by | Jul 8, 2025 9:41 am | Comments (28)
New State St. apartments, as pictured in draft DLDA.
Thomas Breen photo
State St.: Currently parking, future housing?
The Elicker administration has proposed selling two adjacent State Street parking lots for $1.29 million to facilitate the development of nearly 450 new apartments.
Continue reading ‘City Proposes Land Sale For 450 Apartments’
by | Jul 3, 2025 11:06 am | Comments (1)
Sonia Ahmed photos
Chef Ming Zhang slicing noodles to create the house special stir fry dish.
Chef Zhang at work.
Chef Ming Zhang sliced fresh hand-pulled noodles before tossing them with bok choy, carrots, and onions in a wok. He then topped off the noodle dish with marinated beef, shrimp, and a tea egg — to make one of the more popular dishes at the recently opened Kung Fu Kitchen on Orange Street.
Continue reading ‘Today's Special: Chef Zhang's Stir Fry Noodles’
by | Jun 27, 2025 9:48 am | Comments (2)
Sonia Ahmed photo
Pride Center Operations Director Laura Boccadoro at 50 Orange St. Thursday.
Kyasia Hagins and her daughter combed through the New Haven Pride Center’s community closet, pulling out a rainbow corset, chunky heels, and other items made available through just one of many services offered by the LGBTQ+ advocacy org.
by | Jun 23, 2025 11:55 am | Comments (1)
Jisu Sheen Photo
On Sunday's queer-history walking tour.
Jisu Sheen
The two Denises (Duclos on the left, Webb on the right).
At the turn of the 21st century, going 20 years strong with her partner Denise Duclos, Denise Webb finally felt safe enough to come out. She was going back to school for nursing and had been working with preschool children until that point.
“It was a very scary time,” said New Haven Pride Center founder John D. Allen, leading his 10th annual Queer New Haven walking tour Sunday morning, speaking of an era before certain legal protections for queer people in Connecticut.
“You could be fired for being out. You could have your kids taken away from you.”
Webb and Duclos knew those worries well. I met them at Allen’s walking tour, where the couple filled me in on their story and their desire to learn more about the queer history of their city.
by | Jun 16, 2025 1:22 pm | Comments (0)
Alexandra Martinakova photo
Customer Yazmin: These plants are worth the trip from Thomaston.
Janay Prim makes the half-hour drive from Bridgeport to New Haven at least once per month, just to visit Bark & Vine Indoor Plants shop at 49 Orange St.
“This is my second time here this week,” Prim said on Friday afternoon, her basket full of plants to add to the “Jacklyn” plant she bought the day before. “I get a cute little dopamine hit every time I come here. It’s like my therapy. It’s so cute and homey. I’m obsessed with it.”
Continue reading ‘Familiar Faces, U.S. Sen. Stop By Queer-Owned Plant Shop’
by | Jun 9, 2025 10:56 am | Comments (6)
Robert Greenberg photos
Before/after comparison of 33 Crown St., which is now an 18-unit "mass timber" apartment building.
David Sepulveda photo
Jeff Spiritos (second from left) leads a May 20 tour of the furniture store-turned-apartment building.
A four-story brick building facade from 1877 — now sandwiched between two layers of modernist architectural elements — only hints at the forward-facing transformation that has taken place inside 33 Crown St.
Continue reading ‘ACME Furniture Reborn As Eco-Friendly Apartments’
by | Jun 2, 2025 11:21 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio photo
The Cadavers.
On Friday night Cafe Nine served up a double dose of legendary local bands, as Lost Generation and The Cadavers each offered a set that heated up an already steamy room full of fans and friends with a host of hard and fast songs that got the crowd moving, moshing, and mad for more.
Continue reading ‘Lost Generation, Cadavers Rock Double Bill’
by | May 27, 2025 9:53 am | Comments (0)
Hugh Betta spinning Madonna.
Dooley‑O vs. Hugh Betta
Firehouse 12
45 Crown St.
May 25
Records, heads, and hips turned Sunday afternoon as DJs Dooley‑O and Hugh Betta spun back-to-back sets at The Bar at Firehouse 12 on Crown Street, playing old-school (with a little bit of new-school) hip hop, R&B, and house tracks in the underground lounge.
