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Brian Slattery |
Jan 4, 2024 8:58 am
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The Kevin Saint James Band on Wednesday night.
It was 9:30 on Wednesday evening at the Owl Shop on College Street and already the Kevin Saint James Band had relaxed into an easy swing. Plumes of smoke rose in the air, from fans sitting close by, cigars lit. Lou Ianello took a ride on sax across the song’s changes. Steve Donovan followed suit on keys. Victor Ramirez on bass and Derrick Tappin on drums held down the rhythm for the others, until it was Ramirez’s turn. Each had time to express themselves. Each made sure to keep the vibe right. Singer Kevin Saint James then got up on stage, took a seat in the back, and lit a cigarette, like he had all the time in the world.
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Nora Grace-Flood |
Dec 22, 2023 12:53 pm
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Yale claims its "campus custom" is to reserve housing for university "affiliates" – including at 57 Broadway.
Tenant Lewis Nelken’s new landlord sent him unwelcome news this December: He can renew his apartment lease on Broadway for another year, but, after that lease runs out, he has to move. Just because he doesn’t work or study at Yale.
That’s the new rule for living in a stretch of downtown that Yale has continued gobbling up this year.
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Donald Brown |
Dec 14, 2023 8:54 am
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Samuel Douglas as Uncle Vanya and Rebeca Robles as Sonya.
The David Geffen School of Drama at Yale’s production of Anton Chekhov’s masterpiece Uncle Vanya — running now at the Iseman Theater on Chapel St. through Dec. 15 — is played before the theater’s usual stadium seating, but the viewers positioned on risers in the wings of the stage will feel themselves more pointedly in the midst of the action. The play, directed by fourth-year directing MFA candidate Sammy Zeisel, was adapted by the much-awarded playwright Annie Baker and experimental director Sam Gold to be staged, at Soho Rep in 2012, with a “you are there in the midst of the action” arrangement, where some spectators sat on the floor or makeshift seats, and the cast was surrounded by the audience.
Yale plans to knock down a three-story downtown commercial-residential building that was built in the late 19th century and that used to be home to the York Street Noodle House.
The Elicker administration and local preservationists oppose that coming demolition — even as they both recognize there’s little they can do to stop it.
Carl Ferris at Ninth Square community meeting: "Feces all over the place" in portable restrooms on the Green. "It all gets blamed on homeless people."
Formerly unhoused activists, Ninth Square business owners, and city officials agree: New Haven needs a downtown public restroom that actually gets cleaned.
Norma Rodriguez-Reyes, who officiated Erika's wedding: "The day of a marriage is one of the happiest days in their lives."
Three weeks after getting married, Erika found herself wondering whether her family was one of at least 78 couples that a city official had reported to federal immigration authorities.
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Brian Slattery |
Dec 12, 2023 8:59 am
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Elm Shakespeare Teen Troupe's production of Henry V.
Cast members of Elm Shakespeare Teen Troupe’s production of Henry V burst onto the stage in a rush of sound and energy. “O, for a muse of fire that would ascend / The brightest heaven of invention! / A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, / And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!” they cried out together.
The famous introduction to probably Shakespeare’s most famous war play, the players reminded those seated in the risers at Educational Center for Arts’ theater, isn’t about war; it’s about imagination, creativity, and the collective act of actors, crew, and audience creating a world together inside a theater.
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Thomas Breen and Jake Dressler |
Dec 11, 2023 1:09 pm
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Thomas Breen / Jake Dressler photos
Rabbi Gershon Borenstein on Monday: "One act of positivity will far outpace ... what one negative act can do"; a protester on Saturday, climbing the menorah with a Palestinian flag.
Elected officials and faith leaders gathered at the spot where a protester climbed a public menorah and planted a Palestinian flag — and warned that such acts, if not called out, can escalate into violent antisemitic action.
A protester climbing the menorah on the Green on Saturday.
About 300 people marched in the streets and rallied on the Green on Saturday in the latest local effort to get elected officials to support Palestinians and a ceasefire amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
During the event, one protester climbed the menorah on the Green and lodged a Palestinian flag between the candle holders — prompting criticism from fellow protesters, and a planned press conference by elected leaders and the Jewish Federation on Monday morning to denounce the act as antisemitic.
Rite Aid cashiers Tyrek Caesar and Claire Hernandez ...
... on one of their last shifts at the soon-to-close Church St. Rite Aid.
After Monday, Tyrek Caesar and Claire Hernandez will no longer be able to walk right across the street from class at Gateway Community College to work at the Rite Aid on Church Street — because the downtown pharmacy is shuttering for good, the latest victim to a wave of bankruptcy-induced closures for the national chain.
On Thursday just after the sun went down, the first night of Hanukkah, Eric Notkin decided to come to his first ever menorah lighting on the Green simply to show solidarity at a time of rising anti-Semitism — occasioned in no small part by the violent reverberations of the Israel-Hamas war.
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Brian Slattery |
Dec 8, 2023 8:48 am
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Barrett, Deupree, Morris.
In between sets of improvised music at Never Ending Books on State Street, the band joked with each other with the ease of old friends. Ringleader Joe Morris introduced the band to newcomers. Horn player Taylor Ho Bynum used to live in New Haven, Morris said, but relocated to Vermont; shortly after his arrival, he got 40 inches of snow.
“And I stayed!” Bynum interjected, to laughter. Morris then introduced bassist Brad Barrett. “I don’t have any good snow stories about Brad,” Morris said. He was killing time. Seeing that most of the audience had settled in, he then turned to his fellow musicians.
“All right,” he said, “Enough reality.” And began to play.
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Brian Slattery |
Dec 6, 2023 8:59 am
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(2)
Ann Lehman
Friends on Bench.
