There’s no such thing as a free lunch — at least, if you’re eating in or taking out downtown.
Downtown parking though, has always been free — for 1 or 2 hours.
During the pandemic, enforcement of parking limits was suspended.
Tickets may soon return — but only after those parking limits are extended.
The second agenda item on Wednesday’s Board of Selectwomen meeting (August 16, 9 a.m., Town Hall auditorium) reads:
Acting in its capacity as the Local Traffic Authority, to re-establish the enforcement of timed parking limits previously suspended by the Board of Selectmen at its public meeting of June 10, 2020, and further, to establish uniform parking limits and times of enforcement throughout the town-managed and owned downtown parking lots known as Parker Harding Plaza, Sigrid Shultz Plaza, Baldwin, Bay Street, Jesup Road, and Taylor, and the Town roadways known as Main Street, Church Lane, Bay Street, and Taylor Place, by changing FROM the currently posted “1- and 2- hour parking” limits TO “3-hour parking” limits and enforcement times TO “8:00 AM to 6:00 PM.” And further, to request permission from the CT DOT to change the current parking term limits posted on Post Road East FROM “1- and 2-hour parking” TO “3-hour parking.”
Click here for the livestream of the Board of Selectwomen session, or watch on Optimum Channel 79. Comments may be sent to selectwoman@westportct.gov prior to the meeting.
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The 3rd agenda item for Wednesday’s Board of Selectwomen’s meeting is also of interest: a request from the Remarkable Theater to use the Imperial Avenue parking lot from August 28 through November 3 for a 4th season of drive-in movies.
From 2020 through ’22, the Remarkable’s season began in the spring.
Jacqui O’Brien was one of several readers who sent photos of a strange object seen over Westport skies last night.
Susan Leone was the first to identify them as SpaceX Starlink satellites.
They were launched yesterday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. It was the 9th flight for the first stage booster supporting the mission.
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As first noted on “06880” over a year ago — but denied vociferously by Organic Krush — Sweetgreens is indeed moving in to Compo Shopping Center.
Organic Krush has already moved out.
No date has been announced for opening. But the fast-casual salad-based chain — which emphasizes healthy eating and sustainability, and has 158 outlets in 13 states — already has Westporters excited.
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The recent food drive for Homes with Hope’s Gillespie Center and food pantry — which included a special, fill-my-shopping-cart trip by a mother and 2 children — was celebrated yesterday, at the Sunrise Rotary Club’s weekly meeting.
The sponsors — including also the Westport Rotary Club, Westport Police Department and Saugatuck Rowing Club — presented a check for $1,105.62 to Homes with Hope.
Those cash donations were in addition to the hundreds of bags of groceries that were dropped off, as shoppers entered and exited the store.
From left: Liz Wong, Sunrise Rotary president; Rob Hauck, Rotary member; Helen McAlinden, Homes with Hope president; Paris Looney, HWH vice president, and Sunrise Rotary members Bruce Paul and Bruce Fritz. (Photo/James Wong)
The link provided yesterday by Wakeman Town Farm for their September 9 Harvest Fest fundraiser was incorrect. Click here for tickets, and more information.
But all can agree: the Smart Shots Pickleball Social is great.
The September 30 event (6:30 to 9:30 p.m., Milford Indoor Tennis) is a fundraiser for A Better Chance of Westport.
Level-designated courts will ensure exciting matches. Vendors will offer pickleball services and products. A raffle includes special prizes. The Porch @ Christie’s is providing food (available for pre-purchase).
The event is sponsored by ATP (Alan & Tina Pickleball). Click here to register. Questions? Call 203-984-1949.
And finally … anyone who saw the 2012 Oscar-winning documentary “Searching for Sugar Man” knows that Rodriguez’s story is astonishing.
The Detroit musician wrote and sang haunting protest songs. But he never found an audience, and settled into a life as a laborer and office worker.
He was “discovered” in Australia however — and then, even more so, in South Africa during apartheid. According to the New York Times:
“To many of us South Africans, he was the soundtrack to our lives,” Stephen Segerman, owner of a Cape Town record store, said in the documentary.
