Talk:New Paltz (village), New York

• It's a village in New York. Should it be moved to New Paltz, New York or New Paltz? I say New Paltz, New York since it's not well-known outside of NY State. Rhobite 02:05, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)

• A town that has a twentieth of the population density of a village of half the population? That isn't a town, it's a smudge on the map! good grief! Who calls that a town? Don't they hold censuses and whatnot in NY? --Tony Sidaway|Talk 00:30, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Out East, what they call a "town" is what normal people like you and I call a "township". I have a more objection in general to including every place the U.S. census counts, just because we have numbers for those places. Given that they are there, I conditionally oppose this move, but would not oppose weeding out some of them entirely. Gene Nygaard 01:25, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• oppose. This is far from the smallest of towns in NY. Blame Ram-Bot for the additions of all the little towns and villages and hamlets if you'd like, but thisis where it should be, given all of that. - UtherSRG 14:43, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for keeping this article at its current location for now. It's listed on Wikipedia:Requested moves and we'll see how that works out. I'm sure it'll get moved to either New Paltz or New Paltz, New York but in the mean time, please let it be. Also, there is no policy disallowing links to commercial sites from Wikipedia. The local newspaper should have a link, for example.

It's a little exasperating to have the same user continue to come in and revert this article, despite the numerous style problems people have pointed out. The latest version now has a paragraph which says "original position and veil of ignorance are concepts developed by John Rawls that are intended to help people write laws that govern the distribution of wealth in societies." I hope it goes without saying that this is off topic for an article about the village of New Paltz. Rhobite 01:31, Jan 17, 2005 (UTC)

That's actually been in several of the earlier "preverts" as well. Weird. --Ray Radlein 02:39, Jan 17, 2005 (UTC)

The anonymous user who frequently reverts this article claims that it's due to bad grammar and broken links. I checked every external link in this article and they work fine, and I can't see any obvious grammar problems. Please use the talk page and explain what the issue is. Rhobite 16:49, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

I dont know what thats all about but I live in New Paltz and theres very little differance between the village and the town of New Paltz. Also I don't know anyone who commutes to New York City from New Paltz its 90 miles away, well maybe i know one or two but they only go down there 2 times a week at most and they certenly are not in any kind of majority . Personaly I hate Mayor Jason West not because hes doing the whole gay wedding thing i just don't like him. He brought so much attenchin to the town and himself little good came out of it, the media flooded the streets and there where (and still are) tons of torists and it just made it that much more difficult to smoke pot.

I just wanted to say that

He brought so much attenchin to the town and himself little good came out of it, the media flooded the streets and there where (and still are) tons of torists and it just made it that much more difficult to smoke pot.

may well be the best. comment. ever. --Ray Radlein 06:01, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

I was more than glad to see him NOT re-elected. He looked SO dejected, it was enormously thirst quenching to all who despised him.

I see that my deletion of the statement listing some minority groups in New Paltz has been undone and redone. I should elaborate a bit on why I deleted the sentence about the African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians living in New Paltz. First, it doesn't say much distinctive about New Paltz. Minorities live in lots of cities in the US. Second, it is placed between the Native American and European parts of the history of the city. This disrupts the temporal flow of the article. Third, the sentence is redundant. The demographics section lists the minority groups and provides more detail. If someone wants to make the point that those groups live in New Paltz I would suggest making the fact a bit more interesting by perhaps explaining how they got there. The article would then have the Native Americans setting up a village, the Huguenots arriving, then other groups moving there throughout the city's history. That would show how New Paltz is diverse and also add new information. --Beirne 22:54, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

