Food waste might be the last thing patrons expect to see on display at this year’s reimagined Saratoga Wine & Food Festival—but when it’s as beautiful as photographer Terri-Lynn Pellegri makes it look, it’s hard to keep one’s eyes off it.
As you might remember, Pellegri unveiled her composting series back in May at Uncommon Grounds, where it stayed for the entire month. The series that ran at Uncommon will be getting an encore, along with a number of never-before-seen images, at this year’s festival, which takes place October 4-5 at the Saratoga Spa State Park and will be hosted by the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC).
Photographer Terri-Lynn Pellegri’s ‘Gratitude Overflowing,’ which she created by shooting food waste from Saratoga Tea & Honey Company. (Terri-Lynn Pellegri)
“I’m exhibiting a collection of photographs that many people would consider garbage,” she says, with a laugh. Pellegri, who captures photos of organic waste in the kitchen (mostly her own), has mastered the art of stunning still life photography, with works that pop with vibrant colors and display tremendous complexity. (Yes, we’re still talking about moldy avocados, cherry pits, watermelon rinds and everything else you’d toss in your compost pile at home.) Pellegri’s work turned out to be an easy sell to the festival’s organizers. “[President and CEO of SPAC] Elizabeth Sobol invited me to participate in the festival,” says Pellegri. “She loved the images, and with the festival’s new theme of nature, of sustainability, everything just fell into place.”
Terri-Lynn Pellegri’s ‘Bright Light Hidden Shadow,’ one of the never-before-seen photos that will be on display at the Saratoga Wine & Food Festival. (Terri-Lynn Pellegri)
On Friday night, in time for the brand-new farm-to-table harvest dinner event, Pellegri’s 33 photographs will be on display, 14 of which will be mounted on large canvases (about 24 x 30 inches) spread out across a 50-foot wall. (They’ll also be there Saturday, too, for the Grand Tasting.) The other 19 photos will be displayed throughout the same space as framed panel images mounted on pillars. In all, the exhibition will highlight a mix of work from Pellegri’s previous Love Compost collection, as well as seven never-before-seen photos from her most recent work, entitled COMPOSiTions, which features food waste from Saratoga Springs’ restaurants and businesses that compost as a regular practice. “The original works [from Love Compost] were personal observations of my own home cooking,” says Pellegri. “These newer photos are a bit different [and] reflect the businesses that compost here, such as Caffè Lena or Saratoga Tea & Honey.”
Pellegri started composting regularly six years ago and says she was “jazzed” by the results and reduction in her at-home waste. And then, one morning, the glass jar full of compost she kept in her kitchen caught her eye in a new way. “The light came through it by the kitchen sink, and I said, ‘Wow, I like what’s happening there,'” says Pellegri. “I grabbed my phone and began photographing it. I found myself doing it again and again and again until I realized that I’d found some beauty somewhere.” Pellegri turned this little compost-shooting obsession into a daily practice that eventually yielded Love Compost and now her second, more collaborative collection, COMPOSiTions.
Three years in, and Pellegri’s still finding inspiration in her compost. She’s looking forward to, perhaps, sparking some interesting conversations about her work at the Saratoga Wine & Food Festival. “I’m so excited to be a part of it, because I love photographing food,” says Pellegri. “It’s just another way to see food differently and see the beauty in what we usually perceive as waste.”
Every musician has a musical soulmate. Mine is my buddy Zach, whom I first connected with at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland in 2000. Years later, after both of us wound up in New York City, we formed a band and played the club scene together. Zach and I have this cosmic rapport when it comes to songwriting and guitar playing that I’ve never experienced with any other musician; we “complete” each other’s songs. And we’ve turned each other onto a number of great bands and artists in our time. Case in point: For my 21st birthday, which I celebrated in Scotland, Zach gifted me two albums that would completely change my life as songwriter and guitarist: Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush (1970) and Harvest (1972). I remember sitting in my Pollock Halls dorm room playing “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” (from the former) and “Old Man” (from the latter) over and over and over again until I was able to teach myself my own versions. When they finally clicked, I couldn’t fathom being able to write one, let along two songs that were that good. And I still haven’t even come close.
Graham Nash, on the other hand, has written more than a few songs that rival Neil Young’s in brilliance—and aside from being an old friend and bandmate of Young’s—he, too, has his own musical soulmate in David Crosby. Nash and Crosby have this unmistakable melodic unity, which was put on display in the most public of ways on August 17, 1969, when Nash, along with Crosby, Young and Stephen Stills played their second show ever as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in front of more than 400,000 fans at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in Bethel, NY. (Young did not appear on Crosby, Stills & Nash’s [CSN’s] eponymous 1969 debut, which had been released just three months prior; the group’s first show as a foursome was the night before Woodstock at Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre.) Remembers Nash of the group’s set on the 17th, which kicked off at the ungodly hour of 4am: “[We flew in] over an immense crowd of people in the dark and the rain in a helicopter. Crosby put it best when he said it looked like an encampment of the Macedonian army. Seeing all those people was an amazing feeling.” Three songs into the quartet’s set, Nash and Crosby, who had really only been singing together for about a year, duetted on Crosby’s “Guinevere,” one of the most haunting numbers on CSN’s debut record, a complex latticework of harmonies that was just “one acoustic guitar and two voices and a half-a-million people,” says Nash. That moment might as well have sealed their musical marriage for the masses.