“In the mid-’70s, if you walked into a random white, liberal, middle-class household that had a turntable and a pile of pop records, and if you flipped through the records, you would always see ‘Abbey Road’ by the Beatles, you’d always see ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ by Simon and Garfunkel, and you would always see ‘Cold Fact’ by Rodriguez. To us, it was one of the most famous records of all time. The message it had was ‘Be anti-establishment.’”
Astonishingly, Rodriguez did not know he had fervent fans in South Africa. Equally astonishingly, South Africans thought he was dead. One rumor was a drug overdose; another, that he had killed himself onstage.
In 1998, he was discovered — alive, and living in obscurity in Detroit. He was invited to South Africa, and played concerts at sold-out venues.
He was “discovered” again more than a dozen years later, with the release of “Searching for Sugar Man” — a film about his strange but vibrant life.
Rodriguez — whose full name was Sixto Diaz Rodriguez — died Tuesday, in Detroit. He was 81.
Click here for a full obituary. Click below to hear Rodriguez.
(Have you recently discovered “06880”? Did you know we rely completely on reader support? Please click here to help. Thank you!)
Several intriguing abstract works highlight this week’s online gallery.
Of course, age, level of experience, subject matter — there are no restrictions. Everyone is invited to contribute.
All genres are encouraged. Watercolors, oils, charcoal, pen-and-ink, acrylics, lithographs, collages, macramé, jewelry, sculpture, decoupage and (yes) needlepoint — whatever you’ve got, email it to 06880blog@gmail.com. Share your work with the world! (PS: Please include the medium you’re working in — art lovers want to know.)
“Un Peu Bleu” — acrylic resin abstract (Patricia McMahon)
“Floral Neuron Network” (Ken Runkel)
“‘Scene’ From Above” — acrylic paint and pouring medium (Amy Schneider)
Untitled (Tom Doran)
“Summer Adventures: Oh, The Places We Love!” (Dorothy Robertshaw)
“Fishing Vessel Samantha Brooke, Gulls and Lighthouse” (Peter Barlow)
“My Father’s Soul” — Photographer Sharon Paulsen shot this in her father’s backyard on Sanibel Island, Florida in August 2017, a week before he died.
“I Am Not Lichen My New Skin Lotion” (Mike Hibbard)
“It’s a Stretch” (Lawrence Weisman)
“Julie’s Office, Circa 1989” — Steve Stein says, “Julie was my father-in-law, a great family man and a motion picture ad guy handling many of the accounts seen on the wall behind him.”
(Entrance is free to our online art gallery. But please consider a donation! Just click here — and thank you!)
Sustainable Westport began as a municipal task force, appointed by First Selectman Gordon Joseloff in 2006.
Its mission is to “inspire, support and connect residents, organizations and the town of Westport, in furtherance of the town’s resolution to become a Net Zero community by the year 2050.
“Sustainable Westport advises the First Selectwoman, Westport Public Schools, town commissions and departments on determining and setting environmental policies and decisions for the purpose of transforming Westport into a more sustainable community.”
Now a non-profit organization, Sustainable Westport has watched the debate over the future of the Westport Community Gardens and Long Lots Preserve. The group says:
We are inspired by our community’s response to the Long Lots Building Committee’s consideration of plans to relocate the Westport Community Gardens and Long Lots Preserve.
As hundreds of residents have already stated, the Community Gardens are a valuable community asset. Not only do they support exceptional programs like Grow-A-Row [providing food to underserved communities], but they are also emblematic of the type of spaces Westport wants to promote and foster – a natural resource that provides flood storage, wildlife habitat, and tree canopy while also providing an educational and enriching environment for our community.
Sustainable Westport wholeheartedly supports preserving the Community Gardens and building a sustainable school to support our town’s commitment to use best efforts to become a Net Zero community by 2050.
As a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting individuals, businesses, and our town government in making changes to reduce our overall carbon footprint, Sustainable Westport recognizes the immense opportunity this project represents for our community; Westport has not built a new school from the ground up since 2001, and prior to that, not since 1965.
In a recent letter to the Selectwomen and the Representative Town Meeting, Save Westport Now shared several important observations about proposed plans to relocate or modify the Community Gardens and Preserve. Although Sustainable Westport was not invited to participate in the committee, our team has made every effort to attend all public committee meetings and has used our platform to encourage our community to make their voices heard.
Since last October, Sustainable Westport has shared informative content both with the committee and the public to educate residents about the advantages associated with constructing a sustainable school.
