Downtown Westport is compact: Main Street and the Post Road, plus the Saugatuck River.
But there’s a lot to see. And there’s no one who captures it better than Lynn Untermeyer Miller.
The Westport native and 1971 Staples High School graduate sees it all: the natural beauty. The shops and shoppers. And the hidden sights the rest of us walk right past.
Here’s what Lynn sees:
Imperial Avenue footbridge
Riverwalk, east side of the Levitt Pavilion
Riverwalk, behind the Levitt
West bank of the Saugatuck River
Riverwalk lights, near the Library
Westport Library
Arezzo restaurant and National Hall
Pedestrian walkway and Gorham Island, off Parker Harding Plaza
Village Square
View from Anthropologie
Alley between Post Road and Church Lane
WEST boutique
Taylor Place
Cold Fusion
Brandy Melville
A relic from the Y’s downtown days. (All photos/Lynn Untermeyer Miller)
Moments before the 2nd annual Holiday Stroll yesterday, the weather cleared.
Hundreds of Westporters of all ages — including tons of kids — headed downtown.
A small part of the large crowd. (Photo/Lynn Untermeyer Miller)
They met Santa, dropped off letters to him, and gave gifts for the PAL toy drive. They had their faces painted, and got animal balloons.
11-year-old Owen Hill (blue jacket) provided animal balloons for dozens of even younger kids. (Photo/Dan Woog)
They were serenated by Staples High School’s Orphenians, and Greens Farms Academy’s Harbor Blues. They wandered all around downtown too, joining in carols led by professional singer Nick Calabrese (plus 1st Selectwoman Jen Tooker).
Nick Calabrese leads carolers. No, the teenagers are not checking their notifications. They’re reading the lyrics to holiday songs. (Photo/Dan Woog)
They nibbled free food and drank hot chocolate at a dozen restaurants, and snagged giveaways and discounts at a few dozen shops.
Garlic knots at Joe’s Pizza! (Photo/Dan Woog)
It was a magical evening. Thanks to the Westport Downtown Association, which partnered with “06880” for the event.
And to the weather gods, who delivered big time when we needed it most.
Staples Orphenians, directed by Luke Rosenberg, offered wonderful music … (Photo/Lynn Untermeyer Miller)
… and the crowd grew larger with every song. (Photo/Dan Woog)
Both 1st Selectwoman Jen Tooker and a young constituent were decked out in blinking lights. (Photo/Dan Woog)
Aarti Khosla offered hot chocolate at her Le Rouge chocolatier. (Photo/Lynn Untermeyer Miller)
Nomade handed out candied almonds in bamboo cones — and chocolate chip cookies. (Photo/Dan Woog)
The main tent was outside Cold Fusion. There were plenty of treats inside too. (Photo/Dan Woog)
More hot chocolate, at Manna Toast. (Photo/Dan Woog)
Savvy + Grace put out holiday treats. (Photo/Lynn Untermeyer Miller)
WEST owner Kitt Shapiro drew crowds with a $150 gift card raffle. (Photo/Dan Woog)
Some kids mailed letters to Santa in the Savvy + Grace mailbox … (Photo/Dan Woog)
… and some parents handed them directly to “Santa.” (Photo/Lynn Untermeyer Miller)
Santa greeted youngsters, who were excited … (Photo/Lynn Untermeyer Miller)
… and serious … (Photo/Dan Woog)
… and who photo-bombed him. (Photo/Dan Woog)
Santa was also popular with Greens Farms Academy’s Harbor Blues, after they sang. (Photo/Dan Woog)
Westport PAL collected gifts for kids in need. (Photo/Dan Woog)
Staples freshman Ava Carter and friend Nelly Kaminski painted dozens of young faces. (Photo/Jen Cirino)
The 2nd annual Holiday Stroll was sponsored by “06880” and the Westport Downtown Association. We’re already getting ready for next year’s! (Photo/Dan Woog)
(If you enjoyed last night’s Holiday Stroll, please support “06880.” Click here — and thank you!)
Joseph J. Clinton Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 399 hosts Westport’s Veterans ceremony in their Riverside Avenue parking lot.
The Westport Community Band plays patriotic music at 10:30 a.m., honoring all those who have served in the US military.
The 11 a.m. program includes posting the colors, remarks from State Senator Tony Hwang and 1st Selectman Jim Marpe, an address by Staples High School senior Pierre Briand, and a firing salute by the Westport Police Department.
