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.
by | Jan 12, 2023 1:48 pm | Comments (4)
Allan Appel photo
Neighbors Marjorie Weiner and Meg Friedman checking out Beecher Park photos before Wednesday's meeting.
Lizzy Donius was driving near Valley Street on Dec. 19 with a car full of 16-year-olds, including her own son, when a volley of police vehicles, sirens blaring, raced past.
Later, she learned the cruisers were headed to a nearby scene where another local 16-year-old, Joshua Vazquez, had just been shot and killed while riding his bicycle.
“That’s our community,” Donius recalled, choking back tears.
Continue reading ‘West Side Q: What Makes For A Safer Neighborhood?’
by | Jan 12, 2023 12:42 pm | Comments (18)
Laura Glesby file photo
The view from the soon-to-be-replaced Mid Bridge.
City Engineer Giovanni Zinn at Tuesday’s Zoom meeting.
A dance venue. A community garden. A set of lights for the skate park. A … West Rock-bound gondola?
Those were a few of the ideas that made it onto a community-built wish list for $800,000 worth of improvements for Edgewood Park, as put together by roughly 100 parkgoers.
by | Jan 10, 2023 8:29 am | Comments (0)
The centerpiece of Lisa Toto’s part of the latest show at Kehler Liddell Gallery — running now through Feb. 5, and also featuring works by Hank Paper and Chris Ferguson — is two prints of the same image, of a young girl in a dress running by a relief. She exudes joy, but there’s something wrong.
Continue reading ‘Photo Show Takes Westville Gallery To Chernobyl '89’
by | Dec 19, 2022 2:23 pm | Comments (2)
Maya McFadden photos
First grader K'Jalee makes tasty treat for birds during Wellness Wednesday, an outdoors and inclusive successor to a talented and gifted program.
Students looking for color inspiration for their art class mandalas.
An Edgewood School first grader spooned sun butter and Cheerios onto a pinecone to feed a hungry bird.
Nearby, one of her fourth grade schoolmates found inspiration for a classroom art project in a pale-yellow house with green shutters.
And in an outdoor classroom area near Yale Avenue, an eighth grader weaved coral-colored yarn around two sticks to make a dream catcher to beautify her school, all as a part of a unique effort to address both social emotional challenges in the classroom and concerns about exclusivity in enrichment programs.
by | Dec 16, 2022 9:12 am | Comments (0)
Julie Fraenkel
Party Girls.
The subjects of Julie Fraenkel’s Party Girls are as the subject says. One after the other, they’re portraits of fun, leisure, unwinding. One of them dances with a lampshade on her head. Another arrives with a large piece of cake and an expression on her face that suggests that she knows the recipient of that slice is going to first politely refuse such a large slice, then acquiesce and eat the whole thing. A third is being borne aloft by balloons. The general public will never know what one party girl was doing, however, because that piece has already been sold.
by | Dec 12, 2022 9:16 am | Comments (8)
Maya McFadden photos
Semilla's Tortillería Collective co-founders: Ariana Shapiro, Elizabeth Gonzalez, Anabel Hernandez, Martina Perez, and Javier Gonzalez-Villatoro.
Freshly made tortillas, hot off the comal.
Standing over a hot comal filled with half-cooked handmade tortillas, Elizabeth Gonzalez pinched her thumb with her index and middle fingers to grip the corner of a puffy tortilla and flipped it over — showing in a single swift motion how she and a small group of worker-owner chefs hope to bring a Central American and Mexican staple to the streets of New Haven.
by | Dec 1, 2022 4:40 pm | Comments (13)
Paul Bass Photo
Laydon crew on peanut-prep duty Thursday.
The Great Peanut’s staging ground is beginning to take shape in Westville.
by | Nov 23, 2022 9:55 am | Comments (0)
144 more apts., en route to Blake St.?
Local legislators cleared the zoning path for 256 new mostly market-rent apartments to be built in Westville and Long Wharf.
Continue reading ‘Alders Approve Plans For 256 New Apartments’