Sustainable schools deliver significant health, educational, financial, and environmental benefits to students, teachers, and communities. Not only are sustainable schools more energy efficient, leading to lower operating costs, but they also provide learning spaces that significantly improve the wellness and productivity of those in and around the building. Learn more here.
We also strongly advocated for sustainability to be included as a primary objective for the Long Lots Building Committee. In fact, the resolution appointing the committee includes the directive to incorporate “sustainable and energy efficient design practices to the extent possible into the scope of work as appropriate to achieve the best long term value for the town, in support of the 2017 resolution committing Westport to use best efforts to become a Net Zero community by 2050.”
Long Lots Elementary School was build in 1953, and renovated most recently 50 years ago. It is energy-inefficient today. (Drone photo/Brandon Malin)
We have been pleased by the committee’s willingness to explore sustainable options for each potential outcome: renovate, renovate and expand, or build new. Most considerations focus on energy, including solar, geothermal, ground-source heat pumps, and insulation.
However, we have also heard discussions about installing dishwashers (to reduce the single-use waste), induction stovetops, using mass timber and concrete to lower embodied carbon, implementing rain gardens and sustainable landscaping, and using grey water or a retention pond for irrigation. As these examples illustrate, the umbrella of “sustainability” is complex and far-reaching.
Our ask is simple.
Please extend your energy and enthusiasm beyond protecting the Community Gardens and Long Lots Preserve, a long-standing example of our community’s commitment to sustainability, by also advocating for establishing a school that aligns with the Town’s objective of achieving Net Zero status by 2050.
Let us work together to encourage the Long Lots Building Committee to both preserve our existing natural resources and create new infrastructure that reinforces our shared dedication to sustainability.
Sincerely,
Gately Ross & Johanna Martell
Co-Directors, Sustainable Westport
(“06880” will continue to follow the Long Lots School/Community Gardens debate. Please click here to support our work. Thank you!)
From 3,500 feet, in a 3-seat prop plane, I got a remarkable view of our town.
I marveled at the amount of water. The compactness of downtown and Saugatuck. And the many, many trees that provided a canopy, nearly everywhere.
In 1934, a statewide project photographed every square inch of the state.
The images are housed at the University of Connecticut. They’re fascinating.
Fred Cantor found this shot of Westport:
Click on or hover over to enlarge.
Amonghe surprises, he writes, are “how many houses there were by that point in the Compo Beach neighborhood (bottom center of the photo), and the fairly large number of houses in the Compo Hill/Old Mill Beach neighborhood (just above it).
“I imagine most of these were probably not winterized, but still…”
However, Fred adds, “I expected to see more homes directly on South Compo Road, leading from the train tracks to the beach.”
Also of note: The crooked intersection of South Compo, Bridge Street and Greens Farms Road (just above the railroad tracks). It looked a bit different, before I-95 was built 2 decades later.
What do you notice? Click “Comments” below to share your observations.
(Friday Flashback is a weekly feature on “06880.” Please click here to support it — and this entire hyper-local blog. Thank you!)
Over the years, Wakeman Town Farm’s Harvest Fest has “grown” to become one of the best fundraisers, in a town that has plenty of them.
This year’s event (Saturday, September 9, 6 p.m.) will again feature season fare by local farmers and chefs, wine and signature cocktails, live music, auctions and more.
The food station setup encourages mixing and mingling. Seating in the outdoor tent is limited; tickets go fast. Click here for tickets, and more information.
Season 3 of Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building” includes an all-star cast: Meryl Streep, Martin Short, Steve Martin and Paul Rudd.
And — to keep things interesting — this season the “murder investigation” heads to Broadway.
To do that element right, the New York Times says, producers “enlisted the aid of a musical theater supergroup led by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, known for their work on ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ and ‘La La Land.’”
Before earning “supergroup” status, Justin was a kid — okay, a rising star even then — in Westport.
He graduated from Staples High School in 2003.
He likened the “Only Murders” experience to “theater camp.”
He told the Times: “It was just through and through a Broadway experience — there are just cameras filming it. There was that same sort of ensemble sense, whether it was Meryl or Paul Rudd or Marty or Steve, that everybody was making this show together.”