The end of the history section as well as the paragraph on politics have largely the same information, with one contradiction. The history section says Julia Walsh is a Green Party member but the politics section says she is a democrat. The two paragraphs should be merged and the party affiliation of Julia Walsh should be clarified. --Beirne 00:06, 2 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Removed "Daniel J. Torres" from the notable residents list. I cannot find anywhere on google that can tie anyone with this name to New Paltz in a 'notable' way. If you revert - please put some evidence here to back it up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Caidh (talk • contribs) 02:24, 19 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Daniel Jason Torres lives in town.--otherlleft 14:10, 28 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Missing from this page is the natural culture of New Paltz - where I sit at this moment. The children of the local towns folk, such as the professors at the college, have been a wild bunch. Added to the local culture has been a roving culture that is today loosely linked to the Rainbow Family culture, but has had many cultural incarnations. New Paltz has been, and remains, a great place to party. I have heard it called Zoo Paltz, New Palsy, and No Pulse. It is useful when trying to understand the perenial cultures of New Paltz to note that it is the nearest college to the town of Woodstock, New York, which is the mecca of the most important American alternate culture: the hippies.

There is a darker cutural undercurrent to the area. Along with the ubuitious influences of the spread of the KKK during the 1930s, which created for every small American and Canadian town a corrupt network of enforcers and racists called a "good ole boy" network, there have been insidious influences due to its proximity to New York. Interviews I conducted with elders during the 1980s indicated that with the beginning of WWII, supporters of Nazi Germany formed themselves into "bunds" and trained using Nazi training techniques. Another poor influence was the importation of of gangster influences into the area during the 1960s and with them the formation of corrupt business influences that aligned themselves to the police department.

The local agriculture is the apple; apple orchard owners have of course used migrant labor. When I first came to New Paltz in the 1980s as a student, I took a walk with my dorm-mates through an orchard owned by the locally respected Moriello family. In the orchard I found a dump, and in the dump I found the records of the use of migrant labor at the orchard. From these records I learned that this respected family used migrant laborers as virtual slaves, and apparently utilized brutal labor sub-contractors.

Possibly for these reasons, in the 1980s New Paltz was a haven for "skin head racists" as well as their antithetical opposition, the "peace punks" -- who inherited the hippie mantle. There were many ideological battles of the bands during the 1980s, and the two opposing forces, Nazism and Anarchy each developed in an uneasy yet mostly peaceful coexistence. The ever popular breakfast business, The Bistro, is owned by the former drummer for Murphy's Law, a Nazi-leaning punk band of that period.

Today, the threat from the extreme right is property and business owner Bobby Downs; recently he had a large number of the contemporary pacifist crowd arrested and imprisoned for standing on a sidewalk in front of property he owns; his claim, backed by the police department, is that he owns the sidewalks, an obvious exaggeration. For one thing Main Street, where this occurred, is a state maintained highway.

The town has also been called by the local youth the "town without mercy" for the brutality and corruption of its police and policies; my nickname for the town is "Nazi Polis."

It may be interesting to note that there is an on-going effort to eliminate New Paltz's two police departments (village and town), and give enforcement responsibilities to the county's sheriff department. The general complaint is that the two police departments are "useless" as they protect the locals no matter what they do while harvesting students, new comers, and passers-through for revenue with over-zealous enforcement. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by <deleted for obvious reasons> 20:52, August 23, 2007 (UTC).

What the hell are you talking about? Maybe this was the case almost 30 years ago in the beginning of the 80's but it isn't the case today. I've lived in New Paltz from 1999 to 2007 and it is FAR from a Nazi heaven. As a Jewish person I have never felt any sort of Nazi attitude and certainly not from Bobby Downs. If anything in 2007 Jew Paltz is the right word for it, we even have a website with that name. New Paltz has the largest and most vibrant Jewish community in Ulster county. A chabad located on North Oakwood, there is a large reconstructionist temple on Church street and the old Italian restaurant on South Chestnut is now the Jewish community center. While I am not going to sit here and claim there is no racism in New Paltz because there is racism found in EVERY American community from New Paltz to San Francisco, its not palatable.

The people who call it a town with out mercy are a) drinking and driving or b) busy begging for change with their tattoo faces. Get real man. --Lietkynes65 (talk) 15:27, 23 April 2008 (UTC)Reply

I happen to agree with unsigned on the police issue. The motto for the town should read "Welcome to New Paltz, you're under arrest". I can't even tell you how many times I've had my car damaged by police dogs, my things broken, and them finding nothing. Then laughing that my car was trashed. The probable cause for them is, there's a person who's under 30 and driving a car. I avoid driving through the town whenever possible. People are afraid of the predatory tactics in the town. People are afraid of the police.