The two friends in Ann Lehman’s sculpture — we only know they’re friends because the title tells us so — appear as though they’re deep in the middle of a long conversation, one that started long before we arrived and will continue after we’ve gone. One is perhaps trying to convince the other of something. He’s pressing his point. The other isn’t convinced, but he’s hearing the argument out. It’s happening on a bench that could be in any public park. In short, it’s a definition of community: people coming together in an open space, exchanging ideas, listening and speaking, challenging one another knowing that the friendship is stronger than any argument, that the bonds between people matter the most.
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Brian Slattery |
Dec 5, 2023 8:53 am
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Ken Grimes
Untitled (The Electrical Experiments of Marconi).
Ken Grimes’s pieces in “The Truth Is Out There” partake of the style of cartoons, woodblocks, and also — thanks to the associations from the X‑Files reference in the title — the illustrations on the covers of the Golden Records aboard the deep space exploration vehicles Voyagers 1 and 2. Those contain information for any aliens that might find the record, starting with instructions on how to play the music and proceeding to a diagram showing the location of the origin of the mission, that is, us.
Grimes’s work shares that sense of playful seriousness. It muses aloud whether scientific experiments activated a distant alien probe, the tone of voice making room for wonder, conspiracy, and the skeptical response to both: Probably not. And so what if it did? The inherent humor allows for it all — yet in its dogged focus on its subject matter, puts its thumb on the scale. Grimes hears the skeptics. But what if there’s life out there? When it makes contact, how do we respond?
Yale University dropped more than $139.6 million to purchase one of downtown’s largest pieces of med-tech real estate, in a part of the city bursting with new lab and office towers.
It doesn’t plan “immediately” to stop paying taxes on the building.
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Karen Ponzio |
Dec 4, 2023 8:33 am
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Tyshawn Sorey Trio.
Did you hear thunder Friday night or see lightning? Probably not, unless you were one of the lucky few to attend the sold-out Tyshawn Sorey Trio show at Firehouse 12. Part of the venue’s 2023 Fall Jazz Series, these three acclaimed musicians — Tyshawn Sorey on drums, Aaron Diehl on piano, and Matt Brewer on bass — presented a scintillating set of spontaneity and skill, coupled with unbridled joy, that became a master class on how live music can be downright magical.
Pro-Palestine protesters gather at Thursday's tree-lighting.
As close to a thousand people gathered for New Haven’s annual tree-lighting celebration on the Green, hundreds protested mere feet away in support of Gaza and Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem, where there will be no Christmas celebrations due to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.
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Brian Slattery |
Dec 1, 2023 8:59 am
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Joan Marcus Photos
Taylor A. Blackman
When we first meet Boseman Salvage Junior (Taylor A. Blackman), he’s shoveling snow, and turns it into a dance. The labor he’s doing can’t take away from the grace with which he’s doing it. As he continues to move, in more abstract ways, the dance becomes a strong expression of character, a portrait of a young man with more within him than he knows how to contain. In that context, his act of shoveling becomes meaningful, given the mountain of snow that hovers in the background for his dance — and for the entire play. No matter how much he shovels in that moment, can he make a dent in it? But he works, and dances, anyway.
Yale spent $7 million purchasing two more commercial properties on Broadway, further solidifying its ownership of the university-adjacent stretch of storefronts.
Mexican restaurant owner Brenda Jain took a chance on her lifelong love for Thai food and decided “It’s Thai Time.” We decided it was time to check it out for ourselves.
Time to call in the alders: City's Kathleen Krolak, sustainability intern Lewis Johnson III at the Ives CMT meeting.
Eating, drinking, shopping, and soon enough being ho-ho and merry are all roaring back post-Covid, which is good news for Downtown and Wooster Square and the city’s economy.
However, that also means parking woes and complaints from both merchants and residents are on the rise. And don’t forget about the dreaded 8,000-person bar crawl.
by
Maya McFadden |
Nov 22, 2023 1:42 pm
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DeJadonyea Council gets thankgiving turkey from Gateway’s new food pantry.
Twenty-five year old nursing student DeJadonyea Council cut the ribbon for a new food pantry at Gateway Community College then picked up a free frozen turkey and fixings to go with it for Thanksgiving.
Julie Parr, outside her 116 Crown home: "I felt very disenfranchised."
Julie Parr and 27 of her Crown Street neighbors didn’t get to vote in their ward’s alder race in this month’s election, because a government mess-up sent them to the wrong polling district.
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Brian Slattery |
Nov 22, 2023 11:00 am
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Markeshia Ricks Photo
Reel life in New Haven: The 2018 Black Panther opening became a festive community event for organizers like Paul Bryant Hudson, Jennifer Quaye Hudson, and Mercy A. Quaye (pictured).
Midnight showings of classics and new movies. Packed lobbies for James Bond films. A small screening room for arthouse flicks. The smell of popcorn. The collective laughter, sobbing, and gasping as an audience took a ride through a movie together.
When Bow Tie’s Criterion Cinemas closed its doors in October, New Haveners lost the ability to have those experiences — and now face the question about the future cultural place of movies in the Elm City.
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Brian Slattery |
Nov 17, 2023 9:17 am
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Hyunsuk Erickson
Thingumabob Tribe #3
Hyunsuk Erickson’s Thingumabob Tribe #3 spreads out across one of the first-floor galleries of the Ely Center of Contemporary Art. Their sinuous shapes and bright colors might carry, for some viewers, suggestions of meaning. They could be seen as chess pieces, or as rock formations on an alien planet. Or perhaps they’re microscopic shapes brought to the human scale. On the other hand, are they really asking to be understood, to be perceived in that way? They can be taken as is, simply as shapes, forms, colors. Or anything in between, an apprehension of form, the content arising in the viewer.
