Email/Share
Digg
Facebook
MySpace

Single Page
Larger Font
Smaller Font

If you’ve been to the Berkshires, you know what French meant. Drive past rolling hills sweeping up to Mount Greylock, Massachusetts’ highest point. Shop at antiques shops, crafts stores, and farmers markets. Indulge in amazing food. Photograph cows grazing placidly on deep green fields, see the houses of great artists and writers, and settle into inns and resorts united in their gay-friendliness.

First, a geography lesson. The Berkshire Hills, on the New York/Massachusetts border, stretch for about fifty miles north to south, encompassing several little villages from Williamstown in the north to Sheffield in the south. The region is about halfway between New York and Boston, about two hours from each. Heading south from Williamstown, veering occasionally to the east and west, you’ll pass through North Adams, Adams, Pittsfield, Lenox, Lee, Stockbridge, West Stockbridge, Great Barrington, and about a dozen even smaller villages in between.

It’s as gay-friendly a place as you can imagine. I can’t think of a single place in the Berkshires where GLBT visitors wouldn’t be welcomed with open arms—not surprising, I suppose, in a region filled with renowned cultural activities. While it’s not exactly brimming with gay nightlife (or any nightlife, for that matter), it is brimming with gay lives—another thing that makes the Berkshires such an attractive region. As a gay wedding mecca and a favored escape for a weekend or a lifetime, there’s a notable gay presence here that’s comforting.

The big gay event of the year is the BSCC festival the last weekend in April. This year, lesbian comic Reno entertained, and the event included silent and live auctions, a presentation by the president of Massachusetts Equality, and a casino-style game night. With all these events, and outreach both to schools and the community at large (the latter on such subjects as Transgender Issues or Spouses of Bisexuals), the Coalition has, in Connors’ words, “come a long way in twelve years.”

That could be said of the entire region, which became famous as a playground for the New York elite of the late Nineteenth/early Twentieth Century (the Berkshires’ “Gilded Age”).

Many of their “cottages”—this designation, with typical New England understatement, is used for manors of more than twenty rooms—have been converted into elegant inns or fascinating museums, while some, of course, house today’s gilded homeowners.

While such villages as Lenox and Stockbridge have long been established as getaways for the well-heeled, the real story these days is in the central and northern Berkshires, where towns like North Adams, Adams, and Pittsfield are shedding their industrial past and achieving a new raison d’etre, a new chic emerging in this formerly-neglected part of the Berkshires. It’s a story well worth watching, and one I’ll tell you more about in a while.

First, though, let me tell you about some of the gay lives, and the ease with which they blend into the landscape of dairy farms and rolling hills. “I came here for many years before moving here,” says Scott Laugenour, owner of Gallery Boreas, Pittsfield’s only gay-owned gallery and an integral part of that town’s revival, “and I have never had a feeling of not being welcome. You can travel here and be YOU.” Politically, he adds, the Berkshires are “one of the bluest areas of Massachusetts,” its residents were some of the first in the state to support gay marriage.

Everywhere you go, you’ll run into gay people—many of them transplants from New York, and all of them happy with their decision to move here. I speak with Gaetan and Mike, who run the beautiful Broken Hill Manor bed and breakfast in the woods outside Sheffield. With its opera-themed rooms—choose the large, four-poster bedded Aida or Tosca, with its brass canopy bed—and gorgeous common area with easy chairs and stone fireplace, it’s a great choice for lodging in the southern Berkshires.

If you’re lucky, you’ll meet Aruni Nan Futuronksy, who runs Out and About, a GLBT weekend at Kripalu Yoga Retreat in Lenox. As we walk through Kripalu’s halls, she waves at another woman (“That’s my wife,” she beams), later showing me photos of their family (which includes a dog and a bird). Says this no-nonsense and open-hearted teacher, “For me, Out and About represents healing. It’s been profoundly wonderful to see people being who they are.” Not that being gay or lesbian is ever a problem at Kripalu, or for that matter in the Berkshires. “In spite of the small town air,” notes Aruni, “it’s very progressive.” The Out and About retreat is the GLBT highlight of a year-round program of workshops and retreats. “It’s for people who want to bring a union of their lesbian/gay side and their spiritual side,” says Aruni.

You’ll definitely meet Daniel Osman at some point as his Dream Away Lodge is the closest thing to a gay bar the Berkshires have. Legendarily a brothel/speakeasy bought by the equally legendary Mama Fosca, this “best-loved secret place” (in Osman’s words), is tucked away on a wooded hilltop near Becket. It hosted Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975 and was featured in his movie Renaldo and Clara. Venture up there for dinner or cocktails in the kitsch-filled house, or for events such as Wednesday’s “democratic song circle” (i.e. open mic), art gatherings, and dances in the woods. “Mama created a little cultural center where all the coolest people hang out,” Osman smiles, and under the leadership of this self-described “gay man running the brothel on the hilltop,” the tradition continues in all its wacky fun.

More gay lives: Nana Simopoulos and Caryn Heilman, who opened the eco-conscious Topia Inn just last month. Here heating is provided by cooking oil, the entire establishment is fragrance-free, plants are watered from rain barrels, and the walls are covered with natural clay. It’s indulgence and virtue all in one. Step into your artist-designed room with private rain shower and organic linens, and you’ll feel more pampered than righteous. The couple also runs the Topia Arts Center, where you’ll find performances from Marcia Gay Harden reading Tony Kushner’s new work to Luisah Teish’s African creation stories. How has this lesbian couple been accepted in gritty little Adams? “In a blue collar town of 10,000, we’ve been completely embraced,” smiles Nana.

In fact, I first hear of Topia from one of their “competitors,” Nick Harrington, who with his father runs another delightful new Adams inn. As I tour Harrington’s Inn’s four large and comfortably-furnished rooms, and dig into fabulous baked scallops in the casual restaurant, Nick tells me about Topia, on whose board he sits. The next day, Nana is on the phone. Even when I run behind and can’t get in touch with the people I want to, this gay-friendly small-town network does all the work for me!

Does this kind of teamwork seem hard to believe? You haven’t been to the Berkshires, where people really are as open-minded and friendly as they seem. Prejudice is not only not happening, it’s not even a consideration. For instance, after my incredible body scrub at Cranwell, a lovely resort just outside Lenox fashioned around grand 19th-Century buildings, I ask Tobie, my therapist, about the couples massages offered. Are they available to same-sex couples? She looks kind of startled. “Of course they are,” she says without a moment’s pause. “A couple is a couple.” A minute later, she confesses, “I guess I’d never have considered the possibility that they WOULDN’T be available to same-sex couples.”

Continued
1 | 2 NEXT>>