Paul and Nicole N.

Hello, I’m Edith Zimmerman, and this is a newsletter in which I ask people for recommendations in and around upstate New York and then illustrate the responses.

Paul and Nicole are the husband-and-wife team behind Dope Jams record store and Dope Jams Open-Air Festival at Locust Grove, in Oak Hill, which is ***NEXT WEEKEND, August 1-3!*** 

Full disclosure, Paul and Nicole also co-own a taco truck with my husband and me. It will be open at the festival and should be a good time!

How would you guys describe yourselves?

Nicole: I'm a mom, I'm a wife… God, that's a really hard question.

Okay, we can start with something else. How did you guys get to Oak Hill?

Paul: I came from Brooklyn. I just blindly moved, in 2011.

Why Oak Hill?

Paul: Because I wanted to get out of the city. And the rent for the entire building I moved into, with a storefront and an apartment, was less than my apartment in the city.

And at first, Nicole, you were just coming to visit?

Nicole: Yeah, every weekend. I was living in Cambridge, MA, at the time. We'd go back and forth. One day we took a day trip through East Durham and saw the Zoom Flume slide. Paul was like, “The girls will love it; there's a water park!” And I'm like, What? But then we saw the building [where we first lived and had our first record shop] in Oak Hill and ate at the Yellow Deli. And I was like, This feels okay. So I picked up the girls and moved here a year later.

Have you guys been anywhere cool recently?

Nicole: Zoom Flume! It’s the coolest place around, and we basically live there all summer.

Paul: And Kelley Farm & Garden hardware store, in Cobleskill. That place is great.

Any restaurants you like?

Nicole: Hy’s Fried chicken, just over the border in South Egremont, MA, and Ollie’s Pizza, in High Falls — the best pizza and wings you could get upstate.

Oh, and The Ice-burgh in Middleburgh expanded this year, too. They’re top-tier for ice cream.

Awesome. Thanks, guys!

(Buy tickets for Dope Jams Open-Air Festival here!)

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