Around Town

‘A Donation of This Scale Is Very Meaningful’: Waveny Park Conservancy Receives $24,000 from Caffeine & Carburetors

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A town man’s hugely popular car show is benefitting New Canaan in new ways. Long praised for the visitors it brings to town who then patronize downtown businesses and restaurants, the “Caffeine & Carburetors” antique and specialty car show that Doug Zumbach launched nearly 30 years ago outside his eponymous coffee shop on Pine Street now is raising tens of thousands of dollars for local nonprofit organizations. On Wednesday, Zumbach—joined by Zumbach Coffee/C&C Director of Business Development Claire Drexler, and fellow C&C organizer Peter Bush—presented a $24,000 check to the Waveny Park Conservancy. 

The funds were raised through the Oct. 20 C&C at Waveny. Zumbach runs two C&C’s per year, one downtown—that saw $16,000 raised for the New Canaan Community Foundation—and the other at the park.

Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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New Canaan Police at 9:14 p.m Monday received a report of a residential burglary on Skyview Lane. Stolen items include jewelry. Police have no suspects at this time. The investigation is ongoing. ***

Register here for “Cocktails and Conversation with Elissa Bass,” the Connecticut author of “Happy Hour” (more on the book and writer here).

Around Town

New Canaan’s CT Stage Company Opens Season with ‘Hair’

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Connecticut Stage Company, a nonprofit theater production company based in New Canaan, is nearing the start of its second season. Founded by Kate Simone and Lorah Haskins, it didn’t take long for the experienced duo to see success. Their inaugural season, which began in October of 2023, featured productions of “Into the Woods,” and “Little Women,” with both selling out weeks before each show. Simone and Haskins said they hope to keep that momentum going with their next production, “Hair,” showing Nov. 23 and 24.

Dr. Andrew Gerber

Podcast: Dr. Andrew Gerber of Silver Hill Hospital

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This week on 0684-Radi0, our free podcast (subscribe here in the iTunes Store), we talk to Dr. Andrew Gerber, president and medical director at Silver Hill Hospital, about the New Canaan Behavioral Health Alliance’s Community Health & Well-being Survey. 

Here are recent episodes of 0684-Radi0:

Around Town

‘A Tremendous Amount of Fun’: Meet Kelley Franco, Baseball’s ‘Three Inning Fan’

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Kelley Franco, eleventh and youngest sibling among the New Canaan Francos, a clan of eight boys and three girls, recalls sitting out on the family’s screened-in porch on Tommy’s Lane one day in 1982. 

She was 12 years old and one of her big brothers, Mike, had either just gotten into law school or decided to become a lawyer, she recalled. “And I also had decided that I wanted to be a lawyer—which I realize is a little young to decide your career path, but whatever—and someone made a joke at dinner out on the porch, and they said, ‘Maybe someday they’ll have a law firm together and it’ll be the ‘Franco Law Firm.’ And everyone was like, ‘Right, haha.’ Fast-forward to 2006, and I just kind of called up Mike one day and said, ‘Remember when we talked about this?’ ”

By then, she’d attended St. Aloysius School through eighth grade, graduated from New Canaan High School (class of ‘88), earned a bachelor’s degree in government from Georgetown (minor in French), studied abroad for one year in Paris, earned a law degree from the University of Connecticut School of Law, passed the New York and Connecticut bars and married a Mets fan (Tom Throop, gifted furniture designer maker of Grove Street). Franco would form Franco Law Associates with Mike after launching her own career as a litigator, doing a three-month internship in a Paris law firm and then stints at large and small firms in the United States. Amid all that, about 20 years ago, Franco—a steadfast Yankees fan who’d managed the NCHS freshman baseball team as a teen, keeping score for the squad—felt another itch to scratch, this one connected to our national pastime.