If I really aspired to be Thoreau-like, I guess, I’d be taking a long hike on this Sunday-in-January morning but here I sit at my desk, hoping my family members all sleep late so I can get this underway before the day truly intrudes. My problem with blogging is not the lack of ideas but more of an ADD-type confusion of which topic to focus on…and honestly I might as well make a smorgasbord (that beautiful Scandinavian word again) out of the potpourri of scattered appetizer ideas that swirl in my mind.
The town is changing week to week, and that’s how often I am supposed to blog here, yet it’s hard to keep up with the various movers and shakers of Saratoga Springs who make things happen. From the deep primordial construction pit on the center of Broadway has risen a half-skeleton of iron beams and risers which have required the use of the hundred-foot crane that has loomed like a majestic metal stork over the downtown area for most of this month. Hardhat steelworkers are doing their thing daily, no matter the weather– you pass the site at 7:30 and they are well underway. Sonny Bonacio knows how to make things happen, and so do the subs and the partners he chooses.
His end-game on the end-of-the-block transition of Railroad Place at Church Street is moving a bit slower, but will ultimately be even more transformational than the fill-in site between The Cantina and Lillian’s. This grand 11-screen intown movie theater strikes me as something that was long overdue, as Jimmy Kunstler correctly pointed out about 20 years ago in one of his localized diatribes about the shabby side of Saratoga’s architectural progress. For as long as I’ve lived here, incoming traffic from Church Street to Broadway– also known as State Route 9N– has faced the, um, butt-end of the former Price Chopper’s nondescript blockwall posterior, along with dumpsters and stacks of cardboard and misplaced shopping carts. Not a view the well-to-do, or any people of taste, would approve, and that’s why it was lovingly dubbed the ghetto Chopper, as opposed to the suburban versions, I presume. While I don’t think the facade will rival the new Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, the upgrade of a glassy cinematic entrance on that north-facing, prominent block, will certainly be
most excellent. I commend the Galesi Group, Bonacio’s partner on the construction project, and Neil Golub of the grocery chain that invested in a major manner in this westside-of-Saratoga downtown project.
Down the hill from the Olde Bryan Inn, just below the Courtyard Marriott, across from the Old Red Spring, is another project underway– a large new banquet hall facility that I believe is linked to the Marriott as well. Instead of brick and mortar it is almost entirely a wood frame complex, a very deep building with interesting roof lines. Almost within view of my office window, I watch it approach weathertight status, slowly, during this coldest time of the year. Off-season is construction season in Saratoga Springs.
On Lake Avenue across from the Hampton Inn’s 6-story facade the backhoes and bulldoers were skimming the pavement on the site of the long-anticipated Pavilion Grand project, just west of The Parting Glass (which I hasten to add is still intact), and just east of The Saratogian’s HQ, (for now). There may well be a large crane on that site soon.
Where Ellsworth Ice Cream plant once stood, the rubble field has not changed much in the last month. The ground is resting a bit there I guess, getting ready for a major spring makeover.
On Seward Street the upscale apartment complex is well-underway near Birch Run.
Those buildings too are wood-frame construction, and the site seems to be supporting a good number of carpenters, roofers, and tradesmen. The overused (in Saratoga anyway) descriptor “PARK PLACE” is worked into the sign on the corner of Morgan Lane and Seward somehow, but I hope the owners come up with something more distinctive than that when they actually get ready to rent out the units, which are still in the early stages of assembly.
Toby Milde’s group is busy restoring The Adelphi Hotel, which I wrote about a few months’ back. The vividly-named Fingerpaint Agency is taking over the Border’s Building and doing a colorful renovation which will soon revitalize an empty space downtown. With another great bookstore going in across the street anyway, their is a net gain for Broadway with this diversification in tenants.
In short, things is still booming around here; if I may be grammatically incorrect, I am still telling the truth. Other upstate towns may hibernate, some are dormant year-round, but Saratoga Springs does not rest on its past laurels, it continues to evolve…
*****
William Kennedy’s Latest, and One Old One…
Speaking of past laurels, Pulitzer Prize- and MacArthur–award winning author William Kennedy is more famous for celebrating the history, working-class legacies, and political chicanery of Albany, but the grandeur of old Saratoga Springs is brought to life in two recent books of his I’ve read this past month. In his 2011 masterpiece– Chango’s Beads and Two-Toned Shoes— we are witness in the first chapter to an impromptu scat/jazz session featuring Bing Crosby and a semi-fictional pianist. Even though the episode occurs in an Albany mansion, they recall how they met in Saratoga during racing season at one of the Prohibition-Era Casinos functioning at the time. Later in the book, the main character, one Daniel Quinn, has his own Saratoga experience, after having met Ernest Hemingway in Florida, and Fidel Castro in revolutionary Cuba. Without giving a full review, which others have done better already, I can tell you it is a riveting, action-packed ride that I consider a crowning achievement for a writer I first met in 1980, when he was not particularly well-known and certainly not famous yet. Now 84 years old or so, he is an exemplar for how much can be accomplished in the 3 and a half decades AFTER 50.
