Snow Shovel Collab Clears Upper State

Caroline Smith slid a shovel beneath some slush obscuring a State Street sidewalk — and cleared a pathway to keep some of the city’s small businesses open for snow day shoppers.

She was joined by a handful of other volunteers looking to lend some muscle to a slew of stores thrown off by the previous night’s snowstorm.

“A few of the small business owners are just dear to my heart,” Smith said of her idea to start the icy day off with a winter workout. ​“This is just one way to show care for individuals who are a big part of our neighborhood and community fabric.”

Smith, who first came to New Haven to study at Yale University, is known around the city for co-founding Collab, an equity-based business incubator, as well as her local organizing efforts around biking justice and neighborhood empowerment. 

At 8 a.m. Tuesday, Smith was joined outside Hanmi Oriental Food & Gift Shop and J & J Deli on Upper State Street by Joel Callaway, Josh Glaab and middle schoolers Lora Kenyon and Tovah Berkowitz. Over the course of the next two hours, the crew greeted storefront owners, skipped stretches of sidewalk that hired workers were already sweeping, assisted any paid shovelers who wanted some support to get the job done, and accepted complimentary coffees and cocoas from grateful business owners and employees. 

By 10 a.m., both sides of State Street had been cleared for pedestrians from Mechanic Street through Bishop. 

“It’s gonna be a busy day!” J & J Owner Emanuel Almonte declared, now that his deli was accessible to passerby. In addition to the volunteers scooping snow off his stoop, his daughter Stacy was helping out to ​“fill the fridges” on her day off from school.

Sixth and seventh graders Tovah Berkowitz, 12, and Lora Kenyon, 13, were also starting their day off by helping out the neighborhood businesses. Berkowitz said her mom, Anne Watkins, is an alumna of Collab. She knew Caroline Smith from her time working with Collab to develop a student loan fund.

“I like shoveling,” Berkowitz said of her motivation to scrape snow off the streets Tuesday. ​“We’re hoping to go sledding next,” Kenyon added, simultaneously sculpting a snowball that crashed back onto the sidewalk in powdery pieces after sliding down Berkowitz’s jacket. 

Callaway and Glaab similarly said they showed up Tuesday morning out of their friendship with Smith — as well as to get in a morning workout and make the rounds to visit their favorite community hubs.

On Tuesday, they were also able to meet new friends.

“Are these new plants?” Glaab, a science teacher at New Haven Academy, asked aloud as he wandered into Gather East Rock for a moment of warmth. 

Yes, the barista replied, after following his gaze to a shelf dripping green ivy.

“Good, I’m not crazy!” Glaab replied. ​“No, you can still be crazy,” Callaway, a local photographer, joked.

Smith inquired as to whether it would be useful for the team to clear out the sidewalk in front of the store. ​“I don’t know, I’m new here,” she said, just like the plants. ​“But I definitely don’t think we’d mind!”

“I thought you were new!” Smith said. ​“Nice to meet you. What’s your name?”

The barista shared that her name was Ro Diaz. ​“Like row, row, row your boat,” she introduced herself.

Diaz said she’d lived in New Haven for the past two years, since the pandemic, but it wasn’t until she found her fresh post at the coffee shop that she began to meet more New Haveners and recognize how tightly knit its neighborhoods are.

“What’s your philosophy on whipped cream versus no whipped cream?” Smith prodded, ordering a couple of hot chocolates for Berkowitz and Kenyon.

“Almond or oat milk, I don’t know. But if you’re going with whole milk, I assume you want whipped cream,” Diaz stated. Starting up the steamer, she said the drinks were on the house. ​“We’re all about community here, so it’s alright,” she said of Gather.

Just down the street, on Edwards, Smith ran into another new friend: Ralph Salatto, 56, a property manager for landlord Topliff Peak Enterprises. Four shovels in hand, he was working to shovel around fifteen different properties before the end of the day. ​“It’s a tremendous amount of work,” he said.

With the help of Smith and company, he said he’d be able to finish earlier and return to completing maintenance requests across East Rock. ​“Without their help, I’d be beat,” he said. ​“You need to know when to limit yourself.”

Smith exchanged cell phone numbers with Salatto before taking off for the day. ​“Next time there’s a snowstorm, text us!” she instructed.

Looking around towards layered-up New Haveners waddling down the no-longer so-slippery sidewalks, Smith reflected on the morning’s work in conjunction with the kind of community-based work and activism that she said drives New Haven forward in motion. 

“It’s a really urgent time in our city,” she said, one defined by crises across education, climate and housing. ​“There’s so much grassroots organizing that has been reaching for a more equitable horizon line,” she said, whether that’s high schoolers taking action in the New Haven climate movement or tenants forming unions and calling to cap the rent.

While she is gearing up to say goodbye to her role at Collab, which recently hired a new executive director, she said she has no plans to leave New Haven anytime soon. ​“It’s a city that has so much fight,” she stated, and a city that she wants to keep fighting for.

With State Street cleared, she took off to walk Berkowitz and Kenyon back to their parents house.

Callaway and Glaab, meanwhile, paused in their tracks to help a neighbor scrape snow from her car.

“What are you guys doing?” the driver asked. 

“Just terrorizing the neighborhood!” Callaway responded.

“Well,” the driver followed up, ​“I appreciate it.”

Clearing off snow from one’s own car, the men reflected, is always the worst part of a snowstorm. But, Glaab said, clearing off snow for others somehow ​“feels kind of nice.”

The science teacher concluded: ​“There’s something special about snow days.”