Town life in a Yankee summer
Summer is drifting away, with September nearly upon us. Part of my non-blogging could be attributed to the fact that I've been pretty busy just enjoying the summer. In Connecticut, enjoyment is best had in the towns. The biggest city here is Hartford, which isn't all that residential, and the state is just full of towns everywhere. They're where I spend a lot of my time. I live in a town, after all.
Yet life always takes me to Torrington. I can't really lay a finger on why I like this ersatz mill town so much; it's the combination of art deco buildings with weirdo artsy stuff while also being a city-type place in an otherwise country landscape.
But really, it's probably because half my CT friends are either from there or I met there. Ever since the say Rosemary and I first went out there to check out the new store Brazen Betties and made friends with Julia, we've been drawn back again and again. And this summer, we've been out there quite a bit.
Back in May, Julia put on a street fair for Brazen Betties' second anniversary. As usual, tons of things were happening on downtown Main Street. We got there just in time for the zombie crawl from ArtWell around the corner, in which the zombies kidnapped Torrington's mayor. He gave out prizes afterward. I was gonna lick the grime off my friend Keith's zombiefied face for a laugh, until he told me it was mostly mud.
Once the zombies shuffled off and the gore was wiped away, they rolled out the red carpet for a fashion show of CT-based designers. Really nice stuff, especially from Hartford Denim Company (I'll definitely be getting my own lifetime-warranty custom jeans) and South Africa native Sylvie Dahl. She and I talked after the show, and I recently had her make a top for Rosemary. We'll do some photos soon. And you can't beat any event that ends with music from Julia's boyfriend Chip and his band Main Street Suits.
Main Street Marketplace has been going on this summer, but I've been able to make only a few since I've been working nights. This year we've been able to take some friends with us. Sylvie came with us for some palling around, and another time we met up with Virginia and baby Charlie out there for eating tons of food and taking in the cool weather. The best part was that Rosemary found a vendor who sells a lot of plus-size, super-colorful summer dresses, and she picked up a few. We're on the vendor's mailing list now so we can keep up on the latest inventory.
We got to see our buddies Patricia and Joe at Rocket Fine Street Food, gorging ourselves on mac and cheese, burgers and Latin-style pork sandwiches. Our friend Kate was in front of Brazen Betties with her jewelry, and another time it was great to see steampunk painter Geoffrey Houghton, who suffered a stroke a few months ago and appears to be doing well in recovery. Got a few prints from him to add to the collection in the house. Also ran into Stacey and madeher stop embarrassing her son :) Unfortunately I'm gonna miss the final one of the summer since it was rained out last week and I'm heading to Philly this week.
We also spent a night in Torrington at Snapper Magee's for Julia's birthday. It was pretty fun! Chip, who bartends there, had the place decorated in a flamingo-luau sorta way, with streamers hanging everywhere. Like some lord of whimsy, he came out from the basement with 33 helium-filled balloons.
My other top town to hang out in is Collinsville, which is an old company town for Collins Axes, and now is a super-cute place filled with art and hippies, old cars and kayaking on the Farmington River. A few folks we know live there, most of them connected to Brazen Betties. Most times we're there, we eat at Husk or Crown and Hammer, walk along the river or in the woods, check out the antiques and do something weird.
A few weeks ago we were there for the town's Community Unity Day, where we took in some crafts, saw Julia and Chip, Kate, Jenny, another artist named Chip (I have a photo of his up in the apartment gallery), ran into our massage therapist Tracy. But I gues the top attraction for Rosemary was the community dog show, in which people ran their dogs through road cones and over jumps, and the pooches were placed on the stand for inspection (namely, kisses).
More photos on Flickr:
So yes, summer town life has been good. Though I guess we should hang out in West Hartford a little more! It's nice, but these other places just have more soul for us. But it's all good! Glad I can take a hike around the reservoirs every day to stay active.