Category Archives: Teenagers

From ABC House To The Penthouse

Posted on February 5, 2012 | 4 Comments

The world knows Westporter Eileen Ogintz as a talented travel writer. Her  popular blog, Taking The Kids, chronicles the challenging/funny/eye-opening experiences taking her own 3 kids everywhere from Disney World and Yosemite to Alaska and Europe.

Last week, 2 posts described her travel adventures with 7 other Westport kids: residents of A Better Chance‘s North Avenue home.

The 7 teenage boys — outstanding students from economically disadvantaged areas across the country — attend Staples. Scores of Westporters augment the program in many ways, from tutoring to driving to offering “host homes” on weekends.

Eileen decided she’d share a prize — winning a weekend stay at the Hilton New York‘s 5-bedroom penthouse — by showing off the city’s many treasures to the ABC kids.

The ABC House students at the 9-11 Memorial.

The 2 days included Alicia Key’s Broadway play “Stick Fly“; a family-style dinner in the theater district, and visits to the 9/11 Memorial, Chinatown and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

Also along: a 9-month-old (the houseparents’ younger child), and a 60-plus chaperone. But the itinerary had something for everyone. And staying in the Penthouse — with a library, living room with a baby grand piano, and access to the Executive Lounge — certainly helped.

“Stick Fly” — about an upscale African American family gathering for a weekend on Martha’s Vineyard — discussed family issues like parents playing favorites, children unable to live up to parents’ expectations, girlfriends’ difficulties assimilating and class issues — that “can play out in any family,” Eileen writes.

Because the family is black, the play had special resonance, she notes. The ABC students were treated to a special behind-the-scenes tour afterward.

In Chinatown, with housemother Desisree and her 9-month-old daughter.

The Tenement Museum also resonated with the ABC House teens. The 1863 apartment building was home to nearly 7000 working-class Irish, German, Italian and Jewish immigrants who, Eileen notes, “faced challenges we understand today: making a new life, working for a better future, starting a family with limited means.”

She tells her blog readers:

Every one of our boys’ parents are immigrants — from Africa, Mexico, Jamaica and Trinidad, from other places….What makes this museum so interesting is experiencing the apartments of those who lived here and hearing their stories. The saddest, we agreed, was the young German mother whose husband went to work one day and never returned — just as her great grandson failed to return on the day the Twin Towers fell.

It was a long but exciting weekend. The boys passed on the offer of a movie at night, preferring to hang out in a Penthouse in the middle of Manhattan.

ABC House students relax on the "Stick Fly" set, with Westport program co-founder Lisa Friedland.

What a memorable experience for the A Better Chance students. Westporters embrace these outstanding young men. And — thanks in part to this remarkable program — ABC graduates will one day be in a position to provide similar opportunities to the next generation of bright, curious, talented teenagers lucky enough to be in programs like this.

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Posted in Organizations, People, Staples HS, Teenagers

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“Bonjour, Jean. Comment Vas-Tu?”

Posted on January 29, 2012 | 60 Comments

Right now, there’s a proposal on the table — la table — to eliminate middle school French within 3 years.

Mon dieu!

While that’s not the extent of my French ability, it’s close.

It’s all ALM’s fault.

If you didn’t go to school in the 1960s, you missed out didn’t miss anything. ALM was a language instruction method rooted in rote repetition. Wikipedia says it was “discredited as a teaching methodology in 1970,” but those of us who suffered through it then (and after) in Westport have it seared in our brains.

“Où est Sylvie? A la piscine.”

“La neige est belle aujourd-hui.”

And something about mounting a balcony. Plus, of course, Monsieur et Madame Thibault.

Other victims students from that era have similar ridiculous and basically useless sentences embedded in our memories, crowding out anything remotely resembling vocabulary, grammar or the rest of the French language.

Which is not to say that learning French at Long Lots Junior High School was not memorable.

My 8th grade teacher was Carmen Delgado. A large, imposing and very loud woman, she was — as her name implies — not French, French-Canadian or even Cajun, but rather Puerto Rican.

Louis Pasteur, a French scientist who gained fame for inventing a cure for rabbis.

English was probably her 3rd language, which is why she said such things as “Louis Pasteur invented a cure for rabbis.”

At least that is understandable. What were 13-year-olds to make of “Daniel, what is it you are staring at? The moon of Valencia?”