The event was set up as a bit of a versus: Dooley‑O vs. Hugh Betta. But if you came thinking you’d witnessed a real showdown, you’d be wrong.
“Let the people think what they want to think,” Dooley‑O said as he prepared to replace one record with another on his turntable. “The ‘VS’ stands for Vegan Soul food.”
He was waiting on a plate of vegan fish and grits from Chef Skyller, who took over Firehouse 12’s kitchen for the afternoon.
by | May 19, 2025 2:21 pm | Comments (3)
Leigh Busby photo
Printmaker Tung Hoang.
Leigh Busby Photo
New Haven kicked off the festival season Friday evening with the Spring Night Market. The celebration, hosted by the Town Green Special Services District, began at 5, and for the next five hours with live music, vendors, and service providers activated 9th Square.
Over 100 vendors in all participated — a record, continuing a pattern of steady growth since the event’s 2018 inaugural, according to Town Green Executive Director Win Davis. Upwards of 6,000 people attended Friday night. (Click here to see a list of vendors.)
by | Apr 22, 2025 5:06 pm | Comments (14)
Design of the new lab-and-office building that might now not be built.
The site of New Haven’s next planned biosciences office and lab tower will remain an empty lot for now — as Yale pulls back its biotech investments in light of possible federal funding cuts.
by | Mar 31, 2025 3:13 pm | Comments (9)
Laura Glesby Photo
Mallory Sanchez and Bethany Cinque help Selks fill out name-change paperwork.
Selks was tired of trying to convince doctors and employers to stop calling them by a name they want to leave behind.
So they came to the New Haven Pride Center to make their chosen name official.
Continue reading ‘Trans ID-Seekers Navigate Legal, Safety Shifts’
by | Mar 6, 2025 12:05 pm | Comments (2)
Laura Glesby File Photo
Juancarlos Soto leading a tour of the Pride Center's new home in 2024.
Juancarlos Soto is stepping down from his role as executive director of the New Haven Pride Center, after two and a half years at the community center’s helm.
by | Feb 24, 2025 12:55 pm | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
Allie Burnet.
Midway through her set with her band, the Proven Winners, Allie Burnet asked to do one song by herself. In a break from her original material, she launched into a cover of Sinéad O’Connor’s “Black Boys on Mopeds,” a 1990 song about police brutality that has aged all too well.
To give the song a final twist, Burnet changed one line. In 1990, O’Connor sang, “These are dangerous days / to say what you feel is to dig your own grave.” Burnet altered the second half of that line: “To be who you are is to stand in your grave.”
by | Feb 10, 2025 9:40 am | Comments (0)
Leigh Busby Photo
Vance Gilbert performing at Jazzy's.
Vance Gilbert
Jazzy’s Cabaret
4 Orange St.
New Haven
Feb. 8, 2025
Vance Gilbert was talking about John Prine before a full house at Jazzy’s Cabaret Saturday night when he saw flashing lights outside on Orange Street.
by | Jan 30, 2025 10:28 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
Chris Brunetti of Trench CT.
Rage found an outlet in voices and beats as three Connecticut bands — Remedies, Trench CT, and Psycho Brat — took to the stage at Cafe Nine on Wednesday night. With newspaper headlines full of political tension, the bands’ sets of hardcore and punk made a place for release.
by | Jan 24, 2025 3:19 pm | Comments (28)
Newman Architects rendering
The latest design for 450-ish apartments planned for State St.
Zachary Groz photo
Newman Architects' Paul Santos: Looking for mix of traditional and modern.
(Updated) A development team’s plan to build nearly 450 apartments atop a publicly owned parking lot on State Street inched forward — with a second community meeting, a refined design and an estimated price tag of $125 million.
Continue reading ‘State St. Parking-To-Housing Plan Advances’
by | Dec 17, 2024 9:36 am | Comments (0)
Matt Wilson.
