You can sit back over cheese fondue or ham and cornichons on a baguette with butter. This milltown along the Housatonic River has a long connection to New York and one of the strongest concentrations of restaurants and small local shops in any Berkshire community.
You can wander among second-hand books and vintage clothing. On a crisp fall morning, you can share a home-made doughnut with apple filling and a locally roasted cup of coffee, or Thai noodle soup and steamed buns.
Bard College at Simon’s Rock adds to the cultural weave of the community, holding talks and performances and art year-round, along with downtown venues like the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center and St. James Place. The town has fed creative life since long before Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne met on a hike up Monument Mountain.
W.E.B. DuBois was born and raised here, and he found sources of strength on the Housatonic. Today you can walk a path to his homesite and find his thoughts in the DuBois Center, in the rare bookstore near the cemetery where he buried his wife and young son — or join a tribute in a garden along the River Walk and keep the rhythm of a spiritual and a talking drum.
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You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant — even an evening of music with the Guthrie family. The church that made folk music history 50 years ago in Arlo Guthrie’s hit song is now a community center and the site of an annual folk music series in the summers.
READ MOREThe Great Barrington Farmers Market runs outdoors, just off Main Street, on Saturday mornings from May to October, with fruits and greens, baked goods, herbs and oils, coffee and cider and more.
READ MOREWoven Roots Farm is a traditional, hand-scale vegetable farm, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program and education center.
READ MOREMark Firth was a restauranteur in Brooklyn before he came to the Berkshires. Out here he has raised his own pigs for his own kitchen. He also turns to local farms for fruits and vegetables and meats.
READ MOREPleasant and Main looks like a cafe grown in an antique shop, in its quiet corner of Housatonic, and its menu is bright and unexpected. Plate-sized pancakes with cherries, eggs Florentine, country fare with a European undertone.
READ MORESteam Cafe is a cheerful place, and the menu is pure comfort food — soups and dumplings, steamed buns, spring rolls. A bowl of Thai noodle soup comes in a generous portion, ample for many meals, mild on the spice and rich with chicken and vegetables.
READ MOREThe farm market carries blueberries and garden plants in the summer, apples and pumpkins in the fall, winterberry and wreathes and evergreens in the winter.
READ MOREThe Southern Berkshire Chamber of Commerce covers a lot of ground. It is based in Great Barrington, known in the Berkshires for its concentration of shops and restaurants, and it has expanded to serve the towns around it.
READ MOREClose to 30 years ago, cellist Yehuda Hanani began presenting chamber concerts with conversation on a theme. The form was new then — it has become common now. And over the years, Hanani has created concerts with musicians and themes around the world as artistic director of Close Encounters with Music.
READ MOREor more than 40 years, Richard Bourdon has been baking European-style sourdough breads in an old brick building that once belonged to the Rising Paper Mill.
READ MOREThe W.E.B. Du Bois Center for Freedom and Democracy is taking shape within the former Clinton A.M.E. Zion Church in Great Barrington.
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