SARATOGA – Although New Yorkers will head off in all directions to escape the sweltering city sidewalks this weekend, horse racing fans will be heading due north. Yes, it’s that time of year again in the heavenly Adirondack foothills, where woulda-coulda-shoulda complaints about bets not made are suitable breakfast conversation and the Daily Racing Form is the paper of record. Saratoga began its meet on Wednesday – for race fans, August is as good as it gets.

Red Smith coined one of the most famous sayings about the Spa, as Saratoga is affectionately called. His directions to Saratoga were: “From New York City, you drive north for about 175 miles, turn left on Union Avenue, and go back 100 years.” And it’s certainly easy to imagine yourself in 1905 while you sit on wooden chairs in the clubhouse, with the ceiling fans whirring overhead.

But Saratoga isn’t just about nostalgia. It is the most vibrant race meet in the country, and it’s a beautiful place to be. The bars of Caroline Street are hopping day and night. Swells from all over the country are bivouacked at grand hotels such as the Adelphi and the Gideon Putnam. At the track, the jazz bands honk their horns and the scent of fried potatoes wafts through the air (they invented the potato chip at a hotel in Saratoga). The place is a park, a picnic grounds with big trees and green lawns, the Big Red Spring gurgling in the back.

The small town finds itself with four times its normal population for the month of August, and each day about 27,000 of those folks go to the track. After a season in the echoing halls of Belmont, that kind of crowd in the Spa’s intimate grandstand feels positively bubbly.

I would like Saratoga even if there were no racing there. Luckily, I’ll never have to know. The races start at 1 p.m., six days a week (Tuesdays are dark) throughout the 36-day meet. On offer this year are 45 stakes races, 30 of them graded, 13 of them Grade I. The total stakes purses will exceed $10 million.

Saratoga also marks the beginning of first-rate 2-year-old racing. Your 2006 Derby horse is probably there, running in stakes races like Wednesday’s Adirondack, yesterday’s Saratoga Special, the August 27 Hopeful, and the August 26 Spinaway.

This weekend, Saratoga will host the Grade I Diana for fillies on the turf, the Grade II Jim Dandy for 3-year-old colts on the dirt – Todd Pletcher’s Flower Alley and Nick Zito’s Andromeda’s Hero are both pointed to that race – and the Grade I Go For Wand, for fillies and mares 3 years old and up.

Every division makes a good showing at the Spa. On August 6, you can see the $750,000 Whitney, where some older horse will try to inherit the kingdom of the retired Ghostzapper. Funny Cide will be here attempting to win his first race at the Spa, but Eddington, Limehouse, Saint Liam, and Evening Attire are expected to get in his way.

Some of the best 3-year-old fillies, including Spun Sugar and Round Pond, are expected to run for the $750,000 Alabama on August 20. But Smuggler could steal the show in this, the third leg of the Triple Tiara, having won the first two legs in the Mother Goose and the Coaching Club American Oaks.

All that leads up to the cymbal crash of August 27, when Preakness runner-up Scrappy T will lead the field in the $1 million Travers. The undercard, the Grade I King’s Bishop, may be an even more exciting race: The undefeated Lost in Fog is the best 3-year-old running, seemingly unbeatable around one turn, and he’ll be attempting to push his winning streak to nine races. Bellamy Road, sidelined with an injury after finishing seventh as the chalk in the Kentucky Derby, returns to race over these 7 furlongs. Roman Ruler, scheduled to start in the Haskell at Monmouth on August 7, may also be pointed to the King’s Bishop.

These big races are great stuff, but a typical race card at Saratoga has better racing than a marquee event at most of the tracks in the country. There is no bad day of racing at the Spa, so put on the seersucker and get upstate.