121. Health Care

James: [00:00:00] How has the acclimation been? It's been great. Thank God for Google, and the friend who lives in Cairo, and she, for a living, makes HGTV type home renovation shows. Oh. So I moved up here with a cheat. I have a person up here who knows how to do everything and knows the people. So I kind of thought I'd be like, great, I'll use her contractors.

I'll use her plumber. I'll use her everything as it. Turns out people don't cross the river, so, right. So I, yeah, I tried to call people over there. They wouldn't come over here. I've been finding my own people little by little, but she is an amazing resource for knowing how to do stuff. So I'll ask her, do you think this project I wanna do on the house is truly DIY?

Can I learn how to do it? Or is this something I should outsource? For instance, I have a little guest apartment, which is a crazy thing to say. Moving from Brooklyn and having lived in the city, it sounds so

Mat: indulgent, but it's so normal. It's like having an outbuilding, you know? Yeah. And I have one of those too.

Oh, you have out buildings! I love out buildings.

James: Yeah. I have a little barn that a friend is gonna [00:01:00] rent out as a wood shop in exchange for doing some work on the house, which is You're

Mat: bartering labor. Yeah.

James: I'm really settling it. That's a life goal. I'm so excited about that.

Song: Down in the valley, moved up from the city. It's a new way of living and I'm trying get used to one park, have announced of an idiot ordered a Manhattan, and they called me a cidiot. At first it hurt my feelings, but now I'm getting used to it.[00:02:00]

I'm looking.

Mat: I am Mat Zucker, and this is Cidiot: Learning to live and love life in the Hudson Valley. As you know, I love meeting new people, and not just new to me, but new to the Hudson Valley. There's an excitement and energy of trading favorite places and discoveries. I always have 10,000 spots and tips to pass on, and yes, even after 11 plus years, I keep hearing about new things.

Today you're in for a favorite new person. James Lauren is a nurse practitioner who recently opened up a primary care clinic here in Hudson. James is not only a health practitioner, but a new homeowner and bravely let me try in-person recording at his adorable farmhouse with my slick new recording system.

We talk about primary care, what it means, and why it matters, who their clinic serves. Short answer: everybody. And that I can't buy a double appointment apparently. But we also chat about being a new homeowner, the city and the [00:03:00] country, bartering labor, talking to people, being nice, painting a subfloor, which is a thing, and what a carpet knife is.

Yes, I am still learning new things. We talk about how welcoming this area is for people like us and our favorite places as well, including ice cream spots. I really do need to make a proper list. Tune in. It's my first in-person recording other than Upstate Art Weekend, and Sheep and Wool, with my niece in-law more than a year ago, so you'll hear a few cars pass by, but excited to take this journalism on the road.

Hi James. Hello. So nice to be in person together. Yes, I'm glad we made it work. Yeah, I do mostly my recordings remote, but I just got this new system, so I'm excited to be. In person. So we're sitting in your brand new house too?

James: Yes. You're one of my first guests.

Mat: Oh my goodness. So like tell us about your connection to the Hudson Valley and.

Your move up here? 'cause it [00:04:00] was very recent.

James: Yes. So I only got here full time a month ago. I grew up in Long Island, so I used to come apple picking like people do who are from Long Island. I did my first bachelor's up in Syracuse in fine art. And then I went to NYU for nursing. So I did the full sort of rotation through the state from Long Island all the way up to Western New York, then to the city, and then I think through the pipeline.

The next step was Hudson Valley.

Mat: Oh my God. How did you choose to move here?

James: I have friends who moved to Cairo. Yep. In 2020. Oh, you pronounced it correctly. I learned the hard way. You can imagine. Yeah. My friend moved to Cairo in 2020, and she has this incredible house. And she's been there for five years.

I've been visiting the whole time and I've been threatening to open up a clinic up here ever since I visited her for the first time 'cause it was just so beautiful. I was just so taken aback by how beautiful everything was. And as a [00:05:00] queer person, my main reason for not doing it earlier was I was always a little worried what it would be like up here.

Sure. People were nice and through her experience and all of her friends were really cool. She has a really diverse friend group, all ages, races, sexualities, and I was like, oh, there's a million different kinds of people up here and everyone's nice. Yeah. So visiting her for five years, I had decided when I finished my doctorate, which was set for May, 2025, I was gonna move up and that's exactly what I did.

Mat: One sidebar on the queer community for me is that I find upstate, I don't know if you have found this is, it is more. Multi-generational. It is more mixed. I just found in the city, like all the gay guys hung out together, lesbians, like it was very segregated. And up here it's 'cause everywhere around shows up at the potluck.