Secondly, in regards to dirty, filthy drinker drivers. Let's consider the fact that every major parking lot in the town threatens car impound if you leave your car overnight. This CREATES drinking and driving. People do not know where to park and get put into the situation. Apparently there's a non-listed park and ride across from Stewart's that might be safe to park in. There's no signs. There's no literature. There's only threats and police swarming like sharks at 2am.

On one occasion I had a a driver who thought she was fine, she had 3 drinks over the course of the night. An officer was stalking the bar we were at so I marched her over to the officer and demanded that she be breathalyzed before she got in her car. The officer was ANGRY. He reluctantly performed the test. But then refused to let us see the numbers and said.. "I dunno.. MAYBE she can drive". This means, he wanted her to get in the car so he could pull her over despite our encounter so he could get the collar. WHAT A DICK. We took a taxi ($20 bucks one way) and requested that we could leave the car at the bar. The bar owner had to write a special note to stop the car from being toed.

New Paltz, has Town police, State Police, Campus Police, Sheriffs, and you occasionally see Environmental police and rangers. From what I hear. The police arrested 150 collage kids last week. People who are trying to invest their money and time into a career only to get a black mark on their record that will haunt them forever.

Police are a necessary element in society. Without them there would be total anarchy. However over policing feels like tyranny. New Paltz is a tyrannical police shark tank, and the parking lots are a set up that promote drunk driving. It's probably known by the police and town that it's a set up and they don't care because ruining lives equals money. It's also great business for "Tow-Riffic" who seems to be in kahoots with the whole scam. It gives the town a bad name.

184.74.239.106 (talk) 17:24, 20 September 2014 (UTC) Not saying. I fear police and I obey the law. ^[1]Reply

I have conducted interviews with several local residents about Halloween in New Paltz and published the results in a series of articles. I hope that an editor may find some of this information useful in developing the Halloween section of the article, as New Paltz itself gives Halloween more weight than the present sources are able to indicate. The kicker is that, should any of these article be considered, the editor will have to request it be whitelisted in order to reference it. The publisher's site has been blacklisted, but there is precedent for whitelisting individual articles that are considered verifiable. These are the article URLs:
http://new-york-travel.suite101.com/article.cfm/haunted_hasbrouck_carries_on_a_scary_tradition
http://holiday-entertaining.suite101.com/article.cfm/new_paltz_halloween_parade_open_to_all
http://sculptingmaterials.suite101.com/article.cfm/night_of_100_pumpkins_draws_new_paltz_artists
http://pagan-wiccan-practice.suite101.com/article.cfm/samhain_in_new_paltz
http://dutch-history.suite101.com/article.cfm/huguenot_streets_historical_halloween_event
http://kids-holiday-activities.suite101.com/article.cfm/new_paltz_teen_seen_haunts_community
The first two are, in my opinion, the most valuable, because they contain historical information which was new to me.--otherlleft 14:22, 28 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Hi otherlleft. My gut instinct is that these sources don't pass WP:RS as the site doesn't display a "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". If it did then I wouldn't be objected to you using them as citations within the article, but I don't believe that they'd be acceptable as external links. I've posted this at WP:RSN and you're welcome to contribute to the discussion there. If the consensus there is that the site meets WP:RS than I wouldn't object to letting you cite the article without going through the normal COI routine, as it is obvious that you know the gist of the COI editing guidelines. ThemFromSpace 23:10, 30 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

The information does not appear to have any unique scholarly basis – they are just general articles. Accordingly, the links should not be added as they do not clearly satisfy WP:EL. Per WP:NOTDIR Wikipedia does not attempt to list all relevant links. Johnuniq (talk) 01:42, 31 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Not a problem - I found that some of the interview subjects contributed previously undocumented historical information, which is why I suggested the review. I won't participate in the RS discussion because I've as yet been unsuccessful in getting the editorial staff at Suite101 to seriously consider any changes. Cheers!--otherlleft 12:24, 31 October 2009 (UTC)Reply