Lis Bar + O+ Festival
Kingston was named NY’s first capital in 1777, a grand role cut short within months when the British army burned much of it down. Two hundred years later it boasted an IBM plant that lasted a few decades longer than their first city status, until its run was halted by a busted economy rather than booming muskets. From the early 1990s, Kingston has struggled, aged. Until recently: the city is now rebuilding as a hive of artistic and culinary activity. Creatives and connoisseurs aren’t just coming for weekends—they’re planting roots.
Roots are vital to Jonathan and Patty Rich, owners of Lis Bar in Midtown, a post-industrial district benefitting from municipal programs to retain working artists. The Foxhall Avenue restaurant’s name means “fox” in Polish, and, true to nature, the food is clever. This is a refashioned, often vegetal take on the Eastern European cooking Patty’s parents brought to the US from Krakow, connecting southern Poland to the Hudson Valley. Buckwheat is fluffy with braised greens and roasted squash. Slather your angular potato cakes with sorrel cream and an earthy leek and mushroom jam. Refresh with a beet and pear collins, floral with bison grass vodka and satin sips of purple puree.
The Riches love Kingston’s diverse artisans and Lis shows it, from the exterior mural and locally-made neon to the couple’s personal collection hung on forest green walls. A drive west from their dining room is historic Uptown. We’re here to see the O+ Festival, drawn by its activist mission: musicians and makers exchange art and performance for health care donated by doctors, dentists, and wellness experts. Working outside of traditional job structures, American artists are chronically underinsured. O+ strives to address a systemic issue through barter.
Concerts and installations pop up inside bookstores, the Old Dutch Church, and BSP Kingston, where Chris Wells’ Silver Spaceship covers glam rock while covered in lamé. Beet-violet light bathes an alley while a train whistle mourns on repeat in a soundscape by musician Tyler Wood. A Brooklyn transplant, he’s one of many arrivals finding their own somewhere, here.
10/18/2019