Because Hartford eliminated parking minimum requirements a few years ago, we got a shout out on The War On Cars podcast.
Night Fall’s vulture campaign was the most creative and fun fundraiser I’ve seen.
The new Capital Spirits storefront on Pratt Street is a massive improvement over the tiny, cramped space they previously filled across the street. A snug store is charming when it has books — not when it contains racks of smashables.
Bloom Bake Shop opening on Pratt Street. Hartford had many excellent bakeries already, but they were all in the neighborhoods and sometimes you want what you can reach by one bus ride only. The bakery also has decent coffee, and more than fills the hole left when Blue State Coffee shut down at the end of 2022.
Hartbeat Music Festival at Riverfront Plaza. Free. Variety of music at different stages. A “just hang out” atmosphere.
Free short cruises on the Connecticut River during said Hartbeat Music Festival.
We are festive and creative.
Exhibit A: The Christmas ladder outside of Donde Julio on Park Street.
The emergence of Connecticut Urbanists, a group that has been adding benches at bus stops. On a more somber note, they are also arranging vigils following pedestrian deaths, and setting up Ghost Shoes memorials at sites where drivers killed people on foot.
Hartford’s Black Heroes Trail. A new in 2023 virtual and physical installation of 19 signs on Main Street beginning just south of Arch Street and ending just north of Saint Monica’s Avenue.
Having just the one giant mural in downtown would have been enough, but several more good ones, with height, have since been added. This includes “The Oneness of Being in Still Waters” painted by Tao LaBossiere (photo above) and one on Broad Street that is the absolute best because of the conversation that I imagine having taken place. [Artist: “So, what did you have in mind for this mural?” Building Owner: “Whatever. I trust your judgment.” Artist: *looks at sketch of King Kong wearing bling, hanging off the Connecticut State Capitol* “Right on.”]
Girl Pictures. Best use of Avery Court that I’ve seen.
We show up to preserve our historic buildings when absentee landlords try to tear them down.
It’s not perfect, but I can appreciate that the medical industrial complex in South Green was more thoughtful than most with its recent construction along Washington Street. Instead of stranding pedestrians mid-block, they installed clear signs for a detour at marked crosswalks. You still have to watch out since one of these crossings has no exclusive pedestrian phase, and the one that does is by a driveway where people exiting the hospital complex turn right on red without looking to see if someone is using the crosswalk. . . but it is a start.
Elizabeth Park’s Halloween display. It’s fun, doesn’t take over the entire park, doesn’t use stupid amounts of electricity, doesn’t require a car to view, and doesn’t cost visitors money.
Better hours at the Hartford Public Library branches, at least temporarily, while the downtown library is broken.
You want to sit and sip hot chocolate in Mozzicato’s cafe? That’s gonna be cash only. Doesn’t matter how you can use cards or your phone to pay everywhere else. Cash. There are reasons. Roll with it or GTFO.
Although New Britain Avenue should have been dealt with years ago, credit to the City of Hartford for doing some quick-build work in the area following the preventable death of a pedestrian by Trinity College. The flex posts make that intersection more appropriate for an urban area, and this shows that government can be responsive to the people when there is political will to do so.
Gather 55. Whether you can pay for it or not, you can have an excellent three-course dinner
Inside the Wadsworth Atheneum, Berkins on Main is a nice stop for hot beverages and pastries. Perhaps someday the museum will figure out how allow patrons to carry wrapped food through one short hallway and a gallery to exit the building — they have plenty of security already who can keep an eye on those with takeout. Most of us aren’t planning to waste soup by hurling it at the wall.
The e-scooter rentals have continued and the world has not ended and models with seats have been added to the fleet. Pedestrians share the sidewalk with both cyclists and scooter riders, and it’s not total madness. Of course, we would not need to be crunched up in the same space if Connecticut could stop being car-centric and build actual, protected bike lanes. Regardless. Love for the electric scooter rentals.
You don’t have to look far to find helpers, like the guy who blocked traffic on Asylum Avenue so that a hawk with an injured wing could cross without getting hit by a car.
Or how someone identified a need that might look like an indulgence to others, and then found a way to fill it. The Free HART Closet on New Britain Avenue provides art and craft supplies for free, giving people tools for creative expression regardless of their income. They also host events, like the upcoming seed swap.
I don’t hate everything about West Hartford, and to mention Hartford Stage, I have to simultaneously shout out Playhouse On Park. This month, both venues have housed multilingual plays using subtitles, and we need so much more of this. Indecent at Playhouse on Park is in Yiddish and English, with a few other languages mixed in. Espejos: Clean at Hartford Stage was in Spanish and English, and there, the subtitles were in both languages.
Image shows Indecent performance. Photo by Meredith Longo
The new signs in Elizabeth Park that emphasize that visitors are in a Hartford park while sharing information about what they are looking at.
We can have plants! Bloom Bake Shop and Gentle Bull Shop are both selling houseplants, so we don’t need to feel lured by big box stores in surrounding towns.
And in between, there is Hartford Prints! selling planters. Would you look at that — Hartford acting like a real city!
