SARATOGA SPRINGS – City employees were forced to set up temporary offices across the Spa City this week in the aftermath of a fire and water damage which forced the closure of City Hall. 

The 19th century building, which opened in 1871, was struck by lightning Aug. 17, resulting in fire and water related damage to the structure. No re-opening date has been set.

“It’s indefinite. Right now, we’re on a 30-day plan,” city Mayor Meg Kelly said this week. “That means our first estimate in our emergency management plan, is we’re out for 30 days. If people can get back in in 10-15 days they go, but there are a lot of departments that will be delayed.”

Most city employees were relocated to the southside city recreation facility on Vanderbilt Avenue. Public Works employees set up shop at Van Rensselaer avenue and city police, who are located in an unaffected City Hall annex, maintain their department offices on Lake Avenue.  Saratoga City Court sessions are being held at 65 South Broadway, in the Lincoln bath building house and this week’s council meeting was staged at the Saratoga Springs City Center on Broadway.

The Vanderbilt Avenue recreation facility – which had been bonded for $6.5 million - became a hot political topic in 2009, with a local community group filing a lawsuit against the facility being developed on the south side. Scott Johnson, who was eventually re-elected for a second mayoral term, pushed for the facility to be developed.  Accounts Commissioner John Franck, who held the same position on the council at the time, also was in favor of the project. The building opened in 2010.

There had been some previous debate about potentially turning the Saratoga Music Hall – located on the top floor of the City Hall building - into a new, expanded court room. It is unclear if any changes will be made however.

“There’s no plan right now,” Mayor Kelly said. “Right now we’re in the recovery stage, so we are not making any plans for the building at this time.”

Financial Report for 2017

The city released a 66-page financial report regarding an independent audit conducted through Dec. 31, 2017 by BST & Co. of Albany. Among the details cited:  Sales Tax and Hotel Room Occupancy Tax each decreased by 1 percent compared to 2016, VLT Aid remained at $2.326 million in 2017 - the same as the previous three years, and Mortgage Tax receipts increased in 2017 to $1.693 million, 15 percent higher than 2016. A full copy of the report may be downloaded here.  

SARATOGA SPRINGS - Diane Duhame says she has always felt the need to help others.

In late April, Duhame learned of a group of volunteers who host Friday get-togethers in Albany to provide hot meals for the hungry and necessary essentials to the less fortunate. “I thought: I want to do that,” says Duhame, who makes her home in Galway. 

The Albany organization, who call themselves Street Soldiers, gather at the Soldiers' and Sailors' monument in Washington Park and was founded in 2016 by area residents Renee and Mike Fahey. Their motto: We can't change the world, but we can help those local who are a part of the world.

In Saratoga, things moved quickly. Drawing inspiration from The Faheys, a small group of volunteers assembled in May and were granted permission to set up some tables in the Salvation Army parking lot on Woodlawn Avenue.

 “We started off with no idea what to expect,” Duhame recalled. “That first week we probably had two tables with some sandwiches and fruit. I didn’t know if anyone would show up.”  Volunteers from the Albany group came to support the Saratoga version of the Street Soldiers. About 15 people showed up that first week. The group has gathered every Saturday night since their inaugural May event. 

“It just grew from there. More and more people started coming. Now we have eight tables and we take up a third of the parking lot,” Duhame says. “The last couple of weeks we’ve had about 40 people – and it’s not just for the homeless. There are a lot of people who are trying to make it on minimum wage. There are people leaving bad relationships and on their own. We have families come by and working people who are making minimum wage. They can keep a roof over their heads, but not everything else -   sometimes it’s some shampoo or toilet paper to get you through the week.”  

The tables offer goods – from razors and shaving cream to hair conditioner, underwear and socks – as well as homemade food made by volunteers – a varying course of fried chicken and macaroni salad, to fruit and sandwiches. 

“Everybody makes the Saturday supper and brings it over. We’ve had goulash and bean soup; we’ve also barbecued a few times. Every week it’s something else,” Duhame says. “It’s just a group of individuals who show up Saturday night to help our friends. These are people who have good hearts. There are a lot of good people in the world.” The core group of volunteers has grown to more than a dozen, and more are always welcome.

 For those in need of a meal or supplies, there are no questions asked, and everyone is welcome, Duhame says. “There are no requirements. Just whoever needs it. We don’t ask for any kind of proof or even their name. And there’s no corporation (involved). Nobody has ever said anything negative to us. It’s been amazing, and it’s taken on a life of its own.”

The gatherings are staged 7 p.m. Saturday nights in the Woodlawn Avenue parking lot of the Salvation Army. The plan is to host the event year-round and there are currently discussions being held about moving to an early time slot, to maintain daylight hours, during the winter. 

“I know it’s only going to get bigger and we would like more people to help out. I know people don’t want to come out every Saturday night, but people could do little things: make something and drop it off, or just tell us where you are and we’ll tell someone to come get it. We live all over Saratoga County,” she says.  

The group has created a Facebook page - StreetSoldiers II Saratoga – which contains a “wish list” of supplies and food and information about how others may get involved.

