Massachusetts’ smallest city is going through a revival. It hits home for me when I walk into the Bear and Bee Bookshop on a quiet day and wind up talking with the co-owners about speculative fiction … and how to revive the Hoosic River. And when I walk into a writers group and meet people I’ve never seen before, even in 20 years of talking with local folk.

I can walk into a workshop at the Plant Connector or an informal gathering of friends and local entrepreneurs and find people talking excitedly about summer plans. We have a new energy in the state’s smallest city, and I’m feeling it grow.

In the pandemic, the downtown has seen a raft of new businesses — we have an independent bookstore, plant shop, tea shop, vintage clothing and fiber arts. While Mass MoCA keeps a strong beat as the country’s largest contemporary art museum, and encourages a community of artists, they have company.

Around downtown

Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts brings art downtown, along with local places, from Common Folk artists’ co-op to Installation Space. Common Folk and GreylockWorks and Belltower Records host local live music.

You can pull together a picnic from the farmers market or pick up a bottle of Berkshire Cider, Chingon tacos, ice cream at Tunnel City and Lickety Split, a local burger at Public with purple potato chips … and take them on a hike up the Appalachian Trail or Mount Greylock, or sit by the marble arch of Natural Bridge and listen to the river.

North Adams

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FreshGrass

Mass MoCA

Mass MoCA is now the largest contemporary art museum in the country, and one of the largest on the planet. Artists from across the U.S. and the world have come to show their work in a former mill North Adams along the Hoosic River.

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Photo by Kate Abbott

GreylockWorks

Karla Rothstein and Salvatore Perry have renovated a 240,000 cotton mill on Route 2 near the North Adams / Williamstown line into GreylockWorks, a center for local food and events.

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Photo by Kate Abbott

Tunnel City Coffee

A college hangout and an anchor on Spring Street for decades, Tunnel City roasts its own coffee and has a loyal following — it roasts its own blends locally in the renovated Norad Mill in North Adams.

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Photo by Kate Abbott

Norad Mill

Moresi & Associates has drawn more than 40 local businesses to the renovated Norad Mill — artists and artisans, coffee and local wines, vintage records, yarn shops and even rocks and minerals.

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Photo by Kate Abbott

HooRWA

The Hoosic River Watershed association is a group of local people who want to restore and conserve the river and bring people to enjoy it — paddling, biking and wandering along the bank or soaking your feet as you watch a migrating solitary sandpiper at the water’s edge.

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Courtesy photo by Sam Whited

North Berkshire dance

Contra and square dancing is a living New England tradition, as casual as dancing barefoot in the kitchen on a summer night. The North Berkshire Community Dance holds a monthly dance on second Saturdays at the First Congregational Church in Williamstown, with live music.

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Brewhaha

Up at Brewhaha, Barry Garton smiles when he hears about the farm-to-table movement as a new phenomenon, because he has been cooking that way since the 1970s — local and homestyle, with fair trade coffee, soups and omelettes and his signature muffins — pumpkin chip, chocolate banana and more.

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Nikki Giovanni / MCLA

MCLA

National and international figures come to visit the students at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, ranked in the top 10 public colleges in U.S. News and World Report and appears in U.S. News’ list of Top National Liberal Arts colleges.

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Photo by Kate Abbott

Public Eat + Drink

Public Eat + Drink is the kind of place that has purple potato chips on the menu, and homemade ice cream sandwiches — and local hamburgers so thick they can last for two meals. It’s the kind of place that will be crowded to spilling over at 5 p.m. on a Wednesday in a soaking rain. The word has gotten out.

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Courtesy of the Berkshire Scenic Railway

Hoosac Valley Line

On weekends, Berkshire Scenic Railway runs hour-long, round-trip historic train rides between Adams and North Adams, and local volunteers tell the story of trains in the mountains.

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