All sorts of issues occur after you pull the cork out of your favorite wine bottle. For one, opened wine will turn to vinegar. The villains are acetobacter, acetic acid bacteria that are found on all grapes. They flourish in warm temperatures, in the absence of sulfur dioxide, and in the presence of plentiful oxygen. In other words, they will be very happy in the half-empty bottle of red, left on the kitchen counter, overnight tomorrow. Later, when you come to taste it, you will be less happy. The immediate consequence of bacterial activity is the wine loses its fruity aroma and becomes dull, flat and vapid. The color of both white and red wine becomes brownish. Ultimately, the wine won’t be wine anymore, but vinegar.
There are devices, of varying effectiveness, that claim to help wine from going vinegary. The most popular are the vacuum pump and the aerosol spray; both work by limiting the exposure of the opened wine to air. While the vacuum pump sucks air out of the bottle, the aerosol puts into the bottle argon or nitrogen which, the gas being heavier than air, sinks to the surface of the wine and lays as a sheet of inert gas on it, in much the same way a you might wrap previously cut fruit in saran wrap.
There are simpler ways of restricting the wine’s exposure to air, and the most effective one is to transfer the leftover wine into a smaller container—an empty water bottle is worth keeping on hand—and resealing it as good as new. Wine lovers have also been known to add inert objects to their half-empty wine bottles—small glass marbles are a favorite—raising the level of the wine back up to the neck of the bottle.
I’m full of admiration for anyone who has the energy to attempt any of the above after a Thanksgiving dinner, but it’s not for me. So, for lazy wine drinkers out there, here’s my tip: deny the bacteria the warm temperatures they need and put the opened wine, red or white, in the fridge. We may not defeat the bacteria, but we can slow them down long enough to keep the leftover wine fresh for the leftover turkey.
Wine Challenge:
Next time you just want a glass of wine, open a wine bottle and immediately fill a clean plastic water bottle to the brim, screwing the top back on. Put it aside for the next time. How well did it survive?
Everybody knows that the day after Thanksgiving is Black Friday, where discounts (and mayhem) at malls and big-box stores abound, and that a few days later is Cyber Monday, the online extravaganza, during which you get no work done and the Internet breaks. But did you know that there’s an additional shopping day of note in that cluster? One where you can get incredible deals from a number of local businesses? Enter Small Business Saturday, when consumers are encouraged to buy local.
Which businesses are participating in the Capital Region? I’m glad you asked. I tracked down New York Business Development Corporation (NYBDC), an Albany-based lender that helps (local) small businesses gain access to business loans, to help demystify Small Business Saturday for you and identify some of the players involved. NYBDC has been at it since 1955, and it’s invested in myriad local business, including a few tried-and-true Saratoga Springs staples, including Druthers Brewing Company, which also has locations in Schenectady and Albany, and Nurture Green Salon and Spa. They’re both participating in this year’s Small Business Saturday, as well as a number of others. Here’s a handy list: Bard & Baker: Board Game Café (Troy), Black & Blue Steak & Crab (Albany), Crave Burgers and Frozen Yogurt (Albany), The Cuckoo’s Nest (Albany), DinerTime (Latham), MezzaNotte Ristorante (Albany), Pro Image Sports (Albany), Rocco’s on Main St. (Clifton Park) and Warehouse Grill & BBQ (Albany). “It’s hard to find a better example than Saratoga Springs of a city that’s supported by its small businesses,” says Jim Conroy, Regional President, Upstate New York and Pennsylvania, for NYBDC, which has supported all of the above businesses throughout the years. “Throughout Saratoga and the Capital Region, these businesses make our communities unique places to live, work and visit and are significant contributors to job creation and economic growth.”
Small Business Saturday was created in 2010 by American Express to drive more customers to local or small businesses, which in the US are defined as any company with fewer than 100 employees. That includes (believe it or not) 99.7 percent of all US firms and companies, according to the Small Business Association (SBA). Small businesses account for a massive chunk of the national GDP—$4.8 trillion to be exact, or roughly equivalent to the GDP of Japan—and an average of two-thirds of every dollar spent at a small business in the US stays in the local community. Plus, local businesses tend to buy and invest locally as well.
So in that spirit of the holiday season, while you’re out shopping this Saturday—or just looking for to grab a bite during the holiday rush—maybe try hitting up a few small business. I know where I’ll be eating (and shopping) this weekend.