Drummer Matt Wilson had much to say at Firehouse 12 on Friday night, but there was one word he used the most. He used it when bassist Paul Sikivie unfurled a series of ideas on his instrument, again when Sikivie and reeds player Jeff Lederer played as if they were talking, again when all three of them executed an elegant turn of phrase. Again and again, that word was “beautiful.”
by | Dec 16, 2024 2:17 pm | Comments (29)
Thomas Breen photos
Mayor Elicker and Spinnaker VP Frank Caico (center) ...
... celebrate new apartments at the "Anthem at Square 10" ...
... as property manager Alves (right) shows off common area "plant wall."
Brian Alves reached back in time to his teenage years attending concerts by Aerosmith and Huey Lewis and the News at the Coliseum — as he gave reporters a tour of the shiny new mixed-use building that has risen from the ex-venue’s ashes, complete with 200 apartments, ground-floor retail space, a pool, a gym, and a common room buttressed by a “real life plant wall.”
Continue reading ‘At Long Last, Ex-Coliseum Apartments Open’
by | Dec 6, 2024 12:15 pm | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photos
Tommy V and David Ramos.
There are people who talk about helping and change and making the world a better place one day, and then there’s Joey Batts and the CT hip hop community, who for the past 11 years have gathered for a series of shows at multiple venues throughout Connecticut and Massachusetts to actually do it. Hip Hop for the Homeless began its annual December run raising funds and collecting donations for local groups on Thursday night.
First stop: New Haven’s Cafe Nine, where host for the evening Sketch tha Cataclysm brought forth a healthy and harmonious collection of CT-based hip hop artists to entertain for a worthy cause: Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen.
Continue reading ‘Hip Hop For The Homeless Launches Year 11’
by | Nov 21, 2024 8:35 am | Comments (4)
Laura Glesby photos
No empty seats at the table, at Trans Day of Remembrance.
Simon: "I'm not inherently political."
There were no empty chairs around the New Haven Pride Center’s communal dinner table, though there were missing people.
Continue reading ‘Trans Lives Remembered; "I Just Want To Live"’
by | Nov 8, 2024 4:31 pm | Comments (2)
Laura Glesby Photo
Sterling Valentine dances out his stress.
Xiomarie LaBeija reminds the crowd: In case nobody told you today, you're special.
Legal rights may be fragile, but community isn’t.
That message resounded through a post-election gathering at the New Haven Pride Center on Thursday evening, where attendees reeling from Donald Trump’s presidential victory found a salve in art, dance, drag, mindfulness, and mutual support.
by | Nov 5, 2024 7:55 am | Comments (0)
Allen Lowe.
On Friday night, the latest show in Firehouse 12’s fall concert series featured a journey through the American music of the 20th century before the rise of hip hop, as imaginatively seen through the eyes of one of jazz’s most central figures, Louis Armstrong. In walking decades in the icon’s shoes, it was also a trip through the latest compositional ideas of musician and writer Allen Lowe.
Continue reading ‘Allen Lowe Rolls Six Decades Into Six Songs’
by | Oct 18, 2024 1:37 pm | Comments (4)
Karen Ponzio photo
Olmo-Rivera, Zumwalt-Hathaway, and Werlin.
What happens when a Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen volunteer and New Haven arts and culture scene superfan decides to combine the two things near and dear to his heart? The New Haven Cares Festival of Arts and Music is born.
The brain child of Andrew Zumwalt-Hathaway, this newly created fundraising event will transform some of the city’s hottest night spots into places where donations can be collected for the annual DESK Thanksgiving For All program, offering both good will and a good time.
by | Oct 10, 2024 3:17 pm | Comments (8)
Thomas Breen photo
Looking through the Chapel Street window glass at an empty Elm City Market.
(Updated) Elm City Market has officially closed its 360 State St. location — in advance of the grocery store’s planned move to a smaller space a few blocks away at the “Square 10” development at the former Coliseum site.
by | Sep 30, 2024 8:37 am | Comments (0)
Kelly Jensen Photo
Taylor Ho Bynum.
Cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum smiled from the stage at Firehouse 12 Friday night, explaining how good it was to be back there. “I cannot imagine my life without it,” he said, from his collaborations with Anthony Braxton to his numerous performances there with other groups. On Friday, however, he was there with UK-based pianist Alexander Hawkins, as part of the Crown Street bar- recording studio-performance space’s fall jazz series, running now into December.