Lex Gets A Fresh Cut

2:38 p.m. Fair Haven: The woman with ​“fresh” written on her ring — and braids long gone — walked amid the guys filling Orlando’s barber shop, sat in the chair, and asked for her new usual: a wave cut with designs in the back.

Then Alexis Batts let Ariel Bruno, her new favorite barber, do his thing.

While barber shops in Newhallville and East Rock were either closed or empty Wednesday afternoon, a traditional down day for the business, the Grand Avenue was hopping with salsa music and plenty of customers.

All males. Except Batts.

Batts, who goes by the nickname ​“Lex,” lives nearby on Poplar Street and works as a babysitter. She asked Bruno for a wave cut with designs in the back.

“He’s a good cutter, and he’s very fast,” Batts said. She trusts him with a razor. ​“I let him freestyle.”

Batts said she didn’t mind being the only female customer in the men’s shop. She used to spend hours getting her hair braided. Then she cut off all her hair — ​“It was getting hot, and aggravating.”

She finds the barber shop quicker than the salon, and she likes the vibe there, too. ​“It’s cool, fun, relaxed — my type of environment.”

Like many of the barbers and customers in the store, Bruno is Puerto Rican. (He’s part Italian, too.) As other guys bantered in Spanish, Bruno, who’s 20, got serious. He pulled out the electric razor and buzzed her hair from back to front, going with the grain.

He trimmed the edges around her forehead, giving her what he called a ​“fresh” cut. Lex wears the word ​“fresh” on her hand, inscribed into a wide ring. It means ​“cool, fly,” she said.

She stayed quiet while Bruno moved to the back of her head, cutting zig-zags with the electric razor, then etching finer lines with a straightedge.

“I’m carving it,” he said. ​“It’s sculpture.”

Just when Bruno thought he was done, Batts asked for an extra design above her left temple. He held up the mirror to see if she approved.

The answer was better than the response Bruno got when he performed his first haircut at age 14 on his cousin Harold. Bruno buzzed Harold’s fade-up way too high. Harold was not happy.

Batts was.

“I love it,” she said. ​“I love it every time I come here.”

She paid him $15. She apologized that she didn’t have a tip.

“That’s OK,” he replied.

MB

A Lunchtime Favor

1:27 p.m. Fair Haven: Osmany Hernandez spends his days feeding other people from his Cuban food cart across from the Fair Haven School. When it came time for his own lunch break Wednesday, a loyal neighbor pitched in by scooting back to her senior citizen complex to microwave his meal.

The lunchtime favor took place at the Sandwiches El Cubano food cart, which Hernandez opened six months ago in the parking lot of the Inspirational Zion Ministries church on Grand Avenue.

Hernandez worked as a swim coach for 20 years in Cuba and Guatemala before immigrating to the U.S. four years ago. When he couldn’t find steady work in the swimming pool, he set to work in New Haven’s restaurant business.

He worked for three and a half years, saving money to break out on his own — ​“so I don’t have to work for anybody.” Now he runs his cart on weekdays and works at a downtown restaurant on weekends to pay the bills.

As lunch hour got under way, he served a $1.50 chicken empanadilla to an elderly woman, then sold a dollar bottle of water to a passerby. Business was slow. The location doesn’t get much traffic, Hernandez said. His dream is to move the cart downtown, but he needs permission from the city.

At 1:20, he leaned out of the window of his truck to say hello to a friend, Aida Luz Díaz, who was rolling by on her motorized scooter. Díaz, who lives nearby at the senior citizens complex at 50 Grand Ave., pulled a K‑turn on the sidewalk and said hello.

“Anything to eat?” Hernandez asked.

“No, I’m on a diet,” she replied.

He asked if she wouldn’t mind doing her a favor and microwaving his lunch.