I’m not ashamed to admit that I was first introduced to writer Susan Orlean not through her illuminating articles in The New Yorker (where she’s been a staff writer since 1992) or through her brilliant books (of which she’s written eight, including a children’s book), but via the fascinating film, Adaptation. The film is, well, just that: a feature-length adaptation of Orlean’s popular 1998 nonfiction book The Orchid Thief, which revolves around Orlean’s musings on the nature of passion and orchid collecting as she follows eccentric orchid enthusiast John Laroche on his quest to find and clone the elusive Ghost Orchid. The film, which was conceived by writer/auteur Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich andSynecdoche, New York) and co-stars Meryl Streep as Orlean, along with Nicholas Cage, takes a few liberties (to put it mildly) with what really happened in the book, but it still did a fantastic job of showcasing Orlean’s sharp eye for finding and telling good stories (you should check both out, if you haven’t).
Ever since discovering the movie and Orlean, I’ve been a big fan of her dazzling and diverse array of New Yorker articles (she’s a big fan of animals), as well as her books; I finished her 2012 biography Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend just a couple of months ago. Orlean has had the kind of career that writers can only dream of. She’s been a contributing editor at both Rolling Stone and Vogue; and in 2012, she received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Michigan, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts in 2014.
When I heard that Orlean had a new book out—The LibraryBook, which is about the terrifying 1986 Los Angeles Public Library fire—and that she’d be coming to Northshire Bookstore in Saratoga Springs on Tuesday, December 4 to discuss it, I knew I had to try to track her down for an interview. And I did just that.
Is this your first time at Northshire Bookstore?
It’s not. I think it’s the first time I’ve done a book event there, though. And Saratoga has two really great bookstores. [We’re guessing she’s talking about Lyrical Ballad.]
How about Yaddo? Have you ever done a residency there? Yeah, several times, and it’s been a really valuable, almost irreplaceable advantage for getting my books done. I’m really unspeakably grateful that it exists and that I’ve had a chance to be there.
I imagine it must be tempting to go into the city of Saratoga while you’re there. Actually, I don’t go into town very much while I’m at Yaddo. I mean, I love Saratoga and I have a good friend who lives there, so I’ve spent time as a visitor just bumming around. I really love it. When I’m at Yaddo, I really have my nose to the grindstone, and I kind of have to resist the siren call of town so that I can make use of my work time there.
Speaking of your work time, you have a new book out that you’ll be doing a talk on at Northshire. Tell me about The Library Book. Well, the book examines the Los Angeles Public Library fire as a fascinating historical event and one that actually allowed me to look at a lot of other aspects of libraries that really interested me. Such as why libraries mean so much to us. And why they still matter, what their role has been in our lives and how they’ve changed and how my own relationship to libraries has changed.
Libraries have gone from quiet study and reading spaces to multifunction service centers. How do you feel about that change? I think it’s a really encouraging and exciting sign seeing libraries embracing new roles, particularly as the traditional needs for merely storing books is less urgent. Their role as information hubs and knowledge hubs for a community has become more relevant. So I think it’s an exciting time. It also means being a librarian requires a lot more than knowing the Dewey Decimal System, and it’s probably turning it, for a lot of people, into a more dynamic profession. But it’s an exciting development, one that insures that libraries will be important and meaningful into the future.
A lot of people know your book The Orchid Thief through the film Adaptation. Even though it’s an obviously fictionalized adaptation, what did you think of the film’s depiction of you and the book? I love it! I think it’s in many ways truer to the spirit of the book than a traditional adaptation would’ve been. And I think, even if it weren’t my book, I would say it’s a brilliant movie, and probably the best movie I can think of that addresses what it’s like to be a writer. I’ve seen it many, many times, and it gets better and better, which is, I think, the sign of a really great movie. I think it’s a movie that gets more interesting the more often you see it. I’m probably in an unusual category having seen it lots of times. [Laughs] And I still find it really wonderful.
Did you get to meet or work with the writer Charlie Kaufman at all while the film was written? No, we didn’t meet until the movie was being shot. I spoke a lot to the director, the costume designer and a lot of the production people. But I didn’t meet him until the movie was already shooting.