David Crosby (left) and Graham Nash (right) performing together in 2011 at the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York City. (David Shankbone/Flickr)
Now, as far as I can remember, Zach and I never had a serious falling out. Sure, we’ve butted heads before in the past, but we’ve never gone more than a few months without talking. Nash and Crosby, on the other hand, haven’t spoken in almost three years. This stems from a yet-unexplained chasm between the two musicians that materialized around March 2016, prompting Nash to tellBillboard that “I don’t want anything to do with Crosby at all. It’s just that simple. In my world there will never, ever be a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young record and there will never be another Crosby, Stills & Nash record or show.” Three years later, the wounds haven’t seemed to heal in the least. “I [used to speak] to [Crosby] on a regular basis—not daily, but certainly three or four times a week—and [now] I haven’t spoken to him in two or three years,” says Nash. “Our friendship is over, and that’s the way it is, and if we never made another note of music, [you’d still have] what we did in the last 50 odd years.”
As sorry as fans might be to never hear Nash and Crosby’s ethereal voices intertwined again—let alone jigsawed together with their compatriots Stills and Young—Nash does make a valid point. Besides “Guinevere,” the Crosby-Nash (or Nash-Crosby) recorded oeuvre alone is a mind-blowing, prodigious group of tracks (and full albums) that includes nuggets such as “Lady of the Island” (Nash with Crosby), “Lee Shore” (Crosby with Nash) and “Song with No Words (Tree with No Leaves)” (Crosby and Nash)—and of course, there is a seemingly endless supply of songs the two produced with Stills and Young, such as “Ohio,” “Helplessly Hoping” and “Teach Your Children,” which is arguably, Nash’s signature song. In regards to “Teach Your Children,” Nash says: “[In Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young], we had a ‘reality rule’: If I sat down and played a song for David and Stephen, and they didn’t react, you’d never hear that song again.” When Nash first played “Teach Your Children” for Stills, he didn’t have an entirely favorable reaction to it. “Stephen looked at me and said, ‘That’s a really great song, but don’t ever play it like that again,'” says Nash. (The original demo is more of a shuffle than a country-pop song.) It was Stills’ rearrangement of the song that turned it into a hit, says Nash.
Just two years prior to the release of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s debut, Déjà Vu (1970), which included “Teach Your Children” and reached at No.1 on the album charts, Nash had been a founding member of British Invasion band The Hollies, which scored a string of hit singles in their own right, including “Bus Stop,” “On a Carousel” and “Carrie Anne.” “When I was in The Hollies, I had learned to be able to write a pop song that the melody of which you probably couldn’t forget if you’d heard it a couple of times,” says Nash. But after Nash’s own tune “King Midas in Reverse” performed poorly on the UK charts—although it reached the Top 20, in the era of singles, it was deemed a “failure”—his Hollies bandmates began to reject his contributions. When he offered his upbeat “Marrakesh Express” as a possible new single, they all but ignored it. Nash soon saw the writing on the wall, moving to America, where he linked up with Crosby and Stills—and started dating and moved in with Joni Mitchell—singing with the pair for the first time in 1968 in an informal setting, and soon after, recording CSN’s eponymous debut with them, which peaked in the Top 10. The lead single? “Marrakesh Express,” which hit Billboard‘s Top 40. Nash would go on to contribute a number of the band’s most memorable, upbeat songs, including “Pre-Road Downs,” which (fun-fact alert!) is the only song on the Crosby, Stills & Nash album to feature a voice other than Crosby’s, Stills’ or Nash’s (Cass Elliot, from the Mamas & the Papas, provides a harmony vocal on the word “roaches” in the chorus); and “Our House,” a saccharine sweet love song about Nash’s then-girlfriend Mitchell, which also hit the Top 40.
