The Weekend: Berkshires

ENCORE

came together by way of Sears & Roebuck’s The Hills Are Alive prefab housing division. Appreciative Master clarinetist, Oskar EspinaRuiz, is king of Litch eld County’s audiences have esteemed Music Mountain. | By Sandy MacDonald been ocking to this acoustical marvel ever the choruses i’ve sung with have taken me since. Six years ago, globally acclaimed clarinetist, all over the world: Switzerland, Uruguay, Japan… Oskar Espina Ruiz, likewise a prodigy, who began Somehow, though, a premier New England music performing with the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra mecca has eluded me all this time, awaiting in his mid-teens, accepted the reins from Jacques’s unnoticed in my very backyard. Tucked away in son, Nick Gordon, an NBC executive who had run Falls Village, a well-preserved 19th-century hamlet the show for nearly a half-century. northwest of Hartford, is the venerable For Music Mountain’s long-time devotees, the concert venue Music Mountain. roster has changed only incrementally. Espina

In 1930, at the onset of the Great Ruiz is an experienced festival founder and Depression, Jacques Gordon—a child curator who does all his prodigy Russian violinist who led the Oskar scouting in person. “The Chicago Symphony in the 1920s— Espina artists that I present are snapped up this 130-acre sylvan paradise Ruiz artists with whom I have either and erected a 300-seat concert hall. played or heard live. Here, it’s Don’t let your eyes deceive you: common for artists to return What may look like retro and the quality has always Colonial Revival actually been over the top.”

GET Puelche Boot Dryer

Avid skier Larry Corlear, of Glens Falls, NY, had a small problem on the home front: cold, wet ski boots strewn across a cluttered mudroom. The boots stayed wet, the oor chaotic. An engineer by trade, Corlear got to work inventing his own elegant solution, the Puelche Dryer, a highly functional yet stylish stainless-steel shoe and boot drying rack with retracting pegs. The dryer is super practical for mountain

living. PuelcheDryer.com $1,299-$3,999

GET Aarke Water Carbonator

Longtime Catskiller JT McKay opened bluecashew Kitchen Homestead in Kingston a er being enchanted for years with the location. Now his culinary concept shop sells high-quality cookware including the Aarke Carbonator. “I love things that strike that ne line between technology and history,” he says. We do, too.

bluecashew.com $349

BIG PICTURE Vassar, Take 1

As the cameras rolled, Poughkeepsie’s elite campus glittered. | By Mitch Rustad that’s a rapp

as a pop culture maniac, I adore high- and decidedly low-brow television and lms in equal measure. Whether it’s a train-wreck of a reality show escapism or a brilliantly written, heartstopping thriller, I’m so in.

But as a long-time television writer and blogger— and now even writing my own TV scripts—I nd myself paying attention to far more than just the storylines. I scan every scene, noticing the oddball stu and the visual worlds Hollywood creates: the quirky extra sitting in a café; a lonely glimpse of a rural road; a picturesque university quad. Here’s the thing, many of these terri c productions are lmed right here in our neck of the woods.

As a rabid Sex And The City fan, I couldn’t wait to see Mindy Kaling’s HBO Max show, The Sex Lives Of College Girls. In fact, I think I binged the entire

Renée Rapp stars in

HBO Max’s The Sex Lives Of College Girls lming

at Vassar College.

rst season in one weekend. The beautiful campus of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie became the stand-in for the ctional, elite Essex College, the setting for the girls’ wild shenanigans (season two’s currently in production). I was hooked the instant I watched earnest, good-girl Kimberly, a small-town, sheltered character, try to win over her new coworkers at Sips, the show’s on-campus co ee shop.

Oh, and look out for a local Millbrook diner featured in the buzzy ve-part HBO limited series about Watergate, The White House Plumbers, starring the always great Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux. Better nd that remote.