Heaneyland!

Hippies to the rescue

If you were thinking, "Hey, New York's a liberal state -- where are our gay marriages?", wonder no more: the mayor of New Paltz has stepped up to the plate.

This story particularly charms me because Rose and I stopped in New Paltz as we were driving back from a friend's wedding upstate, and we loved it. We had wanted to check out a local winery, as we had seen so many signs for wineries on the drive up to the wedding, but had no time to stop (we arrived at the wedding with seconds to spare). We were about to give up on wineries because all the ones we had tried to visit previously were closed on Sundays, but we tried one more (and I'm sure its geek-friendly name of Rivendell had nothing to do with it), and scored big; they had a generous wine-tasting policy (basically free if you bought two or three bottles), and a good selection of unusual fruit and dessert wines, which we love, whatever dry wine-liking snobs may think.

Anyway, our trip to the winery took us through New Paltz, which seemed like a great little hippie throwback town -- the sort of place I could see myself living if I weren't such a die-hard urbanite. It reminded me a bit of Santa Fe, actually. So it doesn't surprise me that they've been the latest town to take up this new civil rights struggle. It did surprise me a bit to learn that their mayor is only 26 years old, though. He's also a member of the Green party, but that doesn't seem so shocking for a tiny little liberal burg. But 26 years old? Wow. I like a town willing to elect someone so young. I do have to overcome my vague feeling of, geez, I'm seven years older than he is and I'd be way too frivolous to cope with being a mayor. But, whatever...someday I'll be older than the president and I'll probably be shocked about that as well.

Short version of the above post: Go, New Paltz!

Posted by Francis at 03:15 AM