James: Yeah. And I, I've only been here again full time for one month, so I haven't met a ton of people yet. For instance, I live a couple miles away from a vintage shop called [00:06:00] Sideshow Vintage. And I walked in there and it's owned by this woman named Mary, who is so sweet and has connection to the queer community and just right away welcomed me in and said, you have community here, and that was too long.

Oh, she said that. She said that. Yeah. So I was just so excited and that kind of keeps being my experience. I live right by Random Harvest, which I'm sure we'll talk about later, but there's even the signs up around town, there's rainbows everywhere and stuff, and I wasn't. I didn't need to move into the neighborhood, but

Mat: Right.

James: I was also very excited to move somewhere where it seemed like there just really is a diversity of people. I'm certainly have nothing to worry about being the only one. Yeah, not at all. I know Hudson, generally speaking, has a large gay community anyway, and then I didn't know what it would be like a little bit outside of town.

It's amazing. Yeah,

Mat: I think it's a great area too. So I really wanted to talk about both your experience moving up here. Because you are newer than me, but I think you are better equipped than I was. Just a suspicion that most people are, and then also about your business, about the [00:07:00] clinic. So you're two months in.

So what has the Yeah. Acclimation been like this morning we were texting about carpet knife blades, which I need to know you were talking about. I was gonna Google until you sent me a picture.

James: Yeah,

Mat: but how has the acclimation been?

James: It's been great. Thank God for Google and the friend that I told you about who lives in Cairo, her name is Lindsay, and she.

For a living makes HGTV type home renovation shows. Oh. So I moved up here with a cheat. I said, I have a person up here who knows how to do everything and knows the people. So I thought I'd be like, great, I'll use her contractors. I'll use her plumber, I'll use her. Everything. As it turns out, people don't cross the river.

So I, yeah, I tried to call people over there. They wouldn't come over here. I've been finding my own people little by little. But she is an amazing resource for knowing how to do stuff. So I'll ask her, do you think this project I wanna do on the house is truly DIY? Can I learn how to do it? Or is this something I should [00:08:00] outsource?

For instance, I have a little guest apartment, which is a crazy thing to say. Moving from Brooklyn and having lived in the city, it sounds so

Mat: indul. So normal. It's like having an outbuilding. It's like, and I have one of those too. Oh, you have out buildings. I love out buildings.

James: I have a little barn that a friend is gonna rent out as a wood shop in exchange for doing some work on the house, which is You're bartering labor.

Yeah, I'm really settling in. That's a life goal. I'm so excited about that. When I looked at the guest house, the main house was very empty in a beautiful way. Not much to undo, but the guest house had a really horrific carpet. It smelled like. There was a cat living there that didn't have a litter box.

Yeah. So that had to go and she said I could do that myself. So that's how I learned all about carpet knife and how to do that whole project. So carpet

Mat: knife, to be clear for our listeners, it's a knife that you use to cut carpet carpets. Yeah. And the blade must be thicker than a razor blade. It's just a razor blade like sucked it agway.

And he said, yeah, I have a regular one, but I think it's not thick enough for you.

James: It's pretty [00:09:00] much just a razor blade. I don't know my blade thicknesses, but it's pretty much just a razor blade. It's just the thing that's holding it and the way that you use it. But I did that myself. I ripped up that whole carpet and then painted the floor and I've been, well, you painted the floor.

Yeah. I was gonna put down like cheap tiling, which you can do, which is nice, but then you have to rip that back up. I talked to people in Lowe's. I also talked to other people who have houses around here, and they said. That you can paint the subfloor, which I didn't know was a thing. Why would you paint the subfloor?

Because then you don't have to install anything. And then eventually, if you do wanna lay a nice flooring down, there's nothing to now rip up. Oh. So you can sand clean and just paint directly on the subfloor. And that's what I did. I'll show it to you later. It's really cute. Actually, it came out nice and I asked the guy at Lowe's if that was a good idea and he said, yeah, absolutely.

So. That's what I did. But yeah, that's how I didn't know about a different knife for a carpet, or I didn't know what a subfloor was. I was showing him a picture. I said, this is what was under the carpet. He said, [00:10:00] yes, that's a subfloor. He said, okay, great. And they said, you can just paint that thing. I said, perfect.

Let's do it.

Mat: I'm jealous that you have the aspiration of becoming a DIY-er. I don't have the courage. I really blame my parents. I don't know why. I'm afraid to do these things. I guess if I just sucked it up, watched the video and try and I'd be less fearful.

James: The key is knowing what makes sense to DIY and to even try and if I miss this thing up, is this gonna cost me more money than it would've in the first place?

Just to have a professional do it. So, ripping up carpet and painting a floor is something that everyone said, just do it yourself. You'll save a ton of money and if you mess it up it, you can't mess it up that bad. Okay. For instance, a fireplace. I wanna put in a wood stove for the winter and I've had people say, oh, buy a wood stove, find one at the Restore or on Facebook marketplace and then just hire someone to install it.

