Frog Spotted on Main St

New Paltz is a small version of some of the cooler nabes of NYC. We have coffee bars, tattoo parlors, tchotchke vendors, antique stores, and head shops (3 of 'em!). Main St is a combination of Columbus Ave and Greenwich Village. But one thing is conspicuously absent: conspicuous consumption.

Yes, New Paltz has its share of Beamers, Benzes and Jags, but those mostly return to their Upper West and -East Side garages by Sunday night when the second-homers return to Manhattan. People don't walk the narrow sidewalks of New Paltz decked out in the latest designer duds; we're more likely to see students on streetcorners sporting sweatpants and sneakers. So it came as a shock to me when I spotted a young man pushing an $800 stroller past the bus station today. That Frog

When we lived in Manhattan, we began to see Frogs and Geckos as soon as they came to this country. We first spotted them when stores just had prototypes and were taking orders months in advance. I was surprised how popular these strollers became, given their price and impracticality: they don't fold up small enough to fit on a bus or subway, so basically they're only meant to allow rich people's babysitters to take Dakota or Max for a stroll to Barnes & Noble.

Now, I don't have anything against rich people. It's the impracticality of these strollers that kills me. Maybe it's because I used to go thru strollers quickly, but if you added all of the strollers we had over the past 11 years, they still wouldn't add up to $800. Weirder still is that New Paltz doesn't have stroller-friendly sidewalks. The main shopping and walking areas tend to be narrow and hilly. In our 8 months in New Paltz, I've only seen a kid in a stroller two or three other times. But spring is upon us and summer isn't far away. Maybe we'll be seeing more of these schmancy parambulators in the months to come.