Bringin' home the bacon
A former Playgirl editor traded beefcake for pancakes by opening an upstate B&B

Aimee Szparaga rose quickly in her magazine-publishing career. In college, she interned for Rolling Stone and Paper and by age 25, she was editor-in-chief of Playgirl. But she soon found that heading up a skin rag comes with all the baggage one might expect. "There's a huge stigma attached to being editor-in-chief of Playgirl," Szparaga says. "I was starting to not take myself seriously."

Szparaga hightailed it out of Playgirl, eventually becoming managing editor of TONY's guides division. But she became weary of 2am worknights and dizzying deadlines. Besides that, she says, "I was getting squeezed out of every apartment I lived in and had to keep moving."

In October 2000, Szparaga and her boyfriend, Richard Nocera, vacationed at a dude ranch in Tennessee. Amid pristine pastures and four-legged friends, the couple resolved to exit the NYC rat race once and for all. "Around that time, my boyfriend and I were making a lot of weekend trips to the Catskills, and it just kind of dawned on us that the life we wanted was up there."

The couple's penchant for entertaining (Szparaga makes a mean gourmet country breakfast), combined with their desire to buy their own home, spurred them to open a B&B. But they eschewed the doilies-and-darling-antiques aesthetic that plagues most such establishments. Instead, Szparaga and Nocera envisioned "a modern country escape"—a bucolic boutique hotel that would attract young urban travelers. Maintaining that they could turn a profit by summer 2002, they were able to sell their idea to a private lender, who put up $65,000.

For Nocera, a painter, the move would not only accommodate his career, but benefit it. "I can work on a really large scale," he says. "My studio space needs to have large, large walls." Like so many other New Yorkers yearning for space, the couple headed for the hills.

Having calculated that they would need at least four guest bedrooms to turn a profit, the couple spent last autumn scouring tiny towns upstate. After looking at scores of "crappy, falling-apart" stuff, they found a well-kept, five-bedroom, Mediterranean-style house in Saugerties, about two hours from the city. But the place was a single-family dwelling. To transform it into the Villa at Saugerties, as they would name it, the house needed three new bathrooms, a kitchen overhaul and a much larger breakfast nook.

In December, the couple packed up their stuff and began the "Bob Newhart" phase of their lives. But getting the necessary building and small business permits took longer than expected, as did the renovation. ("Things move slow in the country," Szparaga admits.) In addition, as a Manhattanite whose knowledge of home repair ended with the last digit of her super's phone number, she soon discovered that small-town contractors like to quote newcomers big-city prices. Nocera is fairly handy, "but that kind of bit us in the ass, too," Szparaga notes. "He would pitch in, but they wouldn't charge us any less."

Over the past eight months, Szparaga and Nocera have learned plenty—including the fact that the town will cancel the initial public hearing required to get your business permits if you don't use certified mail to notify neighbors of the date. But both agree that leaving the city means looking at life through a more Zen-like lens. "Everyone wants instant gratification, but it hasn't been like that for this place," concedes Nocera, who eagerly awaits the arrival of the Villa's first guests just as this issue of TONY goes to press. "The toughest thing of all has been accepting this as a learning process."

--Melissa Checker