The Scariest Mattress Colony

While we have long featured mattress colonies on Sad City, this one seems more suited to Halloween rather than the Christmas season. Since it's the final mattress of 2011 you could also consider this monstrosity the "boss" mattress colony. Found after dark on Babcock Street, this partially shredded mattress colony looks like it is eating itself. Perhaps the mattress colony is trying to fortify itself as Mayor Segarra gets ready to introduce a plan to rid the city of its mattress problem. 

Sad City Hartford Comic: The Reverse Flasher

We're pleased to present a new comic strip here on Sad City Hartford, The Ongoing Mundane Adventures of Martin Martinczk. The comic strip is a bout the boring happenings of an insurance claims manager living in Hartford. This week's episode is about a "reverse flasher." What's a reverse flasher? You'll just have read the comic to find out, won't you?

Future episodes may or may not appear sporadically. Enjoy! (The full comic is after the jump.)

A Great Hartford Christmas Gift

Unless you're watching a Lexus commercial, a good Christmas gift is a gift that has utility, nostalgia, surprise, or any combo of the above. Unless this is your first time to this blog you also know that Hartford was once home to the NHL and that Sad City are Hartford hockey boosters. What you might not know is that our little gem of a city once hosted an NHL All-Star Game. To be fair, we aren't fans of All-Star games in any sport, and tend to think of them to be wastes of time.

But way back in 1986, an era before every game, every highlight, every night, everything was readily available on television, the internet, and your phone; way, way back then, All-Star games did mean a  good deal more.

Pay Phone #37 - Grocery Store Edition

We haven't featured a pay phone in our great Pay Phone Search in quite awhile and what would the Sad City holidays be without one? Pay Phone #37 is located outside the Stop & Shop on New Park Avenue. One thing you'll notice about living in Hartford is that grocery stores, or the lack thereof in downtown, is a topic of continuous hand-wringing in our fine city.

At this point we all realize the short lived, poorly executed, Market at Hartford 21 is not going to return. Yet we still don't think that Hartford is all that lacking in grocery stores. There's hardly anywhere you can live in Hartford and not be 10 minutes away from at least a grocery store.

The Weekly Whale

Just as it's a slow week at the office for many last week, it was a slow week on the ice for the Whale who only skated once, taking the ice in Hartford against Adirondack on Wednesday night. With only one game during the week, the Whale made the most of it and once again gave the Hartford fans an exciting show en route to a 3-2 victory at the XL Center on a great goal by Pavel Valentenko with 16 seconds to play that thrilled the crowd and sent everyone home happy.

Return of the Sad City Hartford Yule Log

Since it's December 24 today, we've gone up to the attic (the place where we store our old Wolf Pack merch and Hannukah decorations) and dusted off the Sad City Hartford Yule Log. Throw it up on your flatscreen, set it to loop and be mesmerized. Happy holidays, everyone.

Sad City Artford, Part 2

Demon Perez, finger on iPad

There's good news and bad news about our proposed art exhibit. The good news is that apparently the aye's have it. An overwhelming 95% of readers surveyed are in favor of some sort of exhibition that documents the sad city experience in an artistic, most-likely post-modern fashion. That's the good news.