Very kind of you and your friend to mention us and we do love FTC and do everything we can to support it including curating the Emerging Artists Series there. Next time you're in town we'd be happy to show you around FTC.
Cheers,
Chris and Tina
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Welcome back to the Nutmeg State Bob! It is beautiful here, maybe the most under-rated part of the country, especially when you hop on a bicycle along the Sound east of Westport past the mansion, then head north into dairy and horse farm country where you feel like you could be in Iowa.
Shout out to my man Bill Taibe, owner of the Whelk as well as two other Westport eateries: KawaNi and Jessup Hall. Always unique and amazing.
I am,
Sincerely yours,
David Levy
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Love your CT reminiscences! Best to your mom and glad you got your cookies :)
I went to Kimmel on Monday, his lead writer went to my high school 15 years before me .. Hamden Hall .. (Wah wah, I know ... private school) they try to keep you coming back for the donations.
This proves I'm only 2 degrees of Jimmy Kimmel from you.
Enjoy the rest!
Kara
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My Mom lives in Milford on the sound and my 104 yo Grandmother is in Bridgeport. I was born in Stamford and spent my childhood in New Milford. My parents ended up selling our childhood home and buying one on Candlewood Lake in Danbury. That lake, fairly unknown, is gorgeous with some amazing history, but like anything else you don't fully appreciate it until you are gone. Always love reading your CT stories. Best to your Mom.
Jamie Minotti
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OMG! Your passing reference to the bar exam took my breath away. After 3 years of law school & 8 weeks of a bar review course, less than an hour into my bar exam I freaked &, like U, went to the bathroom to pull myself together... not even sure what I did, but to this day it is one of those scary moments I recall only reluctantly when reminded (like ur article) that I could have caved, could have given up, but didn't - I looked in the mirror &, face to face with the specter of failure, found the fortitude to go back in & pass!
Greetings from the ADE conference in Amsterdam !
Wallace Collins
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Your emails are like being in a club. We are demographically similar (age, grew up in Queens and "the City," prep school in Milford, and got my start with the WMCA Good Guys)… and you make me feel included, just like Howard does.
Next time, Tal Bagels, 1st and 54th… perfect bagels, and the guy has his own recipe at the smoke house in Brooklyn for the lox. That's something I know, as my grandfather and great-uncle sold lox on a pushcart, which became Acme, the lox served in all the delis in LA.
Paul Brownstein
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I live in Westport and it surely is very different than when you grew up, especially Main Street. Most of the mom and pops have given way to chain clothing stores and overpriced whatever. But I'm glad you found the Whelk. I took Lee Abrams and Dave Logan there and now it's the only place Lee will eat when he's in the area. But the best thing to happen to Westport in recent years is the complete reconstruction of the Levitt Pavillion into a wonderful, modern riverfront outdoor venue. Fogarty concert was the biggest event of the summer in our little town.
Dick Wingate
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Subject: Borchetta's Deli in Westport
Long gone now, this place was on the north side of the Post Rd. in the Greens Farms area. The owner's son Mike Borchetta had a band in Staples called the Schemers (which included Barry Tashian who later took over as leader). Mike eventually worked as Capitol promo man out of Nashville, where he raised his son Scott.
lanningpaul
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Great one Bob but I gotta keep you honest on LA oyster availability: L+E Oyster Bar (SL) and Blue Plate Oysterette (2 locations, SM & Bev/FF) both offer a seasonal bicoastal selection. Even SOCA in Sherman Oaks does a decent job. Highly recommend checking out all three.
Cheers,
Kevin Wyatt
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Levain! The best. Have you read the New Yorker article about the indie-folk group Darlingside and Levain cookies?
Check it out here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/09/harmonious
Full disclosure: I'm part of the group.
Thanks for writing. Your stuff is much-needed.
Love,
Auyon Mukharji
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Thanks for writing such a great piece that really brought me back. As a current LA resident who grew up in Westport it was nice to see some of my old stomping grounds mentioned (Gold's Deli) and a shoutout to Paul Newman who lived right around the corner from my elementary school. Unfortunately I haven't made it back to Westport in a long time as my parents moved to Woody Creek, CO (right behind the Tavern as I know you are a frequenter of Aspen Live) but I always feel excited when I see it mentioned.
Matthew Fritz
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You are so right. This was always my favorite time of year in Old Greenwich.
