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The wealthy weekenders blend in much more easily across the river in the more cosmopolitan Columbia and Dutchess counties. But even there, the buzz is coming not from the established zones of WASP chic like Millbrook or Chatham, but from long-neglected cities like Hudson, a onetime whaling hub that was overcome by crime and poverty until the mid-Nineties, when antiques dealers transformed it into a weekend furniture mecca.

In the past two years, Hudson's endless supply of vacant 19th-century buildings has been drawing a younger crop of artists and designers who've given the town a new energy, new restaurants and aeven a hint of urban nightlife. On a Saturday in June, more than 100 of Hudson's recent transplants - almost all of them ex-New Yorkers - began the evening at a benefit for a local theater, where headliners ranged from classical pianist Vladimir Pleshakov to Bitch & Animal, a lesbian performance duo. Later the crowd moved down Warren Street to the Red Dot restaurant, where a deejay was spinning for a convivial group of business owners, artists, and one or two drag queens. The hot topics of the evening: politics (the newcomers are mobilizing to protest the construction of a new cement plant along the river) and real estate (a brownstone just went on the market for $49,ooo).

Alana Hauptmann, who owns the Red Dot with her husband, Perry Cooney, came to Hudson after 20 years in Manhattan, where she worked in design and sales for Versace and other fashion houses. The first night she spent on lower Warren Street, which still has its share of drug dealers, there was a stabbing outside her window. To her surprise, she stayed, seduced by the opportunity to join a group of people building their own version of a small ton, pretty much from scratch. "A lot of us originally moved to Manhattan for the anonymity, to do our own thing - and that's fine when you're 25," she says. "But when you get a little older you want to connect with people. The new people coming to Hudson have done the New York thing, or they've done the L.A. thing. And now the're really looking for a home."

It hasn't gone unnoticed that many of the newcomers - on both sides of the river - are gays and lesbians, who often make up the first wave in a gentrification cycle. But there have been few reports of problems or overt prejudice, perhaps because so many locals take a pragmatic view of their new neighbors. One Sullivan County antiques dealer sums it up this way: "You've just bought a home and you're spending lots of money on renovations? Then you're fine. You're neat and clean, and you don't clog up our schools with more children? Then welcome to the neighborhood. We'll leave you alone."

Indeed, whether you're gay or straight, upstate New York may be the only place left within two hours of Manhattan where you can still live in true rural seclusion, far from the watchful eyes of neighbors, friends and the New York Post. And since the region is so vast, you rarely have to worry about that notorious Hamptons hazard: seeing your co-workers - in shorts - at the supermarket. For many Manhattanites, that's upstate's biggest draw of all.

"You keep hearing about all these people who have houses up here, but everybody is tucked away in these little pockets," says Chandra North, sitting in the kitchen of her Ulster County home, which was built by Dutch settlers in 1745.

"And that's what's so great about it - you don't ever see them. Unless, for some reason, you really want to."

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