By the time Nash released his first solo record, Songs for Beginners, in May 1971—almost exactly a year after Déjà Vu hit the streets—a lot had happened to the musician. His band was one of the biggest in the world; Woodstock, which helped make that happen, had come and gone; as had the antithetical Altamont Free Concert in California, at which Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had performed and where chaos had ensued and a young fan had been murdered; Nash’s relationship with Mitchell had disintegrated; and Vietnam War protests were reaching a fever pitch, following the Kent State Massacre in May 1970 (this being the basis for Young’s famous protest song “Ohio”). All that, and Nash’s ability to write songs had changed dramatically. “When I came to America to join David and Stephen and Neil and was living with Joni, I began to realize that if I put better words to my melodies, I would have better songs,” says Nash. “That’s exactly what happened.” But the Nash you find on the album isn’t the young songwriter marveling at the freedom of touring Morocco via train (“Marrakesh Express”) or spinning a picture-story as a lovestruck balladeer (“Lady of the Island”), but rather one that’s grown introspective and at times, dispirited, depressed and downright angry. As luck would have it, the more off-the-rails Nash gets, the better a songwriter he becomes.
For the uninitiated, Songs for Beginners, which certainly has its fair share of breakup songs on it, also comes trip-wired with a powerful statement of anti-war protest, beginning with album opener “Military Madness” (about his father leaving to fight in World War II) and swinging into high gear with “Chicago,” a Top 40 hit in the US, which addresses the violent protests during the 1968 Democratic Convention in the same-named city (it was written for Stills and Young, trying to coax them to come play a benefit show for the seven young protestors arrested at the convention). What’s maybe most incredible about that latter song is that it even made it onto wax as a single—and eventually, the radio. (The same could be said of CSN&Y’s “Ohio.”) Nowadays, you’ll find nary an anti-war or -president anthem making a play for the top of the Billboard singles charts. Do you think we’re living in a post protest-song era? I ask Nash. “No,” he responds, firmly. “I think the people that own the world’s media, which you can probably count on two hands, don’t want protest songs on their airwaves—radio, TV. They learned from Vietnam. They learned that when [CBS Evening News anchor] Walter Cronkite was telling us at 6 o’clock every single night how many American men and women had died in Vietnam, it obviously pissed off the people, and it was the people that put the pressure on their congressmen and senators and president to stop that war. But [the powers-that-be] learned.”
Three years after Songs for Beginners, Nash released a second solo set, Wild Tales, which found the musician battling the blues of another breakup, this time, from then-girlfriend Rita Coolidge, a relationship that had also created tensions within Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (she had had a brief dalliance with Stills as well). Soon after, CSN&Y itself would break up. After all, it was a group featuring four lead singers and songwriters, all of whom had ego clashes throughout the years—and had been members of incredibly famous and famously combative bands in their own right (Nash had co-helmed The Hollies, Stills and Young were co-leaders of Buffalo Springfield, and Crosby had been one of three lead singers in The Byrds, who had been making a play for the lone frontman gig when he was unceremoniously fired in 1967 prior to the release of The Notorious Byrd Brothers album). Once again, Nash’s songs took a turn for the dark—and in many ways, got even better. This was largely due to the influence of one of his bandmates. “Hey You (Looking at the Moon),” “And So It Goes” and “I Miss You” sound like they could’ve been outtakes from Young’s bestselling Harvest, for which Nash had been a part of the sessions (he provided backing vocals on “Are You Ready for the Country?” and the masterful “Words”). “You can’t exist in this world, standing next to Neil Young, and not be affected; he’s like a virus,” says Nash. “Neil is very serious about music, he’s very committed to the muse of music and will only move when the music makes him move. He brought a slightly darker edge to [Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s] music—’Ohio’ being a perfect example. But there’s no way that you can be in a band with Neil Young and David Crosby and Stephen Stills and living with Joni Mitchell and not be affected by these people.” The album also included another protest song in “Oh! Camil (The Winter Song),” about soldier-turned-activist Scott Camil.
This fall, the 77-year-old Nash, who’s been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice (once with The Hollies, once with CSN), along with his touring band, will be criss-crossing the country—including stops at The Egg in Albany on September 28 and Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in Bethel, NY (the site of the original Woodstock festival) on October 15—playing his first two solo albums, front to back. “I’ve always liked Songs for Beginners and Wild Tales,” says Nash. “Obviously, because I’m a solo artist, I get to play songs that I never had a chance to play [in Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young]; when you’re in a band with four strong writers, there’s only so much room.” (He acknowledges the influence of his wife, Amy Grantham, in making the string of shows happen, too.) Nash also tells me that he’s working on a follow-up to his 2016 solo album, This Path Tonight. “I’m a writer,” says Nash. “There’s so much to write about. I can’t stop. As long as I’m writing songs that I feel are worth sharing with people, I’ll continue to do that.” And if you’re wondering whether the septuagenarian songwriter’s been thinking about hanging it up, quips Nash: “I can’t even spell retire.” Count me among the local fans that just breathed a sigh of relief there. And while I can’t write Nash and Crosby back into the same room together again, I will send them some good vibes via loving-kindness meditation. Because while the world would still turn if Zach and me never played another note together, I’m not sure the same applies for Nash and Crosby.
