🙅Saratoga's anti-screen movement (this might hurt!)
🥐 BUT FIRST: Bear's Cup review (are the lines worth it?), Susan Orlean, and remembering a lifelong local who was also one of our oldest (105).
🥳 Happy New Year, Dispatchers! We were (past tense) going to take this week off, but so many of you sent (very kind) notes asking where we were…
Talk about the biggest compliment we could dream up at this still-early stage of our start-up! THANK YOU.
So we’re coming back early— with a slightly abbreviated schedule (TBD).
Enjoy!
As always, simply reply to this email with feedback, notes, a story idea — or just to say hi!
— Abby Tegnelia, Saratoga Dispatch
🥐 (REVIEW): Bear’s Cup Bakehouse’s sweet debut
Now that things have settled a bit, are the lines worth it?
SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY — Saratoga Springs is an excitable place full of passionate foodies and lovers of novelty. So when a new restaurant or bar opens, as Bear’s Cup Bakehouse did Dec. 18, expect a crowd. But the lines at this new Broadway hotspot — snaking outside, in the winter — have been nothing short of impressive, even by Spa City standards.
“The overwhelming excitement around it has been insane,” says owner Danielle DeSantis. “I knew it would be busy, but the demand has been bigger than we anticipated.”
Danielle and fellow-owner and husband Louis DeSantis are as thrilled to be here (the couple also have a seasonal, popular location in Bolton Landing) as we are to have them.
And they appear more equipped than the average bear to contend with the onslaught of moms, dads, tweens, teens, toddlers, retirees and gaggles of roving college students who gather at their cavernous space for bagels and cream cheese (four and seven types, respectively), pro-level baked goods (I can check my hair in the lamination on that croissant), and imaginative sandwiches (come for the bacon, egg, and cheese on a plump-but-not-bloated toasted everything; stay for the open-faced New Yorker with cream cheese, smoked salmon and all the expected accoutrements on a toasted sesame).
“Great pastries, great coffee, great bagels and great service don’t happen without top-notch quality and great training,” Danielle tells me, explaining that she works the day shift back-of-house training staff and making sure all of the from-scratch baked goods are up to snuff, while her husband oversees the baking overnight. “Pastries and bagels have always been our bread and butter — no pun intended — but I’ve been surprised by how popular pastries [in Saratoga] are versus bagels, which sold out consistently in Bolton.”
I visited a few times recently, once with a friend and our daughters and once with girlfriends, and in each case, the lines were long but the staff was incredibly efficient, warm and welcoming.
My 13-year-old daughter, Emily, whose hobbies include critiquing other people’s baked goods while enthusiastically consuming them, was notably smitten with Bear’s Cup’s blueberry muffins.
“Usually when I buy a muffin and bite into it, I think, ‘This over-processed monster is going to give me cancer in 20 years,’” she says. “But this one was magnificent. I can’t believe how many blueberries they got in there, and yet the texture was light and fluffy, with a perfect crumble on top. Like, seriously, it has literally dozens of blueberries.”
Like, seriously, and literally, people, I concur.
And don’t skip the coffee. There are the classics, of course—espressos, flat whites, cortados et al — but Bear’s Cup also serves up creative cold options from taps, including cold brew, nitro cold brew and vanilla oat matcha.
“We’re building something sustainable — not something that feels fast, rushed or throw-away,” Danielle says. “It’s an in-person experience. We care; we care a lot.”
Visit Bear’s Cup at 543 Broadway, open 8 a.m. Tues-Sun.
🥂Other openings!
Congrats to Phila Street’s new restaurant, Elody (from the couple behind the former 13 North), which just enjoyed its Grand Opening weekend.
The Marriott’s AC Hotel Saratoga Springs (past Thirsty Owl on the way out of downtown) started taking guests Dec. 16. Did we mention the tapas bar?
In brief
🕊️105-year-old, lifelong local remembered
On Sunday, friends and family remembered Nellie S. Johnson, who passed away on New Year’s Eve at the age of 105, according to the Daily Gazette. The lifelong local was born in Fort Ann (on Dec. 21, 1920), worked in Ballston Spa, lived in Malta, and loved camping on Long Lake.
