Life Without a Vehicle

As I explained in my original post, this blog is about my experiences of living without a vehicle. When I embarked on this phase of my life, I had some pre-conceived notions of what it would be like, but I truly did not know for sure if it would be possible. I had some doubts, and so did some of my friends and family. Nobody lives in Upstate New York without a car, that's just crazy talk. I was sure there would be some hassles or inconveniences along the way, but I thought I could make it work well enough. What I wasn't expecting it to be was a bit of a life-changing experience.

Slick's Tavern & Restaurant

Before I get into more detail about my life experiment, I want to let you know about one of the places that primarily drew me to Schenectady's Stockade neighborhood as a place to live. 

I grew up in the Corning-Painted Post area of Upstate New York, and I have fond memories of many of the restaurants, taverns and pubs that were a big part of the daily life of that industrial area. Corning in particular had an abundance of corner and neighborhood bars and taverns, the kind that were always full of life, loud people and good food. I was, of course, very young then, but I often went to these places with my (much) older brothers, often after a little league game or practice, where I got to sit at the bar with one of them, or in a group of their friends at a table, and have a soda and a burger, or a basket of the now-ubiquitous Buffalo chicken wings. Because of the Flood of '72 (Hurricane Agnes), a good many of those places are gone. Those were different times back then, but the memories of the laughter and jokes, the crusty old bartenders ("Hey kid, how are ya? Nice game last night. Coke's on me"), and the feeling of belonging to a place, always were very strong in my mind. I found some of those places when I was a college student in Binghamton (which might explain why I didn't do a lot of dating then; no self-respecting girl would set foot in most of those places).

Food Shopping in Downtown Schenectady

When I first told a good friend that I planned to live in Schenectady without a car, one of the first questions she asked me is, "Where will you do your food shopping?" Before I could answer, she followed with a second question, "There aren't any grocery stores downtown, are there?" Well, after some time here, the answer to the second question is no -- and yes. I have found many answers to the first question, so if you're new to the area, or think that there just aren't any alternatives to the bigger stores, this article is for you. I might be able to answer another question that many people are asking as the city undergoes revitalization, and that is, "Do we really need a supermarket in downtown Schenectady?"

Zenectady - An Electric City Side Walk

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

These words from Henry David Thoreau fit this new experiment of my life quite aptly. The difference is that I left the woods, or the farmlands rather, of the Helderberg Hilltowns and moved instead deep into the heart of a city. The city is Schenectady, nestled along the banks of the Mohawk River in Upstate New York, and I now reside in its oldest neighborhood, known as The Stockade.