The second book of his I turned to after being so enamored of “Chango’s Beads…” was simply called “Quinn’s Book” and is obstensibly narrated by yet an earlier version of Changos’ main character– also named “Daniel Quinn.” Replete with phenomenal re-creations of Albany, Troy, the Hudson River, and the Erie Canal prior to 1850 in its opening scenes, it too alludes to Saratoga during many key points in the book, and the final section takes place in 1864 Saratoga Springs– noted in the book as the first full summer season when the famous Racetrack was opened to the public. It details characters who may or may not have been modeled on Madame Jumel, Big John Morrissey (of Congress Park Casino fame), and other actual dignitaries of Saratoga’s past. The United States Hotel porch, the Lakeside Inn on the shores of Saratoga Lake, and the Racetrack all figure into the story in a beguiling manner. Set a full century earlier than the book he published most recently, “Quinn’s Book” was published in 1992 as a continuation of his “Albany Cycle” which most famously featured “Ironweed”– made into a film with Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep back in the ’80’s. Kennedy is one of the living powerhouses of literature in America at this point, and the Capital District is lucky to still have him residing here, still producing fine work, and reading at UAlbany and Skidmore once or twice a year. His body of writing is a treasure. And with these two books above in mind, he should be made an honorary citizen of Saratoga Springs as well!
*****
The Propitious Birth of One “Miles Perras”–
1992 was indeed a good year for creative production for my wife and I as well, as it turns out. My eldest son, Miles, was born during this month of that year, and his birth, as I’ve noted in brief fashion in my bio notes, was transformational to my life. I mean that in a couple of ways. Melinda and I weren’t at all sure of the status of our commitment with each other, (as with many early-stage romances) much less the prospect of family to follow, in the spring of ’91. We had our tumultuous times. She thought I might still be too flighty, or a committed bachelor, during our courtship and then in the co-habitation years, while I thought she was a bit too cautious and bitter about men in general after being married too young to the wrong guy in her early 20’s. I was still struggling to figure out how to be a proper step-dad to her son from that marriage when suddenly we seemed to discover she was pregnant. Once I came to my senses, I had to learn how to be a real dad from the word Go. I was 36 years old, not a youngster, but not a geezer either. After the shock of learning the pregnancy was real, I buckled down on my job and began to work like a fanatic, whereas I’d been a bit casual about my career up till then. We took LaMaze classes together and did all those things new parents do, a bit choked up with anticipation, I must admit.
We were worried once January came in 1992 that the winter weather itself might pose a problem when it came time for Melinda to deliver, and god forbid we’d have to drive north to the Glens Falls’ Snuggery during a blizzard, in the middle of the night. She was a week past the due date when we were still walking land together with a mutual real estate client that month, crazy as that seems in retrospect. Two weeks past the due date she was very large and when the water broke she woke me at 3:30 am or so on January 23rd and we urgently hustled up Route 9 before daybreak, fortunately with dry roads all the way. I was so relieved when they wheeled her into her room– with a view of West Mountain– before the doctors were even on duty for the day, and all seemed well. I had no idea what an ordeal it would be for her as the day stretched on, so to speak, but her cervix did not want to dilate. We had fully prepared for a “natural” birth but it just wasn’t going to happen. She (or we) had nurtured a very robust baby, and he was too large, or stubborn, to slide down that birth canal on cue. Therefore a belated decision was made to induce, and then an even more belated decision for an emergency C-section, late in the evening, about sixteen hours after our arrival. I remember it was a Thursday night, and CHEERS was on the hospital TV as they ushered us up to a surgical room. I HAD NO IDEA AT THIS POINT WHAT TO EXPECT. I am proud to say the doctors let me stay– in full gown, hat, and mask– cradling my wife’s head while she went through the ordeal of a caesarian birth, and saw her face through the whole process of fear, anticipation, mild agony, and relief, then delight. For both of us it was a magical, biological trial-by-fire, and I had never been happier that there were trained medical professionals in the modern world, and drugs to assuage my wife’s pain. When Miles finally emerged in the doctor’s hands from beneath the white-sheeted curtain, and made his first appearance he was purple! Purple and squirming and with a robust, almost chunky, little body– over-ripe if anything– and with eyes scrunched shut he seemed glad to be out of there finally but bewildered as to where he was. As with my other two children, I got to hold him and talk to him and greet him into this world, as they tended to my wife’s incision. I had a feeling like the sum total of exhilaration of every Christmas build-up of my childhood rolled into one day. As I had come from a family of fairly slender if not puny babies in my family, his 9 lb, 10 oz. size came as a surprise. My wife had eaten carefully and taken tons of supplements and vitamins during that pregnancy, as she does to this day, and had produced a whopping, healthy specimen of a boy. I was thrilled out of my mind, and the euphoria lasted a long time. I thank my wife not only for going through that process but for letting me name him after one of my musical heroes from college and post-college years, Miles Davis, and like the best musicians and athletes, my kid has always had a fully inter-racial array of friends and
classmates, and teammates, and rivals.
This is not to take anything away from the miracle births I witnessed with my other two children, but for a father-for-the-first-time, there is no other single event which transcends seeing the first birth of a child. So, to anyone reading this– or anyone I tell this story to subsequently– no matter who you are or how old you are, or where you are in your life, never take lightly the advent of birth of a child– it is truly WILD and SACRED and AWE-INSPIRING to the N-th degree. It gives you faith in the future of the world. This is what I decree, on the Anniversar-eeee, of my son’s 21st Birthday. Thanks for being here, Miles, and being a stellar son for two-decades-plus..& good luck in your return to LeMoyne, for the climax of third-year classes.
That’s it for now, Business is picking up and the Spring market is well underway, well in advance of any improvement of the weather.
I wish you all well till next time, when a musical topic of some sort will be explored…
Ciao– Wayne, of Saratoga
Copyright 2013 Wayne N. Perras