I have obviously remembered at least as much English from Mademoiselle Delgado as I have French.

Also cemented into my cerebrum is a play we produced, “Astérix et Cléopâtre.” Based on what Mademoiselle assured us were very popular French cartoon figures, it probably broke every licensing law in the books. How she had the cojones to charge admission — it was only $1, but back then that was real francs — to watch us mangle the French language is beyond me. Yet that was part of Mademoiselle’s charm.

As it turns out, I have not had many opportunities to show off my lack of French. I have traveled to 5 continents, and over 3 dozen countries, but only one of them was French-speaking. (It was France, of all places). It did not snow there, and I did not need to know that Sylvie was at the pool, but I managed to eat, drink and find the bathroom (salle de bain).

I even was able — thanks to Monsieur et Madame Thibault — to know which door to use.

The snow is beautiful today. Is that Monsieur Thibault on his bicyclette?

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Posted in Education, Entertainment, Looking back, People, Teenagers

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Not According To Script

Posted on January 21, 2012 | 35 Comments

The other day, a Staples student talked about the SATs.

He’d done fine on the math, he said.  And most of the verbal section was okay.  The writing section, though, was really hard.

Why? I asked.  Was the question difficult?  Did the 25-minute time limit seem too short?

No, he said.  He meant it literally — the writing was hard.  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually written something by hand.

And, he said — as puzzled and angry as if he’d been asked to write in Chinese characters — “they made us sign our signature in cursive.”  He’d forgotten how to do that — along with being “pretty unable” to read script — and worried if printing his name would invalidate his score.

Welcome to the 21st century.

Along with losing the ability to read analog watches and non-GPS maps, today’s teenagers have lost the art of handwriting.  They learned their ABCs by typing, not printing, and ever since then it’s been peck peck peck (and now, thumb thumb thumb).

In class today, kids take notes on their laptops and iPads.  They don’t slyly pass notes on crumpled pieces of paper; they text.  Every paper they write is on the computer.  Actual handwriting is as old-fashioned as fountain pens.

Child development experts have noticed the trend.  They worry that youngsters who don’t write by hand miss out on developing fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, even patience.

Writing by hand takes time — time to think about what you’re writing.  Yammering away on a keyboard is easy.  And if something doesn’t sound right, you just click “delete.”

I am, of course, writing this on a computer.  You should see what I’ve deleted already — actually, you won’t.  But I could write this by hand if I wanted to.  I even know how to use a fountain pen.

Just call me a 21st-century Renaissance Man.

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Posted in Teenagers, Totally random

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De Westport A Cuba

Posted on January 20, 2012 | 4 Comments

Sometimes you can go home again.

Even if home is Cuba.

Maite Hernandez was born in Puerto Rico. She and her husband, Roy Marmelo — he’s Portuguese — have lived in Westport for nearly a decade. But her parents are Cuban, and many relatives still live there.

In 1997 Maite and Roy visited Cuba. They traveled the back way — through Mexico.

But recently, over Christmas break, Maite and Roy and their 4 children enjoyed a family reunion in Havana. They went the new way — on a Delta charter from Miami. Other relatives came from Los Angeles and Barcelona.

The Marmelo family, in Cuba.

Americans can now visit Cuba for religious, educational and family reasons. And what better family event than seeing long-lost relatives — and introducing the Marmelo kids Andres, Claudia, Júlia and Lucas to cousins they’ve never met?

Maite’s aunt Lucy has visited Westport before. (She’s allowed out of the country because, with 5 children of her own, she’s not considered a flight risk.) She and her other relatives still in Cuba live better than many in that country, Roy says. They’re well educated, and serve in prestigious professions like medicine and government. They live in Miramar, a Havana suburb filled with embassy homes.

One of Lucy’s daughters is a famous TV soap opera actress. A son, who serves in the Army, accompanied Fidel Castro on a trip to Mexico. He drove the Marmelos around in his van — just as he did Peter Frampton, on the singer’s visit to Cuba.

Lucy’s neighbor is Aleida March — Che Guevara’s widow. Andres Marmelo must be the only Bedford Middle School 8th grader to have met that connection to history.

A 1950's car, in 2012 Cuba.

Cuba is a study in contrasts, Roy says. Propoganda is everywhere — you can’t avoid seeing signs promoting 53 years of revolution — and so are the 1950s-era American cars that Cubans take pride in maintaining. But there are BMWs too.