He said he spends so much time cooking Cuban sandwiches and empanadillas that he’s gotten tired of his cart food. So he cooked up some ropa vieja, a Cuban dish prepared by putting flank steak in the pressure cooker with red and green peppers, wine and tomato sauce.

As Díaz left, he put on an English-language instructional CD he bought. ​“I need to learn English,” he explained. ​“Next year, I’ll have lived here for five years.”

Díaz scooted home, heated up the lunch, and returned in a jiffy at 1:27.

“Seven minutes!” announced Diaz, who’s Puerto Rican. She handed him the food wrapped in a Golf Digest Magazine for insulation.

“Keep the magazine,” she said.

MB

1 p.m. Newhallville: Peace Lilies Come Together

Sandra Watts spent her lunch hour arranging 48 flowers for a 104-year-old woman who just passed away.

Working inside amid quiet music in her cheerful shop, Remember the Lilies, on Shelton Avenue near Lincoln-Bassett School, Watts arranged a wreath of oriental lilies alternating with baby’s breath and light green carnations into two wreaths. They’ll join eight standing peace lily plants, a spray of pink carnations marking a cancer survivor, and a standing spray and casket spray of white roses, at Vivienne Brown’s funeral Thursday at St. Luke’s.

Watts, who is a graduate of Hartford Theological Seminary and the Yale-New Haven Hospital chaplaincy training program, walked the wreath-in-progress over to the green forest of eight peace lily plants standing in the sunlight by the door of her store.

She held it up to the light and checked the contrast of the green in the wreath to make sure it had the right accents with the darker green of the peace lilies.

Satisfied, she returned the wreath to her work table and added a some additional baby’s breath and pronounced it done.

She felt hungry and considered going to lunch at Yummy’s restaurant around the corner.

But two pieces for the funeral remained undone: the standing spray and the most important, the casket spray. ​“Some cultures call it the blanket of flowers,” she said.

Watts had the elements of Vivienne Brown’s casket spray arranged in a small staging area beside her work table. It was going to be white roses over a green base.

“I’m going to skip going to Yummy’s,” she said. ​“I’m in a different place.”

AA

12:20 p.m. East Rock: The Ladies Dine Al Fresco

Cafe Romeo’s doors were flung open and the umbrella-crested outdoor tables beckoned passersby. Four Yale human resources employees seized the chance for their first al fresco lunch of the year.
 
Marisa Figueira, Ariane Trexler and Jill Goodfellow, and Celestina Perone (from left in photo) walked over to the cafe at Orange and Pearl from their Whitney Avenue office, dressed for the balmy weather in spring plumage. Figueira wore a wrap dress; Goodfellow sported peep-toe shoes. 

“I didn’t wear tights today!” exclaimed Perone, who’s 27 and lives in Orange. She dined on a goat cheese and fig salad with chicken ($7.50). 

Figuiera had a caprese salad with chicken ($7). Trexler had a Mediterranean wrap (also $7). Goodfellow chose a caprese panini ($6).

The four come to Romeo’s fairly often, since it’s a five-minute walk from work. They giggled, poked fun at each other, and caught up on what’s going on outside the office. 

Around them was a mix of East Rock at midday: Moms with kids, students catching some rays, and other workers squeezing in some Vitamin D during their break. Most of the laptop lovers stayed inside, sacrificing sun to be able to see their screens. 

GKS

A Pharmacy Door Opens

Noon East Rock: Carpenter John Caron applied a silicone caulk around the new glass door of the East Rock Pharmacy. Voila—the 19th century doorway would not look so different after suffering a 21st century break-in.

Following a burglary in the wee hours of last Thursday, Caron was called. He made a make-shift door of plywood and two-by-fours that pharmacy co-owner Ka Wa Chan and manager Elias Rodriguez screwed into place.

It was the latest new twist on preserving a piece of history in East Rock. Last fall Chan reopened the old Hall-Benedict Drug Company, preserving a cherished locally owned neighborhood pharmacy at the corner of Orange and Linden streets. Hall-Benedict had closed down after being in business since 1870.