A special tribute honors World War II and Korean War veterans for their service. The public is invited to the outdoor event.
VFW on Riverside Avenue: site of tomorrow’s Veterans Day ceremony.
A few spots remain for this Saturday’s free mattress and box spring recycling program (November 13 at Earthplace, 10 Woodside Lane, 8:30 to 11:30 a.m.). The project is sponsored by Sustainable Westport.
The project is run through the Mattress Recycling Council’s Connecticut Bye Bye Mattress program.
Staples Players’ “Grease” is a hot ticket. And Cold Fusion is adding to the heat.
Owners (and Players superfans) Kelly and Eric Emmert have created a special “Pints for Players” promotion.
They renamed 3 flavors, to honor the show. Through closing night (November 20), customers can purchase pints of Pink Lady (strawberry stracciatella), Burger Boys (blood orange sorbet) and Ode to Olivia Newton-John (peanut butter Xanadu).
Speaking of high school: MoCA Westport has put out a call for submissions from artists in grades 9-12. They’ll be part of an exhibition focusing on the theme of identity, to run concurrently with a show featuring works from the Westport Permanent Art Collections in January.
MoCA officials were impressed with the diversity and talent of last year’s submissions. This year, they hope to surpass those nearly 200 entries. Teachers from across Connecticut and New York played a huge role in bringing that exhibition to fruition. They’re engaged again this year.
The submission deadline is December 19. For details, click here.
A student work from last year’s “Hindsight is 2020” show.
Jillian Elder — the creative force behind the “Finding Westport” information and merchandise site — checks in with more swag.
Her “Westport Love & Life” collection of t-shirts, mugs, blankets, tote bags and more includes our beloved Minute Man, in various forms of the words “Love” and “Life.” Click here to see the wide variety of products.
And Jillian hopes to post a list of Etsy shops based in Westport, for holiday readers. If you’ve got — or know of — one, email jillian@findingfairfieldcounty.com.
Local business professionals are invited to a “Virtual Visitors Day” on Thursday, November 18 (7:30 to 9 a.m. Zoom). The event is sponsored by Westport’s Business Networking International chapter.
BNI meetings are open to only one business per category.
They’re on the lookout for new members. People working in hospitality — event planners, florists, caterers, bakers, DJs and bands, liquor stores, limousine services and gift novelty shop owners — are particularly welcome
Other open categories include home inspectors, veterinary services, dentists, dermatologists, commercial sign companies, martial artists, trade schools, physical therapists, orthopedists, delicatessen owners and tutors.
Email curtis@health-directions.com or billhall747@gmail.com to sign up for the Virtual Vistors Day.
The Westport Police Department and TEAM Westport are sponsoring a Thanksgiving food drive this Saturday (November 13, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.). All donations support Homes with Hope’s Gillespie Center and food pantry, and Westports Human Services Department.
Westport Police officers and volunteers will collect non-perishable food items and cash. Suggested items include canned meats, tuna, salmon, Spam, canned cranberries, boxed stuffing, canned yams, canned corn, canned gravy, pasta, and sauces, chili, hot and cold cereal, canned fruit, canned and dry soups, peanut butter, jelly, mac and cheese, rice, granola bars, pancake mix, syrup and mayonnaise.
Earlier this year, after another drive, Westport Police and Homes with Hope volunteers delivered food to the Gillespie Center, across from police headquarters.
Westport Fire Department chief Robert Yost has returned from a 2-week national assignment, supporting wildland firefighters in Minnesota.
He calls this “an incredible training opportunity in large-scale incident management. Connecticut is not immune to a wildfire or large-scale natural disaster. We need to be just as prepared as our western counterparts. As the fires continue to burn, please keep all the firefighters out on assignment nationwide in your thoughts and prayers.”
When Yost arrived, the Greenwood Fire was 6,000 acres and 0% percent. During his deployment it grew to 26,000 acres, directly threatening the town of Isabella.
Yost was the medical unit leader trainee responsible for the entire incident, along with 7 fire line medics, 2 medical ATVs and 2 incident ambulances.
Yesterday’s “Unsung Hero” story highlighted a Saugatuck Elementary School custodian, hard at work cleaning drains after Hurricane Ida.