Being an online influencer might appear to be an endless scroll of glorious selfies, viewed and liked by millions of adoring, digital hangers-on, who help you garner lucrative endorsement deals from major brands, but it’s actually far more difficult than it appears—especially, the moneymaking part. But that might be about to change thanks to PowerSpike, a Ballston Spa-based tech startup that, as of July 2019, has raised more than $1.3 million from venture capitalists (VCs) to connect video game influencers with brand name advertisers and sponsors. “PowerSpike is essentially the world’s first influencer exchange,” says the company’s CEO Angelo “AJ” Damiano, who grew up and currently resides in Ballston Spa just south of Saratoga Springs. “We take the best parts of programmatic advertising—the way you’d buy an ad on Facebook, for example—and couple that with the influencer market on Twitch.”
For those unfamiliar with online gaming, Twitch is like YouTube but only for video game live-streaming content—mass gaming tournaments, competitions and battles—and it’s huge. In fact, Twitch, which is a subsidiary of Amazon, is the largest video game live-streaming platform on the planet with 15 million daily users and between 2 and 3.2 million monthly broadcasters. YouTube Gaming, YouTube’s own dedicated gaming channel, is actually Twitch’s biggest competitor. And just as on YouTube or Instagram or any other social media platform, there’s a cadre of rising and established video game influencers and content creators scoring brand-name endorsements and making big bucks along the way.
How to go from playing video games at home to being a sponsored digital champion—or, if you’re an advertiser, looking for the right influencer for your product—is where PowerSpike comes in. The company acts as a kind of all-purpose middleman between sponsors, eSports organizations and influencers. “If a brand wants to get one of these famous Twitch content creators to endorse or give a shout-out to their product, there’s a ton of work that goes into actually making that happen,” says Damiano. From reaching out to influencers or their agents to negotiating contracts and measuring the efficacy of specific influencer sponsorships, PowerSpike handles it all. “You tell us what you want, throw that into our platform, and you hit GO, and you’re done,” Damiano says. “There’s no day-to-day legwork or management.”
Damiano’s an old pro when it comes to the world of video game influencers. While still in high school, he was an influencer for the insanely popular, multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft. In 2015, he also worked as a shoutcaster (a video game sportscaster) on Twitch for Electronic Sports League Gaming, one of the world’s largest eSports production companies. His time as an influencer is what originally inspired Damiano to create PowerSpike. “My friends and I wanted to go out and find sponsorships to support this competitive World of Warcraft video game tournament we were creating on Twitch,” says Damiano. “We reached out to 100 different brands and advertisers looking for a sponsorship opportunity. We got two responses, and both of them were rejections.” It was a hard lesson, but one that showed Damiano just how difficult it was for influencers to connect with advertisers, and really, vice versa. “From that experience, my friends and I wanted to create a better solution that could help influencers and creators to make content creation on Twitch their full-time career,” says Damiano.
So in 2015, while a sophomore at Syracuse University, Damiano founded PowerSpike in his dorm room. Developing the company at first was slow-going (especially with homework and finals to complete), but after graduating in 2018, Damiano got a big boost from Saratoga Springs-based video game developer Brian Corrigan, who is the founder and CEO of PUBG MadGlory. “Brian was one of the company’s earliest investors,” says Damiano. “He provided us with space and mentorship that really helped us succeed in the early phases of the business.”
Since then, the tech startup has grown rapidly. In addition to that $1 million-plus in VC funding, PowerSpike has won numerous regional and university business competitions in recent years, including a $10,000 first-place prize in the 2017 New York Business Plan Competition. “The company’s really moving in an exciting direction,” says Damiano, who projects that PowerSpike will grow from its current 8 employees to about 30 by next year. “We’re hiring like crazy right now, and we really want to support content creators and influencers no matter where they’re at and help them succeed.”
It’s time to party like it’s 1999. The 20th anniversary of The New Yorker Festival touches down at a number of different venues throughout New York City, October 11-13—and this year, the festival has a number of intriguing connections to the Capital Region. For those unfamiliar with the event, it celebrates all things pop culture, with panels and performances from some of the best-known names in music, film, books, art, media and politics. With panelists and speakers ranging from 2020 presidential hopeful “Mayor” Pete Buttigieg and the Food Network’s Ina “Barefoot Contessa” Garten to performances by Dua Lipa and Florence + The Machine, the festival has a little something for everybody. But what makes it extra special for us Capital Region-ites? Here are three ways.
