More on Hotsy

/

Mention of the new building proposed for Old Greenwich brought a discussion in the comments of “Hotsy” of Garden Catering and his famous Hotsy breakfast sandwich, so I went looking for his history, and found this remembrance of the man by Greenwich Time’s Neil Vigdor on the occasion of Hotsy’s passing, at 91-years-old. Excerpts:

Remembering Hotsy: The chili loses its spice

By Neil VigdorNov 21, 2012

GREENWICH -- Chili ran through Frank Bertino's veins like molten lava.

His recipe for the comfort food is sacrosanct.

But it's missing a key ingredient: Hotsy.

Known as "Hotsy" to his legion of admirers, from modern-day Garden Catering to the everyman haunt once known as The Oasis that he owned with his late brothers, Bertino died of natural causes Tuesday night at Greenwich Hospital, according to his family. He was 91.

His friends remembered the longtime Cos Cob resident and Purple Heart recipient for his sweat equity in the kitchen, gregarious demeanor, love of family, military valor and athletic prowess as a youngster, from the boxing ring to the golf course.

And his chili.

"He just made the best damn chili," said Stanley Thal, a longtime member and former president of the Sound Beach Volunteer Fire Department in Old Greenwich. "He put chili in everything. You had it with your eggs, your soup, your breakfast sandwich."

The firehouse is a block away from Garden Catering, where Bertino defied his age and worked the graveyard shift for most of his 22 years at the popular takeout place, the final chapter of six decades in the food business.

…

Along with his later brothers, Edward and Paul Bertino, the man known as Hotsy for many years owned The Oasis, a food magnet for blue-collar types located on West Putnam Avenue.

"As a young landscaper, we'd go in there for lunch," Selectman David Theis said. "I have never seen anybody make a cup of coffee faster than he did. It was like he had three hands. He was truly a remarkable man in that sense. He was a local legend."

Bertino was the cousin of state Rep. Alfred Camillo, R-151st District.

"He was what Greenwich used to be," Camillo said. "It was all mom-and-pop stores. Hotsy came to symbolize that."

Born July 11, 1921, in South Norwalk, Hotsy told Greenwich Time in a 2007 interview that he acquired his nickname from a "quick temper" as a teen. He later fought in amateur boxing matches in Rye, N.Y., under the moniker "Kid Hotsy."

After returning from World War II, he joined his brothers at Pat's Hubba Hubba on West Putnam Avenue in 1946. He later ran a concession stand at the Griffith E. Harris Golf Course from 1984 to 1988, before "retiring."

The only conservative media outlet in Maine is unsympathetic to this poor man: the rest of the press, including the Boston Globe, was much kinder.

/

“Welcome to Maine; come for a visit, stay for a lifetime”

Maine Media’s Poster Child for Welfare Programs Arrested in Major State Police Fentanyl Ring Bust

When homeless encampments flourished throughout Maine’s largest city in 2023 and 2024, Maine’s newspaper reporters were eager to tell the sad story of down-on-their-luck Mainers who had been failed by the state’s generous social services.

In dozens of instances, they turned to one man—46-year-old Bruce Cavallaro—the quasi-mayor of whatever homeless camp the reporters were covering on any given day.

Tragically for Maine’s newspaper reporters, their favorite spokesperson for “Mainers experiencing homelessness” was arrested Thursday as part of a high-risk search warrant executed on the apartment unit that Maine State Police say had been transformed into the center of a narcotics trafficking ring.

The Maine Drug Enforcement Agency (MDEA) announced Wednesday the arrest of seven people, including media darling Cavallarro, connected to a suspected drug operation in apartment 402 of 658 Congress St in Portland. Police say they had been investigating the apartment for months due to reports of drug trafficking, threatening displays with weapons and disorderly conduct.

Prior to getting lugged for his role in the narcotics peddling conspiracy, Cavallaro received extensive coverage in Maine’s media outlets for living in Portland’s large homeless encampments.

