’ve produced.”

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al pi ne sp o r tsh o p .com bestselling author and star of the Food Network’s Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten. “The diversity of our portfolio is really fun and exciting for me and the team,” says Michael Mills, the company’s CEO and founder. “One night, it’s John Cleese onstage doing a one-man show; the next night, it might be an original musical that we’ve produced.” Many of these shows even pass through Albany and other parts of the Capital Region. Mills, a Scotia native, had a surprisingly auspicious start to his career in the rough and tumble world of the entertainment biz. In 1998, while still a student at the University at Albany, Mills, a trained magician who owned a magic shop in Colonie—and who paid his way through college doing magic shows—booked his first professional gig for a rather wellknown act. Through a connection made at a magic convention in Las Vegas, he wound up with the telephone number for Penn & Teller’s agent. With no prior booking experience, Mills successfully landed his heroes a show at Proctors in Schenectady. “That show worked, which

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was sort of a miracle because I didn’t know what I was doing,” says Mills. “Fortunately, that event not only came together, but was also successful enough that I craved the opportunity to do more.” Mills did a whole lot more. That same year, he officially founded Mills Entertainment in Rotterdam, NY, and the company presented its first big hit tour in 2003, with Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood of the popular improvisational comedy show, Whose Line Is It Anyway? (the show came to Proctors a number of times). “I was a big Whose Line fan, so being able to work with them was very exciting, and still is,” says Mills. Eventually, Mills Entertainment grew big enough to open its main offices in Downtown Saratoga in 2010 and five years later, it was acquired by CAA, becoming what’s known as a nonintegrated subsidiary; or an entity that, though technically owned by CAA, still retains the majority of its independence. “CAA is a great strategic partner on a lot of fronts,” says Mills. “They help us access new talent and projects, of course, but they also support us in a number of less obvious way. For example, they’re industry leaders in research and insights, which helps us identify trends and evaluate potential opportunities.” Mills Entertainment’s decision to join CAA has certainly paid off: The company opened a second office in Los Angeles in 2016, and it’s having a successful year in 2019, with shows being created or produced by it in 200 cities across the country. Locally, the company announced earlier this year that it’ll be launching a new Christmas musical based on the popular Elf on the Shelf brand (the show will swing through Albany’s Palace Theatre in December). Even though Mills spends most of his time on the West Coast these days, he hasn’t forgotten his Upstate New York roots: “My wife and I kept our home in Saratoga and are still doing summers and holidays there with the kids.” Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll run into him at Max London’s—and I can almost guarantee that no one within eyeshot will know how interesting a life he leads but me.

9/9/19 4:30 PM

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GE & Me

then, now, next (from left) Thomas Edison (left) and famed GE engineer Charles Proteus Steinmetz hard at work on America's future; GE Power’s Building No.273, which has enough room in it to fit 40 footbal fields; a 3-D-printed sphere at GE Global Research’s additive lab.

(Edison and Steinmetz) MISCI, MUSEUM OF INNOVATION & SCENCE

H O W T H E B E H E M O T H C O R P O R AT I O N C H A N G E D S C H E N E C TA D Y — A N D E V E R Y T H I N G I N I T S WA K E — F O R E V E R . BY WILL LEVITH

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photography by e x c l u s i v e ly f o r

KYLE ADAMS

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plot twist saratoga living Executive Editor Will Levith’s late grandparents’ home in Schenectady’s upscale GE Realty Plot.

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(woman) MISCI, MUSEUM OF INNOVATION & SCIENCE

might not have been born with the brain matter required to become an engineer or industrial scientist, but I do have a close, personal connection to Schenectady’s General Electric Company (GE). For the first decade and change of my life, my family spent nearly every weekend and major holiday in Schenectady at 1089 Avon Road, where my maternal grandparents, Van and Martha Ladd, lived. They owned a majestic, two-story house in what’s known as the GE Realty Plot, a prime parcel of land that GE purchased from Union College in 1899 to transform into employee housing. The 75-acre GE Plot wasn’t any old residential neighborhood; it was a tree-lined wonderland, conjured up by and catering to the company’s top executives. Though neither of my grandparents—nor my mom or uncle, who spent their childhoods on Avon Road— ever worked at the company, at least in Schenectady, owning property on the GE Plot was (and still is) worn as a badge of honor. It’s just one of the countless ways GE engineered the meteoric rise of the Electric City into one of the most important industrial centers in the world, a place where the greatest minds in science and engineering literally dreamed up America’s future. Nine years before workers showed up to mold the GE Plot into the modern marvel of real estate it is today, famed American inventor Thomas Alva Edison consolidated his various businesses into one-half of what would become the modern-day GE. In 1892, Edison merged his Edison General Electric Company with competitor Charles A. Coffin’s Thomson-Houston Company to form GE. While the company’s founding would eventually mean mountains of dollars of business, the two companies weren’t a perfect fit by any stretch of the imagination; it was a clash of cultures, says Harold Wallace Jr., curator of the electricity collections at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, DC. Whereas Edison’s men were a rag-tag group of genius engineers, loyal to Edison, Coffin’s employees were mostly suits. So synergy took time to happen. Not to mention the fact that the company couldn’t have been established at a less favorable time in American history: The following year was the Panic of 1893, the worst financial crisis to predate the Great Depression. Of course, GE persevered, and by the 1900s, it was off to the races, modernizing America at an incredible clip, weaning the country off of gas-lit everything and plugging it into the earliest

rosie the engineer GE, at its peak, employed 30,000 in Schenectady alone.

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The crown jewel of the operations was GE’s research and development laboratory—the first of its kind in the world—which worked in service of the company’s business units and was, basically, a giant sandbox for scientists to play around in, day and night, dreaming up products that seemed more science-fiction fantasy than reality.

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weather man Bernard Vonnegut, older brother of novelist Kurt, worked on Project Cirrus, an attempt by GE to manufacture weather.

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electrical grids. Its state-of-the-art Schenectady headquarters consisted of a 600-acre Schenectady Works industrial campus, dotted with more than 240 buildings and touted as America’s “largest electrical workshop.” “They did all the big stuff here,” says Chris Hunter, vice president of collections and exhibitions at Schenectady’s Museum of Innovation and Science (miSci), which houses one of the most comprehensive GE archives in the country. “With all the engineering facilities, it served as an incubator for products.” Arguably, the crown jewel of the operations was GE’s research and development laboratory—the first of its kind in the world—which worked in service of the company’s business units and was, basically, a giant sandbox for scientists to play around in, day and night, dreaming up products that seemed more science-fiction fantasy than reality. GE’s all-star R&D team included Charles Proteus Steinmetz, a German immigrant who quickly became the top electrical engineer in the world, developing the mathematical theory for alternating current electricity and the million-volt lightning generator—a way to simulate, in a lab, what it might be like for a piece of equipment to be hit with a massive power surge (he also co-founded GE’s research lab in his backyard barn). Bernard Vonnegut—whose brother, Kurt, worked for a spell as a GE publicist and later became a bestselling novelist—was part of Project Cirrus, an attempt by GE at manufacturing weather. (Yes, you read that right.) Also assigned to the project were self-taught scientist (and high school dropout) Vincent Schaefer, who created the world’s first artificial snowsquall and rain shower; Schenectadian Katharine Blodgett, the first woman scientist hired by GE and first woman awarded a physics PhD by the University of Cambridge in England; and the giant among men (and women), Irving Langmuir, who became the first industrial scientist to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1932.

or an audience who has access to the world’s most knowledgeable research assistants (i.e. Siri or Alexa) and is starting to see the first driverless automobiles tested across the country, what GE has accomplished in more than a century might seem like child’s play. But its global importance cannot be understated. As early as 1907, the company began rolling out its first line of appliances, making kitchens into kingdoms of convenience. In 1927, GE brought to market its first Monitor Top refrigerator, and the following year, the first range with a “Calrod” heating system (a heat-conducting ceramic still used in today’s appliances). In ’53, it started selling the first toaster ovens; in ’63, the first self-cleaning ovens; and in ’78, the first over-the-range microwaves. GE researchers also dreamed up the first X-ray machine (1896), American jet engine (1941) and nuclear power plant (1957). At one point in the late ’50s, GE even had its skin in the industrial diamond-making business, with a mine in Schenectady. Just as its spring waters or racetrack did for Saratoga, GE transformed Schenectady from just another city

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ge wiz (clockwise from top left; from left) GE physicist and engineer William Coolidge, chemist Willis Whitney, founder Thomas Edison, engineer Charles Proteus Steinmetz and future Nobel Prizewinning chemist Irving Langmuir in 1922; Irving Langmuir receiving the 1932 Nobel Prize for Chemistry; Charles Proteus Steinmetz’s lightning generator; Irving Langmuir (top left), Bernard Vonnegut (top right) and Vincent Schaefer, three key players in Project Cirrus, in 1947; an “Americanization” English class for foreign GE employees held in Schenectady in the 1920s; a GE company office building in 1904; GE workers hard at work; Irving Langmuir holding a Pliotron, or high vacuum tube.

that’s all he wrote Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., third from left, taking notes as a GE publicist in the 1940s.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s Origin Story y wife tells this story like it happened yesterday: When we were dating, the one time she thought I was going to break up with her was during the week of April 9, 2007, when I didn’t call her for a few days. That was because I was in mourning. On Wednesday the 11th, my literary hero, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., had died, and it sent me spiraling into a deep depression. So it goes. My reverence for Vonnegut springs eternal not only because of his novels (my all-time favorite is God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater), but also his connection to the Capital Region. In 1947, the General Electric Company (GE) in Schenectady hired him as a publicist. Vonnegut’s debut novel, Player Piano, tips its cap to the Electric City and GE in the guise of

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fictional town Ilium (not to be confused with the actual Upstate New York town of Ilion) and its Ilium Works (a stand-in for Schenectady Works), respectively. Vonnegut even swiped his main character’s name, Dr. Paul Proteus, in part, from one of GE’s most famous engineers, Charles Proteus Steinmetz. While Player Piano is certainly not Vonnegut’s best work— check out Slaughterhouse Five or Cat’s Cradle—it still helps pay tribute to a city where I spent a sizable part of my youth. —KILGORE TROUT*

*Kilgore Trout is one of Vonnegut’s most beloved fictional characters, an author who makes cameos in multiple books. This story was actually written by Will Levith.

MISCI MUSEUM OF INNOVATION & SCIENCE

O N E O F T H E W O R L D ’ S G R E AT E S T W R I T E R S G O T H I S S TA R T I N S C H E N E C TA D Y A S A P U B L I C I S T F O R G E .

in Upstate New York into a globally famous hub, which at its peak, employed 30,000 workers in Schenectady alone. Those glory days didn’t last forever—and as it turned out, had been corroding for quite a few years. Despite all the societal strides GE was making for the average Joe, from 1947 to 1977, the company was also dumping around 1.3 million pounds of waxy, oily Polychlorinated biphenyls (or PCBs)—a manmade chemical—in the Hudson River from plants in nearby Hudson Falls, NY and Fort Edward, NY. Needless to say, it was catastrophic for the environment. GE’s contamination of the Hudson—affecting everything from the river’s sediment to its fish and wildlife—in part, led Congress to pass the Clean Water Act in 1972. (PCBs were banned in 1979.) And in 1984, a 200-mile stretch of the river was designated a Superfund site. (The US Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] lists PCBs as a “probable” human carcinogen linked to such maladies as thyroid disease and immune system disorders.) Overlapping that environmental disaster, which has cost GE nearly $2 billion in cleanup efforts—and at press time, has compelled New York State to sue the EPA allowing GE to stop its Hudson cleanup campaign early—was an era of company austerity unlike any American worker had ever seen before. From 1981 to 2001, under the leadership of CEO “Neutron” Jack Welch, so nicknamed because of his penchant for pink-slipping, GE began a series of massive layoffs, which took a heavy toll on Schenectady’s GE workforce. Per a company rep, GE’s regional workforce today is now just around 4000. As time wore on, the spotlight was taken off the Electric City. GE’s headquarters shifted away from Schenectady, eventually landing out of state in Boston. Then, the Great Recession of 2008 walloped the company, and between 2017-18 alone, GE lost more than $200 billion in market value. And just this past August, allegations were levied against the company by former Bernie Madoff whistleblower Harry Markopolos, claiming that, among other things, the company had committed $38 billion in accounting fraud, comparing it to disgraced energy company Enron and telling CNN that GE was “one recession away from bankruptcy” (at press time, experts seem divided on Markopolos’ claims, though the company has been under federal investigation for its accounting practices). In a firm rebuke, GE’s current CEO and Chairman H. Lawrence Culp called Markopolos’ allegations “meritless,” assuring investors that “GE operates at the highest level of integrity and stands behind its financial reporting.” It remains to be seen what the outcome will be. But even with its overall valuation in freefall and local headcounts dwindling, GE still has a sizable presence in the Capital Region that can be felt over a trio of locations: its research lab—renamed GE Global Research—whose 550acre campus was moved from Schenectady to Niskayuna, NY and deals with everything from aerospace and healthcare to defense and security innovations (there’s a second research hub in Bangalore, India, hence the “global” moniker; it also

refrigerator magnet GE had its own subway in Schenectady; (top) an advertisement for GE’s Monitor Top refrigerator.

