Last night Niki and Seth invited us to attend an auction fundraiser for the Universal Preservation Hall, a non-religious, non-profit project “to save the Universal Baptist Church building at 25 Washington Street and transform it into a significant and high quality meeting, event and performance venue.”
The church in question, despite being so dilapidated, is really a beautiful building. It’s not the only former church in town that will be converted for another purpose. There’s a former church on Caroline at Circular that’s been converted to luxury condos that are so in demand they almost never change hands (one was on the market last year for more than three-hundred grand and had a “sale pending” the day it was listed).
The event last night was fun. There was a live band, an open bar, and non-stop entertainment in the form of Garland the emcee, who did a stellar job running the event. The auction was for people who were donating their time or services in exchange for a donation to the UPH project. People up for auction ranged from a Saratogian reporter who tried to up the bidding to $500 by saying, “I’ll sleep with any woman” (his strategy backfired and he went for $350) to chefs to authors to the mayor of Saratoga Springs, Michael Lenz (in below photo, right, around the time Garland tried to get him to do the Robot).