Susan Orlean Talks: “Shelf Awareness” – Sunday, October 13 at 11am – NYIT Auditorium on Broadway
You may remember saratoga living‘s November 2018 interview with longtime New Yorker contributor/staff writer and author Susan Orlean, who was set to make an appearance at Saratoga Springs’ Northshire Bookstore on her The Library Book book tour. The novelist, whose most famous work, The Orchid Thief, was adapted into an Oscar-winning film, entitled, aptly, Adaptation, has also had several residencies at Saratoga’s famed artists’ colony, Yaddo, which she describes as “…a really valuable, almost irreplaceable [place] for getting my books done. I’m really unspeakably grateful that it exists and that I’ve had a chance to be there.” Besides giving her talk, Orlean will also be signing books at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center, on Broadway between 62nd and 63rd Streets, at 3pm. Tickets are still available and cost $49 each.
Desus & Mero With Troy Patterson – Friday, October 11 at 10pm – Florence Gould Hall
Two of the podcasting and now TV world’s funniest New Yorkers, Desus Nice and Kid Mero (of Showtime’s Desus & Mero and The Bodega Boys podcast), will be at this year’s festival, in conversation with New Yorker contributor Troy Patterson. The comedic duo are not strangers to the Capital Region. Earlier this year, they interviewed then-2020 presidential candidate (and New York Senator) Kirsten Gillibrand, whose presidential headquarters were based in Downtown Troy. Their interview took place at The Bradley bar,a favorite of Gillibrand’s, which is also in Downtown Troy. Tickets are still available and cost $49 each.
Alison Bechdel Talks With Judith Thurman – Saturday, October 12 at 10am – NYIT Auditorium on Broadway
When saratoga living‘s Senior Writer Jeff Dingler graduated from Skidmore College in 2018, one of his commencement speakers was American cartoonist Alison Bechdel, whose graphic novel, Fun Home, was later transformed into a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical (it played at Proctors in 2017). Bechdel will appear at this year’s festival in conversation with New Yorker Staff Writer Judith Thurman. Tickets are still available and cost $49 each.
To browse a full list of events at or purchase tickets to the 2019 New Yorker Festival, click here.
If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember when The Figgs ruled Saratoga Springs. (I sure do; I spent more than a year writing about it.) Even though the band’s members have all moved away from the city at this point, The Figgs still have an annual presence here and in the Capital Region, whether it’s homecoming shows at Caffè Lena in Saratoga or The Low Beat in Albany. You might even catch a few of them at Desperate Annie’s over the holidays, if you’re lucky.
One-third of what makes The Figgs The Figgs is drummer Pete Hayes, who was a Skidmore College student at the time he joined the band in 1989 and has been the band’s backbeat ever since. Hayes is also an accomplished songwriter in his own right, with credits on the band’s snaking catalog, running back to the early ’90s; and his Figgs bandmates give him a nightly pedestal on tour, a.k.a. “Pete Hayes Time,” where he comes out from behind the drums and performs songs as a temporary frontman.
In between the release of the band’s Follow Jean Through The Sea (2006) and The Man Who Fights Himself (2010), when Hayes was also performing with Steve Shiffman & the Land of No, things took a turn for the scary. Prior to a 2008 gig, he was diagnosed with relapsing-remitting Multiple Sclerosis (MS), a type of incurable disease that causes the body’s immune system to attack its nerve-protectors. Symptoms can include anything from numbness and fatigue to depression and lack of coordination—any of which could spell disaster for a touring drummer. (Hayes tells me that, during the gig, the entire right side of his body went numb, and he was missing cymbals and cues throughout the show, though his bandmates said he’d never sounded better.) While relapsing-remitting MS is often mild and highly treatable, it can still be an extremely debilitating disease. And some researchers have posited that it might be genetic. That might explain why Hayes’ sister, Rosemary, was diagnosed with the same type of MS a decade before he was.
Pete Hayes (fourth from the right) and his Maybe Sump’ms band and Bike MS team.
In the wake of his diagnosis, Hayes, who calls New York City home, decided to begin raising awareness for the disease and in turn, funds for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Despite not being that big of a cyclist—he tends to walk to work—Hayes decided his fundraising vehicle would be riding in NYC’s Bike MS, an annual fundraiser where participants team up with friends, family members and coworkers and bike around NYC, taking monetary donations up until the ride that are then transferred to the nonprofit. For those of you familiar with the Big Apple—and it’s all-day, every-day traffic snarls—what takes place during Bike MS sounds like nothing short of a miracle. Bikers can take one of three, traffic-free (!) routes throughout the city: a 30-mile ride around Manhattan, along the West Side Highway and FDR Drive; and a 50- or 100-mile option through the Holland Tunnel and back into Manhattan via the George Washington Bridge.
