By Sari Botton
Photos by Brian Logan Photography / Shutterstock

Once upon a time, from my mid-20s through my late 30s, I believed I’d never leave New York City. For better and worse, I considered myself a lifer—even through times in the ’90s and early aughts when I felt lonely as a single woman and trapped in my tiny rent-stabilized tenement. I would have laughed at you if you’d told me that just a few years later, in 2005, I’d up and leave the densely populated East Village for Rosendale, a rural, funky river town in New York’s mid-Hudson Valley, with the man I’d met on a dating site. A miserable year spent fighting a landlord in housing court had soured us on the city we loved.

Suddenly, small-town life, a new adventure for a couple of city mice, seemed appealing. In our 40s, we loved our quarter-acre in sleepy little Rosendale. We lived a creative life in an artsy town. We had designs on someday moving to an even more rural spot, further out from civilization.

But then something surprising happened: After nine years, Rosendale had gotten very small on me. I felt desperate for more people, more culture, more bars and restaurants and art galleries I could walk to. I needed a big change.

So much of my experience from my late 40s through my late 50s had been about getting to truly know myself, shedding false selves, and becoming The Real Me. I realized that, for most of my time in Rosendale, I’d been suppressing a key part of myself—the part of me that thrives in the hustle and bustle of a city, a part that needed to be nurtured again.

“I wanted to live in an environment that once again fed my inner city mouse.”

I’ve learned this midlife sort of reverse metamorphosis is hardly rare. Through editing and publishing Oldster Magazine since 2021, I encounter a lot of people going through transitions. So many of the men and women who contribute to Oldster tell me that, later in life, they feel freer to tap into the truth of who they are in a way they might not have had the courage to before. For a variety of reasons, they stop caring about whether people judge them, or disapprove of their choices. They want to live the rest of their lives in a way that authentically suits them.

I was no different. For me, that meant that I wanted to live in an environment that once again fed my inner city mouse—a bigger part of me than I’d remembered. However, I didn’t want to turn my back on the friends I’d made, and the communities I’d become part of upstate. I also didn’t want to leave behind all the incredible nature I’d come to love. What I needed was an upstate city, a small, affordable metropolis central to others, and still only just over two hours north of Manhattan.

I found all that just eight miles north in Kingston, New York, population 24,000. It turned out my husband wanted a change, too, and so we moved—first, in 2014, to a rental loft in the heart of Uptown, also known as The Stockade, then, in 2018, to a house we bought in the burgeoning Midtown Arts District. (Thank goodness we found our home before the pandemic gold rush that began in 2020 and has never stopped.)

In this fairly walkable city—which, during the American Revolution was New York State’s first capitol—I’ve found a greater density of people, more life and creativity going on around us, but also close proximity to mountains, forests, and swimming holes. I’m near the rich culture on tap in the Berkshires, Catskills, and Capitol Region. We love to take relatively short drives, or even overnight trips, to the newly hipsterfied towns in the Borscht Belt. We also enjoy going to hear music at The Egg and The Linda in Albany, or the Ancram Opera House, or Basilica in Hudson; to take in art at MASS MoCA, in North Adams; to hear The Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood; and to take yoga classes and workshops at Kripalu.

If I had any question that I belong here, in 2015 I stumbled on some information on Ancestry.com that suggests I really do—and that I’m actually something of an O.G. I learned from a distant cousin I’ve never met that my ancestors were here in this city from the 1860s to the 1920s, before moving down to the Bronx, and that some of them, including my great-great-great grandparents, are buried here. I now regularly take walks to visit them at Wiltwyck Rural Cemetery, just a mile from my house.

Getting to Know Kingston

Over just the past few years, the city of Kingston has grown even more vibrant. The arts scene is very much alive, with several new murals appearing on old buildings each October during the O+ Festival, a weekend when artists and musicians trade their work for care from doctors, dentists, and others in the community. (O+, pronounced O positive, now has a year-round medical clinic in Kingston.) Great new bars and restaurants keep popping up in Midtown, like Mirador, a wonderful Andalucian wine and tapas bar that has been featured in Esquire Magazine, West Kill Supply, an outpost of West Kill Brewing, and Kingston Standard, another brewery which has good pizza and beer. In Uptown, Chleo Wine Bar is another great addition, and offers excellent small plates. Lola Pizza has wood-fired pies and great ambiance. And some old standbys remain unbeatable: Le Canard Enchaine, a longstanding French establishment, is still one of the best restaurants in town, and Stockade Tavern, with its retro cocktails, remains one of the hottest bars, some 14 years after opening.

Sari Botton is the author of “And You May Find Yourself…Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo” and editor of two bestselling anthologies of essays about writers leaving New York. She also publishes Oldster Magazine, Memoir Land, and Adventures in “Journalism.”