Until about a year ago, Fredrick Arnold was living the life of a Williamsburg hipster. An aspiring filmmaker with mutton-chop sideburns, he spent his working hours waiting tables at Dumont Burger, and his off hours on projects like an animated music video for one of his favorite bands, Casper & the Cookies.
But after being laid off — “Suddenly I wasn’t just competing with other people in their 20s, but with out-of-work stock brokers, people with Ph.D.’s, and even experienced chefs for a shrinking number of waiting jobs,” he said — Mr. Arnold, 25, moved about 90 miles north to this Hudson Valley town. He found a one-bedroom apartment just off Main Street for $700 a month (he previously paid $650 for a tiny room in a three-bedroom) and a job at Market Market, a cafe and nightclub on the edge of town with an eclectic menu and a distinctly Brooklyn feel.
The cafe, opened three years ago by Jenifer Constantine and Trippy Thompson, a couple of other Williamsburg expatriates, is a place where one might stumble upon a copy of The Brooklyn Rail, the Greenpoint-based publication covering the local arts scene. Maggie Gyllenhaal of Park Slope was recently spotted there having lunch.
“It feels to me like a neighborhood bar in Brooklyn, filled with people who have sensibilities similar to mine,” said John Cox, who moved to Rosendale from Carroll Gardens in 2003, when he and his wife were ready to start a family. “We realized that if we stayed in Brooklyn, we’d need a bigger, more expensive apartment, and we’d be working crazy hours just to be able to pay for day care, never to really spend time with our kid.”
Rosendale, in Ulster County, is hardly the first place to consider itself Brooklyn North or the sixth borough. But like New Paltz and Beacon before it, this depressed former cement manufacturing town of 6,400 has lately had a steady influx of creative freelancers with 917, 718 and 646 area-code cellphones. Some hop on the bus for the hour-and-forty-five-minute ride to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, others telecommute, and many have traded in their office jobs for less psychically demanding ones in landscaping or food service while they pursue their music or art on the side.
“It was a trade-off,” said Heige Kim, a painter who opened a gallery on Main Street last year, and whose husband, Fred Lee, commutes to his job as a database manager for a Midtown law firm.
“When we moved up here, we got more space, and as an artist, especially, you’re always negotiating for more space,” she said. “But now Fred has to ride the Trailways bus every day.”
With the feel of a rough-and-tumble new frontier — not unlike Williamsburg or Red Hook a decade ago — Rosendale offers a break from Brooklyn’s bubble real estate prices: the mean price for a house in 2008, the last year available from city-data.com, was $201,797. The town has a much shabbier look than manicured weekender havens like Stone Ridge or Woodstock, but it is closer to the city than other low-cost towns like Catskill and Hudson. The town lacks a supermarket but has a surprising number of restaurants — four on Main Street alone, including the Rosendale Cafe, a stalwart vegetarian and folk-music institution.
“We make jokes about how many people we keep meeting up here who are from Williamsburg,” said David Soman, a children’s book illustrator who was ahead of the curve when he and his wife moved here in 2001. “There’s a growing contingent. We keep meeting more of them at Market Market.”
Market Market replaced the Springtown Green Grocer, a beloved standby where locals used to shop for organic produce and pick up mostly vegetarian lunches from a salad bar and steam table. “In the beginning people seemed resentful toward us for coming in and trying to do something different,” Ms. Constantine said. “It’s funny, sometimes people will still walk in looking all confused and say, ‘Wait, where are the vegetables?’ ”
But it has become a magnet for the Brooklyn exiles. Situated directly across the street from the Trailways station (you can get your bus tickets there), the cafe has a sleek bar surrounded by reproduction vintage Fornasetti wallpaper. The menu features tacos filled with house-made chorizo, Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches, and specials like pork schnitzel with brussels sprout and bacon hash.
“Trippy and I thought it would be good to offer foods that we missed when we moved up here,” Ms. Constantine explained.
Several nights a week, there is entertainment: live music, including a series called Tributon featuring musicians covering the songs of a particular artist; D.J.’s; karaoke; comedy; and videos. Earlier this month, when the band Mercury Rev played music over a silent film, the cafe was packed with people in their 20s and 30s, many in vintage clothes and skinny jeans.
On a recent Wednesday evening, when local musicians Skip Piper, Ross Rice and Jude Roberts took turns playing, Market Market was crowded with urban-expat regulars, including Eric Stern, the bling-bedecked stylist for “The Real Housewives of New York City”; the graphic design artist Woody Pirtle; and D. B. Leonard, a musician and writer who moved from Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan to Woodstock in 2008, but is now hunting for an apartment in Rosendale.