It would have taken more than two weeks, and even more than the thousands being spent, to get a custom door to replace the shattered one, Caron said.

So he picked up a standard-sized glass door. By Friday afternoon, the pharmacy was back in business with a new customized opening to fit a standard metal and glass door.

As he affixed some remaining pieces of trim mid-day Wednesday and people walked in past his ladder, Caron said, ​“It’s a shame what happened to that door.”

The outside frame still shows above the opening the plaque identifying the building as a National Register of Historic Places site.

Chan (pictured) said the new door will have enhanced security against even vibrations. He said the police had come by and showed him pictures of possible suspects. The working theory: Maybe the burglar is the same guy who just hit Caseus and the Blossom Shop.

AA

11:50 a.m. Fair Haven: Teacher Gets Her Meds

Over on Grand Avenue, Hancock Pharmacy was open — and available to help a teacher get through the day.

When she started feeling ill in the middle of the school day, teacher Elizabeth Reyes popped across the street to the new pharmacy in the heart of Fair Haven, then headed back to work.

Reyes teaches pre‑K at the Columbus Family Academy at 255 Blatchley Ave. She needed to pick up new pills for her diabetes.

Just before noon, she walked out the school door, still wearing a colorful apron painted with images of cheerful kids. She opened the door to Hancock, less than a block away at the corner of Grand and Blatchley.

The store opened in 2010 as the seventh outpost in a Bridgeport-based chain. It promised to fill a need for the neighborhood, deliver meds for free, and never make customers wait more than 10 minutes.

On Wednesday, they came through for Reyes, who was served in less than 10 minutes.

Reyes said she started going to Hancock after the Walgreens in her Quinnipiac Meadows neighborhood stopped taking her insurance. March marks her third month at Hancock.

“They saved me right now, because I’m not feeling good,” said Reyes. ​“I’m like, ​‘I’ve got to go get my meds.’”

MB

Noon Newhallville: A ​“Forever” Staffer Gets A Compliment

Unlike Hancock, Newhallville’s Visel’s Pharmacy has been around. So have staffers like Denine Price — who was busy behind the counter giving out prescriptions, helping customers pay utility bills, and ringing up liquor purchases at the one-stop-shop pharmacy on Dixwell Avenue. But she still had time to talk.

“If she’s not talking, something ain’t right,” said customer Ernest Lewis, who’s known Prince since he started coming to Visel’s to get his diabetes prescriptions about three years ago. ​“And she’ll tell people off, too.”

“Why, thank you,” said Denine as she handed Lewis a receipt and grinned. ​“Thank you very much for saying that.”

Price, 34, has worked at Visel’s for almost six years. ​“Everybody who stays here stays here for years,” she said. (The pharmacy’s longest-running employee is Ed Funaro Sr., who took over the business from the Visel brothers in 1964.) ​“I’m here forever.” Price said it’s the first job that’s given her a 401K; she doesn’t plan to give that up. Plus, ​“they take care of you here.”

That’s what the customers say, too. ​“This is the best pharmacy I’ve ever seen. It’s not like those big chain stores,” said Lewis, 47, who lives on Dixwell Avenue and works at Popeye’s. ​“I can talk to people I know here.”

Price used to come here to pay bills and get prescriptions when she was growing up in Newhallville. She now lives in East Haven with her 14-year-old son; she was living in Westville when she was hired. ​“They like to hire from the area,” she said. Ed Funaro Jr., a pharmacist and the storeowner’s son, said most of the store’s 18 employees are from the city.

The Funaros aren’t sure exactly what year Christian and Edward Visel opened up the pharmacy, but they have records dating back to 1913. That means next year Visel’s celebrates its 100th anniversary.

NS

Click here to read stories from earlier today about Fair Haven, East Rock & Newhallville.
Click here and here to read the next installments from later in the day.