Gargoyles Sets Up Shop in Kingston

October 26th, 2010

Perhaps the best publicity a city can get is an article about it in the New York Times. An article appeared in the summer of 2009 that profiled a Brooklyn couple who bought a house on Abeel Street now the One Mile Gallery, has resulted in at least one newcomer relocating to Kingston. Hadassah Zuberi Ben-Dor, a resident of Philadelphia for over 40 years and owner of Gargoyles, read the article and was instantly intrigued. Having never been to the Hudson Valley before, she visited Kingston and fell in love with the architecture, arts community, fabulous restaurants, and relatively reasonable real estate prices.

She subsequently bought the former Coffey Gallery building on Wall Street, closing the deal in June and moving in at the end of August. Ben-Dor operates her retail shop and wholesale business on the ground floor and lives upstairs. “It’s just perfect,” she said, noting that the gallery nicely complements her other business, which is selling and renting props to department stores, restaurants, movies, fashion houses, photographers and other clients seeking high-quality vintage goods. She also has a side business producing vintage-style graphics for stores and restaurants.

Quality of life was an important factor in her decision to move to Kingston: “I will not make the millions I made ten years ago, but what I cherish is the serenity, beauty, and art culture of the area,” she said.

Ben-Dor, who was born and raised in Jerusalem, came to the U.S. as a student at the Moore College of Art, located in Philadelphia, where she got her degree in graphic design. She started out in the salvage business and eventually acquired a 10,000-square- foot building in Philly. Realizing that there was a market beyond home renovators, Ben-Dor started targeting restaurants and department stores and eventually became hugely successful, traveling the world for vintage goods. For a while, she was flying once a month to England, because “they have the look…with their old luggage and sports equipment.” She has made shipments as far as Japan, and her clients include such specialty businesses as a golf club in Maryland. Ben-Dor did more than just provide pieces: she also helped her clients come up with a look and an atmosphere, such as “Maine Fishing Village,” which she would sell as well as supply. “I was loving it,” she said. “It was so creative. The people I deal with are mostly designers.”

After 9/11, however, there was a significant fall-off in business, and eventually Ben-Dor had to sell her building. Finding herself priced out of the Philadelphia market, she was looking for an alternative when she read the Times article about Kingston.

Ben-Dor has already become active in the community, opening her doors on the First Saturday Gallery Walk, participating in the O+ Positive Festival, and becoming a vendor in the antiques show held at the Dutchess County Fairgrounds, in Rhinebeck. It’s been a perfect fit: “It feels like I’ve been here forever,” Ben-Dor said. She invites everyone to her “very beautiful show room,” at 330 Wall Street.

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Kingston’s Bailey Pottery Re-invents the Wheel

October 19th, 2010

In an echo of Kingston’s glory days as a manufacturing center, a cluster of companies have developed a flourishing niche as artisan producers of highly specialized goods.

Locally, almost everyone’s heard of R&F Handmade Paints, located at 84 Ten Broeck Avenue, which manufactures encaustic paints and oil paint sticks in a former brick Standard Oil Building. However, there’s another very successful, nationally known company located across the railroad tracks at 62 Ten Broeck Ave., in a former brick Nabisco warehouse building: Bailey Pottery Equipment Corp., which has become a household name among potters from New York to California.

Founded by potters Jim Bailey and his wife,  Anne Shattuck Bailey, the company manufactures and resells equipment and tools to universities, school programs, professional potters, and serious amateurs. Originally selling through a catalog and now almost exclusively an e-commerce company (www.baileypottery.com), Bailey Pottery has 26 employees and owns a second building on Foxhall Ave., where wheels, kilns and other pieces of equipment designed by Jim—sold only through the company—are produced. Customers include the ceramics departments of most US universities. “We have everything a university or potter would want,” said Jim. “Over 400 universities have our gas kilns.”

Besides being a comprehensive supplier, Bailey Pottery Supply delivers superior customer service. “We really take care of customers who have problems and technical questions,” Bailey said. “We have the ability to advise them because of our extensive knowledge of clay. We know our products inside and out.”

Bailey was originally an artist, who made the shift to equipment design some 34 years ago. Shortly after attending the Kansas City Art Institute, he designed his first piece of equipment—a machine that formed clay into slabs—while spending the summer in a studio in the Adirondacks that was a former art center, stocked with clay, mixers and potter’s wheels. “I started small and decided to continue to design more equipment. I never have a shortage of ideas,” said Jim. One of his heroes is industrial designer Raymond Loewy, who designed everything from corporate logos to streamlined locomotives to the space center Skylab. He has taken to heart Loewy’s saying, “Never leave well enough alone.” “I get new ideas for products that increase efficiency and save energy,” he said. “Also products that improve on ergonomics, which save time and money.”

