Mexican Tacos at Tacos Guadalajara

It being a great day to take a walk, and it being Cinco de Mayo (Mexican Independence Day?), I ventured out to find a place for a quick taco. Not far from my office, I found Tacos Guadalajara, which is a little place at 217 Atlantic Street, 324-2204. Not too fancy, but I had a tasty lunch of authentic Mexican Tacos("Carnitas" they call them.) Carnitas are pork filled soft corn tacos with cilantro and onions sometimes served with rice and beans. My friend had two tacos, the traditional kind. Equally yummy. Quick and fun; it was an affordable lunch, and celebratory at that! Click here to read more....

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Alive @ Five MySpace Keeps Growing

myspace.com/alivefive

The Alive @ Five MySpace page was launched to promote the FREE concert series, interact with fans and to reach out to an untapped audience. Our MySpace page features the schedule, links to our other websites and a list of growing friends including Stamford residents, music lovers across the country and bands from around the world. Most importantly our MySpace page reaches that audience whom are hearing about the concert series for the first time and now express interest. Similar to other websites our page began small in February 2007 with a couple of friends and visitors. In mid-December we had 186 friends and 762 profile views. In the last couple of months the website has received a lot of attention and now has over 1000 friends and is approaching 10,000 profile views, averaging around 200 profile views a day. The goal is to utilize the MySpace Alive @ Five page in two ways. The first is to further widen the talent margin of all the bands submitting to perform at the concert series, therefore increasing the attendance to the shows. The second is to educate our friends on the series to ensure they come to Stamford Downtown and return again and again.

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New Look for Recycling Trucks

New recycling trucks bear anti-litter message
By Veronica Ouellette
Special Correspondent - Stamford Advocate
Article Launched: 04/17/2008 01:00:00 AM EDT

Andrew Munce, left, of Redding, and Jami Sherwood, of Stamford, owner of Simply Signs, apply artwork on recycling trucks at the City of Stamford's transfer station in Stamford, Conn. on Wednesday, April 16, 2008. The project is sponsored by the City of Stamford and Keep Stamford Beautiful. (Chris Preovolos/Staff photo)

STAMFORD - Graphics added to the city's new fleet of eight recycling trucks yesterday are part of a campaign to advertise to teenagers that littering has consequences.

The city's all-white recycling trucks were revamped yesterday with four graphics designed by London artists. Adding the eye-catching designs is part of Keep Stamford Beautiful's anti-littering and recycling partnership with the city.

The campaign's theme, "Litter Leads to Bad Things," is geared toward teenagers, but the message is for everyone, said Ellen O'Neill, executive director of Keep Stamford Beautiful, a nonprofit organization dedicated to enhancing the city's appearance through public education and community improvement programs.

The artwork by Kai and Sunny, a design team working with North Castle, a teen advertising agency, was displayed on buses and as posters in city schools beginning in 2006. The graphics are printed at Simply Signs in Stamford through a grant with Heyman Properties in Westport.

One sign displays a garbage pile with the message, "Litter leads to cockroaches lead to rats lead to bacteria lead to disease and I will not share my block with those bad things."

Another depicts a spray-paint can and text explaining that litter can cause violence, vandalism and drug abuse.

"The important thing about the design is every time you view it you find something different until the message sinks in," O'Neill said of what makes up the graphic. Letters are formed from tiny bacteria, and the garbage pile is made up of cockroaches, rats, and tiny burger wrappers and other forms of litter.
"We thought we'd be killing two birds with one stone: getting the recycling message and the litter message out at the same time," O'Neill said.

The campaign attempts "to get people to recycle, to get people cognizant of the benefits for the environment and that it lessens the cost of disposing of garbage," said Daniel Colleluori, supervisor of solid waste and recycling.

Colleluori said he gave recycling equipment to schools to place in classrooms and in athletic fields. This spring, workers will install recycling bins in city parks, he said.

Through a focus group with Stamford Academy students in 2006, Keep Stamford Beautiful learned that teens and young adults are responsible for creating most litter but are also a tough audience to target. Teens in the group also discussed how litter affects the environment and themselves.

"They did recognize that litter was an act of disrespect," O'Neill said. "We came away feeling that we needed to tie that respect factor to the environment. Living in a disorderly environment leads to disorderly conduct."

The underlying message behind "Litter Leads to Bad Things," is based on the "Broken Windows" theory first published by George Kelling and James Wilson in the March 1982 edition of The Atlantic.

This theory states that "if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. . . . one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing."

Other projects planned by Keep Stamford Beautiful and the city include raising awareness about recycling different materials, including sneakers or electronics, that are toxic to the environment.

The fleet of eight recycling trucks was bought in December after the city canceled its $1.3 billion contract with a private hauler and took over recycling operations.

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Pansies are a Plus

The calendar is telling me that spring is here, but lately, it's been an up and down see-saw of weather offerings. It was so nice to finally have a pleasant day, so Monday I took a stroll through Veteran's Park on my lunch break. As I looked for a bench to relax on, I noticed a few ladies dangerously perched on the median in the middle of Atlantic Street. Yikes, what are they thinking? Well, it seems that every year, without much fanfare, the "Pansy Planting Crew" appears. The are called the Downtown Streetscape Volunteers, and they are quite busy this time of year. This season, they filled the Atlantic Street planters with beautiful yellow pansies, as well as the main library and many other downtown planters with the same. Seeing the new growth reminded me that summer is not too far away. (What a great feeling!) Pictured left: Lenore DiPalma and Betty Roberts
So, as you happen to walk along downtown, take a look and notice the kind work these volunteers have accomplished. Not only do they dig in the dirt, but they dangerously perch along a busy roadway to ensure that beauty of a pansy is shared with Stamford Downtown.

