270-290 State garage (left), soon to be acquired by city. Sherman-Tyler lot: Future housing? Below: Hausladen outlines changes.
The city’s parking authority is about to pick up a 278-space garage downtown, a few months before it is set to lose a 470-space surface lot in West River.
Adding the former could bring in around $600,000 a year, as well as bolster parking options for downtown’s red-hot building boom.
Dropping the latter would mean an annual $700,000 loss, but might also encourage the development of an empty lot in a neighborhood eager for housing.
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Thomas Breen |
Feb 27, 2019 8:55 am
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Eduardo De Lara shows his empanadas at Tuesday night’s pitch event.
Business Accelerator crews serve up the goods at The State House.
Loosen your belt and get ready to eat.
A cornucopia of fried, spicy, savory, and eminently portable international street food is about to hit New Haven, courtesy of a host of new food startups run by local immigrants with fare ranging from Dominican Republic-style spinach-and-feta empanadas, chutney from Mauritius, and social justice-flavored Salvadoran pupusas.
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Allison Hadley |
Feb 25, 2019 8:38 am
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Sometimes, in mid-late February, the relentless gray skies, noncommittal precipitation, and prospect of another month of similar weather can really bring a body down. And sometimes, shows like Prince Royal and MAKU Soundsystem are the equivalent of four days of tropical sunshine and relaxed vibes, the perfect prescription to cure the late winter blues.
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Brian Slattery |
Feb 6, 2019 1:11 pm
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Lydia Luce at Cafe Nine Tuesday night.
Midway through her set at Cafe Nine on Tuesday night, having already won the crowd over, Nashville-based singer-songwriter Lydia Luce motioned behind her.
“You may be wondering about the jellyfish,” she said.
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Markeshia Ricks |
Feb 6, 2019 9:04 am
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Markeshia Ricks Photos
The State of the Union address is about how the president sees the country. For a crowd gathered gathered at the State House Tuesday, it became about a picture painted from a different view.
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Karen Ponzio |
Feb 4, 2019 8:30 am
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Xenosis
“I like having shows on dates that people will remember,” said musician Mark Lyon on why he chose Feb. 2 for a triple bill of death metal advertised as “A Very Brutal Groundhog Day” at The State House this past Saturday night, including his band Xenosis.
“I mean, it’s Groundhog Day, and that movie? Who doesn’t love Bill Murray?,” Lyon added. “I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t love Bill Murray?”
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Karen Ponzio |
Jan 28, 2019 1:40 pm
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Elm Fiction
“When I book here I want to make sure we are connecting with people who are doing similar things in other places,” said Joe Morris, musician and co-curator of Multiplex, the new improvisational music series that opened at The State House Sunday afternoon.
Along with musician and co-curator Bob Gorry, Morris has set up a series of three shows over the next three months to connect and highlight local and non-local musicians on the experimental music scene.
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Karen Ponzio |
Jan 25, 2019 8:37 am
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Michelle Saxton.
Michelle Saxton recalled her first foray into booking and promoting shows under the name GOKATGO! with a big smile at Three Sheets, the former Rudy’s.
“My very first show was in this room, right on that stage!” she said. “It was September 2003, and the bands were the Blind Pharoahs from New York and the Tombs Tones from New Jersey, both old friends of mine, and I was like ‘Let’s do this you guys! Come up and play!’ And the rest is history.”
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Karen Ponzio |
Jan 23, 2019 2:13 pm
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Bitch Fit
“I’m so excited I’m forgetting to breathe,” said Megan, vocalist for Bitch Fit — one of three local bands that gave the audience some breath-stopping moments during a Tuesday night when many braved the icy sidewalks and below-freezing temperatures to be warmed and welcomed by a trio of acts all celebrating their first time playing at Cafe Nine on State and Crown.
Public officials from the governors on down warned people to stay home binge-watching TV Sunday night as temperatures rocketed toward zero and ice made roads slick and dangerous.
New Haven’s Ninth Square music venues didn’t get the memo.
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Brian Slattery |
Jan 17, 2019 8:24 am
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Sam Messer
Untitled (from Denis the Pirate series).
A sailing ship transformed, with eyes on its sails, heads toward the edge of the world, until a hand rises from the mythological depths to warn the vessel to turn back. A hurricane whirls at the center of a small square that shouldn’t be able to contain it. Empty pools bake by the seashore; are they being built or are they being abandoned? It’s hard to say.
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Daniel Shoemaker |
Jan 8, 2019 8:28 am
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Moctar.
Mdou (pronounced mmdou) Moctar, the Abalak, Niger-based musician, packed a New Haven venue for the third time in just over 15 months on Thursday night, playing at the State House this time, edging north in capacity from his prior two outings at Lyric Hall. Rick Omonte, who booked the show, might know why.
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Brian Slattery |
Dec 20, 2018 8:39 am
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Getting ready to come back north from New Orleans for a spate of gigs around southern Connecticut — including at the State House in New Haven on Dec. 27 — Nardy Boy guitarist, singer, and bandleader Renard Boissiere reminisced about a night at the Acoustic in Bridgeport a few years ago. Nardy Boy was onstage on a Wednesday night. The band always had a microphone set up for someone who wanted to join them. A woman with short blond hair asked if she could sing with them. Boissiere agreed.
