Last Saturday occasioned the 24th annual Saratoga Chowderfest under sunny skies and unseasonably warm temperatures. Ours is a city of 27,000 souls, but an additional 40,000 or so showed up to consume an ocean of chowder - some 111,000 servings from 82 different eateries. As a landlocked burgh, we have no direct connection to fish or bivalves of any kind, but taking tourist money is a core competency here; we don’t know how to do anything else. In the middle-of-nowhere upstate New York, we have a great huge wide main street with great huge wide sidewalks because, in 1810, a guy called Guidon Putnam said, “This is going to be a big tourist town and we need to have room to the carriages around”. Oh, how right you were, GP. Ah, but there’s a snag, you see.
© 2024 John Oliver
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