Hilary Surprises The Boyfriend

10:25 a.m. East Rock: Hilary Stearns rushed into the Wash Tub to throw a load of clothes into the dryer — and make time for some outdoor fun once the work day ends.

“Thirty-five minutes: I’ll be back at 11,” Stearns said, looking at the clock in the laundromat at Foster and Lawrence. Then she headed home to feed the cat.

Stearns, who’s 30, made the dash to the Wash Tub in green flip flops. Her nails glistened from a do-it-herself orange pedicure. To welcome spring.

Stearns works nearby as a barista at Lulu’s European Cafe on Cottage Street. Her shift starts at noon. Her boyfriend works the morning shift at Cafe Romeo on Orange.

Usually Stearns drives to Newhallville to do the laundry. (The neighborhood’s laundromat is right across the border in Hamden.) ​“It’s more expensive here” in East Rock, she said. Wash Tub’s prices: $3 to wash, $1.50 to dry.

“I’m doing laundry [here] so we can enjoy the beautiful day later,” she said. ​“I’m surprising him with the laundry.”

Her tentative late-afternoon plan: A walk by the Mill River or in Edgerton Park.

GKS

9:40 a.m. Newhallville: From The Night Shift To The Laundry Shift
Over in Newhallville, Crystal Mabery was piling two loads into washers not to make time for a walk — but to make time for some extra down time at home.

Newhallville doesn’t have its own laundromat. So Newhallvillers like Mabery cross the town line and go a block or two to the Hamden Laundromat, where a ​“top load” costs $2.50, a ​“front load” more (depending on the size).

After an exhausting 4:30 p.m.-1 a.m. overnight shift, Mabery got a few hours of precious sleep before getting up again to head to the Dixwell Avenue laundromat.

“I like to come here early and get it out of the way,” she said of the trip she takes here each week. ​“That way I can go home, lay back down and relax.”

Mabery, 45, has been going to the Hamden Laundromat each week for about a month since her dryer at home in Newhallville has been broken. She’s hoping it will get fixed soon, but she isn’t optimistic.

She drove the few blocks to the laundromat from her home, where she lives with her 22-year-old son.

While she’s waiting for her laundry to get done, Mabery ​“just sits.” After a long night at the Wallingford Post Office, where she’s worked for 13 years, that’s about all she has energy for. ​“Yesterday there was a lot of mail,” she said; her job is to handle it.

NS

10 a.m. East Rock: Cell-Free Zone Reestablished

Meanwhile, back at Lulu’s coffee shop, the barista manning the counter before Stearns’ shift was reinforcing a message.

The barista, Troy Stover, lettered a new sign in blue ink with an emphatic ​“No” at the top. The message: ​“No cell phones when you are in line.”

“When the signs are bright and fresh, people pay more attention,” Stover said.

The old sign failed to catch the attention early this morning of a serious cell phone abuser. Stover asked the man to stop speaking on the phone while in line because, as the sign says, it interferes with other customers.

“The guy got hot,” Stover said. Afterwards three or four others also didn’t follow the rules.

So when there was a break in the morning coffee action, Stover decided new sign action had to be taken.

“I’m not like Miss Manners: ​‘You can’t do this; you can’t do that.’ But there are certain things that keep the place the way it is: people not screeching on cell phones,” explained Lulu’s owner, Louise de Carrone (pictured this morning with a first-ever batch of vegan cornbread). ​“I love all the technology. But can we just please put it away a little? Do something unique: Converse.”

Regular customers know Lulu’s predilections for talk over technology. It’s the non-regulars who are the offenders, said Stover.

Three years ago she instituted a no-laptop policy that one customer Anthony Law loves. ​“I like that everybody is talking, not tuning out,” he said. ​“You’re participating in everybody’s conversation in Lulu’s. They’re feeding their kids, they’ll feed your kids.”

“When I stopped the laptops three years ago, I thought business would go down,” de Carrone said. ​“Business went up.”

Cell phones are allowed but you better not talk when ordering or on line.

AA

11 a.m. Fair Haven: Crossing The River:
Cindy Miguel jumped in a People’s Laundromat minivan Wednesday, as she seized a last chance for door-to-door service to her favorite laundromat before she moves to Virginia for an arranged marriage.