An eclectic billing of hometown electric guitar-adjacent acts took the stage at the still fresh-faced State House to celebrate the release of headliner Polluter’s new record, The Tree That Owned Itself. As a thank you to the crowd, each attendee received a ticket to a free digital download of a cross-genre session that explores the far reaches of artsy jazz punk.
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Brian Slattery |
Dec 14, 2018 8:33 am
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All the elements in the title track from the New Haven-based Ports of Spain’s latest album, Able Archer, are in place from the song’s first breath. There’s Carlson’s drums, relaxed yet urgent. There’s Ilya Gitelman’s intricate, muscular guitar. And there’s Carlson’s voice, sending a melody cascading down a startlingly poetic set of words.
“Sleep through spring / You can throw it away / And lie till the onset of autumn / Cool like a knife slipping into a wave / And lithe gliding down to the bottom,” Carlson sings. “Strong square breathing I’m a leaf on a stream / An archer who’s nocking an arrow / Unfit and insistent I’m a smear on a page / Who shoots though the target is narrow.”
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Karen Ponzio |
Dec 7, 2018 8:19 am
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Sean Beirne.
“It’s nice to have the family all in one room and most of you know what I mean by the family — the NHV and CT music family,” said singer-songwriter Frank Critelli, who took a break from his bartending duties on Thursday afternoon to take the stage at Cafe Nine and talk about his friend and fellow musician Sean Beirne, who passed away on Monday from a brain aneurysm at the age of 39.
“You know how you look at a painting and the artist paints it in such a way that it draws your eyes to a specific point in that painting, something he wants you to notice? Well every time I looked at the stage and Sean Beirne was on it, Sean Beirne was that point. He was always the focus for me.”
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Daniel Shoemaker |
Dec 6, 2018 3:01 pm
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Perched about head-high on the stage left wall of Cafe Nine, there is a roughly LP-sized wooden frame containing what at first glance looks somewhat startlingly like a ransom note: With its askew, cut and paste lettering, it reads, “make sure your volume is right for the room. THANKS.”
Short of asking whether or not Cave or Mountain Movers noticed the sign, I have no way of knowing, but whether explicitly or intuitively, the two bands responded in very different, but equally valid manners.
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Brian Slattery |
Dec 5, 2018 2:03 pm
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James Montford
Target Arrows, 2018.
An arrow embedded in the wall of the gallery. A cascade of disembodied hands, hanging from vines. Walls plastered with the arresting racial imagery of yesteryear. True to its name, Artspace’s latest exhibit, “In Plain Sight/Site,” drags history out into the open for us to see, and it’s not designed to make you feel comfortable.
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Karen Ponzio |
Dec 3, 2018 8:43 am
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Christopher Bousquet and Daphne Martin.
Singer-songwriter Christopher Bousquet, who also records under the name American Elm, had a batch of songs about a hard time in his life. He carried them around for years. He thought about recording them all or possibly putting a band together and performing one show, a rock opera of sorts.
Instead, on Friday night, another idea came to fruition.
Last look? This design will change, perhaps along with architect.
Paul Bass Photo
Spinnaker’s Fowler: To the rescue?
One of the city’s busiest developers has signed on as a partner to restart the stalled plan to build a new urbanist mini-city on the gravesite of the old New Haven Coliseum.
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Brian Slattery |
Nov 22, 2018 10:54 am
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Falcone.
Ed Valauskas stood on Cafe Nine’s stage Wednesday night with a bass slung over his shoulder, checking a long list on the wall. He turned to the crowd and called yet another friend from the packed house to take the stage.
Without further ado, the band executed a nearly note-perfect rendition of the Pretenders’ “Brass in Pocket,” from 1979.
The occasion was the 22nd annual Vomitorium, organized by guitarist Dean Falcone. And why 1979?
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Brian Slattery |
Nov 20, 2018 8:41 am
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Elizabeth and the Catapult.
Elizabeth Ziman — stage name Elizabeth and the Catapult — began her set solo, with a song that found her fingers racing across her keyboard to tell a story of tumultuous love.
By that point in the evening no fewer than three couples were dancing across the open floor of Cafe Nine. They slowed when the song got more spacious, and leapt into frantic activity when the notes took off.
“Wow. Well, good night everyone!” Ziman joked at the end of the song. Then she got serious: “That is the biggest joy of my life, having you dance in front of me. I’ve never experienced anything like it.”
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Brian Slattery |
Nov 19, 2018 8:48 am
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Brian Slattery Photos
Möbius Striptease.
There was a long drone from the keyboard, a pulsing wave of chord after chord. A flourish from the drums. The bass joined in, creating a quietly churning rumble. Then the projections began behind the drummer’s head.
“It was long ago,” the captions read. “It was far away.”
The drums escalated to a big, expansive rhythm as a smoke machine kicked in, filling Cafe Nine with haze and drawing cheers from the crowd.
Then the singer took the stage in a silver cape and approached the microphone. The music got more sparse, and she began to sing. Those with sharp ears in the audience would notice that it was a Meatloaf song, “For Crying Out Loud,” though it was recontextualized, transformed. An electronic voice gave exposition, fleshing out the beginning of a story about a dancer whose star is fading and she knows it. But she still has some life left in her.