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UConn Stamford Celebrates 10 Years!

STAMFORD — It's been a decade since the local branch of the University of Connecticut moved from its original campus on Scofieldtown Road to its current location in the downtown area.

Since the university moved to the old Bloomingdale's building on Broad Street, the downtown has changed considerably. Donald Trump is building Trump Parc across the street, Target looms over the campus, and the current associate vice provost of the campus, Michael Ego, is hoping to partner with private developers who might be willing to offer his students housing.

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The Avon Theatre proudly presents
AN EVENING WITH JAMES IVORY

Special screening of
MR. & MRS. BRIDGE
Followed by a Q&A with Mr. Ivory

Tuesday, May 6 – 7:30pm
Carte Blanche Members – FREE / Members $15 / Nonmembers - $25
Tickets go on sale for members only on April 1,
and for nonmembers on April 8.
Tickets can be purchased at the Avon box office during showtimes
(203-967-3660, x3), or call our administrative offices
(203-661-0321) during daytime hours.


FILM SYNOPSIS: Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward give "the performances of their careers" (Judith Crist) in Merchant Ivory's adaptation of Evan S. Connell's two novels Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge, artfully combined into one screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Walter and India Bridge (Newman and Woodward) are a Midwestern American couple struggling to keep up with the changing world around them in 1930s America. Mr. Bridge, a stout-hearted, staunch paterfamilias, quietly lords over his children -- Ruth (Kyra Sedgwick), Carolyn (Margaret Welsh), and Douglas (Robert Sean Leonard) -- and his wife, who is warm and kind but lacks the independence to forge an identity apart from her husband. As the music, the mores, and the politics of Kansas City are transformed in front of them, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge attempt to keep up with the drama of a changing society within their own family: Ruth wants to go to New York and become an actress; Carolyn is determined to marry a man whom her father deems unsuitable; Douglas is embarrassed by his mother's attentions and rebukes her attempts at intimacy. Shot on location in Kansas City and in Paris (in this film, Merchant Ivory add the Louvre to their peerless list of shooting sites), the film was powerfully received at the box office and was greeted with rave reviews. The New York Times wrote that Newman and Woodward's roles were "the most adventurous and stringent of their careers." Woodward received an Oscar nod and the New York Society of Film Critics Award for her performance: her Mrs. Bridge is like an American Mrs. Dalloway, all warm smiles on her daily errands but seeped with a depth of feeling that her husband forever fails to understand. The filmmakers were similarly lauded for a breakthrough in their first film with a Midwestern American theme: "With the quiet assurance of a perfect work of art," one critic wrote, "Mr. and Mrs. Bridge sweeps all other contenders off the screen to become the best movie of the year."

ABOUT JAMES IVORY: One of the legendary directors of contemporary American cinema, James Ivory was born in Berkeley, California and educated at the University of Oregon, where he majored in Architecture and Fine Arts. His first film, which he wrote, photographed and produced, was Venice: Theme and Variations, a half-hour documentary made as a thesis film for a degree in cinema from the University of Southern California. Ivory's evocation of the city was named by The New York Times in 1957 as one of the ten best non-theatrical films of the year. In 1961, Ivory teamed up with Ismail Merchant to form Merchant Ivory Productions. Their first theatrical feature was The Householder, based on an early novel by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who also wrote the script. The seventeen theatrical films that Ivory has made for Merchant Ivory Productions include the classic Shakespeare Wallah, and more recent films such as the two Henry James productions, The Europeans, and The Bostonians, Heat And Dust, A Room With A View, Maurice, Slaves of New York, Howard’s End, Remains Of The Day, Jefferson In Paris, Surviving Picasso and The White Countess.

See you at the Avon!

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Lewis Black at Palace Theatre

Lewis Black this week at the SCA's Palace Theatre

Thursday, March 27, 2008 - Friday, March 28, 2008
Lewis is one of the most prolific and popular performers working today. He executes a brilliant trifecta as stand-up comedian, actor and author.
A passionate performer who is more pissed-off optimist than mean-spirited curmudgeon, he's perfected expressing what the rest of us cannot say in polite company. For a MATURE AUDIENCE ONLY

Lewis’ live performances provide a cathartic release of anger and disillusionment for his audience. Lewis yells so they don’t have to. A passionate performer who is more pissed-off optimist than mean-spirited curmudgeon, he's perfected expressing what the rest of us cannot say in polite company. Lewis is the rare comic who can cause an audience to laugh themselves into incontinence while making compelling points about the absurdity of our world. How can you not love a man who says, "Republicans are a party with bad ideas and Democrats are a party with no ideas." Will Rogers would have been proud.
http://www.lewisblack.com/

Thursday March 27, 2008 and March 28, 2008
Tickets: $45-$50-$55
Palace Theatre

61 Atlantic Street

Stamford, Connecticut

203-325-4466

http://www.scalive.org/

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