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sits adjacent to the former GE-run Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, which is now overseen by the government); GE Power in Schenectady, which has been focusing its energy on the renewables business through wind, water and solar power innovations (perched atop GE Power’s Building 37 is the company’s iconic monogram sign); and a North Greenbush facility that deals with the production of digital X-ray detector technology, used in medical processes such as mammography.

uring a four-hour tour of Niskayuna’s GE Global Research center and Schenectady’s GE Power last August, saratoga living was provided with behind-the-scenes access to both facilities and granted interviews with a number of senior-level employees. The week before I arrived, GE’s largest union had settled on a new four-year contract with thousands of employees, many of whom were local. (The IUE-CWA Local 301, which represents many Schenectady workers, did not respond to our repeated requests for comment.) And while the company certainly didn’t connect me with union workers, I was able, through simple observations and interactions with a number of employees, to paint a rosier picture of GE than what I’d walked in believing I’d see. For one, sizable portions of the company infrastructure were either brand new or in the process of being drastically updated. At GE Power, for instance, in an open cafeteria setting, buzzing with all manner of employees, I saw a pair of employee-musicians jamming in a corner on their lunch hour. (I have to admit I was a little jealous.) And all the GE employees I had the chance to meet and interview in person were lifers, who had nothing but the highest praise for their employer (it’s possible that this was all by design, but in mentioning things like the Markopolos report to some of them, they seemed altogether unfazed by the bad news surrounding the company). Take dual 17-year GE Global Research veterans Masako Yamada, a technology manager in software and analytics; and her husband Gautam Parthasarathy, a senior scientist, who specializes in material physics and processes, and who is a Saratoga Springs High School graduate, whom I grew up with. Conducting interviews in two separate buildings, it was clear that Yamada and Parthasarathy were both very much engaged in and excited about their jobs. “I lead a group of software engineers and computer scientists,” says Yamada. One of her unit’s primary focuses is “additive manufacturing”—a fancy way of referring to GE’s industrial 3-D printing business, which not only builds and sells the printers themselves, but also uses the technology to produce products such as complex engine parts. (The business unit itself is just two years old.) “Here, a lot of our job is ascertaining what it is that needs to be done, which is very defining,” says Yamada. That’s practically unheard of in most workplaces. Imagine going to your boss and saying, “I’m just going to do what I want all day,” and having him or her say, unflinchingly, “Sure.”

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research project (clockwise from top left) GE’s onsite fire department in 1973; Masako Yamada, a technology manager in software and analytics for GE Global Research; Yamada’s husband, Gautam Parthasarathy, a senior scientist who specializes in material physics and processes; GE founder Thomas Edison is best-known for inventing the incandescent light bulb; Edison’s desk at GE Global Research’s headquarters in Niskayuna; an aerial view of GE Global Research; administrative workers processing claims at the GE insurance office in 1979; an employee at the GE foundry in 1968; (center) a sign marking GE’s place in Schenectady history.

Parthasarathy, on the other hand, I met with in the additive lab, with the man who hired him in the early aughts, Chief Scientist and nearly three-decade GE vet Steven Duclos. (The room where we eventually talked reminded me of a Westworld set, minus all the rogue robots.) “There’s a common public perception that scientists and engineers are not creative—they’re automatons, they’re [working with] their head down, shoveling the dirt,” says Parthasarathy. “But to be successful in the research center, you have to have a continuous innovation mindset; if you’re not creative here, you can’t be successful.” Example: Cincinnati’s GE Aviation developed a turbo-prop engine for a business jet using just 12 additive parts. Before the age of 3-D printing, that same engine had been constructed out of 855 parts. “Every single day, things are being made here that, in many cases, have never been [made before] on the planet,” says Parthasarathy. (Behind a wall of glass, a trio of plain-clothed scientists— identified, simply, as Bob, Victor and Jack—stood around an additive machine, working with a bed of fine metal powder and a laser in order to make a metal part, seemingly out of thin air. They looked like they were having fun. So I asked what they were doing. Duclos said, with the germ of a chuckle in his voice, “We can’t tell you what they’re doing right now.” And the room dissolved into laughter.) “In this business, it’s extremely important to be humble,” says Parthasarathy. “If everything everybody touched turned into gold, it wouldn’t be research or difficult.” Last year, I found myself back on the GE Plot, more than a decade following the death of my grandparents, parked illegally in front of their Avon Road property, which had exchanged hands multiple times since I’d last been there. I got out of my car and snapped a photo of the house for Instagram, and as I was writing up the post, its current owners—perfect strangers to me—emerged, at first skeptically, and eventually warmed to me and took on a tour of my old childhood stomping grounds. The next time I drive by there, I’ll think of my grandparents, for sure (I miss them every day). But I’ll also think of a time when Schenectady—as difficult as it may be to wrap my head around nowadays—was a much, much bigger deal than Saratoga Springs could’ve ever dreamed of becoming. And in many ways, it still is.

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the electric company “There’s a common public perception that scientists and engineers are not creative— they’re automatons,” says Gautam Parthasarathy, senior scientist at GE Global Research. “But to be successful in the research center, you have to have a continuous innovation mindset; if you’re not creative here, you can’t be successful”; (inset) the man who started it all: Thomas Edison.

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magine you’re in a peaceful sculpture garden in a magical forest, surrounded by a glassy, reflective pool, sipping fine wine and dining on a feast fit for royalty. This dreamy scene straight out of a French romance novel is, in fact, actually not that far off from what’ll be happening at this year’s reimagined Saratoga Wine & Food Festival in the Saratoga Spa State Park. The largest fundraiser of the year for the Saratoga Performing Arts Center’s (SPAC’s) educational programming, the festival, which this year takes place October 4-5, is shaking things up a bit. “We really needed to redefine the event to truly reflect what SPAC is and what our mission is,” says SPAC President and CEO Elizabeth Sobol. “I’ve always had my eye on moving in this direction, where we’re really celebrating the culinary and cultural bounty of the region. We took away all the elements that didn’t match up with our vision, presence and community, and went forward to really celebrating the arts.” This year’s festival will be highlighted by two main events: a brand-new farm-to-table harvest dinner on Friday, October 4, and the always-popular Grand Tasting on Saturday, October 5 (each with an exclusive VIP option). The harvest dinner, which will have a “forest magic” theme, will feature renowned regional chefs Kevin

London, Dan Spitz and Michael Blake working alongside New York City-based chef Diego Moya and Aryurvedic cooking expert Austin Peltier to create inventive courses during the farm-to-table culinary feast. For VIP ticket-holders, buzzing UK chef Tim Spedding and his partner, Louise Rødkjær Jørgensen, will be whipping up delicious canapés and other creative dishes at the weekend’s events. “I love to create immersive experiences for people,” says Sobol of cultivating this year’s event. “In my free time, I study plant medicine, ethnobotany and read tons about the natural world, and I wanted to bring the natural world inside and create a meal that celebrated the freshest bounty of the earth.” Sobol takes that a step further by saying that she hopes event-goers actually feel like they’re sitting in the woods while they’re enjoying their meal. “It’ll be an unforgettable evening,” she says. To bring the event (and its killer theme) to the next level, SPAC is teaming up with Glens Falls-based art museum The Hyde Collection, which will provide a specially curated sculpture garden at the Spa State Park’s reflecting pool, featuring works by American sculptor John Van Alstine. Saratoga’s own historic folk club Caffè Lena will be providing live music, too. And photographer and saratoga living contributor TerriLynn Pellegri will be displaying a new exhibit of her photographic work, entitled COMPOSiTions, at the event (a preview of the exhibit was featured exclusively on saratogaliving.com). All that sounds amazing, but really, they had me at “wine.”

hunger games This year’s Saratoga Wine & Food Festival will be highlighted by two main events: a brand-new farm-to-table harvest dinner on October 4 and the always-popular Grand Tasting on October 5.

Saratoga Wine & Food Festival: Back ToNature S PA C ’ S E D U C AT I O N A L P R O G R A M M I N G F U N D R A I S E R G E T S A C O M P L E T E — A N D T H R I L L I N G — R E B O O T.

BY M I TC H E LL FA M U L A R E PHOTOGRAPHY BY E X C L U S I V E LY F O R

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K AT I E D O B I E S

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FROM AEROSMITH TO TOM PETTY AND PEARL JAM, WE CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF THEM. WHY?

MAN, DO WE LOVE COVER BANDS OR WHAT? BY DANIEL NESTER

photography by

E R I C H U S S E X C L U S I V E LY F O R saratoga living

one fish, two fish, badfish, blue fish Badfish: A Tribute to Sublime, seen here playing at Putnam Place in Downtown Saratoga Springs, is one of the most popular bands of its kind in the nation.

