Rosendale Ramblings By Sari Botton

Okay, this post is not for the faint of heart, nor for PETA members.

Let me preface this by saying this has become an us versus them kind of situation, and eat-or-be-eaten kind of thing.

Critters have been helping themselves to increasingly sizeable chunks of our garden, snatching up all the edamame before we’ve even had a chance to taste any, sneaking off with whole stalks of broccoli. It bothers me. It really bothers Brian, who is farmer-in-chief here on our little patch of green.

We have been quite diplomatic about this for some time now. As you’ll see in earlier posts of mine from 2006-ish, we started by sprinkling the edges of the yard with Shake Away, essentially canned fox urine, to deter the ground hogs. I could swear I heard the ground hogs laughing at us. Then we bought a Have-a-Heart trap. We caught ground hogs, rabbits, and even an adorable baby skunk, and dutifully relocated them to greener pastures as they stunk up the  car.

But, as we learned last summer, it is illegal to relocate pests. And, as it has finally dawned on us, there is an endless supply of critters. Moving one 10 miles away does not mean you will not see another gnawing on your yellow beans the very next day.

Last night, over happy hour PBRs at Market Market, we compared notes with our friends and neighbors as to how they deal with such intruders. One has been stockpiling interesting recipes for rabbit. Another, who has a rabbit as a pet, has no qualms about taking a pitch fork to interloping ground hogs – and putting it through them.

When we got home, Brian set up the have-a-heart in the garden. I was woken in the middle of the night by the sound of an animal screeching. At 5:45 in the morning, Brian got up and quietly headed outside. I met him down there at 6:30, and he had a strange expression on his face. It was somewhere between apprehension and glee.

“I got rid of the ground hog,” he said – “the” ground hog. As if it were the only one. “How’d you do that?” I asked. “I drowned it in the tub out back.” I had once purchased a scratched up claw foot tub from our neighbors down the block. I’d had designs on taking cool baths on hot nights. I’ve had the tub for three years. So far, no cool baths.

I winced. I don’t like the idea of killing anything, although I eat dead animals all the time. And my neighbors have dogs that kill the ground hogs every day, and no one feels bad about it. It’s the food chain. I somehow found my mind moving on. I was surprised I didn’t dwell on the drowning.

Once Brian saw that I was largely okay, he relaxed and shifted his attention to the set of next pests: the Japanese beetles had had a field day with our raspberries, beans, cherry tree and more. I’m not even a little upset about killing them, no matter how we do it.

I’m trying to see if I can post pictures so they come out larger than a thumbnail. Here goes.

(Update: Why, yes I can! Still, many hurdles remain toward giving this blog the right look. That, by the way, is Eric Stern, modeling his vintage Hermes.)

When my neighbor and stylist-to-the stars Eric Stern posted on Facebook this morning that he was decked out, head-to-toe, in vintage Hermes, I had to run over and snag a photo of him against the backdrop of gritty Main Street. Nothing says quirky Rosendale contradiction quite like that – although, Eric tells me there exists somewhere a photo of him riding Bill Brooks’ tractor in his fur coat. I’ve got to get a hold of that. And, mind you, it was casual Hermes – madras pants from ’73 paired with a simple white tee. He accessorized with the only pair of orange Hermes boat shoes ever made, and an orange Birkin bag to match.

Of course, when I arrived, Bill Brooks was there, too, in his Rosendale Pickle Festival tee shirt. Another perfect contradiction. Bill, a local contractor, is also a barber. For more than 40 years, he’s owned and run what has come to be known as “Bill Brooks’ Shop,” a barber shop that also sells everything from Rosendale Cement bags and tee shirts, to books on local history and packs of Wrigley’s gum. “Bill Brooks’ Shop” is situated just in front of the apartment/office building he put up a couple of years ago, where Eric and his partner David live.

At once, the image of the two of them together says to me “Green Acres,” and “American Gothic.”

Eric, a recent transplant from Chelsea, no doubt wins the most fashionable contest on Main Street. But some of the longtime locals ain’t too shabby neither. To wit, here’s Russell Muccia rocking leather pants. At 9 in the morning.

Well, it’s been a while since we stumbled upon a dead animal on the property. This one wasn’t quite on our little postage stamp of land, but just over the line, on the firehouse lawn adjacent to our driveway. And certainly close enough to smell.

Last night, after an incredible thunder and lightning storm, Brian and I both noticed a strange stench wafting through the house. Was it skunk? Was it something burning? Was it a skunk burning? Turns out, yes, it was the latter. This critter seems to have been struck by lightning.

After all my other dead-animals-on-the-lawn experiences here so far (cat, possum, deer…), you’d think I would know by now who to call to have it removed. Can’t remember whether it’s the town clerk, the highway department, the police. I’ll be working the phones this morning.

(Update – Survey says: highway department.)

