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the crowded Basilica
Friday, November 28 2025
After the usual lingering breakfast with the inlaws, a plan emerged for Gretchen and her parents to drive up to Hudson today to check out a craft festival at a restored factory called the Basilica. Gretchen gave me the opportunity to stay home, which (in retrospect) I should've done. But instead I opted to go with them. Gretchen's father did the driving in his rental Nissan Sentra, and we navigated us to Hudson on the east side of the Hudson Fjord via Route 9G.
The event at the Basilica was very crowded, and it was fortunate that Gretchen's father had brought his handicapped parking permit. To get into the event, we actually had to pay and get arm bands. And then there we were, stuffed into a dense crowd of mostly white people with an average age of about 35. I wasn't delighted by what was for sale (lots of things like candles, ceramics, jewelry, paintings, foods of various types, and many varieties of homemade clothing), but I went ahead of the others to check the whole thing out before deciding conclusively that there was nothing even the slightest bit interesting for me there. I then went back to Gretchen and her parents, who'd only made it about 20% of the way by then, to say it wasn't exactly my kind of thing. Gretchen suggested I go into the room where the beer was, and that seemed like a good idea to me. I ended up buying an $8 can of not-very-good IPA (the Pursuit by Sixpoint Brewery) and then getting a seat at one of the communal tables in the food tent. I then drank my beer while playing Spelling Bee, which I was going to have to play at some point today anyway. Meanwhile there was a constant turnover of people sitting down in the adjacent chairs to eat things like fried chicken with waffles. I'm less freaked out about that sort of thing than Gretchen is, so it was no big deal. But it's been awhile since I've sat so close to people gushing about how good the chicken tastes. At some point a woman with a tiny red-haired dog protruding out of her jacket sat across from me, and it wasn't long before the dog became the focus of a girl wearing extremely thick-lensed glasses who clearly had severe mental challenges. The girl spoke only in slurred shouts and was quick to tell the dog that she loved her/him. Everyone was very tolerant of her somewhat inappropriate behavior, including her parents/caretakers, who suggested she talk quietly with only the most gentle of ways.
Eventually Gretchen came to get me, and it turned out that she and her parents had managed to find a few things to buy. We weren't quite out of there yet, though, because as we were leaving Gretchen and her father suddenly got distracted by a cracker merchant.
All of this was to soon be redeemed by our next destination, Baba Louie's, the best pizza in the entire Hudson Valley. But once we got inside, we learned that Baba Louie's was now closed for the downtime between lunch and dinner. This was what ultimately led us to drive all the way to Woodstock, where we had lupper at a surprisingly-packed Garden Café. I was feeling hungry and more tolerant of grease than usual, so I ordered the notoriously messy Beyond Burger with a side of potato wedges. I also had my obligatory glass of Montepulchiano. I don't remember much about our dinner conversation, but it was mostly about topics that do not interest me, such as what restaurants serve what vegan food. Gretchen and her father can talk about such things endlessly, and all it does is make my eyes glaze over. Such conversations continued well past after we'd finished our food and Gretchen's father had (as he almost always does) paid the bill.
Late into the night as I was winding down (and drinking booze, but only at a modest rate), YouTube put a three-hour-plus set of suspect interrogations into my feed regarding an incident where three eighteen year old knuckleheads drove around Colorado throwing rocks at cars, culminating in the tossing of a rock that smashed through a windshield and killed its driver instantly. It was only when the interview turned to that of Mitch Karol-Chik that it became interesting for me, as the initial interview of the suspect Zachary Kwak was full of evasive language and obvious lies.
A rotting building across the railroad tracks from the Basilica in Hudson. Notice the parking guide with a wand. Also notice the Catskills off in the distance. Click to enlarge.
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