Or maybe you can do this or that and that. I talked to my friends. That is so, that's a professional job. I'm not gonna, if you [00:11:00] steak, you

Mat: could leak smoke all over your house.

James: You can. I don't even, yeah. I also think that if I get a brand new. Stove and have it professionally installed it's warranty and have them do all that.

Exactly. Then I've got someone on the hook for some kind of maintenance, and there's someone who can take responsibility for that job, which that's not something that I wanna mess with.

Mat: A lot of people forget about fireplaces. Brian's religious about this. Is that getting your chimney cleaned? Yeah, every year.

Yeah, before the season starts, it's really safe and it really does help.

James: I asked them about what the maintenance would be like once I got it done and they said, yeah, you find a chimney sweep. And everyone says around here is once you find your person. Keep them for everything. I'm obsessed with my plumber.

They've really saved my life from here. And then very important, yeah, I'll have my buddy, that's my chimney sweep. I also, every person that does some work here that I talk to about anything, I give them cards and I'm grabbing patients as well. So when I was at the fireplace store. I was talking to them about his shoulder [00:12:00] and that he needs a PT referral and I said, come on by.

It's also fixing up the house. Little by little is also you just

Mat: spit an estimate and you can give out your business card. I know. That's what I'm doing. Let's talk a little bit about your business. So tell us about what you opened up. 'cause you opened up a new business. It's in healthcare, which is really important up here,

James: Uhhuh,

Mat: and we're all discussion about that too.

But tell us, when did you open up in Hudson?

James: It's a primary care clinic, so it's where you go to get your annual physical and then build a relationship with your provider. Who is gonna be me because I am the only one there right now. So it's me and my front desk, Shelby, who's amazing. And then Jennifer, who's a nurse who also has a med spa.

In the building, MeBox, laser, face treatment, dermatology, facials, things like that. She does all sorts of really cool things that I've never heard of. That thing where you take your plasma out and put it back in like filler. So esthetician stuff. Got, yeah. You come to me for your health and then she'll help you.

Day looking young and beautiful, if that's your goal. So whatever your goal is, what our goal is, so you're not gonna come to my clinic and have me [00:13:00] shoving my values down your throat. Um, you come for your medical care and whatever your goals are. So in primary care, that means annual physicals, vaccines well care.

I also do pap, so you know, I do gynecological work. Yep. Uh, as a primary care provider, I do everything up to a point. So also as a queer trans person, I specialize in gender affirming and trauma informed care. Anybody who has a cervix has had a pap before, and a lot of us have had traumatic and terrible experiences with people that just don't treat bodies delicately.

I can do it nicer. Maybe I can give you an Ativan before, so like we try and find a way to make these things less unpleasant, I would say. But let's say I do a pap and it comes back clear. Great, you're good for five years, but if it comes back and it needs to be looked into further, then I would refer you to a gynecology practice.

Yep. That can do an ultrasound or that can do coloscopy. So I do a little bit of everything. If you establish a relationship and let's say you get [00:14:00] your annual physical with me, everything seems good and then you get sick, okay? You can come back to me for that. I can take care of your sick visit. I can test you for strep throat.

I can give you antibiotics. I do a lot of mental health care, so if you're having depression, anxiety, we can talk about medication. So I am the medication person for that. I'm not a therapist. I can help you find a therapist and then I can give you your WellView trend.

Mat: I'll be honest, I love my primary, but this sounds like a different kind of primary care 'cause it seems a little more.

Interconnected or a little bit more resourceful like I, I don't know my primary like really would know those things would say, oh, go to this person or go to this therapist. Like, wouldn't do that kind of stuff. So maybe 'cause he's my primary, but he's not my coordinating primary.

James: Okay. That is the main thing that I wanna do is be that central person for your healthcare.

So if people have complex medical conditions, I want to. Be coordinating that care. I wanna get the note from the rheumatologist and from the [00:15:00] dermatologist and from the neurologist. Again, I can do everything to a point for every system of your body, and then it needs to go to a specialist if it becomes complicated or if it needs imaging or testing.

But then I want those notes back in your chart so I can make sure. Is the neurologist talking to this other one? So for instance, I have a patient living with HIV who's also on biologics for a rheumatological disorder, and that's the kind of medication that can lower your immune system. Now, is somebody with an inherently potentially lowered immune system safe to be on these medications?

Do they, are they communicating with each other? Do they each know what the other one is doing? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I'll say that this person living with HIV has an undetectable viral load. So just to put that out there, her immune system is robust and great and it's totally fine to be on this medicine, but it's important for the infectious disease specialist and the rheumatologist to know, need each out for that.

