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Around & About Lake George: June 1, 2012

By Lisa H. Hall

Friday, June 1, 2012

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Well, that was as about a perfect Memorial Day weekend as we could hope for. On the east side, neighbors who hadn’t seen each other since Labor Day greeted one another with “Happy New Year!” And Memorial Day is truly the beginning of another year on Lake George. Hope everyone got out on the water, did some grilling and enjoyed the parades.

After we put the paper to bed Tuesday night, we all headed down to Cate’s where we saw Cate, Buddy and Jesse, Diamond Point Grille owners Peg and Mark Turner, Sothebys realtor Rachael Zuckerman and Happy Jacks owner Jeff Strief. Jeff hosted a cocktail party on Wednesday for Jay Jordan, visiting from Florida, where we saw David from Trees, David and Chad from George’s and Megan from the library. We wanted to see the changes Jim and Sally Rypkema have made to the Hague Market, so on our way down the lake on Thursday we stopped in, meeting Amy and John Macionis and Bob DuBuys on the way in. Later in the day we attended a ribbon cutting ceremony in an unexpected place, the Fun World Arcade. Owner Doug Coon was debuting his new lazer maze for the Adirondack Regional Chamber of Commerce. Bob Gunther and Dan Molella, who worked at the arcade when Mayor Bob Blais owned it, stayed on when Doug took over, and they were there, along with Village clerk Darlene Gunther, Kim Winchell from the Lake George branch of the Glens Falls National Bank, and, of course, Mayor Blais, who helped cut the ribbon. One thing about the Mayor, he’s game. He even tried the maze. After the event, they said he was heading to a function at the Georgian; we had to head toward North Creek to see Reuben Smith’s new wood boat shop. On our way back to Bolton Landing, we stopped at “the meat store of the north” – Jack Toney’s, in Warrensburg, to pick up some steaks for the weekend. On Friday evening, we attended the benefit for the Lake George Music Festival, where we met some of the young musicians who will be performing in the Village in August. Lake George chamber of commerce director Michael Consuelo was there, as well as the Reverend Julie McPartlin from St. James, Betsy Birchenough from Cleverdale and Frank and Linda Cappabianca from Glens Falls. Villa Napoli, the Italian restaurant in Bolton Landing, opened for the season that very day, so we stopped there for dinner. Joining Rose and Damian at the restaurant this summer is their daughter Elena, who just graduated from Villanova. She’ll work in Bolton for a couple of months before pursuing a career or graduate work in public policy. Among those dining were Victor and Yvette Hershaft and their family and Ashley Sweeney with hers. A slow (but far too quick) cruise on the lake on Saturday and then on to Sweet Pea Farm for the annual reception for Chrissy’s Chairs, which raises funds for local charities by auctioning off artist-modified Adirondack chairs. Hosted by Mark and Linda Perry and their daughter Megan Diehl, the event was attended by Jane Gabriels, Ike Wolgin, Michelle Pollock, Buzz and Cheryl Lamb and Jennifer and Ed Scheiber, among many others. Sunday we attended a Memorial Day ceremony at the Welcome Park in Lake George, (where we saw Town Councilmen Vinnie Crocitto and Dan Hurley and Town Judge Mike Stafford and his wife Nancy) before celebrating the holiday in a very old-fashioned way with friends. That put us in the mood for Bolton Landing’s old-fashioned Memorial Day parade, which passes our office before it concludes at Veterans Beach.

Our first stop this week will be Shepard Park, where the annual Elvis Festival kicks off on Thursday at 7 pm. Dozens of Elvis look-alikes in one place still strikes me as richly, deliciously weird. Our favorite event of the festival is the Opening Night Party held at John Carr’s Adirondack Pub and Brewery, which starts at 9 pm. Get crazy with the Elvises!

On Saturday and Sunday, St James Episcopal Church will host its annual “Spring Fair” from 9am to 5 pm. A variety of handmade crafts, antiques and collectibles and annual and perennial plants will be sold at the fair. Food and beverages will be available. St James Episcopal Church is located at 172 Ottawa Street, at the intersection of Montcalm Street.

Vintage Raceboat Regatta

The Lake George Association will host vendors, landscapers, plant nursery owners and contractors  at a Lake Friendly Living Open House on Saturday, June 2 from 10 am to 2 pm at the LGA headquarters in Lake George. Call 668-3558 for more information.

On Sunday, Eliot Cohen, the author of Conquered into Liberty: Two Centuries of Battles Along the Great Warpath that Made the American Way of War, will  speak at Fort Ticonderoga at 2 pm.

In Conquered into Liberty, Cohen assesses the influence that warfare along the 200-mile corridor between Albany and Montreal had on how Americans wage war as well as why they, and when, they go to war. (Our editor took a class with Cohen in graduate school; he said he wrote a paper on Civil-Military Relations in the Byzantine Empire. Sure would have loved to read that.)