You’re currently on tour promoting your new book. Any other big plans for the future? No, this has been so consuming. I mean, I have magazine stories that I’d love to write, and I’m sure that’s what I’ll do as soon as I’m done with my tour. But at the moment, I’m just flat out on the book tour and can do little more than write my name. But at least I’ve gotten good at that. [Laughs]
Yeah, you’ve been writing for The New Yorker for almost 30 years now. It’s such an iconic American publication, and yet it’s had to have evolved some since you’ve been there, right?
Well, it hasn’t really changed that much, at least not for me. I would say that the way I work and what I do and how I go about it has remained really the same since the beginning. It’s a tribute to the magazine, in a sense, that they don’t just blow with the wind. Its principles, the way they interact with writers, has been pretty consistent. There have been three Editors in Chief over the course of my time there, and each of them is a little different, but what I do and how I do it has remained remarkably consistent.
Thanksgiving might as well be Groundhog Day, as far as I’m concerned. I wake up, stomach full, the morning after Turkey Day and am struck with the realization that I’m going to have to figure out new and improved ways to buy gifts for my family members, who, for the most part, are impossible to buy gifts for and hate everything I buy them. On one side of the coin, that’s because my family’s just getting older, and they don’t really want to get new stuff anymore, because it takes up room in their already stuff-heavy house. On the other? I procrastinate every year.
If you just felt a twinge of guilt slip into your soul after reading the above paragraph, it’s OK; you’re not alone. More than a million people across the Capital Region will be dealing with the same gift-buying dilemma. And with inclement weather starting to rear its ugly head in the area, many will turn online for Cyber Monday—or just strike out completely.
Luckily, we’re a little more than a week away from Black Friday, and WalletHub, a website that offers free advice on subjects such as credit scores, loans and banking, has released its annual Best Stores for Black Friday report. The online hub surveyed 7000 deals from 35 of America’s biggest big-box retailers, based on pre-Black Friday advertising scans, and calculated average discounts for the lot of them. These were then compiled in order of the steepest discounts and further broken down into consumer categories, such as jewelry, toys, appliances, furniture, video games and consumer electronics. (Basically, everything you’d tackle the person in front of you in line at Walmart for when they finally open the doors the Friday after Thanksgiving.)
So which stores can you count on for the biggest discounts this Black Friday—and how far outside of Saratoga Springs (if at all) do you need to travel to get those discounts? I’ve created a list of all the price-slashing-est stores and their Capital Region locations for your convenience below (the percentages equal the average discount per store; those names that are crossed off don’t have a local or regional outlet).
1. Belk (68.91%) 2.JCPenney (65.13%) – For Saratogians, your closest JCPenney is at the Wilton Mall. If you don’t get in line quick enough on Black Friday morning, there’s always the Aviation Mall in Queensbury or the JCPenney location in Clifton Park Center. Good luck. 3.Stage (62.08%) – Sorry, Saratogians; you have to hoof it to Hoosick Street in Troy or Columbia Turnpike in Rensselaer to visit a Peebles department store near you (Stage is its parent company). The next closest location? Massachusetts. 4.Kohl’s (60.76%) – You’re in luck. Kohl’s has an insane number of outlets nearby you. There’s one at 79 Weibel Avenue in Saratoga—and locations in Clifton Park, Amsterdam and Colonie. (You could also drive 3.5 hours to Horseheads, NY, but my guess is that might be a turnoff for you Saratogians…in name alone!) 5.New York & Company (54.52%) – Albany, ho! You have two options for your Black Friday stakeout: Colonie Center and Crossgates Mall. Easy peasy. 6.Payless ShoeSource(50.34%) – Shoe-aholic, are you? Saratogians can visit Payless at the nearby Wilton Mall, as well as the Aviation Mall in Queensbury and Clifton Park Center, too. Hit this one after JCPenney at any of those locations. 7.Dick’s Sporting Goods (49.94%) – Dick’s has a solid showing in the Capital Region. There are locations at the Wilton Mall in Saratoga, Aviation Mall in Queensbury, Latham Farms in—you guessed it!—Latham and Crossgates Mall in Albany. And I know at least somebody in your holiday rolodex needs some sweatpants, sweat-wicking shirts or sneakers. So don’t mope when you’re gift-less on Xmas Eve—or for any of the eight nights of Hanukkah. 8.Macy’s (48.74%)– While there’s a Macy’s at both Crossgates and Colonie Center, let me float another idea by you altogether: Take the train down to New York City and do it the old-fashioned way, at the OG Macy’s at 151 West 34th Street in Manhattan. So what if the crowds will be insane and that Uber driver just flipped you the bird? There’s sure to be a miracle at 34th street to be had somewhere in that store. 9.Fred Meyer (45.30%) – Go see your buddy Fred at Crossgates. He’ll hook you up. 10. Shopko (45.23%)
If you were taking out your calculator, re-holster it, please. I’ve already done all the work for you. The overall average discount for Black Friday 2018, based on these above numbers (and more that are listed in the report – see above), turns out to be 37 percent. Not too shabby. WalletHub does note, however, that if discounts are lower than 37 percent, they should be avoided at all costs. Why? To paraphrase everybody’s favorite Star Wars bit-part character, Admiral Ackbar, “They might be a trap!” And for those of you wondering about the most discounted consumer category, that would be “apparel and accessories” (23.28 percent of the share of items are discounted). The least discounted category? “Books, movies and music,” which has a paltry 0.82 percent of offers that are discounted.