Indeed, his ubiquity in photographs published by the Bangor Daily News, Portland Press Herald, Lewiston Sun Journal, Maine Public, and even the Boston Globe is such a highly unusual coincidence that one has to wonder whether Cavallaro secretly has a highly paid press agent.

In nearly every story covering Cavallaro, the legacy media outlets portrayed the now-incarcerated would-be squatter as a victim of the city’s policy of clearing the trash- and needle-filled campsites over the past two years.

Cavallaro’s friends in the Maine media never got the memo that he somehow found his way into more stable housing at 658 Congress St, an apartment building whose owner remains unclear.

But according to the MDEA, Cavallaro was the man renting the apartment around which the major narcotics investigation revolved. They said that the landlord had evicted Cavallaro, but he refused to leave.

Cavallaro was among the seven arrested after a search of the apartment by police on Wednesday resulted in the seizure of fentanyl, methamphetamine, crack cocaine and other drug paraphernalia.

…. Before this bad turn of luck, Cavallaro received glowing coverage, was included in photoshoots and frequently quoted in news articles while he was living outside in the city’s homeless encampments, and was taken on several occasions to be a spokesperson for the opposition to the city’s policy of “sweeping” the camps.

Portland saw several large homeless encampments sprout up in various locations throughout the city, with the camps reaching their greatest size in the summer, fall and winter of 2023 into 2024.

Particularly large encampments were at the Marginal Way Park-and-Ride, the Fore River Parkway and under the Casco Bay Bridge at Harborview Park.

Those encampments, which at their peak consisted of well over 75 tents each and were littered with needles, garbage and a large number of [stolen _ ED] bikes, were eventually cleared one-by-one by the city, amid protests from the Maine Democratic Socialists of America and other activist groups.

Stories featuring Bruce include:

Portland Press Herald:

Bangor Daily News:

Boston Globe:

NewsCenter Maine:

Maine Public:

….. According to public records obtained by the Maine Wire in 2023, Portland had spent 50 times more per person on General Assistance welfare than other Maine cities and consumed 73 percent of all GA spending.

A spokesperson for the city declined to confirm whether Cavallaro was a beneficiary of the city’s robust welfare programs, citing privacy protections.

Sounds reasonable to me (UPDATED and BUMPED)

/

189 Sound Beach Avenue

Developer wants to raze Old Greenwich building to construct smaller office space on site

The old structure at 189 Sound Beach Ave., next door to the Rummage Room resale shop, was built in 1910, and most recently housed a real estate office and a contracting business. {SP Palmer & Sons Plumbing — Ed]

The site was sold in 2024 for $1,700,000, according to the property tax filing. Now, new ownership, AP Realty Associates and A.M. Patel, are seeking permission from the Planning & Zoning Commission to demolish the old structure and rebuild at the site.

According to the architect working on the plans, the proposed new structure would aim to incorporate a traditional design to add to the historic character of Sound Beach Avenue.

"Our proposed design harkens back to the Federal and Victorian residential structures similar to those built between 1890 and 1910," stated architect Dinyar Wadia.

I can’t remember how many retailers have used the front building from the 50’s to date (and have no idea who was there prior to that), but there have been a lot of them, including Raveis, where I worked some time ago — the firm moved out, broken hearted, after the Mick and I came but then … er, departed); the building, if not its occupants, has always been undistinguished. Dinyar Wadia’s firm does excellent design and construction work, and has a great track record ; they don’t build schlock, so the developer’s description of what can be, unburdened by what has been, is an attractive one; the town should go for it.

Palmer’s former shop — once a stable?

Yes, that time of year has come around again

/

It’s his birthday! Gid’s the type who will remind you of that, but he sometimes is reticent to reveal what, exactly, he expects as gifts. You can chose from any of the three suggestions below, or just give him an affectionate kiss on his cheek(s); he’ll love it.

