Biz on Biz

Biz on Biz: Design Solutions Loves Gingerbitz; New Canaan Olive Oil Enjoys Pennyweights and Francos Wine Merchants

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For this installment of Biz on Biz, we caught up with two New Canaan businesses, Design Solutions and New Canaan Olive Oil. When we peeked our heads in Design Solutions we spoke with the owner, Pauline Dora and asked her about her favorite businesses in town. Pauline immediately commented that she loved all of the local businesses in New Canaan, but her favorite meal would have to be from Gingerbitz, the bakery across the street from her store on Elm Street. “Gingerbitz, they have great food,” Pauline said. When asked what she liked at the bakery Pauline told the New Canaanite that the salad was her favorite.

News

Letter: ‘Thank You’ to Community from New Canaan Society for the Arts

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The New Canaan Society for the Arts would like to thank our community for its generous support of the successful Spring Gala, Monaco Grand Prix, held on May 16, 2015. The gala, featuring the exhibition Va Va Vroom, Art of the Vehicle, raised $33,000 which will be used to operate the Carriage Barn Arts Center and to provide exhibitions and programming for the public. Guests were greeted with champagne and savory hors d’oeuvres while serenaded by the sultry voice of Marie Michele, the lead singer for French jazz quintet, Oh La La. We would like to thank our attendees, members, donors and sponsors for their generous contributions. The Monaco Co-Chairs Karla Rimmer and Serena Gillespie would like to sincerely thank the event’s committee chairs Catharine Sturgess, Amy Reid and Laura McDaniel for their talent and energy to organize a successful and fun evening.

Around Town

Discarded Treasure: NCHS Class of ’39 Yearbook Turns Up at Dump

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New Canaan’s Steve Benko was at the Transfer Station making his regular Saturday morning dump run on a recent weekend, when one of the guys who works there flagged him down. Someone had been discarding books into the bin there, Benko learned, and one of them was an old New Canaan High School yearbook that had his own (Benko’s) father pictured in it. “It was pretty neat,” Benko, New Canaan’s longtime recreation director, said on a recent afternoon from his office at Waveny House. “It was fun. He told me somebody was throwing out books and he saw this one, thought I may want it.”

He was right.

Around Town

Looking Back at Our Town: New Canaan in 1927

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An estimated 200 residents filed into the Lamb Room at New Canaan Library on Monday night for a presentation led by NewCanaanite.com contributing editor Terry Dinan, on New Canaan in 1927. New Canaan Library’s selection of “One Summer: America 1927” for a community-wide reading initiative will culminate this week with Wednesday’s speakeasy in the same Lamb Room and Saturday’s original play at the Powerhouse Theater. Terry, who writes the news site’s popular “0684-Old” local history feature, walked the crowd through a rapidly changing time in New Canaan’s history. The 1920’s saw New Canaan’s population jump by 40 percent, and important pieces of the town’s downtown and landscape took shape in the period. In 1927 itself, both Karl Chevrolet and New Canaan High School were founded, and the town marked locally much of what Bryson chronicled in his book, including Babe Ruth’s 60-home run feat and Charles Lindbergh’s trans-Atlantic flight.

Around Town

Wednesday Nights at Waveny: New Canaan’s ‘Best Kept Secret’

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It was 1979 and Steve Benko was one year into his job as New Canaan’s recreation director when the town started talking to Manhattan-based Music Performance Trust Fund, a recording industry nonprofit dedicated to promoting live music. That organization worked through local unions to line up bands for live performances in towns such as New Canaan, splitting the cost of a show 50-50, Benko recalled. New Canaan had recently held a successful U.S. Coast Guard Band concert at Waveny, off of the expansive balcony behind the main house, and so the town moved ahead with the nonprofit for a series of four shows in the summer of 1980—the first season of a series that’s emerged as fun, beloved tradition for New Canaanites each summer. “A lot of people say it’s the best kept secret in New Canaan, because people don’t realize it’s there,” Benko said Tuesday from his second-floor office at Waveny House, overlooking that same balcony and sprawling fields below. “It’s a fun evening.