The big event of the weekend is the Vintage Raceboat Regatta in Lake George Village, sponsored by the Adirondack Chapter of the Antique & Classic Boat Society and the Vintage Division of the American Power Boat Association and organized by ACBS chapter members Teri Hoffman and Peter Johnson. The regatta hits the water Saturday morning with crane launchings and a driver’s meeting at 8:30 am at the Village docks on Beach Road in Lake George Village. Boats will be out on the course by 9:30; some 30 to 35 boats are registered for the event. For the public, Saturday will be awash with plenty of opportunities for ogling, strolling, photographing and talking with the boat owners. Maybe we’ll see you there!

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Next Summer owner Matthew Slaughter

Next Summer owner Matthew Slaughter

Shopping: The Lake George Needlepoint Belt

By Lisa H. Hall

Monday, July 25, 2011

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How does equality-mad America cope with inequality? By poking fun at the privileged. And no one can more easily be made to look ridiculous than posh prep school alumni  (or at least those among them who don’t have the wit to hide their rank).

With the return of Memorial Day, old Exonians and others can be seen sporting needlepoint belts; belts with regimental stripes are perfectly acceptable,  but especially prized are those made by hand, featuring yacht club burgees, school crests, croquet mallets and allusive references to places like Seal Harbor and Small Point. You get the idea. A few years ago, two prepsters (Peter and Austin) started a company called Smathers & Branson to manufacture the belts, but with a wink of the eye and with irony. (But really, what’s more preppy than irony?) The product has been featured in magazines like Quest, as well as in the New York Times.

Recognizing the humor as well as the appeal of the belts, Next Summer owner Matthew Slaughter commissioned the company to make Lake George needlepoint belts. Stitched into the belt are images of a Hacker, the Minne, an outline of the lake itself, the LG oval decal, and an Adirondack chair, among other things.  Even if you find the semiotics of the needlepoint belt infra dig, you’ll want one of these.  $165. Next Summer, Main Street, Bolton Landing.

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The shirts on display at Happy Jacks, Bolton Landing

The shirts on display at Happy Jacks, Bolton Landing

Lake George Mirror and Happy Jacks Team Up to Create Authentic, Retro Lake George Ts

By Mirror Staff

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

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Ordinarily, a shop on Lake George that sells t-shirts would be in the news only if its products were especially vile or offensive.

We may be biased, but we think the t-shirts that Happy Jacks in Bolton Landing is selling are newsworthy, despite rather than because of the fact that the Lake George Mirror had a hand in designing them.

The t-shirts feature the logos of long gone, but not forgotten, Lake George bars, restaurants and resorts. The introductory line revisits Tops, the Tomahawk Inn, Lake George Bowl, Dock and Dine, the Bavarian House, Red Fez, Sunny Brook Acres and the Red Rooster.

The logos were designed in the 1950s and 60s by the printers at Adirondack Resorts Press, the company that publishes the Lake George Mirror, and appeared as advertisements in guides and brochures as well as in the Lake George Mirror itself.

Jeff Strief, the owner of Happy Jacks, promotes the shirts as “Authentic Retro Lake George Tees.”

“They were an instant hit,” said Strief. “Second home owners love them because of the appeal to nostalgia; their children love them because the shirts are a link to a lake they love.”

Strief added that the shirts also appeal to shoppers who have little or no connection to the lake.

“People just liked the retro designs, which they thought were very cool,” said Strief.

Every shirt comes with a tag offering a bit of information about the businesses, and longtime residents who have come into the shop have supplemented that with details from their own memories, said Strief.

“Tops, for instance, is described as the Village’s first biker bar; Lake George Bowl was owned by the mayor of Lake George Village; Sunny Brook Acres was a resort on the grounds of New York Times publisher Adolph Och’s former estate and its nightclub was popular with people from every town on the lake,” said Strief.

Adirondack Resorts Press, which continues to publish the Lake George Mirror, is credited as the line’s creator.

Tomahawk Inn shirt design

According to Tony Hall, the publisher of the Lake George Mirror and the president of Adirondack Resorts Press, Inc., the printing company was the premier publisher of Lake George brochures, guides, maps and post cards from the 1920s through the early 1970s.

The company even developed its own distinctive method of printing four-color images, which it called Colorgraph.

When Lisa and Tony Hall purchased Adirondack Resorts Press and the Lake George Mirror in 1997, they inherited a vault of advertising images and designs.

Collin Badger, the Mirror’s creative director, began incorporating the graphics into Lake George Mirror covers and in promotional materials, but hoped to make wider use of the images through collateral products such as mugs, caps, posters and, of course, t shirts.

At the same time, Jeff Strief was searching for a line of retro Lake George Ts.

“Tony and Lisa Hall asked me for advice about the retail business, and a collaboration struck me as an obvious solution,” said Strief. “I had wanted to do a line of retro Lake George tees, but couldn’t find a source, and they had this great archive of images. So I suggested we work together and come up with a product that both the Lake George Mirror and Happy Jacks could sell.”

