Spotted on I-84 west, just outside of Hartford

Courtesy the B-Side Blog

The Beat Bike Blog

Chill Will (above center) has a newish blog, The Beat Bike Blog, dedicated to biking around our fair city of Hartford. Check it out.

Space Blues

New blog on the local band and music scene in Hartford and New Haven, Space Blues.

Run it.

On edit: Just added another link to Birds, a local blog by a cool chick named Dianna who’s always supported us.

Champagne Supernovas

Totes Umbrellas, the fab-u-licious blog from Wesleyan’s Katey B, Kate, Joe John and Justin, has decided to go supersonic and rocket off to more fabulous discos in the sky.

They shall be missed.

Check out their site for forwarding info (and a nice shout out to Scary Bunnies), and visit our new fave music blog courtesy of Joe John, IT’S THE MONEYSHOT!!

Tiny Bubbles

For you. From us. At the end of a long day.

● Jacklin leaves the DeStefano campaign:

“Former Hartford Courant columnist Michele Jacklin and Democratic gubernatorial contender John DeStefano Jr. have parted ways - just four months after Jacklin was named a high-ranking campaign aide.Both sides declined to discuss details of the separation, offering only polite comments about each other.” …

● Shonshay from the Mirror Boiyz has a cool new hip hop blog, It’s the Money Shot!! –run it, bitches.

● If you build it, they will come.

VIP store undergoes renovations; set to open this fall“MANCHESTER - Renovations to a former furniture store on Oakland Street have begun as owners of a sexually oriented business make plans to move into the space later this year.

The exterior of the former Huffman Koos store at 480 Oakland St. will include façade work and new signage for VIP, also known as Very Intimate Pleasures, according to information from the town’s Building Department.

Town Planning and Economic Development Director Mark Pellegrini wrote in a short report to the Board of Directors late last month that building permits have been issued to VIP and work on the building is expected to wrap up in September.” …

In the Year 2044…

What do we imagine the city of Hartford will look like in 2044? Will I-84 be underground? Will we be pretty? Will we be rich?

Join Ken Krayeske, Hartford News columnist of The 40 Year Plan, as he ponders these things and more aloud during the panel discussion Hartford in 14,610 Days / Brainstorming for the Future at La Paloma Sabanera tomorrow night (4/27) at 7 p.m.

Panelists include:
Fernando Betancourt, the executive director of the Connecticut Latino and Puerto Rican Affairs Commission
Bernadine Silvers, the executive director of Hartford 2000
Matt Fleury, the vice president of the Connecticut Center for Science and Exploration.

La Paloma is at 401 Capitol Avenue, Hartford.

It Takes a Monorail

Despite enjoying the nice weather and watching a few hundred people march down Main Street to the Capitol to rally for immigration rights (sorry, no pix), we haven’t done a whole lot today. But:

● Indie DJ’s and Webster Underground darlings, Shag Frenzy, have a new blog!

● A new service called Waiter Wheels delivers food from restaurants that otherwise couldn’t be bothered, although it only seems to go to downtown and West Hartford at this point. What? West End or Asylum Hill too scary for you?

● Maybe all it takes to get the party started around here is a monorail.

Reading the author’s description of his city of inspiration–Kiel, Germany–makes us suspect that the dude really just visited Euro Disney and had to come up with something to write about in time to make deadline. Although, scrapping the Front Street plans and turning Hartford into a Eurotrash Mecca of the Future sounds way more fun.

“Maybe 30 years from now, with some smart public policy, Europeans will visit here and go home saying, ‘Those people in Connecticut know how to make a city work.’”

Monorail ! Monorail ! Monorail ! …yeah, we saw that episode of The Simpsons too.

If Det. Sgt. Fish Blogged…

We recently discovered the new “Nightbeat” blog on the Hartford Courant website and couldn’t be happier. If only that we no longer have to do exhausting searches on their site for official reports on local shootings and crimes that friends tell us about when we run into them at Tisane in the morning. The paper is way too depressing (and expensive) to actually subscribe for home delivery, and they’ve often done their best in the past to bury this kind of stuff online. We likey. [Link]