by | Jun 12, 2023 2:55 pm | Comments (12)
Paul Bass Photo
Josh Philie finishing up one of the new Coogan murals.
The city’s youth and recreation department handed cans to graffiti artists to spray away on the walls of Coogan Pavilion and Edgewood skate park — in the hope of retaining a family-friendly feeling for the summer.
by | Jun 6, 2023 8:43 am | Comments (2)
Eleanor Polak photo
At Monday's Shakespeare-in-the-schools rehearsal.
Nineteen middle-schoolers, all dressed in black, filed into the band room of Mauro-Sheridan Interdistrict Magnet School. They were preparing for the dress rehearsal of their production of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
Before they took the stage, however, they partook in a light refreshment of fruit snacks, Cheez-Its, juice boxes — and grapes. When the students dangled bunches of the purple fruit from their hands, they looked for all the world like the Roman citizens they were about to embody.
Continue reading ‘Mauro-Sheridan Lends Its Ears To The Bard’
by | Jun 5, 2023 9:18 am | Comments (13)
Thomas Breen photos
Elicker (right) catches up with nico w. okoro and family before forum's start ...
... as Abdussabur (right) greets Frank Cochran and Stephanie FitzGerald.
More emergency beds. A zoning overhaul. A freeze on taxes. A move away from being the “methadone capital of Connecticut.”
The four Democrats seeking New Haven’s top elected office pitched those proposals when pressed during a mayoral candidate forum on what to do about the city’s lack of affordable housing and rising tide of homelessness.
Continue reading ‘Debate Portrays Housing As Politics Problem’
by | Jun 2, 2023 8:30 am | Comments (0)
Robert Bienstock
Concentricity 3.
Robert Bienstock’s Concentricity 3 is an abstract piece, but the lines are evocative of several natural forms at once. They could be the shapes on a topographical map, depicting hundreds of square miles of land. They could also be organic or inorganic forms growing under the light of a microscope. Bienstock may make conceptual art, but the patterns point toward the real.
by and | May 30, 2023 8:35 pm | Comments (30)
Paul Bass Photo
Ward 26 candidates Joshua Van Hoesen and Amy Marx outside the polls Tuesday.
Legal aid lawyer and Democratic ward co-chair Amy Marx will be the next alder for Upper Westville’s Ward 26, after winning a special election to fill the seat left empty by Darryl Brackeen.
by | May 25, 2023 8:40 am | Comments (1)
Lisa Reisman photo
Tyler Booker (center) with campers: “The kids got a whole lot out of it, and that’s the point, and they had a whole lot of fun."
The rain came in torrents. It kept coming. No one seemed to care. This was the long-awaited second annual Tyler Booker Football Camp, and a little rainstorm wasn’t going to get in the way.
by | May 19, 2023 8:50 am | Comments (17)
Laura Glesby photo
Ten-year-old Corinne: "This is what community looks like!"
Hundreds of elementary, middle, and high schoolers gathered to send a message to adults: We’re not too young to be worth hearing.
by | May 18, 2023 4:54 pm | Comments (1)
Maya McFadden File Photo
Davis seventh-grader Dulce puts pen to not-paper to make a 3D guitar figure.
Out of thin air and a 3Doodler pen emerged miniature plastic avocados and guitars and lava lamps — as hands-on learning took a new shape, literally, in an Upper Westville classroom.
by | May 17, 2023 8:55 am | Comments (0)
Danae.
Anastasia Mastilovic’s painting Danae may be named after a figure in Greek mythology, but her style makes the figure evocative of more. The woman could be a goddess or a mermaid. She could be in repose, or unleashing magical powers. Or perhaps it’s all a metaphor, about power, latent and dynamic, and how it can be used to transform the world.
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’