Date nights
Amid all the wedding plans and such, Rosemary and I have had a recent trend of dates. Not really us going out someplace, getting something to eat, and going home. More like actual dates.
Tonight we saw "The Dictator" (funny as shit!) and walked around Blue Back Square. Great weather as the day turned to dusk, some namby-pamby teen musicians strumming away on the stage. Treated Rosemary to some lovelies at Charming Charlie and, as usual, I further padded my shelves with another item from Barnes & Noble. Went with "Excalibur" this time; possibly the best King Arthur movie ever made.
Even after three years of living in West Hartford, I don't believe I live here when I walk through the yuppified splendor of Blue Back Square. Ann Taylor, White House / Black Market, Bose store, a WASPy prep-school clothing store for toddlers, high-end real estate agent, Crate and Barrel, and so on. Walking past tween girls safe in their privilege. What a ride for a boy from West Philly! No wonder when Steve Lambert's "Make Capitalism Work For Me" art installation was placed in the middle of the square last week, in which people hit a button for "true" or "false," the "true" answers had a comfortable lead. Silly rabbit, it's a trick question: Capitalism works for itself, and sometimes we benefit from it.
Last Wednesday, we sat outside at Max Burger as night fell, watching thunderstorm clouds in the distance. A voluminous wall of clouds that sat in the waning light like a mountainscape. The lightning raged within them, so distant that we heard no thunder and saw no rain. Followed dinner with some ice cream from a local coffeeshop. Just a nice, spontaneous night out, smiling at each other all night.
A couple of weeks back, we went to Newington, a town over from us. I wanted to check out a comic book store over there, having remembered hearing about it in an advert for the West Hartford Library. We wandered our way to The Eye Opener, and it was a fun little shop to pick up a few things we didn't procure at our usual spot, Atomic City Comics in Philly. We'd never been in Newington before, so we walked around the town center -- smaller and sleepier than West Hartford, but still nice. We tried a little burger joint called GoldBurgers, and were treated to flavorful fresh-as-hell burgers and chunky hand-cut fries. Heavenly delicious. Topped it off with Carvel ice cream and called it a night.
But the best of our dates so far has to be April 28 in Torrington. We attended a shindig at Studio 59, a beautiful music space on a residential block housed in a converted Baptist chapel, transformed into 18th-century European drawing room, complete with comfortable wing-back and parlor chairs and tons of arcane music books and antiques with a vintage Steinway concert grand piano at the center.
Local musicians/singers Kate Callahan and Andre Balazs teamed up for a lovely night of original music. So lovely, in fact, that I didn't twinge too much when they closed the show with a cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." The song is so overdone I hate it, but they did it well. I'd seen Balazs before at another event in town, but it was awesome to see him move from a keyboard to this grand piano. He as if he didn't want to stop using that Steinway, teasing out the ends of each song and getting lost in its tones and visuals.
Great to hang with our friends Keith and Julia, and also to meet local public-radio personality John Dankosky of WNPR's "Where We Live." Funniest part of the night was talking to Dankosky with Balazs, then Balazs left to use the washroom only to storm out of there yelling at Danosky, "I know who you are!!" and explaining how he knew the voice once he was in the restroom and could only hear him, not see him. Hilarious!
But the best part was listening to all that music while Rosemary and I sat in a loveseat, snuggled up on each other, drinking wine and nibbling on treats of both sweet and savory varieties. A woman came over to us and said how cute we were, and how jealous she was seeing us hugged up. Yes, we live to inspire love, adorableness and jealousy! Feast your eyes upon us! But for real, nice to know we look that good, nine years on. We'll look even cuter married.
Tonight we saw "The Dictator" (funny as shit!) and walked around Blue Back Square. Great weather as the day turned to dusk, some namby-pamby teen musicians strumming away on the stage. Treated Rosemary to some lovelies at Charming Charlie and, as usual, I further padded my shelves with another item from Barnes & Noble. Went with "Excalibur" this time; possibly the best King Arthur movie ever made.
Even after three years of living in West Hartford, I don't believe I live here when I walk through the yuppified splendor of Blue Back Square. Ann Taylor, White House / Black Market, Bose store, a WASPy prep-school clothing store for toddlers, high-end real estate agent, Crate and Barrel, and so on. Walking past tween girls safe in their privilege. What a ride for a boy from West Philly! No wonder when Steve Lambert's "Make Capitalism Work For Me" art installation was placed in the middle of the square last week, in which people hit a button for "true" or "false," the "true" answers had a comfortable lead. Silly rabbit, it's a trick question: Capitalism works for itself, and sometimes we benefit from it.
Last Wednesday, we sat outside at Max Burger as night fell, watching thunderstorm clouds in the distance. A voluminous wall of clouds that sat in the waning light like a mountainscape. The lightning raged within them, so distant that we heard no thunder and saw no rain. Followed dinner with some ice cream from a local coffeeshop. Just a nice, spontaneous night out, smiling at each other all night.
A couple of weeks back, we went to Newington, a town over from us. I wanted to check out a comic book store over there, having remembered hearing about it in an advert for the West Hartford Library. We wandered our way to The Eye Opener, and it was a fun little shop to pick up a few things we didn't procure at our usual spot, Atomic City Comics in Philly. We'd never been in Newington before, so we walked around the town center -- smaller and sleepier than West Hartford, but still nice. We tried a little burger joint called GoldBurgers, and were treated to flavorful fresh-as-hell burgers and chunky hand-cut fries. Heavenly delicious. Topped it off with Carvel ice cream and called it a night.
But the best of our dates so far has to be April 28 in Torrington. We attended a shindig at Studio 59, a beautiful music space on a residential block housed in a converted Baptist chapel, transformed into 18th-century European drawing room, complete with comfortable wing-back and parlor chairs and tons of arcane music books and antiques with a vintage Steinway concert grand piano at the center.
Local musicians/singers Kate Callahan and Andre Balazs teamed up for a lovely night of original music. So lovely, in fact, that I didn't twinge too much when they closed the show with a cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." The song is so overdone I hate it, but they did it well. I'd seen Balazs before at another event in town, but it was awesome to see him move from a keyboard to this grand piano. He as if he didn't want to stop using that Steinway, teasing out the ends of each song and getting lost in its tones and visuals.
Great to hang with our friends Keith and Julia, and also to meet local public-radio personality John Dankosky of WNPR's "Where We Live." Funniest part of the night was talking to Dankosky with Balazs, then Balazs left to use the washroom only to storm out of there yelling at Danosky, "I know who you are!!" and explaining how he knew the voice once he was in the restroom and could only hear him, not see him. Hilarious!
But the best part was listening to all that music while Rosemary and I sat in a loveseat, snuggled up on each other, drinking wine and nibbling on treats of both sweet and savory varieties. A woman came over to us and said how cute we were, and how jealous she was seeing us hugged up. Yes, we live to inspire love, adorableness and jealousy! Feast your eyes upon us! But for real, nice to know we look that good, nine years on. We'll look even cuter married.