Exactly. So that is part of what I do. The biggest challenge so far will be finding those specialists. 'cause coming from the [00:16:00] city where I had a million different specialists in a five block radius. Now I am finding it challenging to know who is the rheumatologist I'm sending somebody to who is the infectious disease specialist.

And that's something that I have to, it's true. I kind of slept

Mat: all over the valley. I go to Kingston and I go to Millbrook, and I go a lot of different places. I guess Albany would have a lot.

James: Yes, and that's gonna be part of my job over the next month or two is taking some days to actually physically go up there, find the specialist.

I've been Googling, I've been calling and emailing and build my little network up here so that I have. A go-to that I can trust. 'cause that's something I love at building a practice in the city. I have a gastroenterologist who I love, who I text. I say, can you get this person in today? And what do you think I should do for this?

This is my plan. Does that make sense? And I have a lot of different specialists on speed dial and we have a relationships. So I wanna build that up here with people who are a little more local. My impression is that the specialists are all the way down from Kingston or Poughkeepsie even. Yeah. All the way up to Albany Ambassador.

Mat: Yeah.

James: Yeah, and it [00:17:00] feels, oh no, something's an hour away from here. But first of all, a lot of my patients are coming from South. So then it's not even an hour. And also in the city, I was living in Brooklyn. It took me an hour to get to some places. Anyway, it's not that

Mat: unreasonable. No, I think we do, I think we do it for healthcare up here.

Mm-hmm. If you go to the city or you do it here, the question about the patients would be, what's your patient profile? Like, what kind of patients do you want to attract? Do you wanna attract a certain kind of patient or specialty or gender? Is there anything, what is your, what are you looking for?

James: That's a great question.

I want everybody generation of fuck. I want everybody. You want everybody. I don't like having just one specific thing. So I did a fellowship training. It was the Keith Herring Fellowship at Callen Lorde in the city, which is an L-G-B-T-Q specialty Clinic, and they're an FQHC, federally qualified health center.

So they take uninsured patients, every kind of patient, and they specialize in lgbtq plus care. So I have specialty training there. I wish that it didn't have to be specialty medical [00:18:00] care, but at this point it is. It's not something that's taught as well in medical schools as we'd like, and people don't have exposure.

So I do transgender hormone therapy, a lot of sexual health, HIV prevention and. I don't like seeing just one kind of patient though. So even within the L-G-B-T-Q umbrella, it's quite a diverse population. Yeah. Yeah. But you know what? I also love taking care of straight people. I love them. I love what we, there's

Mat: some of them in Hudson too.

James: And I really like that diversity. A really good primary care day for me is when I look at my schedule, at the end of the day, I say, wow, I saw somebody with shoulder pain, somebody with headaches, somebody with who was thinking about starting an antidepressant. Someone else wanted to start testosterone for hormone therapy.

Someone else just needed an annual physical. Someone else needed help getting their disability paperwork done, like a little bit of everything. Someone else had a stomach ache, someone else had streps. So I love that. I love a little bit of everything. The only thing is we only have 20 minute [00:19:00] visits. So when people are really complicated, I just have to set expectations that we're gonna have to do things that are gonna take some time.

Wait, what's the 20 minute visit trip by insurance? It's just the practice protocol. Oh, okay. And it's actually pretty good. So a lot of places do 15 minutes. Oh my

Mat: God.

James: And yeah, so that means I see three patients an hour in person. I also do telemed, so I do video visits and phone call visits. Those are 15 minutes.

So you know, some people. What I've been finding up here is that so far my patients have not been to medical care in a very long time. So that first visit is tough to get a lot done 'cause we're starting from scratch. About your family history, your medical history, can I buy a double? No. And I have had people ask that before.

What I tell them to is primary care. You're walking into the office, you're walking out, right? I did 10 years working in a hospital all over med surg telemetry. I worked in the ER holding area for the last few years in the hospital [00:20:00] system, and those patients need a lot of care. But in primary care, they're walking in the door themselves.

Yeah. Or they're getting themselves in. However they're getting in and they're leaving. Yeah. The reason I'm saying that is that it's not an emergency and the, and what I say is there's a room for that. So if you have an emergency, there's a room for that. Right. When I first say, I was

Mat: like, I was in new emergency clinic, and you're like, yeah, no.

Down the street.

James: Yeah, exactly. Now I don't do, I don't do stitches and I don't, I can't set your broken limb. But once you get that done, then you can come to me and we can make sure that your ongoing care is good. Or you set up with a physical therapist, do your, I can take your stitches out. I can make sure the wound doesn't look infected.

But if you have a true emergency, you gotta go to the hospital. And then by the time you come to me, ev nothing is that. Emergent. Nothing is that urgent. I say we're gonna get it all done. It might take a little bit of time. I'm not gonna solve the problem that you've had your whole life in 20 minutes, but I'll get a good start on it and we'll figure out where to send you [00:21:00] for more in depth imaging and workup.