Some words of friendly advice: Don’t freak out. Freaking out will just lead to poor decisions and crappy gifts for all. (I should know.) You do have some options, though. You can suck it up and do the Black Friday waltz. You can hit up Small Business Saturday the day after, which supports a worthy cause: local businesses getting their feet under them in the Capital Region. Or you can just wait it out until Cyber Monday (November 26). But when Amazon crashes and you can’t pick up that discounted book or sweater for your significant other, know this: There’s no shame in buying him/her/everyone in your family a pair of socks.
With the first major snowstorm barreling towards the Capital Region and nightly temperatures dipping into the 20s, Saratoga Springs’ most vulnerable population, the homeless, will be scrambling to find a warm meal, blanket and roof over their heads. So a group of local restauranteurs have taken up the cause, and are actively doing something about it. On November 26, nine local chefs will be teaming up to offer A Night Of Warmth in the ballroom at the Embassy Suites hotel in Saratoga. The event will feature food, wine, beer and a specialty cocktail from nine Saratoga restaurants, which include Osteria Danny, Harvey’s Restaurant and Bar, Boca Bistro, Prime at Saratoga National, Hamlet & Ghost, Forged, Buddha Noddle, Hatties Restaurant and Embassy Suites.
A big tasting menu for a good cause is the brainchild of Adam Humphrey, Chef and Co-owner of Harvey’s, who had previously talked with Danny Petrosino of Osteria Danny about creating an event to raise money for Saratoga’s homeless population. Humphrey and Petrosino are already in the process of starting a nonprofit organization, Saratoga Chefs Against Hunger, a collection of local chefs that will pool their resources and skills to fight hunger. “We did our homework and we called a lot of the Code Blue shelters, and they told us that they have roughly 70 people that are recorded homeless in Saratoga,” says Harvey. “So our goal is to raise enough money to buy 70 packages that would include a tarp, winter jacket, sleeping bag, a book bag and essential stuff like socks, toothpaste and a toothbrush. And we reached out to everybody we knew for support.”
Humphrey says the response from the community has been overwhelming so far, and the Embassy Suites even donated their ballroom for the event. Not only will there be an array of foods to taste there, but also expect a silent auction and a raffle for a free dinner-for-two at every restaurant participating in A Night Of Warmth. (That’s nine free dinner-dates!) Tickets are $75 apiece, or you can reserve a table of eight for $525. Purchase them here. All proceeds from the event, even the $10 raffle tickets, go towards helping Saratoga’s homeless stay warm this winter. The chefs will even accept any type of donations that help the homeless at the event. “We’ve already had someone donate all his tarps, and we have someone else donating toothbrushes and toothpaste,” says Humphrey. “Whether it’d be to raise money for food or to adopt a family for the holidays, we just want to make this an annual event to help out whoever is less fortunate.”
Stan Lee, creative mastermind and co-creator of many of Marvel Comics’ most popular comic book characters and franchises, including Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man and Fantastic Four, passed away on November 12 at the age of 95. Alongside legendary comic book artists/writers Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, Lee left a massive footprint on America’s pop cultural landscape, taking Marvel, which was at the time just a small division of a comics publishing house and transforming it into a multibillion dollar, global media empire (Marvel Worldwide Inc.). The company went onto have myriad hits, including the X-Men animated TV series, which ran from 1992-97 and laid the groundwork for the live-action film franchise of the same name and the recent blockbuster success of BlackPanther on the silver screen, Marvel’s first film with a black director and all-black lead cast (which also had the fifth-biggest opening weekend of all time). Whether you’ve ever read a comic or not, Lee and his creations are everywhere.
