August 24, 1998

Bad Vibes in a Hippie Haven

By JOSEPH BERGER

ROSENDALE, N.Y. -- This country town had something of
a raffish reputation long before the artists and
hippies began showing up three decades ago.

Rosendale's limestone hills produced the natural cement
used in the foundations for the Brooklyn Bridge and the
Statue of Liberty, and many older residents still
remember when thirsty miners could choose from among 14
bars along Main Street's boisterous quarter-mile.

Though the last cement mine closed in 1971, the town's
unpretentious and tolerant tradition served it well
during the influx of painters, musicians, flower
children, New Age spiritualists and gay people who made
no secret of their homosexuality. The town, in Ulster
County two hours north of Manhattan, seemed to absorb
them in stride.

But the newcomers are not so new or young anymore. They
have come to constitute at least a quarter of the town's
6,220 residents, and many of them want more of a say in
determining its destiny, particularly that of its
pleasantly anachronistic Main Street.

They want to give Main Street a more cultural flavor.
Although they have no master plan, they want to convert
a ramshackle Grange Hall, where farmers' wives once
sewed quilts, into a theater for experimental plays.

They want to hold rock concerts in the Widow Jane Mine,
a defunct shaft not far from Main Street. They want
livelier shops and restaurants and more sidewalk trees.

Many old-timers, however, are bridling, not, they say,
because the so-called newcomers' life styles are
idiosyncratic, but because their vision for Main Street
ignores several realities. There is not enough parking
on a thoroughfare sandwiched between the old Delaware
and Hudson Canal and Rondout Creek, they say. Most
forsaken storefronts have already been converted into
modestly priced homes. The town, which in the most
recent census had a median family income of $36,875,
cannot afford to pay for sidewalk improvements, town
leaders say. Most important, the old-timers say, the
newcomers are cavalier about fire and safety laws.

Many old-timers, in fact, would not mind keeping
Rosendale as sleepy as it is.

"They'll turn this town into a Woodstock" is the way
Burt Johnson, the town's crusty dog warden, speaks of
the insurgents.

"They want to get rid of us old-timers and take over the
town," says Hatch Van Kleeck, a retired engineer who has
lived in and around Rosendale all his life.

High noon in the battle for the soul of Rosendale is
approaching. In the Sept. 15 Democratic primary, Scott
Cranin and Brian Cafferty, two leaders of the
insurgents, are running, along with seven allies, for 9
of the 10 seats on the Rosendale Democratic Committee,
which will select candidates for town supervisor and
Town Board in the 1999 elections.

The discord in Rosendale is typical of social tensions
that crop up in mall-battered towns trying to revitalize
their Main Streets, according to the National Main
Street Center in Washington, a division of the nonprofit
National Trust for Historic Preservation that gives
grants for preservation projects.

"Figuring out what the future of the downtown will be
calls into play a lot of conflicts that are inherent in
a community already," said Kennedy Lawson Smith,
director of the center, which has advised 1,400 towns on
sprucing up their Main Streets. "The key is getting
every group on the same page."

In Rosendale's case, Cafferty and Cranin, who are gay,
attribute much of the resistance to an undertow of
discomfort with the unconventional immigrants, who have
grown stronger as their numbers have increased and they
have begun flexing their political muscle.

The two men remember the posters defaced with anti-gay
slurs during last year's election campaign, in which
Cafferty, a 39-year-old television commercial salesman,
lost the race for supervisor by roughly 100 votes.

"They view artists, writers, gay people, musicians as a
threat to their existence," said Cranin, 41, of the town
leaders.

Jeannie Fleming-Laik, the victorious Town Supervisor and
a nurse by profession, rejects charges of bigotry, and
says the political leadership has always been
broad-minded.

"Here, nobody cares what your life style is," Ms. Laik
said. "It never was a problem until it was convenient to
say it was a problem." She said she believes that
Cafferty and Cranin are making their charges for
political reasons.

"I am not homophobic. I have nothing against the arts
community. But we represent a large cross section of the
community," she added, referring to the old-timers.

Despite the tension, good feelings predominate.

"Rosendale is very tolerant," said Jodi Palinkas, who
co-owns Main Street's vintage-clothing store. "I don't
get a feeling of any clashing of two worlds. I get this
really good Mayberry feeling here."