Johnson was one of the oldest living Capital Regionites, loved to travel, and was a member of the Simpson United Methodist Church in Rock City Falls.
This past August, Paula Griffith — one of the oldest living Americans — turned 111 in Saratoga, reported the Times Union.
📖 Journo portrayed by Meryl Streep visits Saratoga
The great Susan Orlean — a journalist famous for not having a “beat” as she hunts for unique stories and then goes deep in the reporting — stopped through Saratoga on the book tour for her memoir, Joyride, reports Jonathon Norcross in Saratoga Today.
The book delves into not only her own life but the stories she’s covered, Norcross writes, such as, “What does it feel like to be welcomed into a cult commune? How did a horticulturist come to be arrested for poaching rare flowers? What is the life of an ordinary 10-year-old suburban boy really like? What exactly goes on at the World Taxidermy Championships?”
For more info, check out the full interview. (I didn’t even get to Meryl Streep!)
For a more exhaustive aggregate of Saratoga news, please subscribe to my partner Saratoga Report for a morning run-down that’s emailed daily!
🙅Anti-screen time movement kicks off in Saratoga Springs
The time we spend on our screens is staggering, but a well-timed event at SPAC started an inspiring anti-online movement in Saratoga.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY — Feel like screen time is all your family tunes into these days?
We all know we do it, but the numbers feel like a gut punch. For starters, the average U.S. child age 8 to 18 spends 7.5 hours a day watching or using screens.
And how about…you? This might hurt, but a local expert says getting your kids onboard with reduced online time is going to have to start with us adults.
“We all know there’s often a double standard in terms of what we do ourselves, and what we ask our kids to do, especially when it comes to screen time,” says Leah Ferrone, a Saratoga Springs-based certified mindfulness and yoga practitioner. “But the reality is, if we expect good behavior and mindfulness with screen time, we have to model it.”
Americans spend an average of seven hours, three minutes online a day — or about 18 years of their lives.
Not good news for your average American; we spend an average of seven hours, three minutes online a day — or about 18 years of our lives.
But — in Saratoga at least — there is hope.
A Cultural Shift
Just as many local parents were starting to feel uneasy about all of this screen time, a well-timed SPAC in Conversation event in October inspired change that is kicking the New Year off right.
“Many of us, especially parents, are realizing that they need to make changes, and they are not only happy to do it for their children, they want to do it for themselves too,” says Ferrone, who founded Brave Lion Wholehearted Wellness to offer neuroscience-based solutions to caretakers, children and educators. “When Julie Scelfo [a journalist who went on to found Mothers Against Media Addiction, or MAMA] came to speak at a SPAC event, it kicked off a movement in Saratoga.”
A Saratoga Springs chapter of MAMA has been formed, and organizers are reaching out to schools to come up with realistic solutions.
Ferrone says that several of the mothers organized a loose event at Walt & Whitman following the consternation and questions raised by the SPAC luncheon, with dozens showing up to mingle and discuss real solutions. Currently, a Saratoga Springs chapter of MAMA has been formed, and organizers are reaching out to schools to come up with realistic solutions.
Through Brave Lion, Ferrone has also organized several events for adults, teens and children that focus on being present, with other humans.
“Last summer I did summer socials at Pitney Meadows, where everyone checked their phone into a little hotel before going into the gathering,” Ferrone says. “We had games like tug of war, cards and yard games. People — adults and kids — just played. It was freeing for everyone.”
👀 Keep reading!
This year, Brave Lion hopes to restart the popular outdoor series when the warm sun makes its glorious return. In the meantime, Brave Lion is available for formal training workshops for educators, in-school mindfulness training, and teen retreats.
“It doesn’t have to be all or nothing,” Ferrone says. “One of the most important things you can do is talk to your kids honestly about what you both see and learn online, what you like and don’t like.”
📌 ICYMI…
Your top stories of the year! HINT: You all love your celebs. And real estate.
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