But there's plenty that we can get done, I just do, to set those expectations that we're not gonna, if you haven't been. To medical care in 10 years and you unfurl a scroll of problems. It's gonna take a minute to get through all of them. Yeah. So we'll prioritize, what's the one you want today? What are your health goals?

And we'll make it happen. Yeah.

Mat: What about loca location? How did you pick, you're on Fairview Avenue in Hudson. I think it's really Greenport outside. Yeah, technically. Um, rather, my expectation is everything's so can open on Warren Street, on the high street in downtown.

James: So I don't own the clinic. Also, to be clear, I am the medical provider, so I'm the main provider.

I'm running the clinic, but the owners own other branches in the city. So they've, this is their, I think this is their eighth location that they've opened up. Oh. So, and what we're used to in the city is foot traffic and being in places where people are going to be. So certainly when they were looking at places up here, they were looking on Warren Street.

And they did [00:22:00] consider that they almost signed with somebody down there. But the more you know, it's like being up here. You just talk to the people that live here, and I don't think a medical clinic up here is working on foot traffic. Like they're not waiting for people to walk by and say, oh, hey, let me go to the doctor.

You know what I mean? Why be on the place where people can walk to when we can have a big place with a parking lot. 'cause more people be

Mat: driving. It's also, yeah, and that's where people run errands. It's right by ShopRite. It's right by Walmart. It is. It is. Like you're actually, that's where people get stuff done.

Warren Street's more like a mall.

James: Exactly. I also think when I tell people about. The building, it was the link chiropractor building and everyone knows it. It's this big, it's this like house. It's really cute. And it's right by the Jiffy Lube. Everybody knows the building and they're like, oh, that is a really good location.

'cause like you said, it's right on the main drag where people are going to do a lot of their shopping.

Mat: I can get my car tuned up and I get myself tuned up.

James: Exactly. You can do it all. Yeah. Special. And there, there's movie theaters over there. There's a lot of stuff over there. And I think most importantly for up here, [00:23:00] the parking lot.

No joke. Yeah. But when people are coming from wherever they need to be able to park, it's a great space. We have a lot of rooms in there, and right now we're not that busy yet, but when we get busy, it's gonna be really amazing to be able to accommodate having a few medical providers and having the med spot in there too.

Mat: Have you come across any like. People with this kind of choice about should I maintain my medical care in the city, which a lot of people do and my husband does, or up here, like I switched and I don't know if people try to do both, but then I don't get where your records are. Like I don't get how that would work to have both.

Do you really have to pick logistics,

James: have [00:24:00] to do also with insurance? Oh, so a lot of the times insurance is gonna make you list your primary care provider. Otherwise, they're gonna charge you a different rate. Oh, as someone might be considered a specialist. Where you keep your medical care is a really personal decision, and it depends on the complexity of your care.

But let's say you're nice and healthy, you get your once a year checkup and you have your, you're on your medication that you're stable on for many years and you just see them once a year. Okay? But then what happens when you get sick?

Mat: Yeah,

James: now you're going to urgent care. Now it's all fragmented. So now your original medical story,

Mat: you just start over like,

James: ah, you have to go in and tell them your whole history.

Where I, you know, I encourage everyone when they're feeling well, come in. So then if and when something goes wrong, we've got this baseline to build on and not meeting you for the very first time and asking you if any of your grandparents had any genetically linked conditions. We're starting with, Hey, how are you?

How have you been? How are your cats? 'cause I do write that in everybody's charts. I wanna know about their petts [00:25:00] and then what's going on today. We're not starting from scratch. I have your me, I have your med list, I have your history. I know everything. If you keep your medical care somewhere that's not local to where you are, you're gonna run into the problem.

When you have acute issues, you don't have someone to help you. Now, something like a medical practice in the city might be able to do telemed for you, but you're not gonna be able to go in and see them. If you have an ear ache, there are limits to telemedicine. They can't put an otoscope in your ear. Yeah.

Needs to go

Mat: look in my ear

James: exactly to see do I need drops, do I need something else, or do I need a cleaning? And there's only so much that someone can do over the phone. One of the advantages of our clinic, I hear that up here, a lot of people get full, so someone's trying to see their primary care and they can't see them for six months.

Yeah. And it's a small office or it's a hospital system. Yeah, that happens. They can't see anyone. We are a small private practice, but we have eight locations that have providers, two or three providers in all of them. So if I physically couldn't see, let's say we get really [00:26:00] busy and I can't physically see you today.

Someone in the practice can see you for a telemedicine visit, if that's appropriate. So you don't have to rely on only the in-person visits. But again, we're wide open right now and I plan to stay. To make sure that people who are our patients are gonna be able to get. Mm-hmm. So it's not that year long wait to get

Mat: Medicare.

