Mount Pleasant, New York, March 16, 2007--
Over 110 people thronged the reopening of the Emerson Hotel at Catskill Corners in Mount Pleasant on Friday, March 16, despite a major snowstorm.
I entered the hotel with Brian Powers, publisher of [The Phoenicia Times]. Bob Cross, Town Supervisor of Shandaken, lifted a narrow glass of red fluid towards us. "Nonalcoholic grape juice!" he explained. "For the last 20 years, I’m alcohol-free. I will never drink alcohol again. It will be 20 years on the Fourth of July."
"The Fourth of July — that’s an interesting time to stop drinking," I replied.
"Independence!" Mr. Cross said, smiling.
Ward Todd, President of the Ulster County Chamber of Commerce, arrived with a huge pair of scissors. (I felt like I was in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.) Two mysterious men in brown suit jackets conferred near the front door. I heard one say: "I don’t believe the scissors actually work. They are purely ceremonial."
John Paunovic, the general manager of the Phoenix Restaurant, within the Emerson (so named because it rose from the ashes) told me: "I was born in Brooklyn, my mom was originally Romanian, my father’s from the former Yugoslavia, I grew up in Austria and Switzerland, and I started working in the Emerson in 2000. We helped them do the grand opening! I was the bar manager for four and a half years, and we’ve been away — myself and my wife — in Aspen for about two years. And now we’re here for the opening again!"
"What kind of food does the Phoenix have?" I asked.
"It’s American-based cuisine, with Asian fusion and Thai fusion," Mr. Paunovic replied.
"Pretty ambitious!"
"Well, we’re trying to fit the motif. All the hotel is a modern Asian style, with an influence of the Middle Eastern."
"What languages do you speak?"
"English, German, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian. And Italian, as well. When I used to live in Davos, Switzerland, there were people from Italy. Italian and Romanian are very similar."
But I had to run to the front of the room, because the speeches were beginning.
An excerpt from Ward Todd’s oration: "It’s such a special day, I think — the culmination of so much planning. To look back, it was less than two years ago that the original Emerson burned. How rapidly this has all come together, and how spectacular this facility really is. We step back and say: ‘Could this really be in Shandaken? Is this really ours?’"
When his speech ended, the woman next to me observed: "No one can clap! They all have champagne glasses!"
From Bob Cross’ speech: "I was privileged to sit down at a table and enjoy a presentation a little over two years ago when the Conde Nast Johansens Award was presented to the Emerson for the best lodge and spa in all of North America, South America and the Caribbean. That was a fantastic honor, it was a great thing to be part of. But this is even better." He presented Dean Gitter, founder of the Emerson, with a vase he bought at the Shandaken Bicentennial, to display here.
From Dean Gitter’s talk: "It so happened that I was the first kid on my block to own a 13 foot high, 7 foot wide set of Hindu doors. You may have seen on television an advertisement in which a young couple comes into the office of an architect, puts a Lohman faucet on the desk, and says: ‘Build a house around this.’ Well, this is what I did to our interior architect, Antony diGiuseppe.’"
There was a snafu with the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Mr. Gitter was supposed to pause, holding his three-feet long scissors, so the photographers could capture this moment of Shandaken history. Then, after the flashbulbs flashed, Lyn, his wife, would cut the large red ribbon with a real scissors. But Lyn jumped the gun, and no one got a good photo.
Meanwhile, we visitors began swarming through the luxurious edifice.
Actually, I’d never been in a five-star hotel. (Of course, we aren’t sure how many stars it will have. We must wait for the rating committees, especially the Mobil Travel Guide!) I was surprised to discover that a five-star hotel mostly consists of large, awkward carpeted lounge-type rooms — like a small airport. Also, I was shocked the health club only has two televisions (though they were 42" HDTVs). Most posh spas have a separate TV for each treadmill. And the resplendent bouquets of sumptuous tropical flowers were, I discovered, genuine plastic.
Perhaps I expect too much from five-starhood.
Unfortunately, I fast every week from Thursday evening to Friday evening to protest the CIA, so I could not sample the food: raw oysters on the half-shell in soy tamarind sauce and beef satay (on wooden skewers). I did take some of the buffet home, to eat after my fast ended: 17 purple grapes, which were tidy and sweet; and a chunk of craggy cheddar cheese.
As I circled the provisions, I ran into Dean Gitter, and we spoke.
My exclusive interview with Dean Gitter:
Sparrow: Those doors, how long have you had them?
Gitter: Before we started this project, about five years.
Sparrow: And what are they? They’re Rajasthani?
Gitter: Exactly, they are Rajasthani. Mughal Period.
Sparrow: So they were in a temple, a Hindu temple?
Gitter: Actually a Mughal temple.
Sparrow: Like a mosque?
Gitter: Yeah. They got blurred, in there, during the 16th century.
Sparrow: And Rajasthan is on the border of Pakistan…
Gitter: Yes it is.
Sparrow: So, it’s an area where the religions blur.
Gitter: Right, right. And the paintings are all copies from the Ajunta Caves, which are maybe 200 miles northeast of Bombay. They date from around 300 A.D., which is the period when Buddhism and Hinduism coexisted. And I’ve been to the caves. They go on for miles. And they’re just a perfect amalgam of Hindu and Buddhist art.
Sparrow: The caves are sculptures, or paintings?
Gitter: Actually, many, many, many paintings — thousands of paintings. But there are also some astonishing sculptures. I mean, the space itself has been sculpted.
Sparrow: Wow! These are frescoes?
Gitter: Exactly! [Turning to the painting behind them.] You see those strange light things up there, in the upper right?
Sparrow: Yeah.
Gitter: Well, that’s where the plaster has literally come off the walls of the cave.
Sparrow: Oh! This is a copy of a fresco!
Gitter: It is! It is, exactly.
Sparrow: How are these made? These are painted? With oil paints?
Gitter: Yeah. My wife painted them.
Sparrow: Oh, yeah?
Gitter: She did all of them!
Sparrow: Oh I didn’t know that! Wow, wow, wow. And I was thinking, this looks a little bit like a mosque, the carpet motif. [Looking down.]
Gitter: The ways of designers are mysterious. I don’t know what he had in mind, but it works.
Sparrow: Yeah, yeah. So you been collecting Indian art ever since…
Gitter: Ever since I was a student of Rudi ‘s, which goes back almost 40 years. I know it’s a great deal more difficult to export these things from India now than it was 40 years ago.
Sparrow: Which you may have found out, while decorating this place.
Gitter: No, all this stuff is new.
Sparrow: What about that sculpture around the corner? That stone goddess, in front of the mirror?
Gitter: Made the day before yesterday.
Dean and I are both art snobs, I discovered. We both find great inspiration in Eastern mysticism. There is one difference between us, however. Mr. Gitter enjoys entertaining billionaires, and I do not. (In fact, if any billionaires are reading this essay, I hope they find it repulsive.)