The Marmelos visited a military museum (where they saw the American-made boat that brought Fidel back home from Mexico), as well as the Hemingway museum with his boat.

But recent changes allow Cubans to buy permits to sell items in front of their homes. They can open up bakeries. A Hernandez cousin says “80 to 90 percent” of citizens no longer believe much of the propoganda.

“In 1997, when we talked about politics we were told to lower our voices,” Roy says. “This time, that didn’t happen.” Cubans were even dancing to Gloria Estefan’s song, “Cuba Libre” (“Free Cuba”).

There is plenty of food — but it’s very expensive. The Hernandez family went all out to show their far-flung relatives a good time. Still, there was plenty of white rice, black beans and pork. “It was a good lesson for the kids,” Roy says.

Andres Marmelo saw plenty of eye-opening sights in Cuba -- including Che Guevara's face on the Ministry of Interior in Havana. The building proclaims "Hasta la victoria siempre" -- "To victory always."

“Everything in Westport is perfect and beautiful,” Maite adds. “Everyone is well dressed. It’s a bubble. You don’t see poverty. Cuba was an eye-opener.”

The sheets are so rough, they scratch. Maite’s relatives requested linens from America and Spain.

It was an eye-opener in other ways too. Cubans with connections have flat screen TVs. They hide illegal satellite dishes in water towers, and watch ESPN.

Maite’s cousin pays someone for internet access. The cousins have Facebook — “but they get on at like 3 a.m., with a dial-up modem,” Maite says.

There is plenty of night life in Havana. Young people go to bars — one is called the Yellow Submarine — and the famous Tropicana night club is still around. It looks good, Roy says.

The Marmelos spent most of their time in and around Havana. Each relative spent time entertaining them. They did take a side trip to Maite’s mother’s old beach house, and drove by Fidel and Raúl Castro’s ranches. (Photos were forbidden.)

The Marmelos are back now in Westport. The kids are sorting out everything they saw and did. Their parents thoroughly enjoyed the family reunion. They’ve got hundreds of photos, and souvenirs like a couple of paintings.

No Cuban cigars, though. Roy says getting them through customs is too much of a hassle.

A toll plaza on the coast celebrates 53 years of revolution.

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Posted in Children, Politics, Teenagers, Totally random

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Jeri And John Skinner’s Westport Holiday

Posted on January 18, 2012 | 16 Comments

In 1969, John Skinner was a pilot for Pan Am.

His base was moving to JFK. He and his wife Jeri came east, to look for a new home town (and home).

They looked all around New Jersey and Connecticut, but grew discouraged. “Bias of all kinds was pretty prevalent,” Jeri recalls.

Finally — on their way back to the airport — they read a Holiday magazine story and stopped in Westport.

Holiday Magazine used this photo to illustrate its 1969 story on Fairfield County. And yes, that is a helicopter nose in the left side of the shot. (Photo by Slim Aarons)

The rest is history. The Skinners moved here; became involved in many aspects of town, and over the next 4 decades made quite a mark. (One example: They founded Builders Beyond Borders.)

The other day, Jeri sent me that 1969 magazine article that changed their lives — and ultimately so many others’.

Titled “New York’s Best Address,” it’s a long look into Fairfield County — or, as the subhead says, “The Connecticut county that is fast becoming the bedroom of the affluent New Yorker.”

Author Stephen Birmingham — who wrote over 30 books, many about America’s upper class — began by noting that a Greenwich woman said she lived in Fairfield County “because we’re so rich.”

Birmingham described suburban Fairfield County as “one of the most beautiful residential areas in the country.” He noted the “jagged, rocky coastline with hundreds of tiny coves and harbors, secluded beaches and deep-blue water dotted with diminutive offshore islands and, on any summer weekend, clouds of sailboats.”

Inland, “the land rises in a series of wooded hills threaded by bright streams and narrow, winding roads.”

Birmingham described many towns in detail — without shying away from issues like anti-Semitism at country clubs. Most communities were isolated from each other, he said.

For example, said Westport actress Bette Davis:

Bette Davis

My God, I’d never be invited to a party in Southport — unless they wanted me there as some sort of curiosity. After all, I’m unmarried, a woman who works for a living, and one who makes her money in the entertainment industry. If I lived in Southport I’d never be accepted. Here, of course, it’s quite different.

Westport, Birmingham wrote, “has always been different.”