Our friend Dave Olson – better known as “Diamond Dave” in his days tending bar at Tortilla Flats in the West Village – has been visiting regularly. He is loosely considering busting a move to (occasionally) sunny Rosendale, after many years nestled just across the river from Manhattan, in Weehawken. We’d be only too happy to have him in the social mix. Every time he’s here, Brian (admittedly) puts on the full-court press, boasting the town’s assorted advantages for a creative type like Dave. I laugh and tell him to stop. Dave seems pretty sold on the place without the hard sell.

That feels like an appropriate intro to my blogging mission statement. I’ve never been about a hard sell, nor any kind of sell. I am not a town booster nor a publicist. This is not a blog promoting Rosendale, NY, even though it might tout some of the things I love here. Rather, this is where I write about my experience of living here, as truthfully as I possibly can. Leaving New York City and moving upstate to this unique town has provided an ongoing eye-opening experience, and I have always written about those experiences that give me new understandings of myself and the world. I am a navel-gazer by trade, and my navel currently resides in Rosendale.

What you’ll find here are merely my personal opinions. I may rave about my favorite places, but not because I have any kind of proprietary interest in getting other people to those places; if I rave, it’s because I am just so pleased with something, I can’t contain myself. If anything, I am reluctant to draw too many people to my favorite haunts. I don’t want to ruin them, and I don’t want to see what happened to the East Village and other formerly affordable New York City neighborhoods happen here. Too many newcomers with too much money too soon would be a bad thing.

Conversely, I may rant now and then. If you’re my neighbor in town, you might not always like what I have to say. It’s already happened, with things I’ve written in The New York Times and New York Magazine, sometimes because of my perspective, other times because of things that got edited out, beyond my control. It was very uncomfortable at first. In New York City, when people don’t like what you write, you feel safe, because what are the chances you’ll ever even meet those people? Here, where there are just 2000 residents in the village, you run across just about everyone, all the time.

Still, even after being warned by Rosendale’s answer to Joey Buttafuoco that “If I lived on Main Street, and people knew WHERE I lived on Main Street, I’d be careful what I write,” I am undaunted. I’ll be sharing my experiences, my reactions to things, my opinions, and nothing more – whether or not they ultimately persuade Dave and others like him to make the move northward.

Even though the New York Times gave it a lousy review, and although I know there will be moments that will make me cringe, I am dying to see the new Dave Eggers/ Vendela Vida movie “Away we go.” From the preview, and other reviews, I get the sense that this movie both identifies with and pokes fun at a certain set…well, that I am maybe a  member of.

It hadn’t fully occurred to me that I was part of a “set” – especially since I have always thought of myself as breaking from sets, an outsider, not a joiner  – until we went to have dinner with friends in Halcottsville. Our friends Jimmy and Beth had invited another couple over as well. That’s when I learned that I belong to the set that is about breaking from sets.

The couple showed up an hour or so after us – in the exact same car. No, the EXACT same car. A grey, 2002 Passat 4Motion wagon. Jimmy greeted them at the door and asked them to remove their shoes. The same shoes Brian and I had just removed – Blundstone 500 paddock boots, the deep, deep, almost black ones with brown trim. There they were on the welcome mat, four pairs of the exact same shoes in the same colors.

She was in publishing. I am in publishing. He records music. Brian records music. They married late, are childless, have a house upstate, and they grow their own vegetables, and they can them and pickle them…just like we do.

As the aesthetic similarities revealed themselves one after another over the course of the evening, my first impression was: Wow. How is it possible that we have so much in common with this couple? It’s eerie…

But by the next morning, after the wine wore off, it occurred to me: we have so much in common with them because we are all part of a big cliche. It is the cliche of people who think they are so alterna- and outsider-y that they are beyond cliches. I am not sure what I am going to get out of standing in the echo chamber of that contradiction for the length of a two-hour movie. But I am somehow intensely drawn to it.

From the whimsical and talented Ryan Cronin.

The Chronogram has a piece on Rosendale this month that portrays the town very favorably, but it’s mostly old news, and misses a key new wrinkle: what a serious gastronomic, social and cultural hub the two-year-old Market Market cafe has become. Sure, there’s a photo of the place, and a caption deeming it a “hub,” but not a word about this vital, bustling eatery and popular music venue in the piece.

When Pratt grad Jenifer Constantine and her painter partner Trippy Thompson transplanted themselves here from Williamsburg and opened at the site of the former Springtown Greengrocer, they brought with them a brand of Brooklyn edge that many of us other NYC transplants were missing. You can find it in the variety of foods you can’t otherwise get up here – everything from Pork Vera Cruz tacos and Vietnamese Bahn Mi sandwiches, to Korean Bibimbop and tempeh Reubens – and in the crowds that gather each weekend to hear the kinds of bands that appeal to Brooklynites and Rosendalians alike.

Yes, we all loved everything else the town already had to offer, the quaint and quirky cafes and shops. But there was something missing for the transplanted New Yorker soul. Market Market has been filling that void.

I’m thinking about blogging here regularly, about life in Rosendale, especially as compared to life in New York City. Let me know what you’d be interested in reading about, as it relates to Rosendale or upstate living. Thanks!