The American comics visionary also became known for his short but memorable cameos in movies, TV shows and video games produced by Marvel or based on characters from the Marvel Universe (Lee always got an Executive Producer credit for those cameos). Lee’s first appearance in a Marvel project was as a jury foreman in the 1989 TV movie The Trial of the Incredible Hulk (he’d also previously narrated the ’80s Incredible Hulk animated series). These cameos succeeded in introducing Lee’s trademark tinted glasses, mustache and slightly goofy sense of humor to new generations of fans. Later in his career, after he was named Chairman Emeritus of Marvel, Lee became so active as an ambassador to the greater comic book industry that he became an unofficial figurehead of it, making appearances across the globe at comic book conventions, on panel discussions and even lecturing on college campuses.
The Marvel Universe has become an international phenomenon, helping to support a multibillion industry that benefits media giants such as Sony, Twentieth Century Fox and Disney, which bought Marvel Entertainment in 2009. I asked Skidmore College’s Visiting Professor of Media and Film Studies, Aaron Pedinotti, to weigh in on Lee’s legacy: “On one side, there’s the simple fact that Stan Lee—along with his artist-collaborator Jack Kirby, who should never be omitted from any discussion of Lee’s accomplishments—created a slew of characters that have become iconic outside the realm of comics per se. On the other side, there’s the fact that Lee was a very skilled self-promoter who helped to shape the public image of Marvel and eventually became its most recognizable public figure and official liaison to Hollywood.”
Born in Manhattan in 1922, Lee got his start in the comic book industry at the age of 17 as an office assistant at Timely Comics, which would morph into Marvel Comics by the ’60s. He gradually worked his way up from one of Marvel’s core writers and creators to the company’s Publisher in ’72. During this golden era of Marvel creativity in the ’60s, Lee collaborated closely with Kirby (co-creator of characters from X-Men, The Hulk and Fantastic Four) and Ditko (co-creator of Spider-Man) on some of Marvel’s most successful creations. However, Lee had a falling out with both artists over rights and ownership of characters, first with Ditko, who left Marvel in 1966, and then with Kirby, following suit in ’69. “To compare them to another famous duo, it’s not an exaggeration to put Lee and Kirby on par with Lennon and McCartney in terms of their cultural impact and influence on subsequent creators,” says Pedinotti. “[Lee] contributed to a media narrative that portrayed him as the company’s core creative genius. This led to strains and eventual estrangement in his relationship with Kirby and other artists, as well as accusations that he had taken too much personal credit for collaborative work.” And against those allegations, Lee fought back hard.
For years, Lee and Kirby remained locked in a dispute over rights and royalties to certain Marvel characters, and finally, in September 2014, long after Kirby had died, Lee and Kirby’s estate reached a settlement, finally giving Kirby credit for the work he’d done with Lee. “Despite harboring some disappointment in his public conduct over the past several decades, I can’t help but admire him and his many accomplishments,” says Pedinotti. “If there’s one thing I’ve taken from his oeuvre, it’s the import of his famous maxim, first articulated in Amazing Fantasy #15″ (the issue first published in August 1962, and was the first official appearance of Spider-Man): “With great power there must also come great responsibility.” Lee may have left behind a complicated personal legacy, but the comics and characters he helped create will live on as the stuff of legends.
Holiday travel is the pits. Whether it be by car, train or airplane, you can always count on it being a headache. You could be the most organized person on the face of the Earth and still find yourself mired in the concrete shoes of a holiday travel slog. Dare I even venture a guess that some of you might not even make it home in time for Thanksgiving dinner. Ugh.
“Why all the doom and gloom, Will?” you ask. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is predicting that, this year, an estimated 25 million people will be hitting the road, tracks and friendly skies in the United States for the Thanksgiving holiday alone. That’s a seven percent uptick from last year, which, by the way, was the busiest travel season in 12 years. So you do the math. Delays are bound to happen.
Now, if you’re like me and enjoy torturing yourself with the image of screaming children, seat-back-reclining twerps and luggage that doesn’t quite fit in your overhead compartment, you could call this a preview of the hell that awaits. Or you could take it for what it’s worth: a stern (but logical) data-driven warning that might help you avoid the mistakes of the past.