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music by a variety of artists—are such big business. “Concert tickets are just too expensive for most people, and, in general, tribute shows are a better bang for the buck,” says Jason Sherry, president of Tribute Promotions, which produces the Lake George Tribute Festival and Images of the King—i.e. Elvis impersonation—world championships each year. There’s also the nostalgia factor. Many tributes, Sherry says, “take people back to a time in their life when things were a bit simpler.” Back in 1990, you could say that things were a hell of a lot simpler. That’s when Albany native Matt Balin responded to an open audition call by Ohio booking agents looking to put together a tribute to classic Boston rock band Aerosmith. Midwesterners wanted to hear “Dream On” and “Walk This Way,” and the real band wasn’t meeting the demand. “I tried out for [the band's guitarist] Joe Perry,” Balin says. “I got Steven Tyler instead.” Since then, Balin has been the lead singer for Toys in the Attic, the country’s longest-running Aerosmith tribute band, in a number of local venues, including Putnam Place in Saratoga (owned by saratoga living Chair Anthony Ianniello,) and larger venues across the country, such as the Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, NY, on Long Island; the House of Blues in Myrtle Beach, SC and Orlando; and Sioux Falls Stadium (a.k.a. The Bird Cage), home of the Sioux Falls Canaries. Balin’s got the Little Richard-meets-Mick Jagger pipes, the scarves on the mic stand. It’s pretty uncanny. “It’s fun as few years back, I profiled Judas hell,” Balin says, “but I’m also scared Priestess, an all-female tribute band to death. You can get picked apart real to heavy metal giants Judas Priest. quick. The band’s got to be right and The novelty angle got me the assignment; tight, and we are.” He can’t help but use I envisioned an intersectional spectacle petty please Johnny Clifford, Aerosmithian phrases to describe what of leather-clad amazons who lampooned Tom Petty lookalike and leader of it’s like channeling a rock star. “It’s like, macho postures. Boy was I ever wrong. the tribute band The BrokenHearted. well, ‘livin’ on the edge.’” The band rocked so seriously hard on The trick to creating the perfect tribute its own terms that I still don’t understand band goes beyond simply being able to ape the original in how Bogie’s, Albany’s now-defunct rock club, still exists as a look and sound. At their best, tribute bands can help us fans physical structure. I walked away not only a bigger fan of Judas reinterpret music we long took for granted. Take Badfish, for Priest, but with a new appreciation for tribute bands. example, a tribute to ’90s ska-punk trio Sublime, a band whose In a world of a gazillion rock-is-dead hot takes, you’d be star didn’t even begin to rise until after its lead singer’s death forgiven if you didn’t notice that the lineups at rock clubs and the band dissolved in ’96. (If you’re of a certain age, you’ll and halls are still loaded with innumerable tribute bands that remember the band’s posthumous hit singles, which include pay homage to big-name artists. Equal parts cabaret and fan fulfillment, tributes have existed since Bill Haney, the first true “What I Got” and “Santeria,” songs that are still[!] played Elvis impersonator, took the stage as The King in the 1960s. regularly on local stations.) Formed in 2001, Badfish largely You’d also be forgiven if you didn’t, at least scratch your head tours the eastern half of the US, while other Sublime tributes a little bit and wonder why tribute bands dedicated to single work out west. To be honest, I’ve never liked Sublime—but at artists—not to be confused with cover bands, which cover a packed-to-the-gills gig at the aforementioned Putnam Place t’s a perfect Saturday night in Saratoga Springs at the halfway point of racing season. The sidewalks swell with sightseers and high-rollers. Everyone seems to be on their way to have a cocktail somewhere. Johnny Clifford—Tom Petty lookalike, soundalike and leader of the tribute band, The BrokenHearted—is part of the frenetic Broadway milieu, walking—no, strutting—all hair and late-eraPetty beard, mirrored shades and cowboy boots. Clifford moseys to The Adelphi Hotel and heads turn. As he walks back out, the behatted jazz musicians in the lobby do double-takes. “Hey, Johnny,” a guy in a seersucker suit shouts down from The Adelphi’s secondfloor porch. He holds a Pieroni can and may have more than a few empties where that came from. “Where’s the show tonight? You guys were great last time!” “There’s a benefit in Gloversville tomorrow,” Clifford shouts up to Seersucker Guy. “We’ll be back in October.” Today, he explains, “I just wanted to spend the day at the track.” “Win anything?” Seersucker Guy asks. “Nope,” Clifford answers. “Nothing came my way today.” I couldn’t resist but chime in with a Petty lyric. “Well, Johnny,” handing him back the Starbucks iced coffee I’d been holding for him, “even the losers get lucky sometimes.”

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hello from the otherside The four members of The Otherside, a tribute band to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, based in Troy.

this past August, I danced in a sea of Puka shells and Penguin throw on flannel and we get up on stage.” He doesn’t want to shirts, singing along to “What I Got.” The line between original be Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam’s deep-voiced frontman. “I don’t and tribute blurred, and suddenly I morphed into the preppy need to be,” he says. “I’m a baritone, he’s a baritone, so that undergrad I never was. That’s what works out well.” With short-cropped gray tribute acts can do: transport you to a hair and a square jaw, Donahue may place that never existed—even turn you not look like Eddie Vedder, but he sure “It’s fun as hell, but into a person you never were! sounds like him. Like, a lot. He inhabits I’m also scared to death. You know how they say dogs and “Jeremy,” Pearl Jam’s dark, mid-tempo You can get picked apart their owners have similar personalities? hit from 1992, just like Vedder does on real quick. The band’s That same rule applies to tribute band the band’s debut, Ten. Nowadays, Pearl members and the artists they portray. I Jam may play their songs at different got to be right and tight, caught myself thinking about this when tempos or in different keys, depending and we are.” I met Schenectady native Bob Donahue on the notes Vedder’s still able to hit, –MATT BALIN, to talk about Given To Fly, the Pearl Jam but Given To Fly sticks to how they Toys in the Attic’s “Steven Tyler” tribute band he’s in. We sit in the front sound on CD. We talk about the biggest seat of his black Malibu, while Lithium, gig Given To Fly has played thus far, an SiriusXM’s grunge station, plays R.E.M. event sponsored by the real-deal Pearl Jam in 2017, before a screening of a concert documentary. and Alice in Chains. Donahue takes his job seriously. “We don’t Donahue shows me a photo of the band’s performance, wear wigs,” he tells me. “We’re not doing the whole look. We

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held outside at the Twin Drive-In in Mendon, MA, depicting announces the winner of a drawing for tickets to an upcoming the band playing to a sea of grunge aficionados. Donahue Korn and Alice in Chains concert at the Saratoga Performing smiles thinking of it. “Six hundred people just rocking out,” Arts Center, then counts the band in to “Scar Tissue,” Red Hot he says. “It was beautiful.” Chili Peppers’ 1999 hit from their album, Californication. It’s a While most professional tribute bands embrace the fact faithful version, down to Matt Malone’s competent lead guitar that they’re basically getting paid to be someone they’re not, playing. A couple ladies start to dance by the bar. A waitress some tributes have a bit of an existential refills napkin dispensers at a station in crisis before realizing they are, in front of stage left. fact, tributes. Take Troy native Ralph The Otherside gig was booked as sort He doesn’t want to be Renna, for instance, who sings and of an encore to Troy’s Rockin’ on the Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam’s plays acoustic guitar in The Otherside: River, where Kiss The Sky, a Jimi Hendrix deep-voiced frontman. Performing the Music of Red Hot Chili tribute band, was set to close out the Peppers. Renna pushed back at the popular summer series on the Hudson. “I don’t need to be. I’m a term initially. “I think back to the first time Bad thunderstorms forced the series’ baritone, he’s a baritone, I saw KISS Army,” he says. (Founded in organizers to cancel. But the after-show so that works out well.” 1985, the longest-running KISS tribute must go on. “Jimi Hendrix may be afraid –BOB DONAHUE, recreates the band’s kabuki makeup of the rain, but we’re not,” Renna jokes Given To Fly’s “Eddie Vedder” to a T—not to mention Gene Simmons’ before leading the band into “Soul fake blood-spitting.) The Otherside, on To Squeeze,” the Chili Peppers’ 1993 the other hand, wear baseball caps, ballad. A guy with a shaved head and Bang Tango and Meat Puppets shirts and cargo shorts—a white shorts moshes in place with himself. “Yeah, bro, now far cry from rocking onstage, sans clothes or sporting socks that was a guitar solo!” someone shouts. Malone smiles. At on their John Thomases, a Chili Peppers signature. “It’s one point during “By The Way,” his glasses fall off his face. been a whole new ballgame, coming out of the metal and Toward the end of “Suck My Kiss,” bassist Zach Leffler adds hardcore and punk scene,” Renna explains. The Otherside metal groan backing vocals to the chorus. It fits the song, but focuses on the musicianship. On a drizzly Wednesday night it’s most definitely not on the original track. Renna smiles, in Troy, members of the band set up on Dinosaur Bar-B-Que’s mischievously. “Sorry if you felt like you were at a hardcore small stage. A local music impresario for decades, Renna show there for a minute,” he says.

The Deadbeats

faithfully fly their freak flag at venues such as The Low Beat in Albany and on open-air trains to Cooperstown (really). “They deliver the bouncy sound of The Grateful Dead with a stripped-down lineup,” my Deadhead friend Matthew Klein says.

—DANIEL NESTER

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Seconds Of Pleasure

pays tribute to Rockpile, the British pub rock combo featuring Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds, which produced a single perfect album in 1980—which is where the tribute gets its name. “In this band, I feel like I’m contributing to the public good,” Jerry Lee, singer and guitarist, tells me. He is. They are.

(All Paul) CHRIS LENAGHAN/CML PHOTOGRAPHY; (The BrokenHearted, Given To Fly) ERIC HUSS

Given that the biggest draws at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center each summer are the Dave Matthews Band and Phish, it makes sense that our homegrown tribute bands tend to skew more rootsy—I’m looking at you, awkwardly named The THE BAND Band—but we still have a range of choices coming to our towns to help us party down. Here’s saratoga living’s topfive local tribute acts, in descending order of tributary excellence.

hen I sit down at Starbucks to talk to Johnny Clifford about his love for all things Tom Petty, he begins with a familiar story, common to tribute band members. Whenever he played a Tom Petty cover near his home in Glens Falls, folks ran up to tell him: you’re too good at this. So he let his hair and beard grow out, and before he knew it, Clifford was a Petty doppelgänger. He insists on bringing 7 guitars for full band shows, from the pricey 6- and 12-string Rickenbackers to a cheap Gibson “for the slide stuff.” Says Clifford: “I use ’em all. I have to.” I realize, later than I’d like to admit it, that not only does Clifford play Tom Petty, he also plays the part of Mike Campbell, Petty’s longtime lead guitarist, who is currently touring as part of Fleetwood Mac. Such tribute double-duty is remarkable, if you ask me. It’s like playing U2’s Bono and The Edge at the same time. “I’m not trying to convince anybody I’m Tom Petty,” Clifford says. “I know I’m not.” Later, walking past the front of the bar 9 Maple Ave., Clifford and I notice a table of well-heeled women, who give him flirty smiles and raised cocktail glasses through the glass. Clifford issues a Petty-like grin: “No use pretending to be famous if you can’t enjoy it.” That’s what I like to call “runnin’ down a dream.”

(The Deadbeats) DINO PERRUCCI; (Seconds Of Pleasure) KEVIN BERTHOLF

The Best (Local) Tribute Bands

band camp The members of Aerosmith tribute band Toys in the Attic, with the group’s “Steven Tyler,” Matt Balin at bottom right.

Dave Plummer’s ‘The All Paul Show’

preaches the Gospel of Paul (McCartney), playing all the hits, including The Beatles’ “Drive My Car” and Wings/solo-era nuggets such as “Live And Let Die.” Plummer has Sir Paul’s voice, sports a solo-Macca mullet and plays a left-handed Höfner bass. Sold!

The BrokenHearted Tom Petty Tribute is the

brainchild of Johnny Clifford, whose uncanny, heartfelt takes on the Petty oeuvre range from “American Girl” to “Don’t Come Around Here No More.” And if Clifford’s ethereal “Wildflowers” doesn’t leave you verklempt, stop dragging your heart around.

Given To Fly: The Pearl Jam Experience doesn’t dress

the part, other than the 1990s outfit du jour: flannels and jeans. But listen to Bob Donahue’s pitch-perfect Eddie Vedder and Steven Feliciano and Rob Burnell’s dual guitar attack—carbon copies of Stone Gossard and Mike McCready, respectively—and you’d swear you were in a Seattle club in the early ’90s.

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If You Love Saratoga...

PALM SPRINGS

… Y O U ’ L L A L S O F A L L F O R PA L M S P R I N G S , M A L I B U A N D A S P E N . W E H AV E .

BY MARCO MEDRANO

rowan machine Kimpton’s The Rowan, Palm Springs has rooms and views that are equally spectacular; (inset) the rooftop of The Rowan.

Seeing how much I live for all things Saratoga Springs, to lean into a few similar, smallish cities that attract the foodie and hospitality globetrotters who are most definitely in the know: Palm Springs, Malibu and Aspen. Ready for the journey?