Last autumn, Strief, Badger and Lisa Hall began sifting through the archival images and selecting a few to be used on t-shirts. Badger and Strief then refined the images “to give them some contemporary appeal,” said Strief.

More designs will be added to the line soon, said Collin Badger, who created an online store for Adirondack Resorts Press to sell merchandise. Posters and other products will also be available at the online store.

Happy Jacks is located on Main Street, Bolton Landing. Adirondack Resorts Press’s online store can be found at AdirondackResortsPress.com. The site is also accessible through LakeGeorgeMirror.com and LakeGeorgeMirrorMagazine.com.

“Vintage Lake George is still Lake George,” said Tony Hall. “We see these products as another way to refresh the image of Lake George, to market the resort to a new generation as well as to people who haven’t been back in decades. We’re telling boomers that their Lake George is still here.”

 

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The Inimitable Lake George Chowder Party

By Lisa H. Hall

Friday, April 22, 2011

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“Lake George Casual” – inscribed across invitations today – had a somewhat different meaning in the 1890s, when John Boulton Simpson issued invitations to his “Lake George Chowder Parties.”

Simpson, as most people know, was the New York City businessman who, along with four other investors, purchased Green Island and built the Sagamore Hotel in 1882. They also built cottages for themselves on the island, and spent the long summers entertaining themselves and one another with regattas, cruises, balls and informal parties. Simpson’s “Inimitable Chowder Parties” as the Lake George Mirror called them, were among the latter. By 1891, they were “Regular features of life at this popular resort.”

Preparations for the chowder parties began early in the day. Levi Pratt, the “boss” chowder manufacturer of Warren County, according to the editor of the Lake George Mirror, brought the ingredients – for the chowder as well as the party – to the Sagamore docks. With the aid of six men and a corps of waiters, mostly African-American, Pratt loaded the 12 foot long trestle tables, linens, silverware, glasses and dishes, including the huge bowls from which the chowder was served, into Simpson’s steam launch, the Caprice. Everything was then transported to the site of the party, Gull Bay, Tongue Mountain or Indian Kettles. At 11 am, some thirty guests, each given a boutonniere on arrival, would board Simpson’s “flag ship,”  the 80-foot Fanita.

“Commodore J.B. Simpson of the Lake George Yacht Club does nothing by halves, and when he purposes giving a party on board his handsome steam yacht, guests may rest assured nothing will be lacking to make the affair the most enjoyable. Wednesday of this week, the Fanita steamed down the lake, skirting the east shore in and out among the emerald gems scattered through the Narrows. The day was glorious. The sun shone over the waves, gilding their crests with bright touches of gleaming splendor as sparkling as diamonds.” Thus wrote the editor of the Lake George Mirror about the start of one such chowder party, held in September 1891.

Once Levi Pratt and his crew arrived at the site selected for the chowder party, the tables were erected, places set and the branches in the trees above strewn with pennants, burgees and bunting. Then the Fanita and Simpson’s guests arrived.  “A landing was effected and the chowder compounded,” to quote the Lake George Mirror.

Although the parties were informal affairs when compared with the balls at the hotels, the chowder parties were not like picnics of today. The table settings were formal, the men attired in three piece suits, and the host outfitted in his commodore’s uniform.

“The eatables and drinkables were the best the market afforded,” the Lake George Mirror routinely reported. A bottle of champange was placed before each man. Not surprisingly, “Speeches were made after the inner anatomy of mankind was satisfied and many interesting stories told by the chowderites.” The party would last through the early evening, when the guests would return to the Fanita for the trip home, “well pleased with their trip, commodore Simpson’s hospitality and the chowder.”

Should anyone wish to revive the tradition of John Boulton Simpson’s Chowder Parties, we provide this local recipe from 1890.

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A local chowder recipe, circa 1890:

Fish Chowder

4 lb. Perch or other white fish

4 cups potatoes cut in 3/4-inch cubes

1 sliced onion

1 1/2 –inch cube fat salt pork

1 tablespoon salt

1/8 teaspoon pepper

3 tablespoons butter

4 cups scalded milk

8 common crackers.

Order the fish skinned, but head and tail left on. Cut off head and tail and remove fish from backbone. Cut fish in two-inch pieces and set aside. Put head, tail and backbone , broken in pieces, in stewpan. Add two cups cold water and bring slowly to boiling point; cook twenty minutes. Cut salt pork in small pieces and try out, add onion and fry five minutes ; strain fat into stewpan. Parboil potatoes five minutes in boiling water to cover; drain and add to fat; then add two cups boiling water and cook five minutes. Add liquor drained from bones, then add the fish; cover, and simmer ten minutes. Add milk, salt, pepper, butter and crackers split and soaked in enough cold milk to moisten, otherwise they will be soft on the outside but dry on the inside. Remove crackers, turn chowder into a tureen, and put crackers on top. Pilot bread is sometimes used in place of common crackers.

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