Serving the Towns of Wawarsing, Crawford, Mamakating, Rochester and Shawangunk, and everything in between
(none)   
SJ FB page   

Gutter Gutter
Bloomingburg Now
A New Bakery's Smiles, The Old Diner's Worries, Mark Life In A Rapidly Changing Old Village...

BLOOMINGBURG – This small village is the prototype for the song many remember from the sitcom Cheers: "Where everyone knows your name." It's got a population under 500. Many here have deep roots.

"It was a great place to grow up," says Erin Allen, an enthusiastic new employee of the Riverside Pizzeria and Delicatessen, with a bright smile and quick need to mark her pedigree. "My grandfather was the first fire chief in Circleville."

While the store has its regular customers and a door that mimics a turn style, she says, "We get a lot of out-of-towners."

A similar story emerges at the popular Quickway Diner out by Route 17, which is filled to capacity for breakfast on weekends and crowded on the Friday afternoon we visit. Again, mostly local residents are dining there, but a patron from Texas on her way to Niagara Falls stopped for a bite to eat and marveled at the parallel universe Bloomingburg offers to her hometown in Texas. She says she loves the quaintness of such places that eschew Starbucks and the like.

There is no place in Bloomingburg where the hospitality runs deeper than the new Bloomingburg Bakery. A handful of the community's new Hasidic residents are at the restaurant; the Bakery's manager and patrons ask me several times, "Would you like a sandwich? Would you like something to drink?"

Yet they also don't divulge much when asked direct questions about their feelings for Bloomingburg. Instead, they smile honestly and express their love of the area simply and eloquently when two young men turn while leaving the clean, well-stocked establishment.

"We love this area," both say in unison. But they keep their privacy by not divulging their names.

It's chilly outside, with a light sprinkle from an overcast sky. At the 396-unit, high-density housing Chestnut Ridge development underway on the edge of the village, work is underway on some buildings, For Sale signs up on others. Word is that new residents will be filling fifty or so town houses in the coming months. Large families are expected.

Quietly, without attribution, Bloomingburg's non-Hasidic residents scoff at the idea that there might be any anti-Semitism around, as reported in several national and international publications. Instead, they point to the fact that the local population will be growing to at least four times what it is now and infringe on the rural lifestyle the longer-term residents of Bloomingburg and its surroundings have grown accustomed to.

Rob Brinckerhoff, who runs Brinckerhoff Tree Service and Lawn Care, notes how changed his hometown is.

"Everything has changed since I grew up here, "Brinkerhoff said in a flat voice as he exited the Quickway.

Besides the influx of new residents, he feels the advent of the Montreign Casino one town and a few highway stops away will "not solve the problems of economic depression in Sullivan County."

Dr. Clifford M. Teich came from Westchester to Bloomingburg thirty years ago, and served on the village board as it approved the new developments now promising change to once-sleepy Bloomingburg.

"I want to wake up in a quiet, quaint village," he said.

The Chestnut Ridge development has a 24-hour guard service. Nearby is a local community group's billboard expressing opposition to what's being built, implying the same for those moving into it.

The slight drizzle ceases. At the new bakery there's a flurry of activity as new residents head out in order to get to services and then home before dark. The Sabbath starts at sundown.

Meanwhile, those few businesses from the older Bloomingburg keep their lights on. Life, and business, continues, albeit with fewer customers than before.

All remains quiet, for the moment.



Gutter Gutter





Gutter