Early in the 1920′s (it) was discovered by New York writers and artists who began coming there for the summer. Soon they were buying and restoring old farmhouses and barns….

At one point most of the celebrated Algonquin Round Table had houses in Westport. They were joined by people from the theater and films — June Havoc, Eileen Heckart, Ralph Alswang, and David Wayne.

To this rich brew were added infusions from the worlds of radio and, eventually, television and book publishing.

To top it all off, a large contribution has been made to the population from the world of advertising…. This has given Westport the feeling of a bright, brash, assertive — raffish, but very well-heeled — artists’ colony.

Downtown Westport, Birmingham said,

abounds with what are called “fun” shops. There are fun dress shops, men’s shops, gourmet-foods shops, gift shops, ice cream shops, cheese shops, delicatessen and grog shops — and many others.

Collectively the fun shops of Westport exude an aura of franticness. The fun totters on the brink of hysteria, as though the shops were not at all sure how they were going to pay the bills for the fun merchandise. One suspects they are as overextended as, indeed, many of their best customers doubtless are.

Birmingham spent time describing 2 important elements of Fairfield County: zoning and transportation.

Ad executives Tom Wright and Frank Gromer wait at Grand Central for the train home. Just above Gromer's head you can see "Westport & Saugatuck." (Photo by Slim Aarons)

Commuting, he said, “has developed into something of an art form, and each train has a character and conveys a status all its own.” The 6:58 and 7:37 out of Westport were for the “bright, aggressive, ambitious young man on his way up.”

The 9:13 was for “the bankers, the lawyers, the heads of companies whose first engagements of important on any given day occur not much before lunchtime.”

Returning to Westport, Birmingham said, “wives wait tensely at the wheels of cars, motors racing, while their menfolk sprint across the Tarmac.” Of course, certain commuters told their wives they were taking the 7:18, when they actually arrived at 6:03 and spent “the intervening time at the station tavern.”

Birmingham noted that “the celebrated ‘rural character,’ so carefully preserved, does not make a particularly good place to raise teen-age children.”

It has been said — albeit facetiously — that if all the students in Westport’s luxurious Staples High School who have sampled marijuana and other drugs were expelled, there would be no school to run….

On the streets of Westport after school, a group very much resembling Greenwich Village hippies hangs out, looking bored and disaffected. There have been incidents of vandalism and breaking and entering — all laid to teenage boredom.

To ease the problems of isolation, Birmingham said, many parents give their kids their own telephones, cars — and charge accounts with taxi companies.

Bored Westport teenagers -- just like those described in Holiday magazine -- hang out in the library park ("Needle Park") on the corner of Main Street and the Post Road.

But, Birmingham concluded, “for all its shortcomings, Fairfield County is, to those who love it, a very special sort of place. They regard it with a special affection very close to love.”

Reading about that type of place — in 1969 — John and Jeri Skinner were attracted to Westport.

Holiday Magazine is long gone. Westport is no longer an artists’ colony, and in the intervening years the Skinners not only formed B3, but grew it into a huge organization and then gave up its reins.

Some things have not changed. Zoning and transportation remain huge issues; so does teenage boredom.

It’s interesting to look back, and re-read one travel writer’s view of us 43 years ago.

And it’s interesting too to speculate on the chance effect one magazine story had, on one couple from California. They read that piece, were intrigued by our town, moved here — and made it their home for the rest of their lives.

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Posted in Arts, Downtown, Looking back, People, Staples HS, Teenagers

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A Few Real Resolutions

Posted on January 9, 2012 | 25 Comments

Staples principal John Dodig is a keen observer of teenagers — and of the environments that shape them.

In this month’s PTA Newsletter, he offers some insights into how we can more positively shape those environments. It deserves an audience far wider than just the parents of local high school students.

I have been going to the same gym in the early morning for about 10 years now. I have noticed that beginning in late January of each year, the number of people who show up at the door at 5 a.m. increases visibly. These must be people who resolve to do something about their weight, their lethargy, their health, etc.