Though Hayes works a day-job in film production accounting, instead of putting together a corporate team to help raise the money, he, always the consummate musician, decided to put together a rag-tag group of friends and music-heads that he calls a “band.” They’re called The Maybe Sump’ms—yes, that’s a double-double entendre on the acronym “MS”—who’ve been performing a benefit concert together, once a year, since 2008 and biking in the all-day event as well. Members/musicians of the band have included Steve Shiffman (leader of the band Hayes was playing in when he was diagnosed); Christopher Peifer of former Figgs guitarist Guy Lyons’ band, the Blockhouses; Todd Kersten, who was in Hayes’ Skidmore band Cement Bunny; and Michael Goldsman, with whom Hayes cowrote a number on The Figgs’ forthcoming record, Shady Grove, which is being released on September 20. On the 18th, Hayes’ bandmate Donnelly announced his participation in the event, too. “If you’re on the team and you play an instrument, you get to play in the band no matter how bad you are on that instrument,” says Hayes. Last year, the band ran through a full set of Velvet Underground songs that included a front-to-back performance of the band’s classic album Loaded. This year, The Maybe Sump’ms will be tackling Neil Young’s Re·ac·tor, one of the Canadian artist’s lesser-known albums (Hayes says he likes to make the band’s set list a “project” rather than just a bunch of well-known cover songs.)
Besides the once-a-year gig, The Maybe Sump’ms happen to also be really, really good fundraisers. “This is our 11th year doing [Bike MS], and we’ve consistently been in the top 20 fundraising teams,” says Hayes, who notes that the band competes against big corporate teams such as JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. The band also gets a sizable annual donation from Hayes’ day-job company, Green Slate. To date, The Maybe Sump’ms have raised more than $100,000 for the MS Society.
Annually, Bike MS reins in thousands of bikers in New York City alone—this year, 1785 have already signed up—and some 75,000 cyclists, nationally, for the worthy cause. To date, the nationwide event has raised more than $1.3 billion to stop MS.
At press time, Hayes, by himself, has raised more than $2800, with a goal of $5000, for the cause. (To donate to Hayes’ coffers, click here.) And heck, if you’re an aspiring musician, who also enjoys cycling; experiencing NYC whizzing past you on a bike (sans people shouting at you to “get the f*ck out of the way”); and fighting the good fight against MS, you might also consider joining The Maybe Sump’ms team—no audition required. Join them here.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Pending expected approval from the New York State Gaming Commission, racing at Belmont Park will continue through Oct. 27, and first post on weekdays will be 1 p.m. starting next Wednesday.
Owing to construction of a hockey arena behind the west end of the grandstand, NYRA officials had previously announced that the final 14 days of the Belmont meet – Oct. 11-27 – would be conducted at Aqueduct. Also, first post on weekdays since the meet began on Sept. 6 has been 3 p.m. with NYRA forced to card only eight races due to limits on available daylight.
However, through the first eight days of the meet, officials and horsemen say that the noise from the early-stage construction has not impeded racing operations, so the decision was made to stay at Belmont through its regularly-scheduled meet.
NYRA management met with horsemen on Wednesday seeking feedback on returning to the regular schedule. Horsemen voiced no objections.
“We wanted to come here and experience it,” NYRA president and CEO Dave O’Rourke said. “There is no issue with the noise. We will be fine staying here for the traditional meet.”
Though there has not been an official ground-breaking ceremony for the arena, work at the site actually began on Aug. 14, one day after the Empire State Development Corporation gave final approval for the project, which includes a 19,000-seat arena, 330,000 square feet of retail space to be built in the south parking lot across the street from the track, and a hotel.
Construction has continued despite the town of Floral Park filing a lawsuit to try and block the project.
One Glens Falls restaurant is redefining what counts as hospital food. saratoga living has learned that Doc’s Restaurant, which is located on Park Street just beneath the Park Theater, has debuted a completely new, fine dining menu inspired, yes, by the restaurant’s medically minded name, but also by neighbor Glens Falls Hospital, which is just steps away from restaurant. Its new look premiered on September 11, and the restaurant also reimagined its interior with a hospital theme and hired a new executive chef, local food industry veteran Matthew Delos. “The new menu is fairly large, and we’re focusing on local ingredients,” says Delos who has more than three decades of experience in food service, most recently at Mazzone Hospitality in Clifton Park. “Each plate is a composed plate—it’s not like we’re doing the same vegetable on every dish.”
Delos’ menu, designed to offer a high-end alternative to the nearby hospital’s cafeteria food, includes whimsical dishes such as Doc’s braised lamb shank served alongside minted couscous and cumin honey-glazed carrots, and pan-roasted shrimp on top of zucchini noodles with roasted tomatoes. Delos says that Doc’s new small plates are popular as well, and include favorites such as chicken liver pâté with fig jam and pickled red onions on tostini. “Customers seem very happy so far,” says Delos.