Now we can put a name to his dedication. He’s Al Orozco, head custodian at SES. As several readers — and staff members — noted, he is a gem. And well deserving of his Unsung honor.
Butzi Moffitt — who as Butsy Beach owned the original ice cream parlor on Main Street in the 1950s — stopped in to Cold Fusion on Tuesday. The new gelato shop is just a few doors down from the first Ice Cream Parlor (where Brandy Melville is now).
Butzi — 93 years young — brought owners Eric and Kelly Emmert an original menu from 1954.
Bitzi Moffett shows Eric Emmert an original Ice Cream Parlor menu.
The menu.
Butzi — who also owned clothing stores on Main Street — was joined at Cold Fusion by her daughter Maggie Moffitt Rahe, a teacher at Coleytown Elementary School. Butzi also brought a photo of herself, outside the first shop.
From left: Amy Greene, and Bob and Butzi Beach, owners of the Ice Cream Parlor.
The Staples football team’s home opener is tomorrow (7 p.m.). It should be a great game — the opponent is former coach Marce Petroccio’s Trumbull High — and getting tickets has never been easier.
Click here to purchase online; then have your phone ready to show at the gate. You can also click on the QR code below:
You can make Friday a Staples sports doubleheader, too. At 4 p.m., the boys soccer team hosts Ridgefield, in their 2021 season opener. Admission is free!
Reese Watkins, for the Wreckers. (Photo/Brian Watkins)
The Westport Artists Collective’s pop-up shows pop up regularly. They’re eclectic, inspiring — and fun.
The next one runs from Wednesday, September 15 through Sunday, September 19 (2 to 6 p.m., Westport Country Playhouse). There’s an artists’ talk that final Sunday, at 3 p.m.
Like any pop-up, it will pop down quickly. Be sure to get there before it goes!
Westport-based Fairfield County Writers’ Studio’s fall classes will be held via Zoom — at least for now.
There are some intriguing ones. Topics include Writing for Children; LGBTQ+ Workshop; Writing Your Memoir; Creative Writing; Novel Writing, and Fantasy, Science Fiction & Horror.
Click here for details, and registration information.
The variety store at curve, where Riverside Avenue becomes Railroad Place — once known as Desi’s Corner — will soon become “Uncle Leo’s.” A small sign says simply “Steam Coffee Tea.”
There’s no indication when the renovation will be done.
It’s good news for train riders, who have been without a coffee shop on that side of the tracks since Commuter Coffee closed in 2018.
Let’s hope — for Uncle Leo’s sake — that there are soon actual rail commuters for his “Steam Coffee Tea.”
First, Cold Fusion hung the Remarkable Guy — a remnant of the long-ago book store across Main Street from the new gelato shop — on its wall.
Now it’s paying homage to another iconic ancestral neighbor.
The original Ice Cream Parlor was a few doors down — where Brandy Melville is now.
It moved twice, eventually ending up on the Post Road diagonally across from the Westport Country Playhouse. That’s where it was in 1966, when this ad appeared in a Playhouse playbill. Longtime Westporter (and, no doubt, longtime Ice Cream Parlor fan) Paula Schooler gave it to Cold Fusion.
In addition to the Ice Cream Parlor’s brunch, lunch and dinner offerings, and penny candies (“the largest assortment under the sun”), the ad touted Terpsichore. That was the restaurant’s discotheque — “Westport’s first” — with “Go-Go Girls in their Bird Cages.”
From ice cream to gelato — and go-go girls to #MeToo — we’ve come a long way, baby.
One of the few good things to come out of the pandemic is that the New York Times wedding announcements are a lot more interesting.
When fewer couples got married last year, the paper began writing actual stories out of how they meet, and how their relationships developed.
Here’s the lead in one “Vows” story in the Styles section yesterday:
On a summer evening in a previous century, Garrett Foster, then 27, summoned up his courage and entered a gay bar for the first time. At the Brook in Westport, Conn., which, until it closed, was the oldest continually operating gay bar in the country, he laid eyes on Brian Murray, then 31. Mr. Murray had once been a regular, but that was his first night there in a while. Their connection was immediate.
“I knew I was going to spend my life with this man,” Mr. Foster said. What he couldn’t have guessed, was that he would legally marry him someday.
That marriage was July 13, 2021 — 31 years to the day after they first met. Click here for all the details.
