Saratoga’s Primordial Appeal, Part 1–
In my real estate life, as if I were a journalist, I am allowed to ask people a ton of questions,
and if I’m dealing with a married couple, or an unmarried couple who are getting along well enough to consider buying a home together, I love to ask them– Where did you meet?
More than half of those polled will invariably say: Right here in Saratoga Springs…
And when I try to pin down the answer more specifically, It will be an answer like this:
It was at a Mixer at The Olde Bryan Inn…or The Gideon…or Saratoga Prime…
At Gaffney’s, four summers ago…Rick Bolton & Jeff Walton’s band playing…
At Sperry’s…Happy Hour before dinner…2003, I think it was…
It was at the City Tavern, 3rd floor…
At Bailey’s Cafe…the back courtyard…we talked all night…
At a SPAC concert… (take your pick!)…
At The old METRO…upstairs, Carl Landa’s group, Jill Hughes singing…
The Wine Bar…a first date…a Friday night I think…
Siro’s– with wall-to-wall people in the room…
At Caffe Lena…only a few people there that nite, and she was one…
Shopping on Broadway…a Sunday afternoon…
Dancing one night at MINE…
Waiting for a seat at Lillian’s…
Uncommon Grounds…getting a coffee!
In line for a doughboy at ESPERANTO’s at 2 a.m one morning…
Or, (in my case) at The Mexican Connection on Nelson Ave, a blind set-up by a mutual friend…25 years ago…
But it could be ANYWHERE in Saratoga that they mention– even places that aren’t there any more. You might hear them say:
It was at The Grey Gelding… (closed a couple of years, still empty…)
At the bar at Professor Moriarty’s… (now called The Cantina)…
At JACKSLANDS when it was open… (where Starbucks is now…)
Barclay’s Tavern…drinking Long Island Ice-teas…(Impressions boutique now)
The Executive, on Phila Street… (if they’re as old as Dylan, or David Amram)
The Golden Grill…(if they’re older than me…the disco-ball era…)
Out at The Rafters by the Lake (ditto…for those who remember…)
Sage’s CASA 13… (for really old hippies…) Desperate Annie’s…( O wait! That one is still there…)
The point is, a lot of permanent (or semi-permanent,at least) romantic connections
are made in this town, disproportionate to its size or population. It goes back to the
magnetic tendencies underground I alluded to in my last post: along the crescent-shaped fault-line, the dip in Saratoga’s downtown district, is where the magnetism, human and otherwise, is the strongest, I propose. It pulls congruent people together.
Part of this small City’s historic appeal, prior to Horse Racing and Gambling and Downtown Commerce, prior to Skidmore and SPAC and Condos and Golf… was simply “people-watching.” And a good part of that, then and now, involved romantic pursuit, the push and pull of the sexes.
I am not the first to comment on this matter. I’ve been meandering through (3 times overdue) a Saratoga Springs LIbrary book called “Drinking The Waters” by Thomas A. Chambers (c.2002, Smithsonian Institution Press), which sports the cumbersome subtitle: “Creating An American Leisure Class At Nineteenth-Century Mineral Springs.” It specifcally duscusses two places– a comparison of Saratoga Springs, NY, and White Sulphur Springs, Virginia– showing how they evolved into mini-urban paragons of social and cultural aspiration. They were both resorts that “sprung up” in a landscape that was neither coastal nor on a river or lake. They both benefited from “The Democratization of Medicine” which made their respective healing waters famous and drew visitors from all points of the compass, before there were attractions of other sorts to do so.
Other chapters in Mr. Chambers’ book are named “Society of Fashion” and “Love For Sale.” These titles still sum up Saratoga’s original summer appeal nicely. Now, however, even in the nine-month “off-season” this city both celebrates and attracts fashionable people and romance-seekers as a central destination in upstate New York. Though I am not sure how well Sulphur Springs, Virginia is doing at this very moment, my guess is that it too is thriving.
Before there were a hundred-plus bars and restaurants in downtown Saratoga & environs, there were hotel piazzas, grand porches where much of the seasonal flirtation and promenade-watching took place. Here is a pertinent slice of the book:
Furtive exchanges on the porch were only the beginning of flirtation at the springs. According to the popular author George William Curtis, “Romance is the necessary association of watering-places, because they are the haunts of youth and beauty seeking pleasure.” The young and old, wealthy and merely well-to-do, and beautiful and ugly mixed at the springs hoping to find a spouse or at least a temporary romance.
(“Drinking The Waters,” Thomas A. Chambers, p. 135.)
Or this:
“Life at the springs is a perpetual festival. The people dance and drink– drink and dance,– rising early to do the one, and sitting up late to perform the other…”
Everyday activities at the springs were more than simple ways to pass the day; they lay at the core of springs society. A “competitive community” striving for social status existed at both Saratoga Springs and the Virginia springs…. (Chambers, p. 88-89)
These quotes and historical snapshots date to the mid-1800’s, yet still apply to any weekend or holiday or summer evening of the year in downtown Saratoga Springs. Next time you are visiting this vicinity, quaffing a liquid drink of one sort or another and scanning the changing faces hanging out or strolling by, understand that this scene was not just spontaneously created, is not just a recent phenomenon, not the mere result of a faddish prosperity. There is a primordial force here, and it is no coincidence that the best attended “watering holes” still sit directly upon, or adjacent to, that fault line, that source of the springs that lie underneath the core or “the gut” of this town.
There is more I could say on this subject, but I am determined to keep these “blogs” shorter, and turn them out more often instead. Stay tuned…
–C. 2012 Wayne Perras