Yeah. This is crazy. And what about incentive? When I've talked to different people, like the cheese shop had come in and you get like a discount off a cheese plate, the wine place at a free wine tasting. Do you have incentives or lollipops? What? What's the pull? We take insurance. Okay, there you go. All

James: right.

We take a lot of insurances, so you shouldn't be paying a lot for your medical care anyway. Now the medical system in this country is. A mess, which is also why I'm going back to school again for healthcare policy. So wish me You are on that. Yeah, I just started on Tuesday. Yeah. Wow. At the School of Public Health in the city.

So it's a, it's an online program, but I get really frustrated with, with the care and then I think, okay, maybe there's something I can do about it on a, on an upstream level. So that's [00:27:00] something I'm working on also. But in the meantime, the incentive is that we have open availability of appointments. And I'll think about the lollipops too.

But I think the fact that we're here, that we're local, that we have openings and that we take insurance. 'cause that's the other thing. A lot of providers up here are going concierge. Yeah.

Mat: So

James: you can get medical care and you can get it damn week.

Mat: Yeah. It's so, it's just really bad. Yeah. But you're

James: gonna have to pay cash for it.

I know. So we do take a ton of insurances and we take a lot of Medicaid programs. I'm getting credentialed with CDPHP. So as soon as we knew we were coming up here, I said I, I called, people asked around. What's the plan that most people up here are on and we're slowly getting credentialed with everything that's up here.

I'm also gonna get my Massachusetts licensing and my Connecticut licensing.

Mat: Well, that's a good idea. We're so close to the border. Yeah. So close.

James: I already have some patients who came from Great Barrington. Yeah. And if they come to me, the state licensing doesn't matter, but I wanna be able to just expand the amount of care that I can provide.

[00:28:00] That's

Mat: cool. Alright, let's talk about the area a little bit. Do you have your favorite. Places yet that people build a list of secret go-to places as well as well known ones. I'm curious what yours are now that you've been up here,

James: and I'll take that list of other things that you have too. I'll say most of my favorite things that I've been finding so far have to do with food.

Of course. Yeah. It's amazing here. Yeah, it's so good. I didn't even realize, I thought I'm moving up from the city. I guess I'll just get pizza when I go visit there. But I live right near Tommy B's and they are an incredible pizza place that is run by people who did Roberta's and Best Pizza. Really? I didn't know that.

Two miles down. Yeah, it's on 23. It's like not only okay or good, it's excellent. Do they have gluten free pizza? Do you know? They do Really? Yeah. And they're, and it's really good. And they have specials every day and it's reasonably priced. My, the town I live in Prairieville is this tiny little town and it's so beautiful and there's like only three or four stores in it.

Yeah. And all of them are great. Random Harvest. Yeah. I love [00:29:00] Zinnias. I'm obsessed with their food is incredible. And they also have soft serve ice cream, and I love it. The Sideshow vintage I was talking about. And each of these places, now I know the people there. But they're all so friendly. They're so nice.

I put my cards everywhere I go. And then probably my favorite place I've found so far is some mascots.

Mat: Oh, I haven't been there yet.

James: I am a, yeah, I'm trying to

Mat: get to know the farms up here. So Sounds So that's a big orchard farm. Yes. Place.

James: Yes. But most importantly, or Chatham. Maybe Kinder or cia, north Kinder Rock.

Yeah, I think so. It's more importantly though, they make their own ice cream. Oh. And it's the best ice cream I've had so far. So I'm making my way around having ice cream everywhere I can. I found some good ones, but that is by far my favorite. They make their peach ice cream is made with their own peaches.

They have a lavender ice cream that's made with local lavender.

Mat: It maybe help me, Hudson Valley Magazine does do the best ice cream places, but maybe you could help me make a city at ice cream list 'cause I've got a Q2. What do you got? We were at Stewart's last night [00:30:00] visiting, so you get a good shake there.

And they're absolutely dairy famous. Fortunes in Tivoli. This is what I've heard. It's exotic. I have to go there. Yeah. I told I have to go there and they made a big head out of it. Everyone talks about holy cow in Red Hook, which is fine. Okay. I haven't been there yet. Um, but it's, and then there's Dells, which is a.

I was past it, a dairy and red hook, but they have two locations. They sell their ice cream out of Old Hudson, in Hudson, and they also have a place down in Rhinebeck. Uhhuh.

James: I wanna try them all.

Mat: Yeah,

James: I wanna, maybe

Mat: we wait all of them build a list. Yeah,

James: yeah. I have a list on my phone of just, just ice cream places that people recommend.

But some mascot's incredible. And again, they make their own with local ingredients, so their berry flavors and stuff. Yeah, that's fun. It's really good. And it's just a great place. Everything is so beautiful up here too. I take a book, I go get some ice cream. I sit down. I'm really excited. They have a corn maze there.

