You may wonder how the photo above of a delectable entrée at a New Haven restaurant relates to last week’s news from the United States Census Bureau.
After all, that federal office, while working diligently on our behalf since 1902, is not known for reviewing restaurants or publishing cookbooks.
However, if you’ll stick me with a moment, I’ll explain in likely the first journalistic effort ever to connect an $18 plate of grilled salmon, risotto, capers and vertical herbs to recent trends in the U.S. population.
I should first lay the foundation of my case. Last Wednesday, the bureau published a study under the title, “America is Getting Older.” Though the folks in D.C. who came up with this revelation may have thought it would startle the public, it certainly wasn’t news to me. For, I myself am getting older. Perhaps even you are as well.
But as I read the text, I discovered the title of the report misleads. What the Bureau actually means is that the median age has risen from 30 years to 38.9 years in the space of the last four decades.
And if you think about it that’s an astonishing change. And for me, it led right to the salmon. And to the idea of turning back the clock, allowing us to get a little bit younger. If what I suggest here doesn’t measure up to Mark Twain’s idea — that we should be born at age 80 and live our lives going backwards, as we’d be wiser — it is at least offered in the same spirit.
So, let me go a bit backwards. In the old days — say the 1970s — when I visited my parents in their retirement community in South Florida, I necessarily joined the elderly crowd for Early Bird Specials.
This effort in the Bloom household was so extreme that one day my mother, at 2:30 in the afternoon, urged that I drip myself out of the condominium’s pool because if we didn’t get to the Deli Den for dinner by 4:30, the Jell‑O wouldn’t be included in the $5.95 chicken dinner.
I, of course, being at the time in the still vigorous and youthful part of my life, thought this was a joke. But now, having exceeded my mother’s age at the time she came up with this keen insight and planning, I consider Helen Bloom’s thinking on a par with that of Charles Darwin, who, if I am mistaken (which I am), wrote “Origin of the Early Bird Special (or E.B.S).”
My wife Suzanne and I have lately taken the E.B.S to new extremes. Nowadays, we often think twice about going out for meals and entertainment at night. The first thought is, “Yes. Let’s do this. It sounds exciting.” The second thought: “If we go, we’ll have to take off our PJs.” (A wardrobe habit formed during the pandemic.)
What’s more, a raindrop may fall, or maybe even a snowflake, or even more likely a crazy driver (there are, as you no doubt have noticed, quite a few around these days) will decide that our 2008 Saab wagon is suitable for target practice. But let me go back to the primary point of this discourse, assuming I have one.
The day after the Census Bureau had its say, we took advantage of early daylight hours to go downtown to check out a free art exhibit at Gateway Community College, as it was curated by a friend, Alva Greenberg, and features, among selections of three other artists, innovative works by Jesse Good, whom we’ve known since he was a little guy.
Afterwards, we took a stroll down Chapel Street, and made the usual stop at Atticus.
For us, bookstores have always been Disneyworld, taking us on rides of imagination and tempting literature. And places to hustle our work.
So one unfortunate staff member had to listen to my plea to place my recent book, I’ll Take New Haven, in her own shelf of recommended reading. I’m pleased to report that she enthusiastically responded, “Perhaps.”
We returned to the sidewalk, and turned right on College Street, and that swell block across from the Shubert Theater where several restaurants offer alfresco service at the lunch hour.
We had been to Villa Lulu’s once before, when this Italian restaurant opened in 2021, but not for lunch. And I was pleased to see that the noontime menu differs from the evening version in terms of pricing.
This tradition is not followed in Italy, where the price is the price, no matter when you order. But in New Haven and generally in the U.S., lunches are cheaper, and in a place such as Villa Lulu’s, the portions are similar to that of the evening fare.
Indeed, take a look at that photo again, and see if you’d need more food, or $6 more for an additional East Rock Pilsner.
I could go on and on about the daytime bargains of our fair city (the two Yale-run museums on Chapel, both free, the fresh air natural discoveries of Edgerton Park and other such city treasures, lectures open to the general public, the concerts for which tickets are underpriced. And even point out that for last week’s matinee performances of Kristina Wong’s one-woman play about running for public office offered good seats for New Haven residents for only $19), etc., but I’m hoping you’ve gotten the point by now.
It is… Please give me a moment. Ah, yes, that you too can turn back the clock to when, as Charles Darwin or Helen Bloom said, it seemed as is if we all had an endless future.