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alm Springs, CA has had as many are-they-hot-or-not? moments the past few decades as any resort town outside of South Beach has. And why not? Even metaphysics and psychics love this desert Mecca for its converging apex points of energy, deep underground springs, fault lines and ties to a fascinating history. I love it because the sky, the air and the openness just feel healing. Yet, Palm Springs has always been a place of indulgence. Resorts and restaurants have always brought ultra-chic design

(interior) LAURE JOLIET

with its small-town feel and world-class appeal, I decided

here, and many have raised the bar for decadence. Let’s start with the Parker Palm Springs. It’s the epitome of a Leading Hotels Of The World destination and one of my all-time favorite resorts anywhere on the planet. The hotel’s own Mr. Parker’s is also one of my go-to speakeasies/restaurants. It’s just naughty enough, with consistently great food and service. At every turn, the expansive, single-story hotel’s Jonathan Adler design is cheeky-chic, very

playful and quite elegant—where frivolous fun meets decadent elegance. The rooms, too, are terrific. And the Parker’s Palm Springs Yacht Club, or “PSYC” for short, is a place I never want to leave. Blissful. Perfection. The resort’s indoor pool is sublime, as is a steam prior to indulging in one of its signature (and world famous) vodka “lemonades” under the always-scorching sun. Similar in modern/luxe feel with a decidedly adult executive vibe is

Kimpton’s The Rowan, Palm Springs, with rooms and views that are equally spectacular. All the dining venues are stellar, too. Definitely try the rooftop’s 4 Saints for outsized drinks, unforgettable mountain views and elevated small plates meant for sharing. For dinner, try Copley’s On Palm Canyon. How does roasted Scottish salmon or lobster pot pie sound? (I know, right?) Le Vallauris is extravagant and always superb, with plates such as wild boar pâté or Maine lobster ravioli. A five-star menu with service to match, this French eatery delivers all the finery.

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HENRY HARGREAVES

sex on the beach Geoffrey’s is known for its sexy ambiance and fine oceanside dining.

nobu? yes, boo! NOBU’s celebrityfilled Malibu outpost is a fabled sushi Mecca; (inset) NOBU’s Salmon Sashimi.

GEOFFREY'S

MALIBU

o, we always hear about Malibu, CA’s “PCH” or Pacific Coast Highway. Having lived in Hollywood and Beverly Hills for several years, I can say that even visitors feel right at home in Malibu, about a 40-minute ride (in moderate traffic) from Beverly Hills. Is Malibu expensive? Yes, undeniably. But the oceanside town is also genuinely down to earth and sporty—although you might feel more “local” renting a 911 Porsche Carrera 4S Cabrio. NOBU, the fabled sushi hotspot that opened its celeb-filled Malibu outpost years ago, used to be a good enough reason many Angelenos made the trek to Malibu. And it still is…with the NOBU Ryokan Hotel. With 16 one-of-a-kind rooms on coveted Carbon Beach, it might be one of the most memorable Zen stays of your life. Saratogians, get ready for some frigid water temperatures if the beach is what you desire. Also located on what’s known as “Billionaire’s Beach” is Malibu Beach

Inn. Once owned and redesigned by Hollywood mogul David Geffen, you’ll be comforted to know everything is just right. Aside from spectacular dining

and even yoga on the sand, its spa is operated by the acclaimed Veronica Skin & Body Center. If you want to be above it all in Malibu, then, technically, you’ll want to head towards the Santa Monica Mountains, or across PCH to the Surfrider. A fun, massively upgraded motel beach house, it’s infused with

local art that will impress with its wellthought-out amenities and excursions— including a locally grown food and beverage program on its rooftop bar. Surfrider also has beach access and surf supplies and umbrellas, plus sales and rentals of surf boards and wet suits. Pre-book your free Mini Cooper, folks! Staying close by for dinner, you’ll feel super comfortable at Geoffrey’s, with its longstanding sexy ambiance and oceanside dining. Try the Maine lobster and tuna tartar or the see-and-be-seen eggs Benedict for brunch. Exquisite. Need a little beachy-chic, after-dinner hipster cocktail? Aside from a full menu, Moonshadows offers a great casual cocktail patio at the sea, mixed among elegant booth dining. Rustic and chic— and very, very Malibu indeed.

rocky mountain high The Little Nell, is one of the most luxe “destination” experiences in the country.

ASPEN

omething you might actually hear over sunset cocktails in Malibu? Let’s fly to Aspen, CO for dinner! That type of person is probably a regular at The Little Nell, what’s known as the “Aspen of Aspens” and easily one of the most luxe “destination” experiences in the country. With enough Five-Star and Five-Diamond accreditations to put every other resort in town to shame, The Little Nell is the only ski-in, skiout hotel in Aspen (a rarity anywhere), where at every turn, everywhere you look, you see only perfection. The cuisine is legendary, while the service and concierges are as well-trained and affable as any I’ve encountered. With more than 20,000 bottles of fine wine in the hotel’s abundant wine cellar, The Little Nell can get you just about any vintage you desire. This historic resort is bustling year round, but really comes to life when the cold settles in for the season.

fancy feast French Alpine Bistro gets a lot of attention for first-class comfort fare, featuring seared foie gras and mouth-watering escargots in an oven-fresh brioche.

Everyone needs a spa—on that we all can agree. Flying in to Aspen, just for the Remède Spa experience wouldn’t be out of the question. Considered the absolute best spa in the world by Travel & Leisure Magazine, Remède is the real (age-rewind wellness) deal and it makes its home in yet another out-of-thisworld iconic hotel, the St. Regis Aspen Resort. Famous for making its lobby bars the center of attention, and painted as an enormous canvas of stupendous art, The St. Regis makes many other luxury destination hotels seem ordinary in comparison, with perfectly appointed rooms boasting over-the-top fireplaces and jaw-dropping bathroom suites. The Velvet Buck serves exquisite local ingredients all day and night while the Mountain Social Bar & Lounge is the

ultimate in après ski glitz. It’s. All. Here. Aspen is one place where fine dining is taken very seriously, as one amazing restaurant rolls into another. Yet, Matsuhisa ranks high as not only one of the best, but also has, hands down, the freshest sushi, even though its location—a basement—was a surprise, to say the least. Chair 9 at Little Nell, whose name is derived from the fact that Aspen Mountain has a total of eight chair lifts, is considered heavenly and

as tony as it gets. Think all-out food orgy. French Alpine Bistro gets a lot of attention for first-class comfort fare, featuring seared foie gras and mouthwatering escargots in an (OMG!) ovenfresh brioche. Once you start researching Palm Springs, Malibu and Aspen, you’ll definitely be hard at work planning your next luxe destination trip. I know I already have some ideas for my next adventure. Maybe I’ll see you there!

After The Race: Where Are They Now?

hay, stud Former racehorse Big Brown, seen here at Irish Hill & Dutchess Views Stallions farm in Saratoga, has a stud fee of $5000.

Catching up with some of New York’s finest retired racehorses.

BY BRIEN BOUYEA PHOTOGRAPHY BY FRANCESCO D’AMICO EXCLUSIVELY FOR saratoga living

admit that I wasn’t exactly fired up about going to the 2012 Travers Stakes at Saratoga Race Course. I know that sounds strange, considering that I have since co-authored a book about the race’s remarkable history, but that particular Midsummer Derby didn’t have a lot of buzz leading up to it. After all, Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes winner I’ll Have Another was retired before the Belmont Stakes due to injury, and Union Rags, the Belmont winner, was retired shortly after his race. Without the big names in the three-year-old division in the mix, the 142nd edition of Saratoga’s signature race would need something unique to happen for it to have any historical relevance. Enter Alpha and Golden Ticket, and a result for the ages. That Travers Day, Golden Ticket, at odds of 33-1, took the lead about a half-mile into the race and was in a full drive as he came down to the wire, with Alpha, the 2-1 favorite, closing fast. When they hit the wire, they did so in lockstep, registering the first-ever official dead heat (i.e. tie) in Travers history and sending the crowd into an absolute frenzy. Seven years later, both Alpha and Golden Ticket are New York State residents, along with several other stallions that racing fans are sure to have fond memories of from their days on the track. Let’s check in on some of the top stallions in New York State and see what those, um, studs have been up to.

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ALPHA

GOLDEN TICKET

10 Years Old Sequel Stallions Hudson Stud Fee: $5000 Prior to the Travers, Alpha won the Jim Dandy Stakes at Saratoga. Earlier in 2012, the bay son of Bernardini won the Count Fleet Stakes and Withers Stakes and finished second in the Wood Memorial before a disappointing performance in the Derby. Alpha

10 Years Old Questroyal Stud North Stillwater Stud Fee: Private returned to Saratoga as a four-year-old in 2013, winning the Woodward Stakes. He finished his career with a record of 6-2-1 from 22 starts and earnings of $1.8 million. Alpha’s second crop of sons and daughters are making their way to the track this year.

With only one win in nine starts prior to the Travers, it was easy to see why Golden Ticket was overlooked when he arrived at Saratoga. But he wasn’t just a one-hit wonder. Following the Travers, the dark bay son of Speightstown went on to win the Prairie Meadows Handicap

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and the Left Bank Stakes (defeating old nemesis Alpha in the latter) and proving competitive in numerous other starts en route to a career record of 6-8-4 from 33 starts and earnings of $1.3 million.

BIG BROWN

14 Years Old Irish Hill & Dutchess Views Stallions Stillwater Stud Fee: $5000

brown derby Big Brown had an impressive career, winning Grade 1 stakes such as the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes.

Big Brown made his career debut at Saratoga, winning a turf race on the final day of the 2007 meet. The following spring, he was the talk of the racing world with impressive victories in the Florida Derby, Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes. A foot injury in the Belmont ended his bid for the Triple Crown, but Big Brown returned to win

the Haskell Invitational and Monmouth Stakes before being retired with seven wins from eight starts and earnings of more than $3.6 million. Through August, Big Brown is the top stallion in the state by 2019 progeny earnings.

on the road Bellamy Road is now 17 and stands stud in Stillwater, with a fee of $5000.

BELLAMY ROAD

17 Years Old Irish Hill & Dutchess Views Stallions Stillwater Stud Fee: $5000 Anyone who saw it will never forget Bellamy Road’s performance in the 2005 Wood Memorial. At the finish, the dark bay son of Concerto was 17½ lengths ahead of his closest foe. The victory generated a lot of excitement in New York, as Bellamy Road was owned by New York Yankees Owner George

winning ticket Golden Ticket is standing stud at Questroyal Stud North in Stillwater.

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Steinbrenner through his Kinsman Stable. Bellamy Road, however, finished off the board in the Kentucky Derby. He later ran a good race in the Travers, but was bested by Flower Alley. Bellamy Road’s top offspring includes Diversify, winner of the 2018 Whitney Handicap.

CENTRAL BANKER

9 Years Old McMahon Of Saratoga Thoroughbreds Saratoga Springs Stud Fee: $7500 A two-time winner at Saratoga, including the Quick Call Stakes, Central Banker has established himself as one of the top stallions in New York. He was a top-ten North American first-crop yearling sire in 2017 by median and average, and is the top son of sire Speightstown. Central Banker’s top offspring include Newly Minted, who won the Fleet Indian Stakes at Saratoga in 2019.

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along with many others, have helped develop the New York breeding program into a powerhouse on the national scene. I’ll certainly continue to follow their progress as stallions. Maybe someday we’ll see the offspring of Alpha and Golden Ticket dueling it out in the stretch at Saratoga in a future edition of the Travers. Hey, you never know.

record players Saratoga’s summer meet broke a record for allsources handle, thanks to great races such as The Travers Stakes.