At least for this story’s purposes, I’m defining the Thanksgiving holiday rush as taking place from Tuesday, November 20, through Monday, November 26. And I have some good/bad news for you, depending on how you look at it: AirHelp, an air traveler advocacy group whose lone goal in life is to secure compensation for travelers who deal with delayed, canceled or overbooked flights, crunched a bunch of industry data from last year’s Thanksgiving holiday rush and got some pretty eye-opening results. Which might help you grab this year’s holiday rush by the horns, given the TSA’s prediction. For one, more than 153,000 flights departed from US airports during that comparable stretch last year, and without question, the worst travel date of them all was that Sunday after Thanksgiving. (Make a mental note if you’ve booked a flight for that day; don’t say I didn’t warn you.) Nationally speaking, the top five most disrupted flight routes in the continental United States were as follows (and because of the Camp Fire, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to guesstimate that those disruptions will be even worse for the routes in 2018):
1. Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) → San Francisco International Airport (SFO)
2. San Francisco International Airport (SFO) → Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
3. Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) → San Francisco International Airport (SFO)
4. San Diego International Airport (SAN) → San Francisco International Airport (SFO)
5. San Francisco International Airport (SFO) → San Diego International Airport (SAN)
(JJBers/Flickr)
Sorry, Left Coasters. For those of you wondering about the toll the Thanksgiving travel week will take on the Capital Region’s one major airport—Albany International Airport—fear not: I have answers. For 2017, the busiest travel date at Albany was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and these were the top five most disrupted routes (based on how not-on-time the flights were):
1. Albany International Airport (ALB) → Ogdensburg International Airport (OGS – that’s up in St. Lawrence County)
2. Albany International Airport (ALB) → Boston Edward L. Logan International Airport (BOS)
3. Albany International Airport (ALB) → Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR)
4. Albany International Airport (ALB) → Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW)
5. Albany International Airport (ALB) → Baltimore Washington International Airport (BWI)
Wondering how that picture might change if you were to, say, jump in your car and drive 2.5 hours to Syracuse International Airport? Choose your own adventure:
1. Syracuse Hancock International Airport (SYR) → Toronto Lester B. Pearson International Airport (YYZ)
2. Syracuse Hancock International Airport (SYR) → Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR)
3. Syracuse Hancock International Airport (SYR) → Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW)
4. Syracuse Hancock International Airport (SYR) → Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD)
5. Syracuse Hancock International Airport (SYR) → Washington Ronald Reagan National Airport (DCA)
As the stats note, all of you folks that have families in the DC Metro area or the Garden State should be dealing with an uphill battle next week.
But thankfully, it’s not all one nightmare before Christmas—and I can provide you with at least some good, solid advice to make your trip that much more manageable this time around. If you happen to be flying to or from those West Coast hubs listed above, the best time to fly (i.e. book a ticket) is between 6:00am – 11:59am (that will get you the fewest disruptions in service). And if you’re looking to beat the crowds and avoid service disruptions, the best time to depart from Albany is between 10:00pm and 5:59am on any of those dates between November 20-26 (obviously, Thanksgiving night doesn’t count, unless your mother-in-law mistimes the turkey and unwittingly puts into motion The Hangry Games).
It’s entirely possible that you’ve had your Thanksgiving holiday plane tickets booked for months, and none of these data will do you any good. But, hey, when the numbers game looks even worse next year, you can just refer to this handy, dandy saratoga living story—and send me some preemptive thank-you notes. Or poison-pen letters.
With Saratoga’s first snow (meh, dusting) of the season earlier this week, it’s appropriate that saratoga living‘s Editor’s Pick for this week’s calendar is the 2018 Lake George Polar Plunge at Shepards Park Beach in Lake George Village (check out this and more events in our first-ever Luxury Issue, on newsstands now.). The icy dive takes place this Saturday, November 17, at noon, and the event is helping raise funds to support local Special Olympics New York athletes.
To participate, you can get a Polar Plunge Team together with your friends, family or coworkers, or just go solo (a team of one still counts when you’re jumping into freezing water!). Once registered, each team is given a fundraising goal, which varies based on the size of your team. At press time, the Plunge has raised more than $77,000, or 67 percent of its overall goal. There’s still time to register a team or make a donation online.
There will also be a pre-party Friday night at the Lake George Beach Club from 8pm to midnight, so you can warm yourself by the fire with a few beers before the big splash on Saturday. Or if you’d prefer to stay dry (and warm) this weekend, there is, as always, no shortage of other fun and incredible events going on in Saratoga.
