Diners at the recently opened Boitson’s restaurant on North Front Street in Kingston’s Uptown district.
Happenings site; and arranges citywide events like the recent Kingston Clean Sweep beautification program. Safe in the Stockade With the eight-block area known as the Stockade at its heart, Uptown is the oldest of Kingston’s three districts. It has the city’s highest concentration of historic stone buildings and a skyline dominated by the steeple of the Old Dutch Church (built in 1852 and, legend has it, home to a hobgoblin), whose surrounding cemetery contains the grave of the state’s first governor, George Clinton. The neighborhood is defined by the quaint covered sidewalks that line its streets, which are dotted with art galleries, coffeehouses, music and book vendors, and unique shops like quirky gift emporium Bop to Tottom and haberdashery and blues CD outlet Blue-Byrd’s. Foodies get their fill at the seasonal farmers market (Saturdays from May through November), as well as at the quarter’s many restaurants and Fleisher’s Grass-Fed and Organic Meats, which opened in 2004. “We chose Uptown as our location because we loved the look of the area and the fact that it’s within 20 minutes of our customers in Rhinebeck, Stone Ridge, New Paltz, and Woodstock,” says Fleisher’s Jessica Applestone, who co-owns the business with her husband Joshua Applestone. “It’s right off the Thruway and close to routes 28 and 209.” Such has been Fleisher’s success that the Applestones have acquired space in the building next door, where they plan to expand their thriving eight-week butchery training program and open a luncheonette serving dishes made with their locally sourced meats. Uptown is also the site of yearly Wall Street Jazz Festival and the Hudson Valley Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) Community Center, and is a prime barhopping destination thanks to happening hostelries like tapas and wine bar Elephant, the newly opened Stockade Tavern, and performance space 323 Wall Street (formerly Backstage Studio Productions). “[323 Wall Street] is working with several programmers to host live music, theatrical productions, a dance school for children and adults, even
yoga classes,” says Sevan Melikyan, who assumed control of the venue in August. “We have an upstairs dance studio, the smaller Wall Space room and bar up front, and a huge 1872 vaudeville theater in the back, which always blows people away when they first see it.” Melikyan is excited about the club’s upcoming events, which include the Halloween Zombie Bash on October 30. (One can’t help but wonder what ghosts may be lurking in the tunnels beneath the building, supposedly a stop on the Underground Railroad, that night.) On nearby Front Street is Snapper Magee’s, an alternative music haunt and favorite hub of punk bicycle club the Dusty Spokes. Midtown Makeover On warmer nights the Dusty Spokes pedal over to Midtown to hit the city’s other main punk rock club, the Basement, and, just around the corner on St. James Street, microbrewery Keegan Ales, which books a broader range of live music (jazz, blues, Americana, and classic rock) and dispenses and exports three award-winning beers from within its 1830s brick walls. “The City of Kingston has been very helpful to us,” says Tommy Keegan, who co-owns the operation with his father. “Mayor Sottile and the other government people really wanted us here, they held the land for us and did a lot to help with tax credits and other economic aid. I love being in Midtown, I actually live right next door [to the brewery]. It’s one of the last affordable places in the region.” What’s keeping Midtown real estate inexpensive for the present are the aftereffects of its 1970s urban business exodus. While the area has admittedly struggled with crime and vice for decades—reportedly, it was a center for brewing of the, shall we say, less legal variety during Prohibition—Midtown’s streetscape of one-time factory and department store buildings offers the perfect stage for the space-seeking artists and businesses now formulating its renaissance. Examples include tech-media complex the Seven21 Media Center, the tellingly named multi-arts Shirt Factory, which houses composer Pauline Oliveros’s Deep Listening Space, and several small galleries. But when it comes to (literally) perfect stages, the prize goes to Midtown’s anchor of 10/10 ChronograM KINGSTON 31