There were a couple of new faces, too. “We moved up April 1,” said Turu Illgen, an architect who just spent three years building a house in Williamsburg with his wife, Angela Voulgarelis, a painter. “After all that hard work, we can’t really afford to live there,” Mr. Illgen said, half-laughing. “The taxes alone would kill us. So we rented it out and moved up here.”
The cafe, opened three years ago by Jenifer Constantine and Trippy Thompson, a couple of other Williamsburg expatriates, is a place where one might stumble upon a copy of The Brooklyn Rail, the Greenpoint-based publication covering the local arts scene. Maggie Gyllenhaal of Park Slope was recently spotted there having lunch.
“It feels to me like a neighborhood bar in Brooklyn, filled with people who have sensibilities similar to mine,” said John Cox, who moved to Rosendale from Carroll Gardens in 2003, when he and his wife were ready to start a family. “We realized that if we stayed in Brooklyn, we’d need a bigger, more expensive apartment, and we’d be working crazy hours just to be able to pay for day care, never to really spend time with our kid.”
Rosendale, in Ulster County, is hardly the first place to consider itself Brooklyn North or the sixth borough. But like New Paltz and Beacon before it, this depressed former cement manufacturing town of 6,400 has lately had a steady influx of creative freelancers with 917, 718 and 646 area-code cellphones. Some hop on the bus for the hour-and-forty-five-minute ride to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, others telecommute, and many have traded in their office jobs for less psychically demanding ones in landscaping or food service while they pursue their music or art on the side.
“It was a trade-off,” said Heige Kim, a painter who opened a gallery on Main Street last year, and whose husband, Fred Lee, commutes to his job as a database manager for a Midtown law firm.
“When we moved up here, we got more space, and as an artist, especially, you’re always negotiating for more space,” she said. “But now Fred has to ride the Trailways bus every day.”
With the feel of a rough-and-tumble new frontier — not unlike Williamsburg or Red Hook a decade ago — Rosendale offers a break from Brooklyn’s bubble real estate prices: the mean price for a house in 2008, the last year available from city-data.com, was $201,797. The town has a much shabbier look than manicured weekender havens like Stone Ridge or Woodstock, but it is closer to the city than other low-cost towns like Catskill and Hudson. The town lacks a supermarket but has a surprising number of restaurants — four on Main Street alone, including the Rosendale Cafe, a stalwart vegetarian and folk-music institution.
“We make jokes about how many people we keep meeting up here who are from Williamsburg,” said David Soman, a children’s book illustrator who was ahead of the curve when he and his wife moved here in 2001. “There’s a growing contingent. We keep meeting more of them at Market Market.”
Market Market replaced the Springtown Green Grocer, a beloved standby where locals used to shop for organic produce and pick up mostly vegetarian lunches from a salad bar and steam table. “In the beginning people seemed resentful toward us for coming in and trying to do something different,” Ms. Constantine said. “It’s funny, sometimes people will still walk in looking all confused and say, ‘Wait, where are the vegetables?’ ”
But it has become a magnet for the Brooklyn exiles. Situated directly across the street from the Trailways station (you can get your bus tickets there), the cafe has a sleek bar surrounded by reproduction vintage Fornasetti wallpaper. The menu features tacos filled with house-made chorizo, Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches, and specials like pork schnitzel with brussels sprout and bacon hash.
“Trippy and I thought it would be good to offer foods that we missed when we moved up here,” Ms. Constantine explained.
Several nights a week, there is entertainment: live music, including a series called Tributon featuring musicians covering the songs of a particular artist; D.J.’s; karaoke; comedy; and videos. Earlier this month, when the band Mercury Rev played music over a silent film, the cafe was packed with people in their 20s and 30s, many in vintage clothes and skinny jeans.
On a recent Wednesday evening, when local musicians Skip Piper, Ross Rice and Jude Roberts took turns playing, Market Market was crowded with urban-expat regulars, including Eric Stern, the bling-bedecked stylist for “The Real Housewives of New York City”; the graphic design artist Woody Pirtle; and D. B. Leonard, a musician and writer who moved from Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan to Woodstock in 2008, but is now hunting for an apartment in Rosendale.
There were a couple of new faces, too. “We moved up April 1,” said Turu Illgen, an architect who just spent three years building a house in Williamsburg with his wife, Angela Voulgarelis, a painter. “After all that hard work, we can’t really afford to live there,” Mr. Illgen said, half-laughing. “The taxes alone would kill us. So we rented it out and moved up here.”
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