A Look Back At A Busy, Profitable Summer Meet At Saratoga Race Course

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DAILY RACING FORM

CREDIT

BY DAVID GRENING,

CREDIT

he 2019 Saratoga Race Course meet was marked by a number of significant gains on the track. The extended Saratoga summer—in which 40 days were scheduled and 39 were actually run over 8 weeks—proved a box office success. The track saw a record $705,343,949 in all-sources handle, eclipsing the previous mark of $679,798,120 set in 2017. It also marked an increase of seven percent from 2018. (All-sources handle includes bets made at other racetracks, casinos and off-track betting facilities throughout the country.) However, the total ontrack handle was $146,618,388, down 1.5 percent from last year’s figure of $148,826,388. Total attendance was 1,056,053, down from last year’s figure of 1,124,149 and the lowest in 5 years, with 1 less day of racing run. Saratoga was able to set the record for all-sources handle despite the cancellation of a Saturday card on July 20 and the loss of the last 7 races of an 11-race card on July 25, when heavy rains made the main track and turf courses unusable. This was also accomplished with racing being conducted, for the first time ever, five days a week instead of six. With the exception of the Labor Day card, Mondays and Tuesdays were dark all summer long. “The fiveday meet worked well,” said New York Racing Association (NYRA) President and CEO David O’Rourke, who oversaw his first Saratoga meet. “[From] the conversations we’ve had with the town, indications are everything’s gone well downtown. I will be back up here at the beginning of October to sit down with the [Chamber of Commerce] to go through the hard data and get a good feel for how the new schedule worked.” O’Rourke will also discuss whether to alter the dark days to Tuesdays and Wednesdays and return Monday as a racing day. That decision will most likely be made based on feedback from the Saratoga business community. At press time, however, O'Rourke doesn’t seem keen on expanding the meet beyond 40 days, though the calendar next year suggests that it could be done. Next year, Labor Day is on September 7, and moving racing from Belmont to Saratoga on July 9—after its July Fourth Stars and Stripes card—could make for a 45-day meet. “There’s no indication we would do anything like that at this point,” O’Rourke said. “We’ve been asked about it, but we haven’t discussed it in any planning meetings.” In terms of leading trainers, Chad Brown won his third title with 41 wins. He won 13 stakes, 4 of which were Grade 1’s, including his first Alabama Stakes. Todd Pletcher finished in second with 21 wins. “[I’m] very happy with the meet,” Brown said. “Once again, many of the horses showed up and my staff did an unbelievable job, which I’m so appreciative of. Of course, my owners supplied us with the right horses that fit here.” One of those owners was Seth Klarman, whose Klaravich Stables won a meet-best 17 races. Some of those horses Klarman owned in partnership with Bill Lawrence, including Grade 1 Sword Dancer winner Annals of Time. Among the top jockeys, José Ortiz won his third Saratoga title in the last 4 years, winning 60 races, the last coming on September 2 in the Grade 1 Hopeful (right behind him was brother Irad with 53 wins).

BILLY FRANCIS LEROUX

AMONG OTHER HIGHLIGHTS, SARATOGA COMPLETED ITS SUMMER MEET IN THE MONEY.

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Build Your Dream Home In Beautiful Oak Ridge T H E E X C L U S I V E S A R AT O G A N E I G H B O R H O O D H A S 5 1 L O T S N O W AVA I L A B L E . BY Z ACHARY GOLD

t doesn’t feel like you’re living just minutes from everything that Saratoga Springs has to offer when relaxing at home in Oak Ridge, a residential community of elevated Victorian-style homes less than a mile from Saratoga National Golf Course. Set amidst 135 acres of walking/hiking trails and park space, this beautifully designed neighborhood, with custom homes built by J. Snyder Builders, embodies the timeless charm of Saratoga and allows for each resident to create his or her own unique blueprint. Now, almost 12 years after the construction of its first home, Oak Ridge is expanding by offering 51 new lots that are currently available. Take a look at what could be inside your gorgeous, customized home in this one-of-a-kind Saratoga community. The Oak Ridge community utilizes the best in local architects, designers and appliance suppliers to make home buying and customization a hasslefree process. Prospective residents

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Marcella’s is an authorized dealer of Vent-A-Hood products, such as the copper hood shown here; (top) a Thermador kitchen featuring a wine fridge, column refrigerators and other modern accoutrements.

⁄ SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2019

will get to choose from the latest, most high-tech trends in home appliances at Marcella’s Appliance Center, a family-owned appliance business with showrooms in Schenectady and Clifton Park. “There are so many exciting new kitchen trends for 2019,” says Nick Madelone, marketing director at Marcella’s. Founded in 1957, Marcella’s currently has the Capital Region’s largest selection of new appliances, as well as a dedicated service and repair shop for its customer base. “Today’s appliances now have all the function of traditional appliances,” says Madelone, “but with some very modern twists.” Popular appliance packages within Oak Ridge have featured some seriously high-end, smart kitchen gear by Thermador appliances, which are handcrafted using stainless steel, metallic silver glass and vibrant-color, touch-screen displays. Thermador also offers a fully connected cooking experience through the company’s Home Connect app. From the comfort of their bed, homeowners using Home Connect can brew their morning coffee, preheat their oven, start/

stop their dishwasher or adjust the levels of their refrigerator. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. One of the most popular Thermador products in Oak Ridge, says Madelone, is the Under Counter Wine Refrigerator, the ultimate, built-in wine cooler that offers precise temperature control and convenient access to wine, cheese and hors d’oeuvres. Another is Thermador’s Built-in Automatic Coffee Machine, which, like a personal barista, offers homeowners a variety of brewing options from a caféquality cup of coffee to espresso and cappuccino with fresh steamed or frothed milk. Madelone also points to another hot item at Oak Ridge: Vent-A-Hood, which provides more than 200 custom kitchen ventilation hood canopies, fitting over ranges, stoves and cooktops of virtually every style. “The award-winning VentA-Hood Magic Lung technology is who co-owns the company with her unparalleled in the industry,” Madelone husband, Terry. “Just to name a few, says. “It rids the air of cooking we have created hidden step ladders contaminants and helps remove heat, for today’s 10’ ceilings, super cutlery grease, odors, smoke and steam.” for clutter-free counters and drop In addition to the latest in cuttingdown spice storage for organized edge appliances, Oak Ridge convenience.” also features incredible Zarrillo says that kitchen designs by her company can Zarrillo’s Custom accommodate most Design Kitchens in clients’ tastes. Some Princetown, NY. of the more popular Founded in 1978, cabinet choices at Zarrillo’s achieves Oak Ridge have each client’s unique included traditional vision by using cherry wood with its expertise and burl inlays and white depth of experience shaker inset with in kitchen and bath quarter sawn white oak design. Plus, the islands for an Arts and An example of a company has its own Craft- or Mission-styled Thermador 24" underon-site cabinet shop, interior. Full access counter wine reserve found at Marcella’s. which for more than cabinets in Acrylic, four decades has metal or painted wood been fabricating beautiful Americancombinations can be used for a more made custom cabinets for all types modern look. Lustrous black (TriCorn) of homes throughout the Capital and translucent stain combinations Region. “Our handcrafted cabinets have come on strong throughout the allow us to create and utilize every Capital Region. “Starting a ‘wish list’ inch of the kitchen,” says Dawn Zarrillo, and creating an online album with

A contemporary design by Zarillo’s Custom Design Kitchens.

concept photos is a great way to begin the design process,” says Zarrillo, who works directly with clients to bring their vision to reality. “After more than 40 years, you learn to read body language and decipher the ideas and photos provided by the homeowner. Sometimes that requires reading between the lines.” At Zarrillo’s, you are working with a family member every step of the way. In addition to incredible homes and options for customization, Oak Ridge boasts one of the most convenient locations in Saratoga. Located close to Exit 15 on I-87, this cozy, elegant community is less than ten minutes by car from all of the Spa City’s major attractions, including Downtown Saratoga, Saratoga Race Course, the Saratoga Spa State Park, Saratoga National Golf Club and the Saratoga Lake State Boat Launch. Plus, the overall neighborhood design offers incredible features not found in many other neighborhoods

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(from top) A custom backyard pool; one of the tree-lined neighborhood’s beautiful gazebos.

in the region, including street lighting, sidewalks, common park areas and carriage lanes—not to mention its own trail system that links up to Saratoga’s popular Bog Meadow Brook Nature Trail. Turning one of these Oak Ridge lots into a dream home has never been easier than with Schenectady-based Armida Rose Realty Group. “Many residents have commented that they

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adore Oak Ridge’s location, since they are in Saratoga Springs but not right in the city, so they appreciate the privacy, proximity and accessibility to these attractions,” says Armida Rose Principal Broker Franca DiCrescenzo. “The neighborhood appeals to people looking to create exactly the floor plan that works for their lifestyle and design aesthetic that matches their vision of what our clients call home.”

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DiCrescenzo says that many clients start from scratch when it comes to designing their home. After a client selects a building lot that will ideally situate their home design, Armida Rose pairs the future homeowner with an architect or has the client’s own plans reviewed by Jeff Snyder, Oak Ridge’s creator and owner of J. Snyder Builders. “The greatest appeal of J. Snyder Builders custom home designs is the level of attention to detail,” DiCrescenzo says. “You can easily distinguish his homes, due to the level of quality in materials and care in making all of his clients’ homes unique. Whether it’s the tumbled stone used on the exterior foundation walls or fireplaces, or beautiful copper valleys in their rooflines, it all matters and contributes to the overall look and feel of his homes.” Once blueprints are finished, Armida Rose and J. Snyder Builders work together with their preferred vendors to help each client complete their selection process. “Each vendor contributes towards the client’s vision, and many clients like the fact that they have a say in their steps in design and selection,” DiCrescenzo says. “We have also added the resource of our clients working with an interior designer as part of their building contract.” “At Oak Ridge, residents find ease in calling this home, once they pass through the entrance with stone pillared lights and feel the timeless features and beauty that surrounds them,” DiCrescenzo says. Those interested in calling Oak Ridge home or getting more information about the community can reach out to Franca DiCrescenzo at Armida Rose Realty Group.

Franca DiCrescenzo

office: 518.374.2228 mobile: 518.857.3907 email: franca@armidarose.com

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Home-Grown Beauty COMPLEXIONS OWNER D E N I S E D U B O I S DEBUTS HER NEW CLEAN SKINCARE LINE M A D E W I T H N AT U R A L I N G R E D I E N T S FROM THE REGION.

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he poet who penned the now-famous adage “beauty is only skindeep” clearly didn’t understand proper skincare. One person who does? Denise Dubois, owner of Complexions Spa For Beauty & Wellness, with locations in Saratoga Springs and Albany. “I’ve been a practicing esthetician for 35plus years and have worked with a lot of different skincare brands during that time,” Dubois says. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve developed a greater appreciation for clean beauty, because what you put on your face can have an impact on your total wellness.” After more than three decades trying other brands, Dubois is now on the cusp of launching her own line of green skincare products, under the brand name Dubois Beauty & Wellness. “Clean beauty’s not a luxury—it’s a lifestyle,” Dubois says. “That’s our

After three years of preparation, Complexions Spa For Beauty & Wellness Owner Denise Dubois is ready to launch her new line of clean skincare products.

philosophy with everything we do at the spa, and skincare is just one more piece of that total body experience.” Starting in January, Dubois Beauty & Wellness will be available for sale at both Complexions locations in the Capital Region. This spagrade skincare line will consist of 14 products, featuring a selection of highperformance facial cleansers, toners, moisturizers, specialty serums and hydrating mineral water sprays made with essential oils and local Saratoga mineral water. “I wanted to use natural ingredients from the Northeast,” Dubois says. “So the skincare line is inspired by our local nature, and uses the best clean ingredients to deliver exceptional results.” The new line holds a high standard for clean, natural, and organic ingredients and never uses parabens, petrol-based products or, with the exception of milk and honey, animal-based ingredients. Also, as part of the company’s

dedication to creating a truly green skincare line, Dubois Beauty & Wellness doesn’t use any ingredients that are hazardous to the environment, and has reduced any excess packaging. She says, “We want each product to reflect our commitment to sustaining our natural resources.” A graduate of the Catherine E. Hinds School of Esthetics in Woburn, MA, Dubois has been working on her skincare line for three years. “It’s been a lot of researching ingredients and testing products,” she says. “We actually did a focus group with our spa clients to determine what the skincare program was going to look like.” Though it hasn’t been an easy process, Dubois says it’s been worth it, and she’s ecstatic that Dubois Beauty & Wellness will be available early next year. “We all want beautiful skin,” she says. “Our mission is to make sure that what you put on your skin supports your total beauty and wellness.”