“Sometimes people feel invisible. When someone pays attention, someone who touches your heart, it can make all the difference,” Duhame says. “It’s just human kindness.” 

Michael John Stone shows his appreciation for the Saratoga Street Soldiers, Saturday night Aug. 10, 2018. Photo by SuperSource Media.

SARATOGA SPRINGS – The city’s history reveals itself room-by-room in the two-story building Minnie Bolster called home.

Bolster, who died last December at the age of 97, collected Saratoga Springs related memorabilia for more than a half-century. Several thousand pieces of her collection will be offered in a public sale, which begins Friday morning.

“She tried to save everything, from all the hotels and the restaurants: the menus, the keys, photographs and posters, some bottles,” says Rosemary Gold, Bolster’s niece and one of a group of a half-dozen family members coordinating the estate sale.

“I had asked her what she envisioned and we’re trying to do this the way she would have wanted,” Gold says.

The initial thought was to have everything go to one buyer. When that didn’t pan out, the family thought to offer the items individually and stage the sale of Saratoga memorabilia in Saratoga.

“There are so many things we’ve come across - all from her 50-year-plus of collecting Saratoga. She was just dedicated to Saratoga. She grew up here and she loved the city,” says Gold. A sale of some antiques was held at the end of June. “It was successful, but it was antiques. You can put a value on that. This one: how do you put a value on something where you’ve never seen another one like it?”

Bolster, whose brother-in-law was photographer and photo collector George Bolster, served as president of the city's historical society for nearly a decade, chaired the annual antique show for more than a quarter century and was the longtime secretary to the late state Supreme Court Judge Michael Sweeney.

During visits to her home, she would happily tell you she was born and raised on the city's West Side and proudly offer that she was a Saratoga Springs High School graduate of the Class of '38. With the confidence of a historian - and while flanked by drawings of bemonocled men beneath top hats and well-dressed ladies pinched at the waist - Bolster would explain how the springs originally brought visitors to the city, but it was the grand hotels and the racing that kept them coming. Bolster published a handful of books about her family and Saratoga. Her collection is so vast, researchers would visit her home to review and peruse the many pieces of the city’s past.

“She’s preserved things for the next generation, or two,” says Gold, seated in a room Bolster called her Revolutionary War room, draped with wallpaper that depicts soldiers at the Battle of Saratoga. Upstairs, in the “Saratoga Room,” vintage newspapers are collaged onto the walls. In between, there are rarely seen maps, engraved souvenir silverware, and a banister from the United States Hotel that was made into a lamp. There is a plethora of glassware, shelves lined with books, paperweights, miniature cups engraved with intricate designs and vintage chairs. There are room keys that once opened the doors inside the city’s grand hotels that are now, no longer there. There is a baton with a ribbon and accompanying dried flowers that date to the city’s floral fete in the late 19th century. And there are thousands of photographs.

The estate sale takes place 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, Aug. 10 through Sunday, Aug. 12 at 161 Church St.

“I think we’ll probably have a long line at the door,” Gold says. “We’re hoping people turn out to get a little piece of her history.”  

SARATOGA SPRINGS - In the age of social platforms, event hashtags and electronic invites, it was a dinosaur. Suddenly one recent weekday morning, it was no more. 

The Caroline Street Register stood fixed to a building on the south side of Caroline Street for approximately a half-century – the notice board a tapestry of flyers and posters and postcard-size bulletins that for several decades freely publicized city staged events. An adjacent plank which runs along the billboard’s left side lists 20 different businesses – and alongside, each business’ motto - a heavy plank reminder of the city’s funkier and hands-on, do-it-yourself past.

When the building was undergoing an exterior paint job recently, workers removed the large sign, apparently targeted for the trash pile. Local resident Stephen Smigielski was working at a nearby eatery at the time.

“I saw it sitting against the lamppost, just waiting for the dumpster,” Smigielski says. “The garbage truck was pulling up and I was like, whoa, whoa…”

Jim Stanley, who runs the Tin & Lint located a few yards from the board’s long-standing position, estimates the register has clung to the Caroline Street wall since probably the early 1970s. The business listings had been updated and repainted at least twice since that time, he added.

“I grew up in the ‘70s in Saratoga Springs,” Smigielski explained. “I remember a lot of the places being boarded up when the town was not as booming as it is now. That sign was always there. It was there when we were teenagers. I didn’t want it to hit the bonfire.”

Smigielski rescued the sign and placed it in a toolshed for safekeeping. Beneath a stencil burgundy-fade that reads “notices,” it remains as it was, festooned with staples and push-pins and swatches of flyers that existed the day the board came down.  The “register” position holds a listing of businesses that date to the 1970s - some which continue to exist to the present day, others not as fortunate and obliterated by time.

Desperate Annie’s – with its’ motto “Lively Libations,” the Tin & Lint - “an American Bar,” Gaffney’s, Sperry’s, and the Vault – “coin shop and baseball cards,” maintain their respective businesses on Caroline Street.     

Some have been replaced by other businesses:   E.H. Holland (“70 years of Service”) most recently was the site of One Caroline Street Bistro; Boyce & Drake plumbing and heating currently sites Hamlet & Ghost; Madame Jumel’s “dining emporium” has been transformed into Dango’s pub; Aiko’s is today the Spa City Tap and Barrel, and Side St. Saloon (“Drinks Galore”) morphed into Clancy’s Tavern. 