I've never done a corn maze. I can't wait. So

Mat: I have,

James: I did it to get lost.

Mat: I didn't meet Mead Orchards, so I used to live around the corner from him. So I went in there. Brian wouldn't go with me, so I [00:31:00] went in, I paid the $5 for the thing and. The, yeah, I got totally lost. I was terrified.

James: It was

Mat: like Children of the Corn.

James: I love it. I

Mat: love it. And I was, I lucked out and I found this like young family Uhhuh and I asked them if I could tag along with them. Oh my God. And they looked at me like some crazy perv and I just stayed with them to get myself out. Oh my God. But it was very exciting. That's really funny. I filmed some clips of it, so when you go in there, use your camera.

'cause the crazy turns. Yeah. Oh, I can't wait.

James: Oh wow. I already have a plan. They'll be coming soon, right? Yeah. My friends are coming up to visit and that's our plan for the day is to go to the corn maze. We're gonna bring a bottle of water, some good, comfortable shoes, and we're just gonna get in there. If you stamp and find like all the hidden, I think it's eight spots that you have to find, then you have free ice cream.

Mat: Oh, that's a really good idea. So at least you have a plan. Yeah. To move through it. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe could. Well, there was a game I could focus on that. There's a game. It's,

James: I can't wait. It's gonna be so fun. Another place I love Story Screen Cinema, which you did a podcast on.

Mat: Oh,

James: I love them. I love them. So I go there.[00:32:00]

I go alone. I love going to a movie alone. So I'll go, I'll have my Dino Nuggets, I'll watch a movie. Yeah. Have a table at the Japer. Yeah. And it's like I'm saying, everywhere I go, I start to know the people's names and they know who I am. I, I love that up here. And yeah, so the movie theater, oh, one other thing I not mention.

So I went to Plaza Diner 'cause I love a diner. And you know how every diner has like a display of their desserts? That's just a diner thing that got cake, right? Yeah. I love a piece of cake. And a cup of tea is like a little snack in the middle of the day with my book. Yeah. So I'm like, something about these cakes looks extra special.

These look really good. And sure enough, it was like one of the best pieces of cake I've ever had in my life. And. Eat a lot of cake. Oh, grandma's Hands. Bakery. So it's a woman named Karen. That's a great name. Cook it. Yeah, she makes her cakes at home, so she doesn't have a storefront yet. She might soon. And she hand delivers and bakes all of the cakes for the diner.

So every time you go to Plaza Diner, it's fresh, local, [00:33:00] homemade cake, and it's excellent. She made my birthday cake. My office coworkers got me a surprise cake from her for my birthday, and I had ordered one from her. So I had two of her cakes for my birthday recently.

Mat: It was amazing. Oh, that's great. You, I dunno if you've been there yet or if it's open, but right near you in Hillsdale, they're opening up cakes and books.

James: You're kidding. Those are my two favorite things. I know.

Mat: That's what I'm telling you. Like just down the road from here, we, it didn't open yet. I don't know. There, I just, it's next to the liquor store, right off by Anthony's Cook and Larder.

James: Yeah, I know that spot.

Mat: Yeah, I haven't seen that. Yeah, just it's a few doors in from 23.

James: You're kidding me. I have to tell my best friend. I have a friend who we, that's what we do together. We're like, eat the dessert and we trade books and we go to bookstore, send a picture, see picture with cakes and books. Oh my God. I will. Molly, we're gonna cakes and books. Yeah. A bookstore is something that I've been looking for.

I've been to the book Barn. It's so cute. It's so cute. I don't do well in used bookstores that much though, because I'm really a sci-fi nerd, so I need, I need a horror section. You don't

Mat: want Hell hopper anyone new? No. [00:34:00]

James: Yeah. It's not even like the timing of when they're published. It's just organizational thing.

Like for the aesthetic. I like to get lost in a used bookstore or book barn. Yeah. But I don't usually. Find as much there, but I went to Spotty Dog. Yeah. Is that what it's called? Yeah. I got three books there yesterday. That was cute. Yeah,

Mat: it's far End books. I can't decide which one, which it wants to be.

James: Yeah, I know. And I don't drink, so that's why I avoided it at first. But then I heart supplies back, which is cool. Oh, that's pretty cool. Yeah. I am also an artist. Oh, you are? Side note. Yeah. When do you find the time? I think the busier I am the more I actually get done. Me too. Yeah, me too. So when I can use the art as something to get away from all the medical stuff, which feels like an escape.

