Paradise found: for food, fun and culture, you can't beat these 13 veg-friendly small towns - vegetarian-friendly towns

Vegetarian Times, June, 1995 by Mark Harris

Veg-friendly restaurants: Easily a dozen, including a good selection of ethnic restaurants. Joe's and Little Joe's Italian restaurants are frequent haunts of the college crowd and Ithaca vegetarians.

Natural food stores: Greenstar Co-op; Oasis Natural Grocery; Ludgate Produce Farm; Tops, part of a grocery chain, caters to the vegetarian crowd.

Vegetarian support: Ithaca Vegetarian Supper Club; Cornell Students for the Ethical Treatment of Animals; animal-rights group Farm Sanctuary is 4S minutes away in Watkins Glen, N.Y.

Earth-friendly attributes: Curbside recycling and a drop-off center. Community garden plots. Pedestrian-friendly downtown.

Access to nature: Good hiking, swimming and climbing in three state parks that feature gorges, creeks and waterfalls, including Taughannock Falls, the tallest waterfall in the East. Water sports on local Cayuga Lake, as well as on 10 other Finger Lakes nearby.

Cultural life: A number of theater, music and performing arts organizations, including The Hangar Theater, hailed as the "crown jewel" of regional summer theaters. Cornell's Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art houses an impressive international collection. Abundant bookstores and cafes, as well as two arts movie houses.

Worth noting: The Finger Lakes region is a wine connoisseur's paradise. "There are probably 100 vineyards within a two-hour drive," says Cornell graduate student Kimberly Philips. "Most of the best medium-price white wines I've ever tasted come from this region. It's one of the best-kept secrets around!"

NORTHAMPTON, MASS.

(population: 29,289) A small town with a big-city mentality, Northampton is an historic enclave that has managed to welcome the counterculture while preserving the town's old world feel. Nineteenth-century Main Street bustles with pedestrians in search of shopping staples, as well as crystals, organic cotton clothing, cappuccino fixes, foreign flicks and vegetarian fare aplenty. Home to Smith College, Northampton anchors the Five-College region, a largely rural valley that even the staunchest of urbanites call hip.

Vegetarian and primarily vegetarian restaurants: Bela, Paul & Elizabeth's (serves fish)

Veg-friendly restaurants: Most restaurants offer veg alternatives. Even The Graffiti Grill, the local hamburger mainstay, will serve veggie burgers on request.

Natural food store: Cornucopia

Vegetarian support: New England Anti-Vivisection Society (based in Boston, 1 20 miles east)

Earth-friendly attributes: Curbside recycling and drop-off center. Community garden plots. Farmers' market offers organic produce. Pedestrian-friendly downtown.

Access to nature: Suspended walkway meanders through 20-acre marshlands. One-hundred-acre city forest. Downhill and cross-country skiing at nearby Mt. Tom and Sugarloaf Hiking and walking in the Berkshire Mountains to the west, or on the eight-mile Norwottuck Rail Trail, a converted railroad right-of-way stretching from Northampton to Amherst, Mass. Water sports on the Connecticut River along Smith's south campus.