Jim Urie
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Your nods to CT and VT always resonate with me. We both grew up in Fairfield County and went to college in VT. I moved to Westport in 1984, 1 door down from Nile Rodgers. In fact my dad still lives in the same house today, as does Nile. Nile and the other celebrities for sure influenced my choice to be in the music business, although I would have gone into it without them and none of them turned into connections that helped me gain entry. I did it the old-fashioned way. DJ'ed on Staples' radio station, DJ'ed all four years on WRUV at UVM and in my senior year (1998) started an EDM party promotion company. Struggled DJing in NYC and got my foot in the door at Elektra as an asst in marketing. I clawed hard and rose up over time. Went and got my MBA in the midst of It all, mainly for the achievement and perhaps as a false "backup" credential.
Anyway, I bought a house in Westport last summer with my wife and twin 4 year olds. Was a proud moment since the barrier to entry in Westport was always high, but today even higher. I achieved it doing something I love. The area has both changed and stayed the same. I look forward to creating new memories for my kids and trying not say "well, when I grew up here…"
David Bell
Senior Vice President, Marketing
Epic Records
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Oh Man. Pepe's White Clam Pie. I don't care that Zuppardi's shucks the clams to order. Pepe's white clam would be my first choice for a last meal.
Lars Murray
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Sitting in the BRYAC in Black Rock reading. Love the emails.
Rob Phelps
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Bob...you still need to make it to Bethel Woods (the original 1969 Woodstock site). You'll love the Museum!
Eric Frances
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I listened today. You were great. Loved the part about vinyl. I learned something. I have the largest existing disco record collection probably in the world, 1976-1981. Two technic 1200's, and I play records once every year and a half. But I can't release - get rid of them. I don't know what do do? Someday, I'll move and the records can't follow me? It was interesting what you said about the records being made in analog and now, it's digital at the roots -- so converted to vinyl, it's still digital. It was interesting. And then you talk about Westport…..Man, Bob, you really speak to me.
Best,
Lizzz Kritzer
P.S. I grew up in The Compo Shopping Center. My folks owned Country Casuals next to the barber shop.
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Come to Peaches! Or at least send your mother! We will spoil her!
Www.peachesnorwalk.com
Greer Fredericks
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I am about 3 more hours upstate from Storm King. And, it is fantastic. And, so isolated. YOU would hate it, but it is like those days of fresh powder when you're the only one on the mountain. LOL.
Vicki Whicker
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Bob! I've been loving your take on the east coast. For the last two weeks I've been in Boston (my hometown---and where I get my favorite apple at this time of year: Macouns!!), the Cape (for the annual Wellfleet OysterFest) and presently in NYC (one of my favorite cities in the world). I head back to LA tonight and will miss the east coast until I head back for Christmas.
Have a wonderful rest of your weekend!
Paul Antonelli
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I love living in Virginia. We have good apples, too. I always say to my kids, who roll their eye, "Children...we live in a beautiful state."
-Stuart Gunter
Schuyler, VA
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About that Times article... We were just in Lisbon with a couple from the U.S. and one of them had her phone and wallet stolen. The other didn't have a phone because....."I'm not a phone guy." They were traveling on to France from there. Because of no backup phone, they would have been totally ****ed if we had not been there to help with cancelling all the cards, etc. They didn't even know how to change their passwords online. I didn't remind them that I had insisted they get a Google Voice number several years ago. Then they could have used the laptop and had a callback number from the States. It can come in extremely handy in international travel.
Travel abroad without a phone? Better to have two and extend your stay to relax.
Robert Bond
Warsaw
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I was just in NY and stayed in Old Greenwich with an old and dear friend. I grew up in Westchester so everything you said resonated with me. I live in Santa Monica now. I have stayed in Manhattan a zillion times since I moved away in the 60s but this is the first time in many many years where I have stayed in the country.
I had a little epiphany I thought you'd enjoy. Staying in CT, I slept like a baby and I realized that being in the northeast is so comforting. Where you grow up as a child will always be, viscerally, more comfortable than anywhere else. The smells, the air. In CA, there is always dust – it's the desert. In CT there is very little dust.
At any rate it was fun reading about you going home when I was there myself.
Best and thanks for all the posts,
--albhy galuten
____________________________________
Loved reading this one. We grew up with David Smith sculptures (and occasionally David Smith himself) around Bennington and North Bennington, and Ken Noland (his kids Lynn and Bill were friends) living and painting in his studio above the garage in South Shaftsbury; hell, we lived in a small house we rented from Robert Frost in 1954-1955 when i was sooooo tiny, and that house became a Robert Frost Museum and Bennington College just acquired it. Our world there, centered around the Bennington College campus, was also very writer-oriented with Shirley Jackson and Stanley Edgar Hyman, and Bernard Malamud (his daughter Janna was a pal) and Richard Ellman (James Joyce's pre-eminent biographer) and assorted poets, and new American bluegrass musicians like John Cohen and Tracy Seeger and their New Lost City Ramblers. And legendary architect Ben Thompson. So many amazing people. We were kids, we thought everyone grew up around amazing people.
