by | May 16, 2023 9:04 am | Comments (22)
Paul Bass Photo
Joshua Van Hoesen finally got to speak to an unaffiliated voter on Benton Street about an upcoming special election for alder. But first he had to break form and agree to break a rule.
by | May 15, 2023 8:36 am | Comments (3)
Luxuriating in a warm spring day, ArtWalk — organized by the Westville Village Renaissance Alliance — brought out a crowd on Saturday for a full afternoon of art, craft, music, theater, food, and community.
by | May 5, 2023 9:13 am | Comments (0)
Keith Johnson
Flying Untied (detail).
The sky is full of planes. Not like it is at an airport, or ever an air show. No, in Keith Johnson’s Flying Untied, the atmosphere is littered with planes, as if they’ve been shaken all at once out of a gigantic cosmic bag, or as if a dozen air traffic controllers messed up at once and we’re in for the biggest cumulative air disaster the world has ever seen. Flying Untied succeeds in being both somewhat comical and a little threatening in this regard, an effect amplified by the fact that — apart from their proximity to one another — the planes seem totally natural.
Continue reading ‘Two Artists Capture The Matter Of Moments’
by | May 4, 2023 2:34 pm | Comments (7)
Thomas Breen photos
Pastor Wilkins with city climate czar Steve Winter (right) at Thursday's presser.
Solar panels powering Wilkins' Westville home.
Want to save roughly $900 a year on your electricity bill while also doing your part to wean off of planet-destroying fossil fuels?
There’s a solar panel for that — and a new city-backed campaign to get more such sun-powered equipment on the roofs of New Haven homeowners and landlords, with the help of a New Orleans-based company that promises energy cost savings through long-term solar panel leases.
by | Apr 28, 2023 3:13 pm | Comments (26)
Ward 26 alder hopefuls Joshua Van Hoesen and Amy Marx.
Upper Westville voters will have the chance to pick between two different candidates running on — checks notes — two different party lines, as Democrat Amy Marx and Republican Joshua Van Hoesen vie to become the next alder for Ward 26 following the resignation of incumbent Darryl Brackeen, Jr.
by | Apr 28, 2023 12:20 pm | Comments (20)
Last summer, one of the other dads at daycare asked if I was on the Westville Dad email listserv.
Continue reading ‘Opinion: On Westville Dads & The Race For Mayor’
by | Apr 20, 2023 9:16 am | Comments (29)
A rendering of the Roger Road home and proposed detached ADU.
A Westville homeowner got the go-ahead to convert a two-car garage into housing for his aging father — after applying for zoning relief to raise the building’s roof and responding publicly to a neighbor’s concerns about property values and personal privacy.
by | Apr 10, 2023 2:43 pm | Comments (11)
Thomas Breen file photo
Darryl Brackeen, Jr. is stepping down this month from his role as Upper Westville’s alder, becoming the fourth local legislator this term to resign his seat.
by | Mar 29, 2023 8:41 am | Comments (0)
PenRod
Elephant Profile with Sun.
It’s an elephant in the valley of the Zambezi River in Zimbabwe, but it has been pulled out of time. It could be an image from the early history of photography, or a film still, or a postcard. But the image is actually quite recent, the years added to convey an urgent message.
by | Mar 27, 2023 1:52 pm | Comments (4)
Lisa Reisman photo
Tyler Booker and his father William Booker at Whalley Ave.'s Westville Diner.
Photo courtesy of William Booker.
Tyler in his current uniform.
Known for his lightning-quick reflexes and prodigious strength, Tyler Booker, the freshman All-American offensive lineman for the vaunted University of Alabama Crimson Tide, is about as close as you can get to a sure thing for NFL stardom.
But these days the New Haven native, who was indulging in a blueberry muffin on a recent afternoon at Whalley Avenue’s Westville Diner with his father William, seems just as interested in making a difference in his hometown as leveraging would-be tacklers out of the way.
by | Mar 25, 2023 8:57 pm | Comments (5)
David Sepulveda Photo
Memories were as thick as the smoke that poured out of Delaney’s Restaurant & Tap Room again — but this time the building was left standing and the damage was minor.
by | Mar 21, 2023 4:00 pm | Comments (5)
Paul Bass Photo
Lequane Gormany was up with the sun Tuesday, and soaking it in at the Fountain Street firehouse.
by | Mar 20, 2023 8:48 am | Comments (11)
Rendering of McKinley convent/chapel to housing conversion.
A long-vacant convent and an adjoining chapel are set for conversion into 10 Westville apartments.
by | Mar 17, 2023 3:08 pm | Comments (14)
Thomas Breen photos
Neighbor Shawn Nesmith outside 949 Whalley: "Tell them to get rid of that blighted property."
Still fenced off. Still tax-exempt.
A former Westville department store remains fenced off, empty and rundown — 20 years after the Church of Scientology bought the property, five years after the church last won permission to convert the site into a religious hub, and one year after a city board found that the long-vacant building should stay off the tax rolls.