Doc’s revamped menu also includes an all-new cocktail list, with tongue-in-cheek names aplenty. Grab a “Cure for a Broken Heart” (vodka with beet juice, ginger liqueur, lemon with a beet sugar rim) or savor the taste of “The Metabolizer” (tequila mixed with mezcal, orangecello, jalapeño and a spicy salt rim). The restaurant also offers an extensive wine list, as well as craft and on-tap beers.
Doc’s entrance with a portrait of the restaurant’s namesake, Dr. Harold Kirkpatrick of Glens Falls. (Gabriella Boschetti)
In addition to this, Doc’s has taken this new hospital theme all the way to its decor and atmosphere. “We have new centerpieces featuring vintage medical bottles that we put fresh flowers in, as well as vintage glassware that we picked up from local antique shops,” says Alexandra Fracchia, Doc’s restaurant manager. The restaurant’s new menu is printed on imitation prescription pads, complete with clipboards, and the bartenders even wear lab coats while serving wine in beakers and mixed drinks in other period or laboratory containers. “The look is really fun, and the response has been great,” says Fracchia.
Founded in 2018, along with the Park Theater, which shares a building with the restaurant, Doc’s is named after the late Glens Falls plastic surgeon, Dr. Harold Kirkpatrick, who bought the building in 1984 with the hopes of eventually turning it into a performing arts space. Though Kirkpatrick never fully realized that dream—he did rent the space out for some concerts, music lessons and movie screenings—his good friend, local builder Elizabeth Miller, who’s president of Glens Falls’ Miller Mechanical, bought the building after Kirkpatrick’s death in 2014 and began a multi-year renovation that transformed the dilapidated building into Doc’s and the Park Theater.
For those curious to check out the new menu and ambiance, Doc’s Restaurant is open Tuesdays through Saturdays, 4-9pm, with a daily happy hour from 4-6pm.
Whether Saratoga Race Course is open or shut tight, as it has been for a few weeks now, one thing is clear: Saratoga Springs is still a horse town. Just walk through Downtown Saratoga, and you’ll see what I mean. One of the brightest artists in town, who keeps this torch lit long after the racehorses parade off to the next racetrack, is equine photographer Tracey Buyce, who’s set to host a solo exhibition of her work on Thursday, October 10.
The Saratoga-based Buyce, who was named to saratoga living‘s “Saratoga 20” list last year, owns Tracey Buyce Photography, a business that specializes in wedding and horse photography. Buyce, who’s been at her craft since 2012, is set to put her awe-inspiring equine photography on display from 5:30pm – 7:30pm on October 10 at the Trilogy Equestrian Center in Ballston Spa. The exhibit will be “interactive,” in the sense that Buyce will be pairing her photos with actual horses attendees can touch such as Thoroughbreds, Appaloosas and American Quarter Horses. “Say, you come in and walk in the barn, there’s a beautiful picture of a horse on an easel, and in that stall, is the horse whose picture is on the easel,” says Buyce.
The exhibit will feature a variety of Buyce’s photograph prints in barnwood, traditional and modern acrylic frames, all of which will be on sale that evening and available to be taken home or shipped. Partial proceeds from the event will benefit New Vocations Racehorse Adoption Program. Interested parties can RSVP for the event here. Click on the above photo for a preview of some of the photographs that will be on display and for sale at the event.
Saratoga Springs-based Belmonte Builders knows how important it is that every home fits the unique needs of each homeowner. For that reason, the local builder pays close attention to customer trends and is always evolving its current home plan offerings. “It’s a collaborative effort between the customers, the trends they’re asking for and existing plans that we might modify,” says Belmonte’s Director of Sales and Marketing Mike Lust. Following that philosophy, the Belmonte design team has developed several exciting new floor plans that have become some of their most popular designs.
The open staircase layout in the Concord design creates a more open entryway.
Belmonte’s bestselling plan for 2019 is the Concord, a new ranch home design developed to appeal to empty-nesters. “This isn’t your typical ranch home,” says Lust. “It’s a small home but feels larger because the design is more open.” Belmonte created this more spacious-feeling plan by combining the great room, kitchen and dining room. A finished open staircase to the basement opens up the foyer, making this ranch design feel more like a traditional two-story entry. “One of the trends we’re seeing is the formal dining room going away, as well as fewer walls and hallways,” says Lust. That’s why the Concord was designed without a formal dining room which left room for a much more popular option—the study.
The new Castleton design features the popular great room, kitchen and dining room combination.
In 2018, Belmonte redesigned its Castleton ranch plan to better appeal to empty-nesters, as well as young families who are looking for flexible and spacious plans with large, open living spaces. “This is an example of a plan that we were able to improve without touching the footprint,” says Lust. “By substituting a study for the formal dining room and eliminating hallways in favor of traffic patterns, we were able to create room for larger kitchen and dining areas…and it instantly became our top selling plan.”
The Weston, located at 43 Julian’s Way in Saratoga Springs.