Miguel, who’s 18, grew up in Fair Haven. For the past six years, she’d been taking her laundry to People’s on Grand Avenue. When she moved across the river to Quinnipiac Avenue without a car, that didn’t stop her from coming back.

She picked up the phone and dialed People’s Wednesday at 10:45 a.m. A staffer from People’s jumped into a gray minivan and drove to her house, just across the Ferry Street Bridge. The laundromat offers free rides for people who don’t have transportation to the store. Cost for a washing load: $3.50. Dryer: $1.

As she hopped in the van, Miguel announced that she won’t be a customer much longer — she’s moving to Virginia to get married. She said her parents, who she said hail from Russia, have a tradition of pairing off their kids by arranged marriage, Miguel explained. Her fiancé is from Russia, too.

“I’m doing it for the family. That’s what we do,” she said.

She got out of the van and put two loads into one in a long line of washing machines. The business remains hopping even as its owner, Fair Haven developer Angelo Reyes, sits behind bars. He’s been charged in four alleged arsons, including allegedly hiring a father-son pair to torch his other laundromat at 83 Lombard St. in July 2009.

Miguel said she won’t go anywhere else.

“They’re great” she said of the staff at People’s. ​“They’re like family to me.”

MB

One Group Walks & Pedals To School; Another Drives

8:30 a.m. East Rock: Running On Low Emissions:
Jeff Green jogged to keep up with the scooters, as families zoomed along to the Hooker School in a colorful parade that involved many modes of transit — but not a school bus.

Because Hooker is a designated neighborhood school instead of a magnet, most kids come from East Rock. That makes it one of the most walked-to schools in town, according to a crossing guard on duty Wednesday.

Green (pictured) and his two kids live on Avon Street. On Wednesday morning around 8:30 a.m., they whizzed past the so-called Little Hooker on Canner Street, which serves grades K to 2.

Jacob, who’s in the 1st grade, sped ahead with enthusiasm while 3rd-grader Anna, riding her dad’s tall scooter, glided by her father’s side.

Green said they mix up how they get to the big Hooker School on Whitney Avenue.

“Sometimes she rides her bike and I take the scooter,” Green said.

Along the 10-minute ride, they come across many other East Rock families en route to the neighborhood school.

“It’s like a parade,” Green said.

Down the block, 8‑year-old Kate Van Tassel arrived in style on the seat of her father’s hybrid Fuji bicycle. Her legs are too short to reach the pedals.

“I just hold on, and my dad steers me,” she said.

While she sometimes rides her own bike from their Everit Street home, Kate said she prefers her dad’s Fuji.

From up high on her dad’s saddle, she said, the world ​“looks kind of big and wide.”

In the front of the pack, young Chris pedaled his own way to Little Hooker. Then their dad, Paul Van Tassel, dropped Kate off, hopped on the bicycle himself, and followed Chris to pre-school at Leila Day.

Farther up Canner Street, Iktae Kim, who’s studying at Yale Divinity School, walked with his son, Youngin. The Kims hopped on a Yale shuttle from Prospect Street to Whitney, then walked the rest of the way.

MB

9 a.m. Newhallville: By Car, From Near & Afar
In Newhallville, 4‑year-old Elizabeth Eng arrived at the King/Robinson Interdistrict Magnet School by car with her teddy bear. Like many pre‑K kids at magnet schools, her mom, Maggie, drove her to school from outside New Haven.

The school, which serves 560 kids on Fournier Street, draws lots of interest from the suburbs, especially for its free pre‑K. The school doesn’t run bus service for pre-kindergarten, so parents drive their kids in.

Eng, of Seymour, said the trip isn’t far out of the way. She was on the way to St. Raphael’s Hospital, where she works.

Patrick Myrthil (pictured) dropped off two sons by mini-van. He said his kids could take the bus from their Newhallville home — but he prefers to drive them for safety’s sake.

“I always drive them to school, because of the violence.”

Daniel Mooney (pictured), of Prospect Street, agreed. He said his pre‑K daughter is too young for the bus, but ​“I don’t know if I’d take the bus anyway. The bus stops aren’t very safe.”

After dropping off his kids, Myrthil headed back to another school, a school he runs: the Newhallville Academy on Newhall Street, which offers GED and job training for adults.