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the back Calendar ⁄

OCTOBER 10-13

sein o’ the times In recent years, comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who’s appearing at the Palace Theatre, has found major success on Netflix.

OCTOBER 10

JERRY SEINFELD AT THE PALACE THEATRE

PALACE THEATRE, ALBANY

arlier this year, between streaming binges, I began watching the entire Seinfeld series from beginning to end on Hulu. I realize that there are 9 seasons and 173-180 episodes to watch (depending on who’s counting)—but after re-watching all 200-plus episodes of The X-Files on Netflix several years ago, I took notes, formulated a pitch and got it greenlit and published in Playboy. So, at least in my opinion, nothing bad can ever come of a

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cleansing re-watch. Several months in, and I’ve barely scratched the surface, but it was clear, even from the beginning, that Seinfeld was situational comedy gold. The show has become the paradigm

⁄ SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2019

for pretty much every major network sitcom since, with memorable characters that have pervaded pop culture, such as Kramer and Newman and Bania; and entire episodes that have been added to the

Brace yourself, Albany. The dinosaurs of the Jurassic Park franchise are stomping into the Times Union Center October 11-13, as part of The Jurassic World Live Tour, an original, interactive storyline for you to sink your teeth into. Watch Blue the Raptor, Triceratops and the mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex come alive as you join a team of scientists to save all-new dino Jeanie from impending danger. Audiences will enjoy seven performances during the tour’s four-day run at the TU, and tickets start at $20.

historically, sees much smaller hammer-prices than in August, it’s become an important source for breeding stock in the Empire State. Admission to the sales pavilion is free; that horse you just bid on is not.

15th anniversary of the low-budget cult classic, Napoleon (Jon Heder) and Pedro (Efren Ramírez) are coming to the Hart Theatre at The Egg on October 17 for a special conversation and screening of the movie. Regular tickets will cost you $35; or you could splurge on VIP tickets

OCTOBER 17

NAPOLEON DYNAMITE 15TH ANNIVERSARY THE EGG, ALBANY

The only thing better than watching Napoleon Dynamite is watching Napoleon Dynamite with Napoleon Dynamite himself. That’s right, to celebrate the

OCTOBER 15

THE SARATOGA FALL SALE

for $100, which include premium seating, a meetand-greet and personal photo with Heder and Ramírez, an autographed poster and a boondoggle keychain. Sweet! NOVEMBER 21

ALICE COOPER’S ‘OL’ BLACK EYES IS BACK’ TOUR THE COOL INSURING ARENA, GLENS FALLS

Equal parts horror-show and rock extravaganza, Alice Cooper’s “Ol’ Black Eyes Is Back” tour is coming to the Cool Insuring Arena in Glens Falls on November 21. Dubbed the “Godfather of Shock Rock,” Cooper— whose eponymous 1970s band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011—is responsible for hits such as “School’s Out,” “I’m Eighteen” and “Poison,” which are sure to fill a setlist jampacked with nostalgia. Tickets start at $26.75. —K ELS EY F REDRIC KS

alice in wonderland “Godfather of Shock Rock” Alice Cooper will bring his “’Ol’ Black Eyes Is Back” tour to the Cool Insuring Arena on November 21.

FASIG-TIPTON, SARATOGA

(horse) FASIG-TIPTON

THE CO -CREATOR AND STAR OF TH E I C O N I C SI TC O M TA KE S HIS ACT TO TH E PAL ACE. n BY WI LL LE V I T H

TIMES UNION CENTER, ALBANY

NETFLIX

Hellooo, Jerry!

pantheon of the greatest TV show episodes ever (see: “The Soup Nazi” and “The Bet”). And even though the series finale aired more than two decades ago, many of Seinfeld’s brightest stars are still front-andcenter, making people lose it all over again: Take Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Elaine Benes), for instance, who’s won more Emmys than I can count on my hands (a historic number, actually), thanks, in large part, to her starring role on HBO’s Veep; or Jerry Seinfeld (Jerry Seinfeld), who’s found a second life driving comedians around in cars with coffee on Netflix (he also has a special, Jerry Before Seinfeld, on the popular streaming network). Speaking of the nonitalicized Seinfeld, the comedian will be headlining a show at the Palace Theatre in Albany on October 10. Expect his usual deadpan, observational brand of comedy—like the stuff he did in the intro and outro of his old TV show. (Sorry, tickets sold out a long time ago.) If, for some reason, someone can get me into this show, and I’m able to meet Seinfeld backstage, I’ll say, “Hello, Jerry;” and he’ll, hopefully, respond, “Hello, Levith,” the disdain dripping from his voice. Perfection.

dino-mite See the Jurassic Park franchise come to life at the Times Union Center October 10-13.

JURASSIC WORLD LIVE TOUR

After a record-breaking Saratoga Sale this past August, which saw two Curlin colts sell for $1.5 million each (!), FasigTipton’s looking to keep the momentum going with its Saratoga Fall Sale on October 15, featuring broodmares and weanlings, with many foaled in New York. While the sale,

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Design the back Beautiful ⁄

Beverly Hills, 12866 OU R D E S IGN EDITOR IS I NSPIRED BY H E R N E W CA LI F O R N I A S URROUNDINGS IN I MMEASU R A B LE WAYS . STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY BEVERLY TRACY

f you haven’t already heard, I’ve moved to Beverly Hills. But not to worry; Beverly Tracy Home Design will still have a daily presence in Saratoga Springs, and I’ll be time zone-hopping to bring saratoga living (and the surrounding community) the latest design advice. Deciding to go bicoastal was a big deal. It meant leaving my comfort zone, both professionally and personally; moving everything I’d acquired in my life into storage or onto a moving truck; and making a series of decisions and steps, all of which had to be orchestrated perfectly in order for the move to happen. And it did. And as if swept up by a rapidly moving cross-country train, I found myself, belongings in hand, on the corner of Palm and Wilshire in Beverly Hills, searching for a hidden key that would reveal the apartment I’d never seen before, soon to be called home.

It’s always a pleasure to come home to…

keeping it real Authenticity is at the basis of good design, regardless of style.

As I’m sure you’re aware from my regular column in this gorgeous publication, home is a big deal for me. As an interior designer, it’s more than simply a place to live. As if connected to my soul, home’s a part of my being, which reveals as much about me as the stories I tell. And as I opened that new apartment’s door, made warm from long hours of the sun shining down on it, bag in one hand, puppy leash in the other, I exhaled. It was perfect. I was home, and now I had to redefine my style— and reconsider my whole approach to design—and life, for that matter. Becoming an interior designer has afforded me a certain rite of passage. It thrust me into a world where, suddenly, everything mattered—from the carefully selected dishtowel to the just-so side

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that’s where i want to be In Beverly Hills, where the sun shines daily and the dogs fit into handbags, the style has a clean, cool vibe in stark contrast to the layered richness of Saratoga Springs.

table. Decor needed to be collected, not purchased. So how would I make this new, stark, modern apartment “home” after more than a decade spent in a centuryand-a-half-year-old farmhouse filled with cherished gilt-framed landscapes and mohair velvet tufted chairs? And what was a New York City-girl-turned-Saratogian doing as a designer in Beverly Hills, anyway? How would my style translate from Saratoga Victorians to hip Cali digs and back again? As the story has begun to unfold, I’ve returned to my roots, knowing that authenticity is at the basis of good design, and that regardless of style—whether it be modern, traditional, farmhouse or SoCal— the critical ingredient is the ability to surround yourself with flourishes that you feel are beautiful, make you feel good, provide you with comfort, evoke a smile or sense of warmth and, most importantly, give you the feeling that makes a house (or in my case, an apartment) a home. For example, out here, my style lets down its

hair, so to speak, and trades in its heels for flip flops (Gucci, of course). In Beverly Hills, where the sun shines daily and the dogs fit into handbags, the style has a clean, cool vibe in stark contrast to the layered richness of Saratoga. As I’m anticipating flying back to Upstate New York for the first time since moving to Beverly Hills, my friends and deep roots in Saratoga—and that classic, beautiful Saratoga home I lovingly designed and sadly, had to part ways with—will take on an even greater significance and importance. That house is where my children slept and celebrated their birthdays: It’s where we became Saratogians. I know those memories won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. But as I change and develop my inner Cali style, I’ll be adding new depth to who I am as a designer, mother and friend. I will be creating new memories— and a new identity. Recently, during an evening walk with my son Josh through my new neighborhood, I asked him whether he felt like he’s home—or if he missed Saratoga. His unwavering reply came quickly and with confidence: “Home is where you are, Mom,” he said. “It’s not a place or a city.” He’s absolutely right.

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Travel the back Horse ⁄

SA RATOGI ANS ARE PREPARI N G TO F LY SO U T H F O R GU LF ST R E A M PA R K’S B I G G EST RACE OF TH E WI NTER—THE P E GASU S WO R LD C U P. n BY M A R C O M E DR A N O

orse racing fans always have something to get excited about. In an equine world that’s hard to impress, the Pegasus World Cup, America’s richest horse race, is turning the gaming, horse racing and sports entertainment sector on its head. And it will once again take the horse racing world by storm when it hits Gulfstream Park on January 25. Taking place in Hallandale Beach, FL, near Fort Lauderdale, the Pegasus World Cup is not only a high brow

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race with an enormous purse, but it’s also elevated by Gulfstream’s overall design, track venues and branding concept, which help “modernize the sport to engage a new generation of fans,” says Belinda Stronach, chairman and president of the Stronach Group, which oversees Gulfstream Park. If you’re running short on trip-planning time, check out PegasusWorldCup. com. The site’s map provides some great information on the places you should be experiencing in the area. And for in-depth info on racetrack venues, go to GulfstreamPark.com.

⁄ SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2019

With more than 20 eateries, bars and night clubs, there’s something for every mood and dress code. Strike 10 Bowling and Sports Lounge, Mijana Lebanese Cuisine, Texas De Brazil Steakhouse and Tito’s Bar all caught my eye for varying, exciting reasons. Off-track, Fort Lauderdale’s scene is centered around the fabled and beautiful Las Olas Boulevard. If you’re in the “I need food now” stage and want to bypass the time-consuming sit-down commitment, then go straight to Bo’s Pub for the Reuben Egg Rolls with Russian Sauce or massive

(horse, Stronach, race, jockeys) PEGASUSWORLDCUP.COM/PHOTOS; (DUNE) TAMZ PHOTOGRAPHY

Get Ready, Fort Lauderdale!

rich beach (clockwise from top left) The Balcony, located upstairs from the more casual Bo’s Pub, offers a festive sitdown atmosphere; jockeys at the 2018 Pegasus World Cup; Auberge Beach Residences & Spa’s oceanfront spread; Gun Runner winning the 2018 Pegasus; DUNE restaurant at Auberge Beach Residences & Spa will leave you wanting more; Belinda Stronach, chairman and president of the Stronach Group, which oversees Gulfstream Park; (opposite) the Pegasus World Cup is the crown jewel of the Gulfstream Park season.

Travel the back Horse ⁄

voila! DUNE, the restaurant at Auberge Beach Residences & Spa, is nothing short of deliriously over-the-top perfection.

happy meal The ribeye steak at DUNE is just one of the many must-have meals for Fort Lauderdale visitors.