Ascot, Jag, or Jaguar: your choice

Excerpts from JD Vance’s speech, and check out Bill Kristol's response: believe it or not, this man Kristol, this little worm, once posed as a conservative

/

smarten up, fools

Vance in the Vanguard

Appearing at the annual Munich Security Conference today, Vice President J.D. Vance torched Europe in a manner they’ve never heard before. I kept seeing squibs from the speech on social media this morning, and couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

Some excerpts:

The threat that I worry the most about vis a vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values: values shared with the United States of America.

I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too.

Now, these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears. For years we’ve been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defence of democracy. But when we see European courts cancelling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard.

Vance was just getting started:

Free speech, I fear, is in retreat and in the interests of comity, my friends, but also in the interest of truth. I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe, but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation. Misinformation, like, for example, the idea that coronavirus had likely leaked from a laboratory in China. Our own government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth. . .

The organisers of this very conference have banned lawmakers representing populist parties on both the left and the right from participating in these conversations. Now, again, we don’t have to agree with everything or anything that people say. But when political leaders represent an important constituency, it is incumbent upon us to at least participate in dialogue with them.

Now, to many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election.

Has Vance been reading Power Line’s Lexicon of Political Terms, in which we define “populism” as “When the wrong person or party wins an election”? This is a clear reference to the AfD (Alternative for Germany) party that may well come in first in Germany’s election next weekend, which will cause a political crisis. And the established but discredited ruling parties will richly deserve it.

Naturally this aspect is summoning the predictable response:

Much more on Powerline, which also has a link to the video of the entire 22-minute speech. One more clip:

And he pushed back on the Musk-ophobia building in Europe:

Speaking up and expressing opinions isn’t election interference. Even when people express views outside your own country, and even when those people are very influential – and trust me, I say this with all humour – if American democracy can survive ten years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.

As bonus material, from another site, this:

NATO Sec-Gen Bends to VP Vance: ‘You Are Absolutely Right, We Have to Grow Up.’ “I also want to thank you personally for everything you have done over the years in engaging with Europe. It has been noted before, and it’s really important. And I look forward also from that perspective to our talks and on Europe stepping up, the European part of NATO stepping up. You’re absolutely right. It has to be done. We have to grow up in that sense and spend much more.”

Sale price reported

/

218 Clapboard Ridge Road (the better, Round Hill end) (video here) has sold for $15.4 million on a $15.8 million asking price. That’s certainly a improvement over the last time this house was on the market, when it was listed in 2013 for $25 million (we ridiculed that price at the time, and did so repeatedly as the years passed and the price kept plummeting) and finally sold to these owners in 2017 for $9.650.

The house was completely and totally renovated in 2018 and listed with John McAttee, who priced it at $15.8 million and put it on the MLS 10/24/24. He had a contract in 77 days.

Two sales pending

/

wesskum wood road, riverside

In bold defiance of the Greenwich ordinance that requires residents to move every 24 months, the owners of 45 Wesskum Wood Road lingered for 28 months, purchasing it for $3.050 million in August 2022 and only putting it back up for sale last week, at $3.9 million. Fortunately for them, a buyer has appeared quickly, and the town is unlikely to initiate enforcement procedures.

Cognewaugh

Cos Cob, of course, is not subject to the mandatory leave requirement because, frankly, who notices Cos Cob or, as we like to say, Byram East? In any event, the owners of 107 Cognewaugh Road have remained in situ, undisturbed, from 2007 until now. They listed the property for $3.1 million 15 days ago and it, too is now pending.

That Roz — mere hours into her leadership role and she's already got the Rapid Response Team churning in high gear! (UPDATED)

/

The Democratic Party posted a list of the things it got done in one day and it reads like satire

They (unsuccessfully) tried to block one of their former party members, introduced a bill to impose socialized medicine, thwarted democracy by barring people from removing chemicals from their tap water, sent a strongly-worded letter, and won a county election?

UPDATE: Forgot this gem from a few days ago of the Schumer trying, and failing, to get his audience to join him in chant: