Crazies, start your engines!
(Just, no motors, please!)
Purveyors of wacky and wild vehicles are invited to compete on Tannersville’s Main Street on Saturday, July 26 as part of the 8th Annual Tannersville Crazy Race & Festival.
Participants simply have to create their own motor-free cars — using anything from Santa sleighs, flower pots or garbage cans — and be ready to race starting at 2 p.m.
Above: Camille Zamora performs zarzuela.
Each year, Phoenicia’s International Festival of the Voice kicks off with something akin to a barn raising. Volunteers unload a massive 5,000-square-foot stage with large white tents flanking from its roost in a local barn and put it together in Parish Park in the tiny hamlet of Phoenicia in Ulster County.
The tent is already up and ready for this year's festival, which kicks off next Wednesday, July 30, with a theme of “Celebrating Spain.” The five days of vocal events and lectures spread across eight local venues offer a wealth of flamenco and salsa-inspired numbers along with gospel, Jewish liturgical music, shape note singing, and the centerpiece performance of "The Barber of Seville."
This weekend, Mike La Casas will create an entire galaxy, complete with stars, planets, rings and meteors. And by Monday, it will most likely be gone.
La Casas, 53, has been composing chalk drawings of galaxies, animals and dinosaurs since he first heard about street art on a radio segment 20 years ago.
On an impulse, he picked up some chalk that day, and still hasn’t stopped.
He said the impermanence of chalk art is part of its allure — it’s what makes it a distinct medium.
And because these pieces of art are fleeting and temporary, unlike other visual artists, chalk artists craft their work for an audience.
“There’s no studio that will let you watch an artist paint,” La Casas said. “This is unique.”
La Casas said he likens street art to performance art, because watching someone create the piece, and the banter between audience and artist, are just as much a part of the experience as appreciating the finished product.
An ongoing investigation into heroin and other illegal drug sales in Delaware County has led to the recent arrests of two local people on sealed grand jury indictments, the Delaware County Sheriff's Office announced Friday.
Arrested on Thursday, July 17 were 31-year-old Gerard Johnson of Walton, who faces charges stemming from the alleged sale of heroin in the village of Walton in June, and 41-year-old Cindy Manon of Arkville, who is accused of selling suboxone in the hamlet of Arkville. Both were arraigned in Delaware County court on Friday and remanded to the Delaware County jail without bail.
“I just stared and said ‘Oh, that’s my restaurant.’ This is my dream,” said Paula Douralas, proprietor and chef of Petra Estiatorio, the Greek restaurant that opened at Shephard Hills Golf Club over the Fourth of July weekend.
Last winter, Douralas visited Shephard Hills, and fell in love. Something about driving up the winding road on a pristine wintery day to the stone restaurant clubhouse took her breath away.
“I was shocked and couldn’t help looking at it. It was all white with snow. I was in paradise.”
The route Douralas took to arrive at Shephard Hills was just as full of twists and turns. Born in Greece, she came to the U.S. at age 7 with her parents who settled in Stamford, Conn.
“I was always cooking with my mother,” she said. “She said ‘If you don’t do it right, don’t do it.’
The recipes she uses were those passed down from her Greek grandmother. Ingredients were never measured, but always just right.
“My mother said ‘God gave you a brain and eyes to use.’ My hand, this is my scale,” she said.
This summer, the Catskills Outdoor Guide is partnering with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the Catskill Watershed Corporation to bring you our new Catskill Reservoir Paddler embroidered badge, which you can only earn by paddling a specific reservoir each month.
In July, the spotlight is on the Neversink Reservoir. Paddle the Neversink anytime between July 1 and 31, send in your proof, and a Catskill Reservoir Paddler badge will be yours. Click here or scroll down for full redemption instructions.
At five miles long, the Neversink reservoir is the smallest of the Catskills reservoirs supplying water to NYC. It's also the southernmost of the four Catskills reservoirs that are open to recreational boating, making it the most convenient one to drive from NYC -- just head up Route 17 in Sullivan County and turn right.
Beneath the waters of the Neversink are the ghost towns of Bittersweet and Aden, both of which were forced to relocate when the reservoir was built in the 1950s, displacing hundreds of residents.
There are two boat launches that lead into the Neversink Reservoir: Chandlerss Cove and Kramers Cove, both on the west side of the reservoir off Aden Road. For a detailed map of the Neversink and its boat launches, click here.
You can get your boat steam-cleaned for the Neversink at Cannie D’s Corner Corp. (845-985-2076, 4 Schumway Road, Neversink) or at the Eureka Market (845-985-5152, 7991 State Route 55, Grahamsville). And you can rent a boat at Bradley Boat Rentals (845-807-1145, 220 Lindholm Road, Hurleyville).
For our five-step guide to boating NYC's Catskills reservoirs, click here.
Above: Photo from the scene of an accident on Route 30 posted to Schoharie Fire Wire and News. For more photos from the scene, see their Facebook page.
A collision between an SUV and a truck hauling a dumpster on Wednesday morning left two men injured and forced the shutdown of Route 30 in Blenheim, police said.
A fierce storm that blew through the tiny Sullivan County hamlet of Parksville on Sunday, July 13 has been determined to be a tornado, National Weather Service meteorologists say.
A team from the NWS's Binghamton office, whose territory includes Sullivan County along with 23 other counties in central New York and northeastern Pennsylvania, visited the site of the storm in Parksville on Tuesday to survey the damage. The team found severe tree damage in a small area around two homes, although the homes themselves had only minor damage from the storm. No one was injured during the storm.
Winds from the Parksville tornado reached 90 miles per hour, making it an "EF-1" storm. The NWS's scale for rating tornadoes runs from EF-0 (winds of 65 to 85 miles per hour) to EF-5 (over 200 miles per hour).
Above: A Hudson Project festgoer earns her 15 minutes of Internet fame, as she shrieks at the river of trash and belongings running through her campsite. Source: The Festive Owl's Facebook page.
A Delaware County judge has refused to hold the Harpersfield-based New York Safety Track (NYST) and its manager, Greg Lubinitsky, in contempt for allegedly violating a declaratory judgement that prohibited racing, automobiles, large engines, and large crowds.
Opponents of NYST have argued that throughout May 2014, the track violated the judgement with the presence of automobiles, more than six motorcycles, and more than 25 people at a time.
In a July 8 decision, Judge Brian Burns wrote that his hands are tied in a matter that the town of Harpersfield must enforce.
"A finding of contempt is not authorized for alleged violations of a declaratory judgement under our laws," Burns wrote, adding that the opponents of the track "must rely on their municipality to enforce its local laws."