MB

Work Day Starts Early

6:17 a.m. Fair Haven: A Newbie Readies The Bolillos
La Tapatía Bakery at 309 Grand Ave. wasn’t open yet, but ranchero music was already playing — and you could smell the fresh bread and pastries inside the store.

A new worker, Antonio Barella (pictured), removed from the oven racks of circular rolls without filling known as bolillos. He transported them on a large cart for co-worker Mary Merino Flores to put them out for display. Flores, who has been at La Tapatía for five months, was busy preparing coffee and wiping down the counter.

Barella has worked at La Tapatía for three months; he hails from Pueblo, Mexico. This is his first bakery gig.

“I don’t mind waking up early,” Barella said, ​“because I appreciate the work and enjoy baking.”

AM

7:10 a.m. Newhallville: A Re-Entry ​“Fighter” Gets Re-Upped Harold Jones snagged the first spot in line Wednesday at the state social services building on Bassett Street, as he continued an uphill battle to find work after prison.

Jones, who’s 48, left his home on Dixwell’s Townsend Street Wednesday morning with his fiancée. She drove him to Dunkin’ Donuts in Hamden to get a medium coffee with cream and sugar. Then she dropped him off on Basset Street at 7:10 and waited in her car around the corner.

Jones, who used to make $45 an hour operating heavy machinery, has been unable to find a steady job since he got out of prison in 2007.

He said he used to make good money selling drugs, but ​“there’s a big consequence to going out on the streets.”

He showed up to the Department of Social Services Wednesday to renew his state health insurance. Twice a year, he said, the state checks his finances to make sure he still qualifies.

The answer this time: Yes, still unemployed.

The building doesn’t open for business until 9 a.m. Jones said there’s always a line. He planned to grab a ticket when the doors opened at 8, then wait around for them to call his name.

As he waited, he recounted the turn of events that left him in his current spot. Originally from Mississippi, he grew up in New Haven and went to Eli Whitney Technical High School, where he learned to be an auto mechanic.

He started collecting tools in high school, and by 1993 amassed a sizable toolbox, ​“as tall as I am” and as long as the table next to the DSS hot dog cart. When he got laid off from the Chrysler-Plymouth in West Haven, which was going out of business, he returned to the store to find his tool box gone.

After that, he decided his career as a mechanic was over. He landed a union job running pay loaders, excavators and back hoes for good money, $45 per hour. That career was sent off track, too.

“But I’ll be honest with you, I tried the street thing. I tried to sell drugs, got in trouble with the law, and went to jail” for a total of eight years.

When he got out of prison in 2007, he said, he made a promise to his mom never to go back. Since he got out, he has had to settle for piecemeal work fixing up homes and mowing lawns.

“When you’ve got a couple felonies against you,” he said, no one wants to hire you full-time. ​“It’s prejudice.”

He said he has continued to look for work to support his five kids, one of whom is following his footsteps at Eli Whitney.

“Some people give up and some keep on fighting,” Jones said. ​“I’m a fighter.”

After telling his story, he looked down the sidewalk and found that another line had been forming on the opposite side of the street.

“That’s OK,” he said, confident of his position. ​“I’m in line, too.”

M.B.

7:30 a.m. East Rock: Man Of Steel Cuts a Header
Al Cypress made it to school early Wednesday. The kids wouldn’t get there for a while.

Cypress was in the hallway outside the pre‑K and kindergarten classrooms of the East Rock Global Magnet School. Or what will become the school’s brand new $45 million home off Nash Street. The new school isn’t built yet; Cypress, a ​“full journeyman” carpenter who has lived in New Haven all his life, is helping to build it.

“It’s like a relay race,” project boss Len Schiraldi observed at the scene. ​“The baton really gets carried by all these trades.” The project started with the ​“earth work,” laying the foundation; then the concrete. The steel frame went up. (Read about that here.) Now the crew is working on the steel detailing.

His shift started at 7 a.m. At 7:30, he had a razor and tin ​“snit” (tweezers of sorts) in his hand, cutting a header — a long, narrow strip of metal used to secure the walls — to the exact right size. Later workers will attach sheetrock to the headers, Cypress explained. Prevailing wage on the job, he said: $70 an hour, including benefits.

NS

Click here, here and here to read stories about what happened later today in Newhallville, East Rock, and Fair Haven.