Life goes on. And then it doesn't. Jayne Simon's husband Norm, who grew up Jewish in LA and went to school with Herb Alpert, and who became one of my closest friends and ski buddies up here in PC and at Deer Valley, he passed away yesterday in LA at 81. Flying into LA for the Monday 12:30 services at Mt Sinai in Burbank, and then back home that night. Because, well, life goes on.
I guess that's what we have to look forward to...
Toby Mamis
P.S. I know how you feel about going home. Even though both my parents moved to NJ years ago, I still sometimes go back to the Upper West Side to cruise by my old apartments, schools, hangouts, Zabars, etc. It's inseperable from who I am. And even living in the city, I went to shows out on the Island, to Action House, My Father's Place, Nassau Coliseum (plus many up your way at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester). Still have friends in the Five Towns.
You can take the boy out of the East Coast, but you can't take the East Coast out of the boy.
____________________________________
For chocolate chip and oatmeal-raisin cookies, nothing in these
United States could possibly top Something Natural in nantucket.
Tom Werman
____________________________________
This one talked to me. I still think of Gold's sesame bagel with butter AND cream cheese as the best bagel. Ever.
And Gord. The Hip phenomena has been a most unexpected trip for me, never knowing the Hip's music, then transplanted to Kingston, their true ground zero.
That final show, Aug 20, was at my building, Rogers K-Rock Centre. When you're that deep in planning an event like that what's happening in the outside world is totally irrelevant. We were all in a work bubble. And then I found out 11.7 million watched it live. Second highest live viewing audience in Canadian television. Yikes.
When you live in Kingston you know these guys. And knowing how deeply you yourself appreciate the emotional experience tied to music, I thought I'd share with you what I posted up here. Memorials in market square, in front of my building, the rock station changing the call letters, playing Hip 100% of the time for 5 days, the spontaneous vigil, the public viewing of Long Time Running -- the documentary of the last tour starting with Gord's disease. (Will be released soon in the U.S.) Just like the final concert, the city broadcast the documentary in market square. It's personal to everyone up here.
Lynn Carlotto
____________________________________
Thanks for the nice mention of Fairfield Theatre Company (FTC) and our good friends, Chris and Tina, who are a wonderful part of the scene here. Fairfield is a fantastic place to live and FTC is thrilled to be the hub of much of the activity in downtown Fairfield and around Fairfield County, with 200+ concerts a year. Please come see us next time you're in town as our guest. Thanks for keeping the conversation alive, too. Music, music, and more music!
John Reid
FAIRFIELD THEATRE COMPANY PRESENTS at:
StageOne | The Warehouse
JOHN REID | Producing Artistic Director and Executive Director
____________________________________
chris franz & tina weymoth joined my wedding band (joe mcginty and crew of loser's lounge) for a rough and tumble version of GENIUS OF LOVE at my wedding back in 2001
Felice Ecker
____________________________________
My wife and I got engaged at Frank Pepe's. I had them bring the ring out in a clam shell.
:)
Larry Wallach
____________________________________
Hey Bob, I hope you have a chance to get a falafel at Mamouns on McDougal st while you here. (there is also a Mamouns on St Marks between 1st and 2nd ave in the East Village. It's just as good)
Bruce Gordon
LIC, NY
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Born in Baltimore, kicked off radio career in Louisville, now live in Nashville, but a New Yorker through and through. LOVE Halal Guys, but if you get a chance, try Mamoun's Falafel. There are two: one (my favorite) on McDougal Street and another on St. Mark's Place. Authentic middle eastern, meaty shwarma, spicy falafel, succulent sheesh kabob and such. Tiny and gritty, open way late, almost always a line in front, but it's speedy and dirt cheap. And the food is EXCELLENT. Man, gotta get back to Enwhycee...
Natalie Davis
Nashville
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Welcome back to the chillier (yet somehow warmer...) coast. Saw you enjoyed the Halal Guys, and I thought I'd tip you off to an extraordinary (and still under the radar) food destination.
http://tanoreen.com/
Quietly regarded as the best Middle Eastern food in NYC.
Bay Ridge, Brooklyn
I only discovered it because it's in my neighborhood. I went in one night for dinner when I noticed a row of black town cars had lined up along the block; turned out they were waiting for a squad of visiting Manhattan foodies to finish dessert.
