Rosendale Ramblings By Sari Botton

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.