Saratoga Comic Con – Saturday (10am-6pm) and Sunday (10am-5pm) at the Saratoga Springs City Center. Melt N’ Toast—2nd Annual Grilled Cheese Festival – Enjoy two different sessions of good old cheese grilling from 11am-2pm and 3-6pm at the Takk House, 55 3rd Street, Troy. Breakfast with Santa – 8-10am at the food court in the Wilton Mall. Double Dare Live – Catch the classic Nickelodeon kid’s game show live at 8pm at Proctors. North Country Jazz Project – 7:30 pm at the Park Theater in Glens Falls. Arenacross – Fans of motocross and dirt-bike racing unite! The event begins at 7:30pm at the Times Union Center.
Long before dinner on Thanksgiving day, more than 3000 runners and walkers from Saratoga Springs and the surrounding region will rise early and participate in the 2018 Chris Dailey Turkey Trot. The annual 5K run, now in its 17th year, begins at 8:30am on Broadway in Downtown Saratoga, snakes through Skidmore College, then makes its final turn down North Broadway. (It’s not an easy race by any stretch of the imagination; it’s rather hilly.) All proceeds from the event go to the Christopher Dailey Foundation, which offers youth sports programming through its Christopher Dailey Memorial Youth Gym in Gavin Park in Wilton. Throughout the year, the foundation also makes donations to other local youth sports initiatives and organizations that help children with special needs and those in need of economic assistance. And we’re talking big-dollar donations: $55,000 to the Double H Ranch in Lake Luzerne (which offers services to children with life threatening illnesses), $25,000 to Camp Spectacular and $5,000 to Y-Knot Sailing at Camp Chingacook, Lake George for disabled sailors.
Now, if you’re from outside of the Saratoga area and have competed in the race in recent years, you’ve probably not thought twice about the name in the race’s title. Who is Chris Dailey? I’m glad you asked. He was an active, sports-loving third grader at Dorothy Nolan Elementary School, who unexpectedly passed away the day after Thanksgiving in 2001. He was just eight years old. In the wake of Dailey’s tragic death, his parents, Mark and Maria Dailey began laying the groundwork for some way of honoring their late son—a way of transforming their loss into something positive. The following year, the Daileys founded the Christopher Dailey Foundation, with an initial goal of subsidizing a youth athletic center in their hometown of Wilton to honor their late son’s memory. In addition to the gym, the Daileys launched the first-ever Turkey Trot in 2002, which at that point, started in the Daileys’ Wilton neighborhood and attracted 350 runners.
This year’s event is expecting more than 3000 runners—a nearly tenfold increase in participants in 16 years. “It’s gotten to be a meaningful event for us, but certainly it’s also gotten to be a nice tradition for a lot of families to start their [Thanksgiving] day with their community,” says Mark. In fact, the Turkey Trot grew so big so fast that the Daileys were able to build that memorial gym within five years of that first run. (The Christopher Dailey Memorial Youth Gym opened its doors in March 2006 at Gavin Park in Wilton.) “When we embarked on this foundation project, we didn’t know we’d end up building the gym a mile from our house, which worked out nicely,” says Mark. After paying for the construction of the gym, the Christopher Dailey Foundation soon handed over management of it to the town of Wilton. The only stipulation was that Wilton name the gym after Chris, which of course they did.
The foundation now takes an active role in the Wilton Parks and Recreation Commission, as well as the gym itself, making sure that it stays true to its original mission. The foundation also regularly donates proceeds from its two annual fundraisers, the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving and an annual golf tournament in May, to support local programs and organizations that help children in economic need or with disabilities or special needs. “[Christopher] would’ve loved it, for sure,” Mark says of the Wilton gym and its mission of helping area children. “He was just a fun kid; he golfed and skied and played basketball and soccer. We got him into all kinds of things just to have fun and see what he was good at.”
Registration for this year’s Chris Dailey Turkey Trot is $25, and runners can sign up online through noon on Tuesday, November 20. (Click here to register.) The last chance to register must be done in-person at the Saratoga Hilton Hotel on Wednesday, November 21, from 4-8pm.
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2651 State Route 40
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453 Dixon Road Suite 5
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I imagine it must be tempting to go into the city of Saratoga while you’re there.