John Dodig

By the end of February they are all gone. What good are New Year’s resolutions when we know from the start there is no way we will stick with them? Knowing that resolutions should be easily doable, I came up with a list to share that some of you may find useful:

  •  Resolve to allow your child to experience failure or rejection without coming to her/his aid. If your child gets a “C” on a test or gets cut from a team or doesn’t get a part in a play, offer a shoulder to cry on but let her/him know that things like this will happen throughout life. Being resilient is a helpful skill for one’s entire life.
  • If you don’t already, tell your children that you love them at a moment when nothing special is happening. I know this sounds silly, but I keep hearing from kids that they only hear those words when they bring home A’s on their report card or score a goal or get a part. In other words, for an accomplishment. They can’t sort through the message that it is really them that you love just for being your children.

  • It's okay to say no to your child.

    Try saying NO once in a while to a request that you know in your gut is not appropriate, and that the decision may incur the anger of your child. I can’t tell you the number of parents who just can’t say no when asked for permission to go to a concert on a Tuesday night, for example. Coming home at 1 a.m. seems inappropriate when the next morning is a school day, but saying no is so difficult.

  • Resolve never, ever, ever to leave your child at home alone on a weekend. This may work for some of you, but I stopped counting the number of times we hear about a child being left alone, perhaps with a sleepover friend, and the home being crashed by a dozen teenagers. It is impossible for your child to monitor that situation.
  • When your child comes home Friday or Saturday night at whatever time you establish, get up and give her/him a great big hug. Remember to take a deep breath in mid-hug and be prepared to smell something you don’t want to smell. For most of you, this will not be a problem, but you would be surprised how many times you will smell something, and then be faced with a decision on what to do.
  • I know it may be difficult, but try to have dinner as a family once or twice a week. Don’t accept silence. Ask about school, life, sports, music, friends, and keep on asking until a conversation begins.

  • Hanging out with your kid can be fun.

    Think of something simple that you can do with just one child and make your way through all of them over a month. Take a walk on the beach. Take a bike ride. Get a cup of coffee together, etc. You are creative. You will think of something. It is not so much what you choose, but that each child gets alone time with you.

  • When you are at a party with people who don’t have any children at the high school, resolve to bring up something about the high school or a student or a team that you know is outstanding. Maybe pick something that I have written about in my monthly messages. Let everyone in town know what an extraordinary school this is, and what great kids come here every day.

I will stop my suggested list of New Year’s resolutions at this point. None of these suggestions will improve your health, take off weight or build muscle. But they will all improve someone’s life, strengthen relationships, make you happy, and/or help the high school in some way.

Thank you in advance. Happy New Year!

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Posted in People, Staples HS, Teenagers

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Holiday Songs With The Staples Choir

Posted on December 23, 2011 | 3 Comments

Yesterday, the Staples choir went caroling throughout the school.

Click below to hear a rousing “Deck the Halls,” a version of “Jingle Bells” with the seldom-sung final stanza — and a chance to pretend you’re in the middle of a group of really great singers.

(Justin Miller, director)

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Posted in Arts, Staples HS, Teenagers

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Westport Teens Dodge Cops

Posted on December 16, 2011 | 5 Comments

It’s not often a kid can whip balls at a cop’s head — and get away with it.

And vice versa.

But last night in the Staples fieldhouse, 100 teenagers and a dozen Westport police officers did just that.

The event was Dodge-a-Cop — the Westport Youth Commission‘s 1st-ever dodgeball tournament. It’s hard to tell who had more fun: the guys (and gals) with guns, or the kids who run from them.

Actually, that was the whole idea: getting police and teenagers to interact somewhere other than at a traffic stop or house party.

A small part of the large "Dodge a Cop" crowd. The police wore tie-dyes.

The Youth Commission — whose 15 teenage and 15 adult members include police officers Ned Batlin and Sereneti Dobson — and Staples’ Teen Awareness Group have been examining ways to help teenagers see cops as human beings who care about kids. And ways to help Westport policemen and women — most of whom do not live in town — see teenagers as more than just stereotypes too.

Police officer Ned Batlin proudly poses with players.

Staples dodgeball players — who came from a broad swath of the student body — formed their own teams. At least one officer joined each team.

The only qualifications to play: an arm. Guts. And $20 per team.

Because Dodge-a-Cop also served as a fundraiser — for the Toys for Tots drive, the Westport Police Department’s annual collection.

It was a great evening. Competitive dodgeball was played. Funds were raised. Pizza was eaten. Cops and kids hung out together. No one got arrested.

And the winners got t-shirts.

Which said: “I Dodged a Cop.”

Four members of the Goons Inc. team (from left): Guerric Vornle von Haagenfels, Jack Dobrich, Thomas Cirillo and Colin Davis.