In the beginning, Bailey had sub-contracted a machine shop in Kingston to build his equipment. When it couldn’t keep up with the demand, he apprenticed at the shop to learn about steel manufacturing techniques, subsequently using that knowledge to design more machines. He rented space for his company in the city before buying his building in 1986.  Anne Bailey, who graduated from Harrow School of Art in England and studied with some of the most important potters of the 1970s in England, developed the Ceramic Supply Division of Bailey in 1985. Her love of materials and deep understanding of the tools potters use helped Bailey grow and gain national recognition as a place professionals could find anything and everything a potter might need. Today the Ceramic Supply Division accounts for over 50 percent of sales.

The interior was recently remodeled to create more space for the show room, and next year Bailey Pottery plans to begin hosting workshops. The workshops will be geared both towards technical training—for example, on how to operate some of the company’s specially designed kilns–and artistic techniques, with high-profile national artists brought in to share their methods of working in three-dimensional design. Bailey will thus join the tiny cohort of companies—they include R&F Handmade Paints and Fleisher’s Grass-fed & Organic Meats, in Uptown—that are boosting the local economy be bringing newcomers to town, who eat in local restaurants, stay in Kingston’s bed and breakfasts, and get out the word about what a great city this is.

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Kudos to Kingston’s Diners

October 12th, 2010

No city is without its diner, but Kingston is noteworthy for having several. Through thick and thin, bad times and good, the diner lives:  Dietz Stadium, Broadway Lights, and Elena’s are anchors in the community, places where you can order up coffee, omelets, fries, burgers, homemade soups and hundreds of other comestibles for a reasonable cost seven days a week, rain or shine. In addition to these stalwarts, Two Brothers Old-Trolley Kitchen opened a month ago on East Chester Street, breathing new life into a dying archetype: an old-style luncheonette serving up American basics made from local ingredients, topped off with homemade jams, pickles, and baked goods.

The New EAT: A Roadside Classic

Located in an intact 1927 trolley car—turns out it’s not a real car, but a diner-style car ordered from a kit—Two Brothers (also known as EAT) is owned by Sylvan Perez and his brother Angus MacDonald. Perez, a veteran of the restaurant business—he’s worked in upscale eateries in the city, as well as in a Texas roadhouse—and MacDonald, who worked in corporate IT for many years, aim to re-recreate the wholesome road food of decades past. They purchase sides of grass-fed beef from a Pine Plains-based meat supplier, get their sausages from Catskill Smokehouse, and serve free-range local eggs.

However, they want to keep prices low, so regular eggs are also on the menu. The white bread is from Deising’s. “We want people to come in and get a good plate of food and not think about it,” said Perez. Open seven days a week, from 7 to 4 on weekdays and from 9 to 5 on weekends, Two Brothers is worth a visit just for the experience of sitting in one of the few authentic trolley car diners left in the U.S., freshened up with a coat of white paint, black trim, and new red vinyl cushions on the chrome stools; it’s a delightful surprise to discover the food is also fantastic. Be sure to order toast so you can sample Perez’s exquisite homemade blueberry jam.

A Greek Legacy—and as American as Apple Pie

Kingston’s three diners are all owned by Greek-Americans: the Dietz Stadium Diner,  Elena’s,  and Broadway Lights Diner and Café.  The Dietz Stadium Diner, on 127 North Front Street,  is owned by partners Xenakis Loizou and Andy Zambas. They bought the business and the building three years ago (they are leasing the land with an option to buy) after running the Villa Carmella Restaurant for 25 years. Zambas says business is good: things are hopping on Friday night, when the Dietz Stadium crowd comes in. In general, weekends are very busy, thanks to the diner’s close proximity to the bus station, which brings in travelers stopping for a bite to eat. Zambas and Loizou take pride in the variety of items on the menu and the tradition of customer friendliness. “When you come to eat here you’re treated like family,” Zambas said. They have a staff of 17, including the owners, and offer breakfast, lunch and dinner specials. There’s also a special senior citizen menu and a 10% discount on the regular menu for seniors. They are open 24/7.

Down on 51 Schwenk Drive, Spiros and Aristea Neofotistos have owned Elena’s Diner for 20 years. The menu is also extensive, and “everything’s fresh,” said Aristea. Spiros makes the soups from scratch, as well as the salads and such staples as chicken breast on a pita. He also makes the sauce on the Greek specialties, including Greek salad, souvlaki and gyros. Open from six to three seven days a week, Elena’s attracts mostly local businesspeople, who work in the nearby offices, although Aristea said customers also come from far away, returning to Kingston just to visit Elena’s. The diner also delivers.

Broadway Lights Diner and Café, at 713 Broadway, has been owned 35 years by Litsa Chasin, who immigrated to America with her parents from Macedonia in 1969. When she and her then-husband purchased the diner, they tore down the small stainless steel structure and replaced it with the current building; ultimately, she ended up running the business herself. “Everything’s homemade,” including the soups and baked goods, she said. Sugarless desserts are available to those who are on a diet. Currently on the menu is a $10.95 special, which includes an entrée, such as roast chicken or baked lasagna, salad, mashed potatoes, coffee or tea, and homemade dessert. The $5.75 lunch special—for half a sandwich and a cup of soup or tossed salad—is also popular.