Shepherd’s Pie. You can also opt to traipse upstairs to The Balcony for a more festive—and tasty!—sit-down meal. AIK Taco Masala’s Indianinspired taco shop is gaining cultstatus for its flavorful fare. For Eastmeets-South, Casa Sensei has raised the bar with Lobster Guacamole, a Casa Ceviche Roll and Crispy Duck Noodle Soup. It even offers sushimaking classes if you’re up for a little twist on dinner. So, we’ve got to stay somewhere great, right? Parking during the Pegasus ranges from $20-$60 per day, so Über or taxi may be a more reasonable choice and could sway your check-in decision. Staying next door to the track isn’t necessary, however. For those who’d like to jaunt down to Miami Beach’s South Beach

(about 25 minutes southward) for sand between your toes or a world-class spa and gym, then I’d recommend HYDE Resort & Residences, a Preferred Hotels & Resorts destination boasting Four-Diamond-Award notability and its luxurious eména spa with a hair salon. Or, there’s always the OG luxe madam, Turnberry Isle Hotel and Resort. I’ve stayed at the latter (huge, plush rooms), and their áme spa is modern and stunning (try the heat-infused massage on a bed of crushed amethyst crystal), as is Turnberry Isle’s famed steakhouse, Bourbon Steak, situated in the lobby. If you love to play golf, then you’ve also found your spot! I had a terrific golf training day with the talented pro Ray Boone (who actually taught Princess Diana to golf). Boone’s an

amazing instructor representing an amazing resort. In the same rarified experience is Hilton’s Curio Collection, presenting a highly-coveted new starlet on the beach and possibly my first choice, The Diplomat, a full-on Four-Diamond

AAA resort. The Diplomat Spa is ahhhh!, its Monkitail restaurant is getting serious national foodie buzz and the stunning beachside pool is next-to-impossible to leave. A luxe gym and Kids’ Club could seal the deal. DUNE, the restaurant at Auberge Beach Residences & Spa will leave you wanting more, and is nothing short of deliriously over-the-top perfection with its oceanfront boutique-chic spread across spacious towers of memorable design. Time to shop! Let’s go to one of the largest high-end retail emporiums in the country, Aventura Mall, or, if your wallet prefers the more elevated palette of Rodeo Drive, then Bal Harbour Shops is for you. Get yourself something extra special for the racetrack, as the winning purse of Pegasus alone justifies that your sartorial glam meter be all the way up. Couture in Florida? You gotta love horse racing!

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the back Food ⁄

Miracle On Phila Street

L EGE N DA RY S PA CITY EATERY H ATTIE’ S C R E AT E S A SAVO RY SAU SAG E D E LIGH T. n p h otograp h y by T E R R I -LYN N P E LLE GR I

his recipe will be a great addition to your arsenal of addictive holiday appetizers. The dish’s base is our cheese straw dough, with the addition of browned breakfast sausage. The cheese and sausage biscuits are great on their own—or you can jazz them up a bit as we did for this variation. The addition of the pepper jelly turns the biscuit into a rich, savory Linzer cookie. The sweet heat of the jelly helps balance the richness of the sausage and cheese. And you should make more than you need to: You’re probably going to eat a few before your guests even arrive!

Cheese and Sausage Biscuits (YIELDS 75 BISCUITS) INGREDIENTS

Jasper Alexander RESTAURANT: Hattie’s SARATOGA BITE: Cheese and Sausage Biscuits CHEF:

½ lb. Bulk breakfast sausage, browned ¼ lb. Butter, cut into ½-inch pieces, room temperature 1 lb. Grated extra sharp cheddar cheese 1½ c. Flour ¼ tsp. Cayenne pepper ¼ tsp. Red pepper flakes ½ tsp. Salt 1 Tbsp. Half-and-half Pepper jelly

INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat the oven to 350°F and gather 2 large baking trays. Cook sausage in a medium Teflon pan over moderate heat until the sausage is cooked but not brown. Drain cooked sausage in a colander and allow to cool. With a stand mixer, cream the butter with the paddle attachment until it’s light yellow, about 3-4 minutes. Add the cheese to the bowl and blend until well combined, about 30 seconds. If you don’t have a stand mixer, a hand mixer with its beater attachment will work, as will beating the cheese and butter together with a wooden spoon. (This will take a little longer, but the results will be fine.) Add the flour, cayenne, red pepper flakes and salt and work into the dough with the back of a wooden spoon. Add the half-and-half and continue to work until everything is well combined and the mixture comes together to form a dough ball. Add the cooked and cooled sausage and combine evenly. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and press into a uniform rectangle about 1-inch thick. Cut the dough into individual strips about 1-1½ inches wide, and roll on the cutting board to form round logs. Place all of the logs in the refrigerator to chill for 30 minutes. Remove the logs and slice them into round coins about ¼ inch thick. Bake on a parchment-lined cookie sheet for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Allow the baked biscuits to cool and then add pepper jelly, if you so choose. If you’re not going to serve them immediately, store biscuits in an airtight container.

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Ask about our Ornamental Stone Finish options

the back Drink ⁄ Exorcise Your Summer Demons With Henry Street Taproom’s ‘Father Karras’ TH E DOWN TOWN SA R ATO GA H OTSP OT GETS GH OULI SH WI T H I TS H A LLOWE E N -T H E M E D “ NEXT GRE AT SA R ATO GA C O C KTA I L” E N T RY.

he Father Karras was inspired by those Saratogians who don’t want to let go of the summer and need a drink strong enough to carry them into the fall—even through Halloween. The cocktail’s name pays homage to Father Damien Karras, one of the lead characters in William Peter Blatty’s classic horror novel—and Oscar-winning screenplay for—The Exorcist. Through this cocktail, help me help you exorcise your summer demons and settle into the fall.

PH OTOGR A P H Y BY DO R I F I T ZPAT R I C K

The Northeast’s classic Photobooth Rentals Since 2006 - SaratogaPhotobooth.com

MEET YOUR

INTERIOR DESIGN

The Father Karras INGREDIENTS

3 2 1 1/2 1/2

oz. Se Busca Mezcal oz. Grapefruit juice oz. Simple syrup tsp. Ghost pepper hot sauce Jalapeño pepper

INSTRUCTIONS

Henry Street Taproom COCKTAIL: The Father Karras MIXOLOGIST: Drew Janik BAR:

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In a shaker, pour mezcal over ice and add grapefruit juice and simple syrup. Add a conservative 1/2 teaspoon of ghost pepper hot sauce. (You can always add more—but you can’t take it out!) Shake and pour into a tulip glass. Garnish with a chiffonade of jalapeños. Enjoy!

Living Rooms Bedrooms

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Elise Penge, Tiffany Merritt Prime at Saratoga National Golf Club Auctioneer Letitia Frye

Hey (St.) Jude

S A R AT O G I A N S R A I S E D M O R E T H A N $ 3 0 0, 0 0 0 F O R T H E F I G H T AG A I N S T C H I L D H O O D C A N C E R AT T H E LU X E S T. J U D E G A L A .

P H OTO G R A P H Y BY

BY HANNAH SACKS K AT I E D O B I E S E XC LU S I V E LY

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n August 29, Saratoga National Golf Club played host to the 7th Annual St. Jude Gala, which this year raised more than $300,000 to help treat— and hopefully, someday defeat—childhood cancer. Chairman Of The Board for Price Chopper Supermarkets and noted local philanthropist Neil Golub donated $20,000 to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in memory of his late wife, Jane Golub, a gala honoree, who was a major supporter of the hospital. Also honored was “a patient’s mom, JoAnne, whose daughter, Ashley, battled acute myeloid leukemia as a young adult,” says Fran Pickles, St. Jude’s regional development director. “Ashley was 19 when she was diagnosed and began her treatment at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis in 2010.” Continues Pickles: “Through her treatment, she realized she wanted to become a nurse and help others like the nurses at St. Jude were able to do for her. Her journey came full circle, as today she’s a nurse at St. Jude.” All the proceeds from the gala went towards ensuring that families, like Ashley’s, will never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, housing or food.

The silent auction table

Liz Bankhead

Matt Ceballos, Diana Ceballos, Larry Treen, Nicole Treen, Eric Narcisco, Bridget Murray

Artwork created by Landon, a nineyear-old St. Jude patient

A lot has gone into earning your wealth. I’ll make sure the same goes into helping you manage it. Jess Centea, Scott Centea, Elise Tordella

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Steve Rodway, Katie Rodway, Shane Kilburn, Jessica Maynard, Scott Gushlaw, Beth Gillingham, Christa Miliani, Frank Miliani, Tara Greiner, Michael Greiner

ALSAC/St. Jude Boards of Directors and Governors member Paul Wein

Peter Searles, CFP® Senior Vice President – Investment Officer PIM Portfolio Manager 100 Westminster St., Ste. 1600, Providence, RI 02903 Office: 401-459-6870 peter.searles@wellsfargoadvisors.com • home.wellsfargoadvisors.com/peter.searles Investment and Insurance Products:

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MAY Lose Value

Wells Fargo Advisors is a trade name used by Wells Fargo Clearing Services, LLC, Member SIPC, a registered broker-dealer and non-bank affiliate of Wells Fargo & Company. © 2015 Wells Fargo Clearing Services, LLC. All rights reserved. CAR-0419-00824 A1924 IHA-586316

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CUSTOMER SERVICE IS OUR PRIORITY

Dark Day, Lit Night

Natalie Moore, Erica Ziskin, Laurie Knapp

saratoga living CELEBRATES “THE R ACES!”

AND SUPERSTAR TRAINER TODD PLETCHER. BY NATALIE MOORE PHOTOGRAP HY BY KONRAD ODHIAMBO exclusively for saratoga living

uesday, July 23 may have been a dark day at Saratoga Race Course, but saratoga living and superstar horse trainer Todd Pletcher lit up the night with a party to celebrate the release of “The Races!”—and to raise money for New Vocations, a racehorse adoption program in Ballston Spa— at Putnam Place in Downtown Saratoga Springs. Pletcher, the cover star of the year’s biggest and most anticipated issue, served as the evening’s guest of honor, mingling with Saratoga horse racing fans during an intimate VIP pre-party at the venue’s outdoor patio. Besides the opportunity to meet and take photos with one of Saratoga’s all-star trainers, VIP guests enjoyed food from Wasabi and Harvey’s Restaurant and Bar, juice from Legacy Juice Works, music by Ryan Clark Music and, of course, swag bags. (Saratoga Race Course’s Sam “The Bugler” Grossman also made an appearance!) When the party opened up to the public, all bets were off. Guests enjoyed rentable hats and fascinators from Lady Luck Hat Rentals; food from Nosh Food Truck and Catering Company; tunes from DJ Supreme; cornhole from TOGA HERITAGE; a photo booth from Saratoga Photobooth Company; and a raffle, with prizes ranging from a framed horse photo by Tracey Buyce (valued at $1600!) and Proctors tickets to vintage Todd Pletcher silks worn by jockey John Velazquez. And just when revelers thought the night couldn’t get any better, a horse and mounted Saratoga cop showed up. They must’ve heard saratoga living was celebrating “The Races!” in style. Giddy up!

Michael Phinney, James McPartlon, Abby Tegnelia, Anthony DePaula, Anthony Ianniello, Todd Pletcher, Richard Pérez-Feria

Todd Pletcher signing a (nearly) lifesize version of “The Races” issue.

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Ryan Cark Music jammed on the Putnam Place patio for the VIP hour.

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www.TheFurntiureHouseNY.com

pop art Bronte Roman performs at the elegant Hyde Gala.

From the High $400’s

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Hyde Collection Gala Wows Art Lovers THE ELEGANT EVENING RAISED FUNDS IN GLENS FALLS.

BY KATJA VALZ

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Take I-87 Ex. 14, left on 9P /South, 1st Left on Gilbert. Right on Rte 29, right on Bryant’s Bridge Rd, Right on Burgoyne, Left on Anthony

Refresh, restore and revive with the Capital Region’s premier smoothies and bowls! Tenee Casaccio, Jim Casaccio

Candace Wait, Tenee Casaccio, Charles Wait

We promote health and wellness in our community by providing our customers with high quality food that is plant based, gluten free and as delicious as it is nutritious. See why everyone is going to BARE at our shop in Stuyvesant Plaza.