Brian Murray (left) and Garrett Foster. (Photo courtesy of New York Times)
Haslea is the name of Jeff Northrop’s new aquaculture company operating on Sherwood Mill Pond. After testing the concept a few years ago with Hummock Island Shellfish, he began developing a more streamlined approach to growing bivalves on the oyster grounds that have been in his family since the 1700s.
Haslea plans to use the Mill Pond not to maximize production, but as an R&D pond for selective breeding oysters for disease resistance. It’s part of a larger natural oyster restoration along the coast they’re working on.
The company — including chief technology officer Luke Gray of MIT — has provisional patents for a new fully robotic growing system that could produce oysters for 1/10th the cost. It’s for offshore sites, and will not be used in the Mill Pond.
Co-founder Jonathan Goldstein moved to Westport recently, to help Jeff. He was previously with Compass in New York.
Chief operating officer Roberto Aguaya Diaz moved from Texas, where he postponed his MBA to help build Haslea. His family has an aquaculture background, with shrimp farms.
And finally … I don’t know how, but I missed a big anniversary. It was 40 years ago yesterday that MTV began broadcasting. The first video was, as everyone knows …
Cold Fusion opened Thursday. From the moment the new gelato place served its first scoop, it was packed.
It’s on Main Street near Avery Place, in the former Papyrus space next to Chase Bank.
Or, to put it another way: opposite the old Remarkable Book Shop.
The Remarkable Book Shop.
Relative newcomers know it as the long-shuttered Talbots (soon to be, remarkably, Local to Market, selling fresh produce, food and artisan craft items, all produced around here).
Cold Fusion owners (and longtime Westporters) Eric and Kelly Emmert know their history. As they planned their store, they knew they wanted to honor their long-ago neighbor.
For 34 years, an Edward Gorey-inspired dancing figure hung on the side of the Remarkable Book Shop.
Now — after all these years — he’s back.
With a different point of view. He’s inside Cold Fusion — occupying the spot he gazed out upon, for all those years.
The Remarkable Guy was stored at the former Westport Historical Society. More recently, Pam Barkentin has taken care of him. (Photo/Lynn U. Miller)
The Remarkable Book Shop was owned by Sidney and Esther Kramer. (The store’s perfect name includes “Kramer,” spelled backward.) Their children, Mark and Wendy, have loaned the iconic work of art to the Emmerts.
Esther made her store a Westport landmark. Shelves were filled with books on every topic imaginable. Cozy, overstuffed chairs (and a house cat named Heathcliffe) invited browsers to sit, read, linger and talk to each other long before “store experiences” were a thing.
Esther knew every customer’s name, from Paul Newman and writers to young children. She and her team of loyal, learned employees remembered everyone’s interests and tastes, and happily recommended the next good read.
Warm, friendly and funky, the pink store was a community gathering place from 1960 until 1994.
That’s the kind of feeling the Emmerts hope to recreate at Cold Fusion. Bringing the Remarkable Guy back is a great way to start.
Cold Fusion opens today. That’s the second gelato shop downtown. La Fenice was the first, last month.
The Cold Fusion brand is well known to Westporters — and has a distinct local “flavor.”
Gelato and sorbet — made by hand, with all-natural, locally sourced ingredients — is sold at many cool places on the East Coast (including Mystic Market and Rizzuto’s). There’s also a retail store in Newport, Rhode Island.
Cold Fusion is owned by Westporters Eric and Kelly Emmert. They searched for a long time for a local shop. They found the perfect location in the old Papyrus store (next to Chase Bank).
There’s an outdoor patio too. History lovers note: The original Ice Cream Parlor was located a few doors away.
Owner Eric Emmert (right) and crew Nate Kolek and Imogen Barnes — both Staples High School graduates — are ready for customers. (Photo/John Videler for Videler Photography)
The Emmerts offer 32 artisan gelato choices, both traditional (hazelnut, pistachio, stracciatella) and new (amaretto almond crunch, Madagascar bourbon vanilla, milk chocolate brownie). There are no food colorings, powders or preservatives.
Sorbets are dairy-free, vegan and made with fresh whole fruits. Everything is kosher-certified.
Besides gelato and sorbet, Cold Fusion carries locally sourced chocolates, and espresso, cappuccino and coffee from local roasters. Hand-packed and packaged pints are available to go.
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The Cold Fusion brand is well known to Westporters — and has a distinct local “flavor.”