“Seven 21’s been great for the area,” said Chasin, noting that the neighborhood has improved considerably. Many customers work at the media center, while others are people who are visiting the hospitals and local doctors’ offices. Sometimes she’ll also get someone from the Thruway, or a worker on a graveyard shift. Broadway Lights is open from six to midnight Sunday through Thursday and 24 hours on Friday and Saturday. Lunch delivery is available, and UPAC theatergoers who show their tickets get 10 percent off their bill.

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Kingston’s Holistic Health Providers

October 5th, 2010

Alternative health providers such as Ileana Tecchio and Glenn Finley of New Leaf Holistic Health, naturopathy providers with a storefront at 31 Broadway, Earthbound Community Acupuncture Clinic, which just moved to a new location on Wall Street, and Dr. Carol S. Kessler, in Midtown –have put Kingston on the map as a center for holistic health.

New Leaf Holistic Health

Tecchio and Finley, who are married, opened New Leaf Holistic Health in June 2008. New Leaf is Kingston’s only naturopathic facility, and both Tecchio and Finley are trained naturopathic physicians, each with four years of graduate school training that required medical rounds in an outpatient clinical setting, just as is required of medical doctors. (Some states, including Vermont, qualify naturopathic doctors as the primary care providers in medical insurance plans; Finley does some work in the Green Mountain State because of this recognition.)

As naturopathic physicians, Tecchio and Finley seek to return the body back to a physiological balance when treating patients of all types of ailments, ranging from the acute to the chronic. “Most times people come to us because they’ve tried everything else and given up,” said Techhio, noting that most of clients are by word of mouth. New Leaf, which is located in the Rondout, is open Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9 to 3 and on Tuesday and Thursday from 3:30 to 6:30; it’s also open once a month on Saturday. For more information about naturopathy and for bios of New Leaf’s founders, visit the company’s website, http://www.newleafholistichealth.com/index.html. The storefront is also the location for the practice of licensed massage therapist Marci Elwood.

Earthbound Community Acupuncture Clinic

Earthbound Community Acupuncture Clinic, which just moved from Broadway to a larger space at 280 Wall Street, offers private acupuncture treatments as well as something unusual—affordable community treatments, at which up to five people, separated by screens in a common space, are treated by the hour for a sliding fee ranging from $20 to $40 an hour. The community alternative means that “people come more often and can better afford acupuncture,” said Minya DeJohnette, who also conducts her private acupuncture practice at the space. Furthermore, the group treatments are “the traditional way it’s been done in China, for hundreds of years,” she said.

DeJohnette’s partners are Hillary Thing and Cynthia Hewett, who conduct a “raw herbal” pharmacy, selling Thing’s specially concocted herbal teas and body products. Beginning in mid November, when more space will become available, the group will be offering classes in tai chi, the marital art with movements designed to generate healing energy throughout the body, and qi gong, a type of internal breathing exercise also designed to help heal the body. Both disciplines improve well being, as well as aid in weight loss. Self acupuncture treatments will also be offered. “We’re training people to take care of themselves, to know what to do with their body when they feel pain or discomfort,” said DeJohnette. “Although the classes will be very gentle and slow paced, they’ll be very effective. People’s bodies can change rapidly when they do” these exercises.

Thing has been running the clinic for three years, previously in the Millard Building. DeJohnette and her partners are excited about the new location. “There’s a lot of foot traffic, and great shops and restaurant,” she said. “We love the feel of the area.” For more information about the Earthbound clinic, call 339-5653. DeJohnette also has been practicing in Kingston for three years and was trained at the Swedish Institute in New York City, which had a Taoist bent. For more information on DeJohnette’s practice, call 332-5653 or visit www.isacupuncture.com.

Dr. Carol Kessler

Dr. Carol Kessler is an acupuncturist who has had an office at 187 Pine St. for 15 years (she’s been in practice for 27 years). She’s also a licensed massage therapist and often utilizes the two treatments in conjunction with each other. Kessler said she originally got interested in acupuncture as a way to reduce the pain when locating trigger points on her massage patients. She studied with Dr. Janet Travell, who wrote a book about trigger points and their relationship to acupuncture.

She is also certified in several specialty techniques, including NAET, designed to eliminate suffering from allergies, and Irlen, a type of treatment for headaches and other ailments that utilizes colored lenses to correct perceptual problems. Kessler, who shares her office with her husband, a dentist, and acupuncturist Barry Mark, is a native of Queens who opened the office in Kingston after marrying her husband. “We choose Kingston because it’s friendly,” she said. “We love it.” She said she offers patients “my undivided attention. I stay with the person from start to finish.” For more information, call 334-9340.

(For a complete listing of acupuncturists in Kingston, visit http://www.ziphip.com/kingston+ny/acupuncturists+acupressure+and+acupuncture.zq.html )

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