What Lust says he’s most excited about is their newest design, the Weston, a versatile ranch plan that offers an optional second floor that adds two bedrooms, a loft and a bathroom. What’s truly unique about the Weston is that it’s built entirely within the roofline of the original plan, so the base floor plan and elevation don’t change whether it’s built as a ranch or a two-story home. “Rather than have more floor plans, we want to offer plans that are more flexible,” says Lust.
The Weston has been built in Spencer’s Landing, Belmonte’s newest community in Saratoga, and is being debuted during the 2019 Saratoga Showcase of Homes (Saturdays and Sundays through September 29; tickets are $20 each and good for reentry each weekend). About the big unveiling, Lust says: “The response so far has been incredible for the Weston, and we are thrilled to be able to introduce it during this year’s Showcase of Homes.”
Harvest season is almost here, Saratoga. And what better way to celebrate it than at the Saratoga Wine & Food Festival? Presented by the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC), the two-day festival will once again feature delicious, local fare, wine and spirits at the Saratoga Spa State Park on Friday, October 4 and Saturday, October 5. In addition to bringing in a team of regional talent and internationally renowned chefs—including Diego Moya, Executive Chef of TriBeCa’s fine-dining hotspot Racines, and Austin Peltier, a specialist in Ayurvedic cooking—the festival’s creators have completely reimagined the Friday night schedule of events (don’t worry; the Grand Tasting, which will be on Saturday, is sticking around).
In keeping with the seasonal theme, the festival’s big, Friday night event will be a “forest magic”-themeed Farm-to-Table Harvest Dinner. The new nature-themed dinner, which will run from 7-10pm and feature a special VIP hour from 6-7pm, is being prepared by some of Saratoga County’s top culinary operators in the fine dining and party catering space, including curator Kim Klopstock of Ballston Spa’s Lily and the Rose, who will be collaborating with a crew of revered regional chefs such as Yaddo’s Head Chef Michael Blake; Dan Spitz of Fat N Happy LLC; and Kevin London, who co-founded the popular Farmhouse Restaurant at Lake George’s Top of the World Resort.
Though the farm-to-table menu is still being finalized, saratoga living recently sat down with Klopstock and London to get an exclusive sneak peek of the big Friday night affair.
Kevin, what are you and the other chefs cooking up for the big themed dinner on Friday night? KL: We’re going to do a fairly elaborate spread for the VIP portion of the event, and we’re going to do a four-course, plated dinner afterward as well. Obviously, it’s still coming together, but I think we’re going to start with a crudo dish, which is being prepared by Diego [Moya] and Dan Spitz, and then move into a course that’s showcasing local vegetables, maybe a pasta or gnocchi course, and we’ll probably finish with duck.
Kim, tell us what we can expect the Harvest Dinner to look and feel like. KK: Well, part of nature is food, and part of food is magic. The dinner’s [theme is] called “forest magic,” because we’re in the magnificent [Spa State Park]. So we’re bringing in components of nature into this beautiful dinner. The tables will be set with moss and rocks and birch bark, and there will be a lot of wild edibles. We’ll also be bringing water in from the park itself to serve our guests—maybe even some cocktails using the sulfur water, but that’s not certain yet.
What’s it like working with big-name chefs such as Diego Moya? KL: It’s exciting! I’ve spearheaded the Fire Feast at Pitney Meadows Community Farm over the past couple of years, and in many ways, it’s a lot of similar chefs. So this is kind of a continuation of that event. Diego has come up from [New York City] the last two years for the Fire Feast—last year as the featured chef—and it’s great working with him. Saratoga has really gotten on the radar of some of these high-caliber chefs from New York City and Boston and even farther away.
Why do you think farm-to-table cuisine has gotten so popular in recent years? KK: Thirty years ago, which is about when I started, it was only fine-dining restaurants using farm-to-table cooking. Of course, it wasn’t labeled that [way] back then. But now people want to know where their food is coming from, and there’s more demand for it.
KL: I think the importance of it is deeply rooted in what it does for our regional economy and what it does for people from a health and nutritional standpoint. The chef’s role in that, especially in this region, has really grown in the last ten years in reintroducing to the American palate how fantastic and easy eating locally can be.
What’s going to set the Harvest Dinner apart from every other farm-to-table meal? KK: [SPAC’s President and CEO] Elizabeth Sobol originally came to me and said she wanted to shake things up a little bit this year. She really has her finger on the pulse of what makes Saratoga beautiful: The culture, the arts scene, the water and the food. She’s remade this incredible event for so many emerging and established chefs to donate their time and showcase what Saratoga has to offer as a region. We want the dinner to be very ethereal and as farm-to-table as we can be for the first year. So I think it’s going to be a huge paradigm shift for what SPAC is used to, and, frankly, I think it’s just the tip of the iceberg.