The show debuted Wednesday. Click here for the full New York Times story. (Hat tip: John Nathan)
Justin Paul and Benj Pasek, at the 2018 Golden Globe Awards. (Photo/Paul Drinkwater NBC)
Westport Police made 1 custodial arrest between August 2 and 9.
A man was arrested for illegal possession of personal information, illegal trafficking in personal information, and identity theft, following a complaint by a resident that a check had been altered and cashed.
Police also issued the following citations:
Failure to obey traffic control signals: 5 citations
Operating an unregistered motor vehicle: 2
Disorderly conduct: 1
Simple trespass: 1
Operating a motor vehicle without a license: 1
Operating a motor vehicle under suspension: 1
Operating a motor vehicle without minimum insurance: 1
Improper use of markers: 1
One person was arrested for trespassing this week.
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Westport’s Department of Human Services’ annual Back-to-School and Afterschool Childcare Campaign for families in need is underway.
Director Elaine Daignault calls the effort “a reminder that many local families struggle to afford basic school supplies, new clothing, and in some cases reliable afterschool care for their children throughout the school year.
“In addition to giving kids the tools for success in school, we recognize the importance of safe and nurturing environments for children outside school hours. Children involved in after-school programs with their peers feel more connected to the community and perform better in school. Reliable childcare allows parents to focus on their jobs with peace of mind, knowing their children are well cared for and engaged in enriching activities.”
Tax-deductible contributions can be made in 3 ways:
Online: Click here, then click “Family to Family Programs – Seasonal Program.”
Check: Payable to “Town of Westport Human Services” (Family Programs – “BTS” or “Afterschool Program” in the memo line); mail to 110 Myrtle Avenue, Westport, CT 06880.
Walmart gift cards: Drop off or mail to Westport Human Services, Room 200 at Town Hall (see above address).
School supplies help children academically — and socially.
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Koda lives near the beach. He usually hangs out at Old Mill Grocery & Deli.
Yesterday he ventured out to the Westport Farmers’ Market.
Unfortunately, he saw this sign:
(Photo/Jim Hood)
OMG! I guess it’s back to the beach …
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Speaking of the Sound:
The Congregation for Humanistic Judaism’s next “Havdalah on the Beach” is tomorrow (Saturday, August 12, 6;30 p.m., Compo).
Bring your own dinner, and a chair or blanket. CHJ provides cold drinkds and dessert.
What can you expect? “A short Havdalah service, and a lovely relaxed evening with friends,” CHJ says.
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Mushrooms are a prime Westport Farmers’ Market attraction.
Sunil Hirani took several photos yesterday. This was one of the best — definitely “Westport … Naturally”-worthy.
(Photo/Sunil Hirani)
I’m sure he bought some of the very photogenic ‘shrooms too.
Westporters worry about trees that topple in high winds, bringing down utility lines and disrupting electrical, phone and cable service for many.
But those power lines themselves are dangerous.
Marion Pietrowski writes of a concern that plenty of residents share, but that seems impossible to address.
No authority wants to — or can — claim oversight over the rat’s nest of wires, cables and poles that grow increasingly heavy and more burdened.
She says: “I constantly hear growing concern about the cable companies adding new live wires and wrapping them to the old ones, as well as leaving huge excess lines rolled up for future use, weighing down the poles, as it is apparently cheaper to do that than remove the old ones.”
She sent a few photos to illustrate her point.
But, she adds, “they’re everywhere.”
Post Road West, near Norwalk line.
Compo Road South, at Bridge Street and Greens Farms Road.
Near Luciano Park.
Saugatuck Avenue.
Sherwood Island Connector, at Greens Farms Road.
And, Marion notes, there’s another issue.
It’s easier for utility companies to place a new pole next to a damaged, rotten or otherwise unusable pole, than to remove the old one.
That too seems to be accidents waiting to happen.
One view of Saugatuck Avenue …
… and another. (Photos/Marion Pietrowski)
We just passed the 3-year anniversary of Tropical Storm Isaias.
Like everyone else in town, “06880” loves the beach.
The other day Andrew Brennan — our summer intern — headed to Compo. He spent some time chatting with the lifeguards (during their breaks, of course), to learn more about their jobs.
What do they like? What don’t they like? What do they do, besides sit in a chair, survey the Sound and get tan?
Click below for the latest installment of “06880 On The Go.”
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