SARATOGA LIVINGThe City. The Culture. The Life.

I may have been a little late to the Friends party—I was born after the hit comedy debuted in 1994—but now, 24 years later, I’m basically its hostess. Sure, my love affair with Ross, Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Chandler and Joey had a slight hiccup when my mom banned me from watching it with my older sister after I told her (when I was seven) that Ross got stuck in his leather pants in a woman’s bathroom in a rerun of “The One With All the Resolutions.” But when I was couch-ridden after knee surgery in high school, I made up for it, watching every episode in order. When you’ve spent so much time watching a show, it’s inevitable that you’ll start finding connections between it and your daily life (What Friends lover can resist yelling “PIVOT!” when moving a piece of furniture? See infographic). Here are some connections the saratoga living team found between Friends and its world and our own hometown of Saratoga Springs.

Pivot infographic: Spare Room

‘Bright’ Light: Friends’ Exec Producer, Kevin S. Bright, is making a huge difference in the Capital Region

It’s the final episode of the final season of Friends. The gang walks out of Monica’s apartment for the last time, and the camera pans around the empty space, landing on the framed peephole on the purple door. The screen fades to black, and the names of the executive producers appear: David Crane, Marta Kauffman and Kevin S. Bright. These are the three people I have to thank for one of the greatest shows in TV history—and countless hours of binge-watching enjoyment. And one of them also gets props for his work on behalf of one of the Capital Region’s most noble causes.

Since October 2017, Bright has served as a member of the Board of Directors at Ballston Spa’s Gateway House Of Peace, a donor-driven, nonprofit community support home for end-of-life care. His decision to join the Board was sparked by a meeting with a 35-year-old Gateway House patient—and Friends fanatic. (The face-to-face was arranged by Bright’s sister-in-law, Patti Veitch, who’s also on the board.) “She was at peace and was very grateful for the way Gateway House was able to bring her home,” Bright said of the meeting. The TV exec summers in Greenfield Center, where his wife grew up.

Gateway House’s mission is “dedicated to providing a safe, comfortable, caring residence for terminally ill patients.” I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds a lot like the Friends theme: “I’ll be there for you.”

Central Perk/Uncommon Grounds: The Face Off

*Due to cost of living adjustments, the double latte that cost $2.75 in 2000, when the
episode that mentioned it originally aired, would cost $4.04 today.

Fun Friends Facts

• saratoga living Design Editor Colin Cowie numbers Friends actresses Jennifer Aniston and Lisa Kudrow among his many celebrity clients.

• In the 2018 “I Do!” Issue of saratoga living, I featured Aniston’s wedding dress from the Friends’ pilot episode in one of my first features in the magazine.

• Actor Eddie Cahill, who played Tag Jones, a love interest of Rachel’s, in seven episodes of Friends, attended Skidmore College.

• On Friends: The One With All The Party Music, a six-track CD sampler released in 2004, the fifth track is The Lemonheads’ “Into Your Arms.” The band’s frontman, Evan Dando, attended Skidmore , too.

• On October 27-28, Proctors Theatre in Schenectady will host Friends! The Musical Parody, which “lovingly lampoons” the original sitcom. This may be the perfect tribute to one of the best television shows in history. —Will Levith

I recently celebrated my 20th high school reunion—Saratoga Springs High School, class of 1998—and it was great catching up with all of my old friends. I hadn’t seen some of them in nearly 20 years, save for the dribs and drabs I picked up about their lives on Facebook. Back then, people knew me as a total music geek—I was a cellist (classical) and guitarist (punk), who could play a Bach Suite and later that day, jam out on a Misfits or Nirvana song. My musical tastes were all over the place.

However, if I could pick a single soundtrack for senior year, without question, it would be Wyclef Jean’s debut solo album, The Carnival, which dropped that previous June. It was seemingly on permanent rotation everywhere. I remember driving to Spring Street Deli on my lunch hour, cranking it as loud as I could. And then there were all of those parties, where someone would end up pulling out his or her copy of the CD and skip ahead to tracks such as “Guantanamera,” “Gone till November” and “We Trying to Stay Alive.” It was like a little party you could fit in a jewel case. We’d even play it the morning after, when the room was spinning, and we were trying to clean up the house before our parents got home.