K AT I E D O B I E S saratoga living

hat better way to spend an evening than at an elegant garden gathering at The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls? The annual gala, held in honor of the art museum’s founders, Charlotte and Louis Hyde, took place on Saturday, September 21 and celebrated the Hydes’ contributions to the arts scene in Glens Falls and the Capital Region. Collectors and enthusiasts of American and European art raised their paddles during the evening’s live auction after being treated to exquisite food catered by Lily and The Rose. The evening was graced with music by Seagle Music Colony, Bronte Roman and The Wayne Hawkins Trio. Charles and Candace Wait, dedicated supporters of The Hyde Collection, were presented with the Legacy Award for their passion and commitment to the museum. It was a night to remember!

154 saratoga living

518-376-2965 cmquade32@gmail www.R-Mhomes.com

Elizabeth Sobol, Terry DeBrule

n P H OTO G R A P H Y BY

E XC LU S I V E LY F O R

Honorees Candace Wait and Charles Wait

Lic. Real Estate Broker

⁄ SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2019

Richard Myers, Kathleen Myers

Mary Van Ness Uitti, William Sohn Wayne Hawkins, Graeme Francis, Bronte Roman, Jeff Link

Laura Bradigan, Wally Graham, Louise Coffman, Jason Ward, Candace Wait, Charles Wait, Norman Dascher

Lily and The Rose catered the gala. ORDER ONLINE!

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SPECIAL PROMOTIONAL SECTION

star gazing

I T’S TIM E TO PI CK NEW YORK APPLES, P E O P LE ! BY MELISSA MORREALE

illustrations by ROBERT RISKO exclusively for saratoga living

LIBRA SEPTMEBER 23-OCTOBER 22

You begin the autumn season attracting plenty of attention. However, you find yourself wanting quiet time to enjoy the colorful Upstate New York scenery while picking apples, drinking cider and cozying up to an evening fire. Time spent with siblings can be enjoyable, with discussions centering around family heritage. This is a ripe time to think of new ways to earn more money and increase your investments. It’s also a great time to take a course in a new subject that has piqued your interest. Guard your health as the weather turns cooler, because some hard-to-diagnose symptoms may arise. Unusual circumstances may occur with the legal system, taxes, loans, inheritances, death and rebirth. Outcomes should be good if you stay focused.

SCORPIO OCTOBER 23-NOVEMBER 21

This is a beneficial time for you, Scorpio. Employment, income and finances are highlighted. You may receive a sudden windfall. Your love life seems a little mysterious at the moment, but that may be short-lived. Enjoy a ghost tour around town or at the historic Canfield Casino. SAGITTARIUS NOVEMBER 22-DECEMBER 21

You have the Midas touch. Your mind is expansive and can produce

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156 saratoga living

multimillion-dollar ideas with solid plans to back them up. Home life is a bit of a mystery; something is going on behind the scenes. Pay attention. Get out and enjoy a fun, active social life. CAPRICORN DECEMBER 22-JANUARY 19

No one’s as driven as you are right now. You can outpace anyone with your stamina and determination. Allow your intellectual and creative friends to help with your goals. They will provide inspiration for your practical ideas.

⁄ SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2019

GEMINI

JANUARY 20-FEBRUARY 18

MAY 21-JUNE 20

Have you always wanted to open your own retreat or spa in the Spa City? Your friends are multiplying rapidly, and they might be able to provide opportunities to boost your career. But beware: Goblins are bringing out subconscious fears. Don’t keep sweeping them under the carpet. PISCES FEBRUARY 19-MARCH 20

Your friends are very accomplished and powerful. Take their lead and push for that career advancement. You have luck riding on your side. You can reason and discuss issues with the best of them. Have confidence, and life will be fair in all departments. ARIES MARCH 21-APRIL 19

Avoid gambling with finances or investments at this time. Keep the grind going steadily, and you’ll be rewarded. Enjoy the crisp air by getting under the covers to read a book. Spend time with your loved one. Quarrels may arise, but making up will be fun.

All signs point to romance. Someone wants to bring fun and creative inspiration into your life. They say office romances aren’t a good idea, but go for it anyway. Why should you miss this opportunity to find a soulmate?

ocated on Union Avenue near Lake Lonely and Saratoga Lake’s north shore, and headed up by Angelo Mazzone, Prime at Saratoga National is one of Saratoga’s top upscale steakhouses. The restaurant, open for lunch and dinner, as well as for jazz brunch on Sundays (think omelettes, pastas and carving stations), offers indoor and seasonal al fresco dining, overlooking the 18th hole of the beautiful Saratoga National golf course. Besides regular daily seatings, Prime is also the perfect setting for weddings, anniversary parties, corporate events and galas, such as UPH’s annual Shaken & Stirred Celebrity Bartender Party; Red, White and Blue: American Cancer Society Party; NYS Laborers Golf Outing: Make-a-Wish Foundation; and Teresian House Gala.

CANCER JUNE 21-JULY 22

There’ll be a little bit of upheaval at home during this period. It might be a good idea to take your mate out on the town to one of the many fun spots in Saratoga Springs. It could redirect the fire between you and put it back where it belongs.

458 UNION AVE, SARATOGA SPRINGS 518.583.4653

LEO JULY 23-AUGUST 22

Flatbread Social

You’ve been building your career potential for a long time now. An unusual opportunity could present itself through a possible partnership. Your creative juices are flowing, so share your ideas with a partner you can trust. Visit with your parents and siblings for grounding.

TAURUS

VIRGO

APRIL 20-MAY 20

AUGUST 23-SEPTEMBER 22

For the earthy and steady bull, things have surely been a bit unusual and unsettled. Let loose. Enjoy some romance! It could surprise you and lead to something special. Invest in this intimacy…and some real estate, too, while you’re at it.

Prime At Saratoga National

Take care of finances and investments; this area will be active for you. It’s a good time to consider remodeling or expanding your home. You’re drawn to a partner who’s intuitive, spiritual and gifted. This complements you in many ways.

N (Prime) THE HARRIS COMPANY

Libras Tip The Scale

AQUARIUS

ew from the owners of Henry Street Taproom is Flatbread Social, a lively bar, serving craft beer and cocktails, and wood-fired pizza hotspot, located right next to the Taproom on Henry Street. Flatbread Social officially opened its doors in December 2018 and has since been serving starters, salads and pizzas in an inviting and, yes, social, atmosphere (you can even play shuffleboard with friends there after you eat). Flatbread offerings include “The Only Kind Of Pizza There Is,” topped with local sausage, garlic mushrooms, fire-roasted tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella; the “Kick In Your Pants Pie,” which features pickled banana peppers, spicy chorizo, fire-roasted tomato sauce and mozzarella; and homemade ice cream. 84 HENRY ST, SARATOGA SPRINGS 518.886.1198

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SPECIAL PROMOTIONAL SECTION

play

The Inn At Erlowest

Spelling Bee BY N ATA L I E M O O R E

he Inn At Erlowest, a Queen Anne-style stone castle on the western shore of southern Lake George, isn’t just a private residence turned award-winning luxury, ten-suite hotel—it’s also a fine dining, farm-totable restaurant destination for guests and the public alike. The inn serves an à la carte dinner menu in its dining room and outdoor patio nightly from 5-8:30pm, as well as a lighter fare menu of cocktails and appetizers at its Library Bar. Weekly specials made with seasonal foods ensure that each visit is a unique dining experience. Guests at the inn are also treated to a farm-fresh breakfast the morning after their stay. 3178 LAKE SHORE DR, LAKE GEORGE 518.668.5928

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53. Editor-speak for “undo” 54. (Premier) place to use the facilities* 58. Fib 60. Pale gray in color 61. Basketball hoop component 63. Thing you may not want to step on 67. Main road, abbr. 68. (Leading) substance for rodent eradication* 71. Snider of Twisted Sister 72. To’s partner 73. Fuss 74. ___ Doubtfire 75. Part of a tennis match 76. Marshy area of land 77. Vietnamese New Year 78. Opposite of nay

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37. “___ was I ere I saw Elba” 38. Steal goods 39. Actress Hathaway 40. Abnormal growth 43. The letter that replaces the first letter in the starred clues 45. Cut in half 48. Lennon’s wife 50. 90-degree angle 51. Hog’s home 52. Release 54. Poets 55. ___ Lauder

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not so secret “I enjoy the quality service aspect of my job, and since we have a fabulous product here, it’s rewarding to offer and then deliver upon it,” says Patrick Toomey, The Adelphi Hotel’s restaurant director.

When you’re at The Adelphi, I’m assuming your role is to walk into any of the restaurants or public spaces and quickly assess the situation: Who’s there? What needs to be done? How can I make this situation better? There’s no question; that’s exactly what I do. I always want to get a solid overview of the comings and goings of the day as soon as I walk in. Outside of weekly meetings and appointments, it’s hard to guess what each day might throw at you.

Patrick Toomey’s Saratoga Pride THE ADEL PH I H OTEL’ S RESTAU R A N T DI R E C TO R EMBODIES TH E CITY H E LOV E S.

BY RICH ARD PÉREZ-F E R I A PHOTOGRAPHY BY

KATIE DOBIES

EXCLUSIVELY FOR

saratoga living

f Saratoga Springs was a person, who would it be? I have the answer. If you saunter up next to The Adelphi Hotel’s dynamic Director of Restaurants, Patrick Toomey, who you can invariably find at the luxury resort smiling through the well-heeled crowd, you’ll discover what I have. This dude is Saratoga. I should know. Like many former Manhattanites who now find themselves in the Spa City, I’m drawn to Downtown Saratoga’s chicest destination like a moth to a flame. How can I resist the just-this-side-of-over-the-top design, the perfectly dim lighting, the glad-to-see-you staff and, yes, Patrick Toomey, at the ready to ensure a perfect experience? A tried-and-true Saratogian—he was born in Glens Falls Hospital and graduated from Saratoga Springs High School in 1995—Toomey, not unlike the city he loves most, is successful, strong, kind, tireless, truthful and resilient. If Chris Evans has the role of Captain America on lockdown, well, I vote for Patrick Toomey to be the lead in the next superhero blockbuster, Sergeant Saratoga. I mean, who better? All I know is that any night I show up at The Adelphi with my assuredly boisterous Saratoga crew, there, at the center of the elegant storm, will be Patrick Toomey’s smiling, reassuring face. And all I’ll be able to think of is: How lucky are we, Saratoga?

What’s the best and the worst thing about having such a demanding job? Yeah, Richard, it’s definitely a demanding job. I enjoy the quality service aspect of my job, and since we have a fabulous product here, it’s rewarding to offer and then deliver upon it. As far as the worst thing, there certainly have been times when we may have fallen short. We learn from those shortcomings and experiences, monitor and adjust and remain committed to excellence. Do you see yourself running your own hotel or restaurant someday? Having now spent close to 15 years in this business, I’ve, of course, thought about owning and running my own restaurant or restaurants. As of right now, though, I intend to put all my efforts toward continuous improvement right here at The Adelphi. And I couldn’t be happier about that, for sure. Now, let’s get real: How happy are you when you see me walking through The Adelphi’s doors? [Laughs] Well, you know how much I greatly enjoy your very regular company at The Adelphi, Richard! You always brighten up the space!

Thank you for voting us #1! We love being a part of Saratoga’s vibrant downtown!

Introducing

The newest event venue in downtown Saratoga Springs. For bookings and tours, call 518.587.3982. the408saratoga.com 408 Broadway, Second Floor

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408 Broadway, Saratoga Springs 518.587.5577 cantinasaratoga.com

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