Enjoy yourself, Bob. You're changing the world, one post at a time.
Peace,
Josh Nelson
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When I took my then girlfriend to NY many years ago - she was from Pendleton, Oregon - she had the best line ever to describe NY, "First and fastest. Everything is first and fastest."
David Rubin
____________________________________
Local Italian neighborhood recommendations-
Chelsea - Le Zie: 19th and 7th.
Just outside Hell's Kitchen - Tavola:
37th and 9th.
Both great neighborhood hangs.
Rich Pagano
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Try Proof Bakery in Atwater Village sometime for the best chocolate chip cookie in LA
Ben Sussman
____________________________________
Great post. I grew up in CT too. It was up in the northwest corner of the state in a rural part of CT in a town called Washington where our high school was the smallest public high school in the state. My house was a converted dairy barn my parents had bought and for years it was our summer vacation place and then my Dad quit the corporate world and became a writer and PR person and my Mom started teaching English at the local high school. We were right next to a big lake called Lake Waramaug. During the summer I was a busboy at one of the restaurants at a resort hotel on the lake.
I hear you about your mother being 91 and most of her friends have died. When we are 35 or 45 or even 55 and dream about living forever we forget that we are not just our individual selves. We are the social network we have built around us. No man is an island. And when that social network starts to die, we start to die too. It's harder to make deep friends later in life. We miss those we used to know and it gets lonely. I think God created death so we wouldn't have to live forever. It would be too lonely.
About 40 years ago I moved to Chicago and I live downtown near Lake Michigan. I love it. Global warming has mellowed out the once fearsome Chicago winters. And there are lots of people and neighbors and things to do. I've launched a new business to develop an idea I've been working on for years. It's starting to make some money, but mostly I do it to meet new people and create a context and reason for us to get together and work on things. That's the best way to make new friends.
I want to keep making friends as long as I can. Because "he who isn't busy being born is busy dying."
Michael Hugos
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Dear God, Bob,
I'm about to drive to LAX to board a plane to see my 85-year-old mother in Glastonbury, just outside of Hartford. She still loves going to the theater, uses a walker and lives alone in a 1-BR condo. Fortunately, G'bury has a fantastic Senior Center and bus service for Seniors that she uses often. It's October and the time I love most back there. (It's also a heck of a lot easier to fly cross-country this time of year before the weather gets too nasty, the holidays cause travel fees to go through the roof and, well, it's fall foliage time!)
My Dad's family is from Greenwich. Not the rich Greenwich of today. My Sicilian grandmother and Scottish grandfather met while working on a large Greenwich estate way back in the 30's, where she was a nanny and he was a building painter. But they managed and bought a house not far from the Greenwich train station and Greenwich Ave, probably for a song. As a result, after brief stints in Newington and Lancaster, PA., my Dad moved us back to Cos Cob for a spell. It was the mid-70's, I was there from 4th grade thru 8th grade and it was my absolute favorite place to live, surrounded by cousins and family and big Italian dinners that my grandmother & her sister cooked-up for us all. Until, my folks divorced and we moved on up to Glastonbury.
I often refer to it as moving from AM-to-FM. For me, Greenwich was ABBA, Billy Joel and Wings and listening to all the great NYC AM: radio stations like 66 WNBC, 77 WABC and even, 1130 WNEW. Little did I know, there would be no AM up North. Glastonbury would become Zeppelin, Floyd, Sabbath & Skynyrd. On FM stations like WHCN or WCCC. Funny how different musical tastes could be a scant 2 hours away as one enters the 9th grade.
I'm less familiar with your home grounds of Westport (apart from Newman living there...oh, and Stew Leonard's, if that's still even a 'thing'). But yes oh yes, I feel all the emotional tugging you described. Especially knowing, there's no place for me there anymore, apart from visiting family and whatever friends have stayed in the area. I've been in California for nearly 25 years. Moved out from Connecticut when I was 27 (after the band broke-up, man.) Billy Joel put it perfectly with the little known, 'The Great Suburban Showdown', from his '74, 'Streetlife Serenade' album: 'I'm only coming home to say goodbye...'
In the meantime, I'll show my wife around some of the old haunts and become frustrated at how McMansiony Glastonbury has become, see how much care New Haven still needs (outside of Yale) when we swoop in for some Sally's Apizza, or look in less-than-fresh-faced wonder at my old Cos Cob.
Thank you so, so much for today's post. I'm looking forward to the Connecticut 'revelation'.
Best to you & yours,
Mark Atherlay
Hollywood, CA.
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