Anita Wetzel, who helped found the Women's Studio
Workshop 24 years ago as a visual arts center, said
artists have never been hassled. "This political thing
has stirred more antagonism" than she has ever known,
she said.

Rosendale's Main Street once had shops that sold meat,
hardware and prescription drugs to farmers and
carpenters as well as workers for the phone and
electricity companies and the International Business
Machines Corporation, which has offices nearby. But the
large malls in nearby Kingston killed the shops off. The
sign for Vaughn's Pharmacy can be hazily detected like a
pentimento under the painted face of one house.

Today's shops are a rather eclectic mix that reflects
the town's split personality. There is a barbershop, a
print shop, a law office and a faded movie theater that
charges $3 for first-run films. But there is also a
vegetarian cafe known for its first-class music, a
glass-blowing studio in an abandoned church, two
antiques stores and a video store owned by Cranin that
has 21 Ingmar Bergman titles.

The artists and other newcomers, who were drawn here by
country calm, cheap rents, a populace that wasn't
priggish and a longing for community, say they do not
want to see the town gentrified with chain stores and
boutiques or developed into another Woodstock, whose
often crowded Main Street has several tourist shops
selling 60's schlock.

Still, some shopkeepers and landlords complain that
every effort to open something new in town is met with
grinding battles over zoning and parking spaces.

"The Old Guard is anti-hippie," said Li Daniels, a real
estate broker who started visiting Rosendale on weekends
when she lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and
eventually moved here.

"People who were born here appear to resent outsiders,
and those of us who have come here don't consider
ourselves outsiders. We've been here 20 to 30 years and
we're the ones who have restored Main Street."

Two incidents rankle. Last summer, the tumbledown Grange
Hall presented a season's worth of experimental plays
for crowds of 80 people a night, but in October the town
building inspector closed the hall, saying it lacked a
firewall and proper wiring. Walter K. Helmuth, a retired
cameraman who bought the building 25 years ago for
$12,500, said he and a local theater group did not
believe they could raise the $60,000 that repairs would
have cost.

"Things in small towns work in funny ways," he said.
"There's lots of cases where the letter of the law
requires something or other and people don't get around
to it. And other times you have to reach for the letter
of the law to make something happen."

Cafferty and Cranin contend that if town leaders had a
broader vision they would have tried to work with the
theater group, perhaps by applying for government
grants, to help rehabilitate the building cheaply.

Cafferty said he was also troubled that town leaders
bowed to the wishes of residents who objected to the
theatergoers.

Hatch Van Kleeck's wife, Harriet, who has lived in
Rosendale for 52 years, did complain at one public
meeting about theatergoers loitering in alleys near her
house.

"After awhile it felt like we were the outsiders," she
said in an interview.

The other incident took place away from the town center,
but it crystallized fears about what a new cultural era
would bring. For many years, the town has held an annual
street festival with musicians and vendors that draws
30,000 people. Two years ago, that event was followed by
a concert at the Widow Jane Mine that became known as
the "Rave in the Cave." More than 3,000 tickets were
sold -- the Supervisor claims that 5,000 people attended
-- and roads were clogged. There was a small fire that
organizers put out, but firefighters were frustrated by
the traffic, and let officials know.

Town Board members met in emergency session and, citing
a violation of residential zoning laws, sued the mine's
owner, the Century House Historical Society, whose
president is Dietrich Werner, a bearded history buff and
a leader of the insurgent Democrats. Ultimately, Justice
Vincent G. Bradley of State Supreme Court in Kingston
ordered a limit of 750 people at future gatherings at
the site.

Werner is still angry.

"This is the only town that when the historical society
has a successful event, they take them to court --
hello?" said Werner, 56, who came here in 1971.

There have been efforts to mediate. Earlier this year,
Alan Lomita, a transplanted Brooklynite who is an Ulster
County Legislator, offered Cafferty and Cranin three
seats on the Democratic Committee, what he called "a
foot in the door." But the challengers wanted four, and
when they were rebuffed, they fielded a slate of nine
candidates.

Most residents say they wish the dispute would be ironed
out so life can return to its characteristic quiet.

"I'm hoping they figure this out," said Ms. Wetzel, the
Women's Studio founder, "because the Old Guard isn't
going to disappear and I don't like the idea of the New
Guard taking over like a charge."

Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company