The album wasn’t just a flash in the pan; it eventually hit No.16 on the Billboard 200 and it was nominated for a pair of Grammy Awards. (Mind you, at the ’96 Grammys, as part of hip-hop supergroup The Fugees, Wyclef had won two Grammys, including Best Rap Album for The Score.) More importantly, though, it was part of a new wave of highly diverse, multi-genre hip-hop that entered my musical lexicon. I’d largely steered away from hip-hop until that year—I did buy the CD single of Naughty By Nature’s “O.P.P.” and borrowed my brother’s copy of De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising, but by no means, was I hip-hop literate. Wyclef’s music was different, though; kids like me who were more into punk and rock music could still find common ground in his songs; it wasn’t angry like gangsta rap or goofy like DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. You couldn’t pigeonhole it. Like my musical tastes, it was delightfully all over the place.

And Wyclef didn’t ever really slow down. He co-wrote the monster Shakira hit “Hips Don’t Lie.” He scored a hit with Fugees’ bandmate Pras on “Ghetto Superstar.” He appears on “Maria, Maria” on guitarist Santana’s watershed Grammy moment, Supernatural. He’s covered Creedence Clearwater Revival. Appeared in a number of films and TV shows. He even tried to run for president in Haiti. In other words, he’s stayed relevant long after many of the other artists that were on the charts in ’98 have fallen off the map.

Just this past March, Wyclef’s The Carnival Tour touched down at Saratoga Springs’ Putnam Place, and although I wasn’t able to make it, I heard that the show was nothing short of brilliant. Says Putnam Place Co-owner Tiffany Albert: “Wyclef Jean’s performance was so amazing when he was here back in March. He played for two-and-a-half hours and had the whole sold-out crowd jumping. He played five instruments, including the keyboard, and even played his guitar behind his back. He loved Saratoga so much that he wanted to come back for his last stop on his Carnival Tour.”

Well, what do you know? Wyclef’s a man of his word. This Saturday, September 15, from 8pm to 1am, he’ll be making his triumphant return to Putnam Place, bringing his Carnival Tour back for another incredible night of music. And to sweeten the deal, Putnam Place is offering saratoga living readers a steep discount on tickets for the show, which will undoubtedly be sold out soon. Fans will be able to snatch up tickets here for $30 only, with fees included. Click here for the deal. (Offer is valid through 12pm on Friday.) To put that into perspective, advance tickets are going for $40, and will go up to $47 on the day of the show. Jazzy Amra and Sophistafunk are the openers.

I’d be surprised if you didn’t bump into some of my high school classmates there. Heck, you might even see a dude in the corner, about 5-foot-11, quietly mouthing the lyrics to all the hits, and doing his best not to embarrass himself on the dance floor.

Saratoga Springs’ world renowned artists’ retreat, Yaddo, announced September 10 that it’s appointed new leadership with the election of New York Times bestselling author Janice Y.K. Lee and New York City-based photographer Peter Kayafas as Co-chairs of the corporation. They succeed Co-chairs A. M. Homes and Susan Unterberg (also an author and a photographer) Lee and Kayafas assumed their positions in NYC today (September 12) at the annual meeting of The Corporation of Yaddo.

The change in leadership comes at an important time in Yaddo’s history. It’s in the middle of a major, multimillion-dollar restoration of Yaddo’s central, historic mansion (where most of the artists stay during their visits). This comes on the heels of a 2016 capital campaign that resulted in the opening of five new live-in and work studios on the retreats’ grounds. Yaddo President Elaina Richardson thinks that the timing of the announcement combined with the personalities of the new Co-chairs couldn’t be better. “Peter and Janice are the ideal addition to that line of leaders,” she said. “They are perfectly poised to build on all that past chairs have accomplished, steering Yaddo into a second century with an appreciation of our past and a clear vision of where we go next.”

New Co-chairs Kayafas and Lee have spent a lot of time at Yaddo themselves. Kayafas,  photographer, publisher, curator and teacher, as well as the Director of the Eakins Press Foundation, has been a member of Yaddo’s board for 18 years and considers his election to Co-chair a “humbling opportunity.” Lee, a member of Yaddo’s board since 2013, is the author of highly acclaimed novels, The Piano Teacher, and The Expatriates, published in 2016, which will be adapted as a television series next year for Amazon Studios by Nicole Kidman’s Blossom Films. Lee, too, is aware of the timeliness of Yaddo’s transition into a new era: “Yaddo’s storied past sets it up brilliantly for an even brighter future and I am truly grateful for the opportunity to be part of this great American institution which has supported the arts in such an important and unique fashion,” she says.

Located on 400 mostly forested acres just south of Saratoga Race Course, Yaddo was founded in 1900 by financier Spencer Trask and his wife, Katrina, opening its doors to its first crop of artists in 1926. Since then, Yaddo has played host to a staggering number of awarding-winning artists, writers, musicians and composers, including 74 Pulitzer Prize winners, 68 National book Award winners, 29 MacArthur Fellows and one Nobel Prize winner.