The west sidewalk of the Sigourney Street bridge finally reopened after a long closure for changes, and it is remarkable. I recently saw a family (two families? I didn’t interrogate them) walking with five children and two adults, and they were all able to walk side-by-side. This width isn’t possible for all sidewalks, but we should look at this and demand at least half this width on most streets.
Hartford does infill development. And before we talk about how we’d like it to be better, we absolutely have to acknowledge that there are towns in Connecticut that fight new housing, that have utterly ridiculous zoning requirements that ensure only a particular demographic can ever live there. Fuck those towns. In recent years, Hartford has removed a concrete eyesore of a church (which replaced a wooden church that had been moved across town to this site) and replaced it with housing at Park and Park Terrace, converted the two long vacant lots (which had been occupied by buildings years before, including one that housed a roller rink) at Park and Main into housing with retail on the ground floor, and turned one downtown parking crater into apartments near the stadium. Only one of those three has rent under $1000/month, so there’s progress to be made in that respect, but good for not dragging things on indefinitely while waiting for the perfect solution.
The North Meadows Bird Sanctuary coyote deserves another shout out. Perhaps it’s not the same one that I saw there a few years back, but regardless, there is a coyote, a quite chonky one, who likes to sit in the sun up on what had been a landfill. And while shouting out coyotes, there’s one that likes to sit in the sun on a certain lawn in the West End, not terribly concerned about people nearby.
Hartford (along with a few other towns) applied for SS4A funding in 2022.
The BID Ambassadors are wicked friendly. It’s literally their job to be, but in theory, anyone in customer service is supposed to be and often comes up short. I’ll be standing in the middle of Pratt Street and one of the Ambassadors will appear, basically to see if I’m a lost visitor needing something, but they’re pleasant and there’s no “you don’t belong here” vibe like what I’ve gotten from various security elsewhere. Move money from the police department to the BID Ambassadors and have this program operate citywide!
The fact that I can stand in the middle of Pratt Street and play on my phone deserves a shout out every single year. After so much “we can’t” from certain decisionmakers, Pratt Street was opened for only pedestrian use on occasional days and times, and then, it happened. “We can’t” became “watch this!” and the street is always only for pedestrian use.
Likewise, every day we decide what world we want to make. Another round of applause for the ongoing choice that the pavement around the rose garden in Hartford’s Elizabeth Park be used by people strolling and rolling, and not for the driving, idling, and parking of cars.
In November and December, local artisans set up booths on Pratt Street, in Union Station, at Parkville Market, and at the Hartford Flavor Company. This is a solid replacement for Open Studio Hartford, which was held on only one weekend (in recent years), which meant human traffic jams in a few buildings — unpleasant even before the pandemic. There isn’t the overwhelm of trying to see everything in one or two afternoons, and with the outdoor booths, this is more inclusive for those who do not want to be indoors among mostly unmasked people.
Any time an independently-owned business opens in a space that was most recently a chain/franchise, that’s a victory. There’s More Than Just Lobster filling what had been a grinder franchise on Main Street across from City Hall, and recently, Aroma Cafe is filling what had been a doughnut franchise. Congrats to those helping to make Hartford something other than a cookie cutter city.
Those who continue to make/buy and distribute protective gear to anyone in need, without requiring them to go indoors or fill out forms first. One organization still doing things this way is the First Presbyterian Church at the corner of Capitol Avenue and Clinton Street where masks and warm outwear has been made available to anyone passing by.
West Side Square. A long-vacant lot has shifted into use as a food truck park that is easily accessible to those not arriving in a private vehicle. And yes, it will be back for at least another season.
The Fired Up: Glass Today exhibit at the Wadsworth Atheneum was a special treat. Sometimes the museum gravitates toward exhibits that, to me, feel stodgy. This is the direction I’d like to see them going in — from the wall text worth reading to the innovative pieces that don’t feel like something you’ve seen a hundred times already.
Organizations small and large, and businesses, seem to be catching on that they need bike parking. Maybe in another million years, they’ll all list the presence of bike parking on their websites, alongside their current step-by-step car storage instructions.
The Hartford-specific Buy Nothing group is yet another example of how, actually, not everyone is wary of strangers, selfish, and unwilling to help another person out.
The street changes are not happening fast enough, but we are blowing surrounding towns out of the water, in part because there’s a willingness to use speed humps, flex posts, and other barrier methods in Hartford. In the last year flex posts were added to Prospect and Sheldon, New Britain Avenue, Capitol/Flower/Lawrence, and I’m sure other places I am not yet aware of. Large barriers were plunked down on Grand Street near the school. What I like is when these changes just happen and government employees don’t do this with lots of fanfare and fuss. Not every move needs to be a photo op, and it seems like Hartford’s City government is getting that again, following years of mayors posing with golden shovels and massive scissors at every opportunity.
Traveling by bus opens up an entirely different realm that a person does not understand without participation. Do people read actual books on the bus? Yes. Are interactions sometimes melodramatic? Yes. Do passengers sometimes wish everyone on the bus a “blessed day” upon exiting? Also, yes. This might not be an exclusively Hartford thing, but, you don’t begin to understand this place if you never ride.
50 Ways To Love Hartford
A Valentine. . .
Exhibit A: The Christmas ladder outside of Donde Julio on Park Street.
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