Gone are the Coronet Press (“Printers Extraordinaire”), Ambience Unlimited (custom audio environments), Jah Skates and Reggae Shop, Esthetiques (European nail and skin care center), Duval’s (games of chance), Hal Bigelow (custom cabinetry), Kitsch (non-essentials), Northwind Graphics (silkscreen prints), The Sideline (food emporium) and Discline – whose motto was “CD’s Forever.” 

Some of the businesses existed in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, which suggests that may have been the last time the registry was updated.

Preserving the sign was Smigielski’s main purpose. He has no specific plans regarding its future destination, other than it should be somewhere where people can see it and where it will continue to be preserved.   

“I’m not looking for financial gain, but I am looking for it to find a home,” he says. “Even if it sits in a shed for the rest of its life, my first thought was: let’s save this.”  

“It was a wild ride sometimes and you never really knew what to expect from him, but we were all really close. He was always kind to us, always respectful and without a doubt the funniest guy I’ve ever known.”

–Teri Coté, longtime drummer of the David Cassidy Band, who will perform in a special one-off David Cassidy Tribute Concert in Saratoga Springs Aug. 14.

Teri Coté was 6 years old when the popular Partridge Family TV show concluded its four-year-run of 96 episodes in 1974. A year or two later, inspired by the music of Michael Jackson and Earth, Wind and Fire, she was drawn to the drum kit.  

“That’s when I discovered I wanted to be a drummer, or, actually when the drums chose me,” says Coté, who became a member of the David Cassidy Band in 2003. It is a role she filled for more than a decade.

“He was a really nice guy and it was a lot of fun. We had some wild moments - he was a wild character, you know? But, always very loving to the band, even during the times when he was having a rough time,” she says.

Cassidy’s musical inspiration came from people like Jimi Hendrix and the Yardbirds, but his massive popularity as a teen idol in the early 1970s cemented an image ultimately impossible to shed. “It was a cage he couldn’t break out of - and he did try - but it didn’t work. I think he had a lot of frustration with that,” Coté says.

As a bandleader, Coté says Cassidy liked to keep things fresh, at times changing pre-written setlists at the last instant and creating unpredictable moments. “He liked that energy, creating that intensity. After being who he was in his heyday, I think he really craved that energy, creating excitement in his shows. One way or another he would make sure that was happening.”

Cassidy’s fan base, while not as large in number as once had been, was nonetheless just as energetic and intense. “We saw a lot of people in the front rows who were regulars. They would come from all over the world - which boggled our minds. They just loved him,” says Coté, who makes her home in Massachusetts, just north of Boston.

During some show segments, Cassidy and Coté would swap onstage roles - she picking up the microphone at center stage to sing the Pretenders’ song “Brass in Pocket,” and Cassidy taking a seat behind the drum kit, keeping the beat.    

“When he sat to play the drums, he looked like a 12-year-old kid with this huge smile on his face,” Coté says. “He was just…so ecstatic. I admired that he would just let it show like that. I think sometimes he just wanted to disappear into the band and just be an I’m-one-of-the-guys kind of thing.”

The brief role-swapping scenario was played out in a March 2017 show at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in Times Square. Coté, who took a short break from the band a year-and-a-half earlier, returned that night for a special appearance with Cassidy’s band. The set began with a performance of “C'mon Get Happy,” and concluded 15 songs later with a performance of “I Think I Love You.” It would be the final concert Cassidy and the band would play. Less than nine months later, the 67-year-old singer died from liver and kidney failure.

Coté and a varied alumnus from the Cassidy band will perform for the first time together since Cassidy’s death in a special tribute on Aug. 14 in Saratoga Springs. The show will also serve as a fundraiser for the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation - an organization close to the singer’s heart. Vance Brescia, longtime guitarist and music director for Peter Noone, will handle a good portion of the vocal duties. Popular horse trainer and bass player Gary Contessa is also expected to join the band onstage.

“It’s going to be exciting. Everybody’s a great player and we’ll be getting together to rehearse the day before,” says Coté, who maintains a busy schedule between teaching assignments, performing gigs and showcasing her own jewelry line. She and her husband, who is also a drummer, operate a drum shop – soon to expand to three music shops in the state - where she teaches the art of percussion.

After more than a decade of performances with Cassidy, one of Coté’s everlasting memories of Cassidy was his sense of humor.   

“David would make us laugh so much. He was really funny. He got that from his dad (Jack Cassidy), I think. He really believed his dad was the funniest person he ever knew,” Coté says. “We had a good friendship, a joke-filled relationship. I have some friends who have a great sense of humor, but David really took the cake. His sense of humor…I really miss that.”

The David Cassidy Tribute Concert will take place 8 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 14 at the Horseshoe Inn, located at 9 Gridley Ave., Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and will benefit the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation.

Tickets are $50 and available by calling TRF at 518-226-0028 or online at https://www.trfinc.org/event/david-cassidy-band-special-guests/.