Continue reading ‘20 Years On, Scientology Site Still Stalled’
by | Mar 10, 2023 12:18 pm | Comments (14)
Contributed photo
No trees, more reckless driving? A flipped car last summer on tree-less spot of Dayton Street.
Neighbors of Dayton Street’s endangered maples are taking a final stand to save them.
by | Mar 8, 2023 10:48 am | Comments (1)
Laura Glesby Photo
Kayliani, 10, and Mila, 11, with the Fall Preventer.
“We had a problem with kids falling off chairs,” explained Davis Academy fifth grader Mila. School chairs easily tip over when kids rock or lean over too much, which not only disrupts class, but can cause injuries.
So Mila and her co-inventor Kayliani came up with a solution: the Fall Preventer, a suction-powered, stick-on mat to keep chairs from toppling.
Continue reading ‘Student Inventors Keep Classmates Upright’
by | Feb 21, 2023 4:40 pm | Comments (18)
Lucy Gellman / New Haven Arts Paper Photo
Regular salsa event on the now-closed-to-traffic "Central Patio" linking Whalley and Fountain and bordering the undeveloped former Cape Codder/Delaney's lot.
Westville Village’s empty gateway lot is back up for sale — offering a chance to rethink its future.
by | Feb 21, 2023 10:55 am | Comments (0)
Maya McFadden Photo
Sixth grader Mahki in Platt's art class.
A “House of Video Games” took shape line by line beneath sixth-grader Mahki’s pen — as Edgewood School students brought Detroit’s fabled Heidelberg Project into their New Haven classroom.
In the process, the students discovered how public art can transform blighted homes into objects bursting with color, life, and beauty, and they continued their monthlong celebration of contemporary Black artists and changemakers.
Continue reading ‘Student-Artists Build Houses Out Of Blight’
by | Feb 15, 2023 3:07 pm | Comments (18)
Paul Bass Photo
New intersection of Chapel and Yale.
Motorist Loukili on initial pass-through Wednesday: Easy road to go.
The Peanut has landed.
by | Feb 10, 2023 9:12 am | Comments (0)
Erich Davis
Illumination
Erich Davis’s Illumination floats in the air at Kehler Liddell Gallery on Whalley Ave. as if it were suspended in water, creating an atmosphere somewhere between cloud and kelp forest. It has a way of pulling in the works around it, making them feel a little more weightless as well, even more than they already are. This is entirely in keeping with the theme of the show — “Light” — running now at Kehler Liddell Gallery through Mar. 12, with an opening reception this Sunday, Feb. 12 at 2 p.m.
Continue reading ‘Artists See The "Light" At Kehler Liddell’
by | Feb 7, 2023 9:25 am | Comments (2)
Lisa Reisman photos
Manjares chef Wilson Coronel preparing seafood pasta marinara.
Clams. Shrimp. Escargot. Calamari.
All elements are crucial to Wilson Coronel’s seafood pasta marinara. But the secret to its exquisite flavor is in the sauce.
“You have to reduce it, so it’s not too much and the taste comes through,” Coronel said on a recent late afternoon in the pocket-sized kitchen of the Westville institution that is Manjares Cafe.
by | Feb 6, 2023 5:04 pm | Comments (13)
Paul Bass Photos
Drew Ramsey and Javon Hailey clear Kimberly Park's invasive vines.
Paul Bass Photo
Dayton Death Row.
Five towering trees were sentenced to death on a crowded west side street. Meanwhile, across town, stewards whacked at vines in a reclaimed park to enable other trees to survive and thrive.
Continue reading ‘Street Trees Condemned; Park Trees Preserved’
by | Jan 30, 2023 12:34 pm | Comments (1)
Allan Appel photo
Mark Oppenheimer with his high school teacher and dean Alice Baxter on Sunday.
How about a written application — as opposed to an old boys’ nod from the rowing coach — and in-person interviews to detect your excessively Lower East Side manners?
How about a questionnaire requiring you to indicate, for example, what business your family is in? And written recommendations and aptitude tests?
Continue reading ‘Podcaster Gatecrashes Ivy League Anti-Semitism’
by | Jan 24, 2023 2:28 pm | Comments (8)
Three new apartment buildings, now OK'd for 446A Blake.
Make way for 144 new apartments on Blake Street, now that a Brooklyn builder has won the final needed city approval to convert a former factory-turned-office complex in Westville into new housing.
by | Jan 18, 2023 8:52 am | Comments (2)
Maya McFadden photos
State Comptroller Scanlon (right) taking a baklava break with legislative liaison Kevin Kurian at Pistachio Cafe ...
... and talking retirement plans with Westville salsa entrepreneur Alisa Bowens-Mercado, Tuesday.
Angela Naranjo now puts aside 3 percent of her Westville massage-therapy paycheck towards her retirement — thanks to a new state program that encourages workers across Connecticut who do not have employer-backed retirement plans to start saving early, even if they have decades to go before leaving the workforce for good.
Naranjo, a 34-year-old Westville native, shared her story about getting ready for retirement — many years down the line — during a neighborhood walking tour promoting that program as hosted by newly elected state Comptroller Sean Scanlon.