But when I first moved to the city after getting my fine arts degree from Syracuse, I was bartending and making art, and I was trying to do it as a living. It didn't last very long. I was like, I hate this now. Yeah. So having something else to do as my main gig and then making my art for fun. But one of my goals is to, so I [00:35:00] make work on bristle board with a Sharpie markers big pen, which is kind of anything you can find at.

A regular store and I make, they're a little bit big, but I wanna scan them in and make kind of small prints and then draw over the prints and sell them at the holiday market. Oh,

Mat: that'd be great. So there's a lot of those up here.

James: Yeah. Yeah. I might side show vintage does a good holiday market. I might wanna get a table there.

So that's a goal is by. November or December. I wanna have something going with that also. Yeah. And I have the space here to actually make our,

Mat: yeah, we all need goals as winter comes and stuff. Yeah. Any, any final thoughts for listeners about, you're so much new. I just bought a house, but this is my second one up here, so I'm a little bit experienced in too.

Any advice for newly. Moved people. You're clearly not a idiot.

James: I don't know. I think, I'm not sure what, where the definition exactly lies. You

Mat: cut up a rug. I don't know.

James: Yeah. But like I had to Google how to do it. It wasn't a, it wasn't a generational thing that was taught to me. I think that talking to people is the main [00:36:00] thing.

When I got here, went to the diner, sat down, and before I was here full time, which again has only been a month, I was back and forth. I got the house in April, so I was back and forth for a long time. Only on the weekends. So it was hard for me to really get a foothold, but I would talk to people, so I needed a cat sitter, so I went to the diner and instead of, not everything is online up here as much.

True, like I looked at TaskRabbit and it didn't exist. I also, okay, city people. If you think you're gonna be ordering delivery dinner, you're not. You're not. It is not a thing. Who knew? So anyway,

Mat: yeah, you better buy groceries. Yeah. That's a hard, that's a hard thing to learn.

James: I did learn, that's a hard way, but I'm happy to actually have a fridge that can fit food in a kitchen to cook it in and a sink.

That, that is advice actually

Mat: to, if you end up with a small fridge, you might want to consider getting a second one, but in the basement because. You need to keep stuff around. You have to

James: have food in the house. Yeah. And you find your local places, but the restaurants close at eight or nine or something like that.

Mat: Yeah. They're not open every day.

James: But, so when I [00:37:00] very first got here, I needed help because I was only here on the weekends. I needed a cat sitter. So again, instead of looking at TaskRabbit like I would do in the city, I asked the waitress. Yeah. And sure enough, she, I said, do you know anyone who cat sits?

And she said, oh, over there. Those two ladies work at Animal Kinds. Lucky. That's crazy. So yeah. So I went over and I talked to them and I, and sure enough, they helped me find a cat sitter. And then, yeah, you just gotta ask it. Yeah. And then there was some lovely people at Random Harvest that I started chatting with just about their breakfast.

They said, oh, that looks good. I haven't tried that. Whatever. And so, I think the thing is don't be shy. Don't, yeah. Don't be too shy. And if people talk to you, talk back to them. Say hello.

Mat: Yeah.

James: I think I'm going to. Do the Trixie's list advertisement as well.

Mat: Yeah. Yeah. I do it. I love it. It's gr Rich is great and I get a lot of, I get a lot of clicks from Trixie's List.

It's d great research.

James: I also, I also love their advice on there also, so they have something about how not to get lost in a corn maze or it, it, it's good. No. [00:38:00] Yeah, they, it's a really great website, but they also said something that really stuck with me on that website about. Be nice and like that sounds pretty obvious in the city.

You build up a little bit of a New York City people are, it's a armor. Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're nice. They're good to you. But it, it's a bit a, it can be a bit abrupt. It can be where we have somewhere to be. But the other thing is you're never, it's a million people. You're all packed together, but you're never gonna see that person again in your life.

Whereas here,

Mat: you're gonna see them in 20 minutes. Yes. You know? Yes.

James: And if you get a little, and I could have a little tempered. So if I get a little snippy with somebody at a store, which, you know, I hope I'm not like that anyway, but if I do, I live here now. It's a small town. There's, it's a bunch of small towns near each other.

And people seem to know each other, people are gonna come back. You're gonna get snippy with someone who almost walks into you and then they're the person that's the only one in town that does fireplaces or something like that. So it's be nice because you wanna be nice and you wanna be, you wanna have friends and you wanna be friendly and build community, but also [00:39:00] because practically speaking, you don't know who you need to help.

And I wanna be here to help other people. There's a lot that I need help with, so I don't want to. Accidentally alienate someone by being no

Mat: rude. No, that's good advice. Yeah.

James: Yeah. Yeah.

Song: Down in the Valley Moved up from the City. It's a new way of living. And I'm trying to get used to it. used to Ordered a Manhattan, and they called me a cidiot/

I'm looking outta place but I keep trying to fitting in.

So for now, I'm a cidiot.