Police officers Howie Simpson and Eric Woods take time out from their warmup throws.

Isaac Stein is all business before the tournament.

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Posted in Organizations, Police, Sports, Staples HS, Teenagers

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71st Annual Gift To The Town (New Photos Added)

Posted on December 11, 2011 | 4 Comments

Every year since 1940, the Staples High School music department has offered the Candlelight Concert to the town.

This weekend, several hundred teenagers — and instructors Adele Cutrali-Valovich, Nick Mariconda and Justin Miller — provided the gift of music to 3 wildly appreciative audiences.

The program included solemn hymns, classical music, a rousing African number, whimsical tunes — and of course, a production number.

In everyone’s thoughts were Nava Zeevi, the longtime accompanist whose husband Kuti was killed in a robbery Thursday night. Todd Simmons, assistant director of the Westport School of Music, stepped in to take her place.

Solomon Sloat (top) and Will Bitsky in the traditional "Sing We Noel" processional. (Photos by Lynn U. Miller)

Senior Mike Ljungberg provides the beat for the lovely African song "Ogo ni fun Oluwa!" (Photo by Lynn U. Miller)

Sophomore chorale member Rick Daily gives it his all. (Photo by Lynn U. Miller)

Mrs. Claus and her dancers (top), and her husband Santa Claus and the Staples choir, in the traditional production number. (Photo by Lynn U. Miller)

(From bottom left) Michael Sixsmith, Mikell Washington and Santa Claus singing the rousing finale, the Hallelujah Chorus. (Photo by Lynn U. Miller)

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Sam Allen’s Star Turn

Posted on November 24, 2011 | 2 Comments

Page 1 of today’s New York Times Home & Garden section features a long — very, very long — story on “Sam Allen, Teenage Decorator.”

If the name and subject sound familiar, it’s because “06880″ profiled Sam — the son of Double L Farm Stand owner Lloyd Allen — back in May.

But we’ll defer to the Paper of Record.  The Times piece begins:

This affluent town has long been associated with Martha Stewart, who built her domestic empire here while living in a farmhouse on Turkey Hill Road.  But in the last year or so, a new local talent has emerged: a boyishly handsome designer named Sam Allen.

Open The Weston Forum newspaper, and there he is, sharing his “latest obsession” with readers of his weekly column.

Leaf through a recent issue of Connecticut Cottages & Gardens, and it’s hard to miss the six-page spread of an Hermès-orange bedroom suite he designed for three sisters in exclusive Greenfield Hill.  Swing by the high-end home store Dovecote, and there, on a miniature brass easel, is his business card, advertising Sam Allen Interiors on thick Weimaraner-gray card stock.

“Everyone in my area of Connecticut seems to know him,” said Gerry Bush-Jaffray, who hired Mr. Allen to help decorate her 7,000-square-foot house in nearby Weston.

Sam Allen, with a client. (Photo/Tony Cenicola for the New York Times)

But while many consider him a rising star, Mr. Allen still lives with his mother in Weston, where he works out of a tiny office in her house.  And though he advises the readers of his column how to freshen up their rooms (“It’s time to abandon safe, go-to colors”), in his room, piles of wrinkled clothes are heaped on the bed.  Around town, the pampered housewives of Fairfield County greet him enthusiastically by name, but at home, he gets grief from his little sister.

That’s because the new design star is a teenager.

“Because I’m so young, some people don’t take me seriously,” Mr. Allen, 19, said one recent morning as he zoomed around Westport in his white Lexus S.U.V., running errands on behalf of clients.  “I say, ‘I’m an interior designer,’ and they think I look through a Pottery Barn catalog.”

Mr. Allen, who has been honing his skills since age 12, added emphatically, “No, that’s not what I’m doing.”

It used to be even worse.  When he was 17, he said, he was meeting with a client to discuss his vision for her austere concrete-and-glass home in Fairfield, Conn., when her husband walked in and said skeptically, “I don’t want to be rude, but how old are you?”

Drinking one Diet Coke after another and talking animatedly about ikat prints, Mr. Allen comes across like a Bravo reality show waiting to happen.  You don’t spend an afternoon with him so much as strap yourself in for the ride.

To read more — including the classic quote from a Weston High School English teacher, who remembers him as  “the boy who read Vogue instead of To Kill a Mockingbird”– click here.

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Posted in Local business, People, Teenagers

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