October Snow

Saturday saw a stunning October snowstorm which downed tons of trees and left nearly a million around Connecticut without power. All before Halloween. While living in New England requires dealing with extreme and unpredictable weather, a big snowstorm in October is a little outrageous. While many Halloween parties were cancelled due to the storm, Sad City managed to get around a bit Saturday night and snapped some photos of the unbelievable storm. Happy Halloween!

Remember This One?

Pic courtesy of The Hartfordite

Sad City friend and Channel 3 Newman Dennis House has lived and worked in Hartford since 1992. That makes him an incredible repository of Hartford information. Recently on his blog, The Hartfordite, he posted a story we had completely forgot, about when an NFL team almost moved to Hartford.

We meet some new to the area that seem shocked we ever had an NHL team and express disbelief that the city could again support an NHL team, but it wasn't that long ago that the NFL was courting Hartford. And as Dennis points out in his story;

Oodles of Noodles

Technically in West Hartford, A-Dong Market is perhaps the most interesting store to visit in the area. Upon walking in visitors are greeted by a case of plucked ducks (head and beak intact.) While that might be the height of the craziness the entire store is pretty mind blowing and somewhat confounding to those speaking only english. Many of the products are only labeled in the language of their origin with no english, leaving us to make an educated guess at what exactly they are. One area of the store is of particular interest, the corner of noodles.

Don't We All Wish?

Image courtesy of Puck Daddy at Yahoo

See anything a little amiss about this screen shot from a broadcast of the Hurricanes and Blues game? Looks like someone over at Comcast misses the Whale as much as we all do. Hat tip to farm boy for this find. Full Yahoo story is here.

Halloween Time

No loitering 364 days, but tonight free candy!

Outsiders are often scared of Hartford without any extra effort by residents, but the time of year has come where dwellers attempt to scare neighborhood kids with ghoulish decorations. Halloween is really an interesting holiday in that it's not really a holiday and it's totally counter intuitive in that it is the one day of the year people make their house look scary and yet at the same time actually want strangers to ring the doorbell so they can give stuff away. Plus Halloween has become the day of the year where females dress as scandalous as possible without any inhibitions. This heavily decorated porch is on Babcock Street off of Park. We'll be on the lookout for Halloween stuff this weekend, until then you can read last years breakdown of Halloween candy.

Steampunk at Mark Twain

This week we checked out the Steampunk Ball and exhibit at the Mark Twain House. While Steampunk was a mystery to us, it turned out to be pretty cool in a mid 1990's Marilyn Manson/Nine Inch Nails type of way. It was quite a night at the Twain House as Sad City friend Craig The Porn Star joined us in a ghost tour, the Steampunk exhibit and the Steampunk ball. Pics weren't allowed on the tour and the ball was too dark for good pics but check out more of the exhibit after the jump.

A Not So Hot Spot

In the last couple months or so we noticed the L.A. Hot Spot Convenience store had popped up over on Franklin Ave in the South End. While we didn't visit immediately, the store caught our discerning Hartford eye for a handful or reasons. First, this thing isn't exactly the traditional convenience store or bodega. It's huge and the front is almost entirely large glass windows, unusual for that type of store. Second the peculiar name the "L.A. Hot Spot" brings the name of our least favorite big city to our favorite small city.