Woog’s World: Westport’s luck on Friday the 13th

Whenever we play “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” I win.

Back in 1978, Sean Cunningham directed a movie called “Manny’s Orphans,” a “Bad News Bears”-type film, except about soccer (spoiler alert: the team of orphans beats the snobby prep school squad!). It was filmed in Westport and Bridgeport.

Cunningham – a Staples High School graduate – lived here. He hired me to choreograph all the soccer scenes. I also had a cameo role on screen, as the referee. Local kids played many of the roles. One was 12-year-old Ari Lehman.  

Two years later, Cunningham moved on to bigger things. He directed “Friday the 13th.” A young Kevin Bacon played Jack. An even younger Ari Lehman played Jason.

So I am only one degree removed from Kevin Bacon.

Which brings us back to 2023. This Friday is the 13th. For centuries – even before a mysterious killer stalked Camp Crystal Lake – Friday the 13th has been considered unlucky.

Which means it is time to consider some of the bad luck that Westporters have suffered. Of course, this month is January – named for Janus, the Roman god of gates and doorways. He is always pictured as looking in two directions. Which means, we’ll consider the good luck we’ve enjoyed too.

For starters: It’s bad luck that whenever there is the slightest slowdown on I-95, Waze and other apps direct I-95 drivers onto narrow local roads that cannot handle the traffic. That’s a function of the bad luck of the highway’s original design: a “thruway” with too many on- and off-ramps.

On the other hand, it’s good luck that an early plan for the “Connecticut Turnpike” – which called for double-decking over the Post Road – was never adopted.

Speaking of I-95: It’s bad luck that the bridge repair near Exit 17 has stripped all vegetation from the hillsides and surrounding areas. The highway now looks like a poor little poodle after being shorn for the spring.

It’s good luck though that the bridge is being repaired. Now we won’t have to worry it will fall down.

Speaking of vegetation: It’s bad luck that we have so many trees and utility lines. Whenever the wind blows, we lose power.

It’s good luck however that we live in a place where the foliage is stunningly beautiful in the fall. The verdant scenery in spring and summer isn’t too shabby either.

Speaking once again of traffic: It’s bad luck that pushing our school start times back by half an hour created an unintended consequence of more cars on the road during morning rush hour, then again in the already crowded late afternoon. Because our buses have become so unpredictable (and stuck in traffic), more parents than ever pick their kids up from school. It’s a never-ending (but very slow-moving) cycle.

The good luck makes up for the bad: The schools they’re being picked up at are excellent. (That’s probably not “luck,” I guess, but they sure are good.)

It’s bad luck that for a couple of decades no one in Westport has been able to figure out what to do with Baron’s South. The hilly 22-acre property just east of downtown has been considered for the site of the YMCA, senior housing, an arts museum, pickleball courts, and probably a half dozen other things. In the absence of consensus the land just sits there, mostly unmaintained and seldom used.

It’s sheer good luck that that happened, though. It means we haven’t done anything spectacularly stupid or completely irreversible with this still undeveloped jewel near the heart of Westport.

It’s bad luck that we once had five movie theaters, and now they’re all gone. (It’s bad luck for movie theater owners too that they got slammed by COVID, and that movies nowadays suck anyway. But that’s another column.)

It’s good luck that a few visionary Westporters created the Remarkable Theater in the early days of the pandemic. Now we’ve got one of the few drive-ins anywhere in the country. (Another bit of good luck: The former Fine Arts III theater has been transformed into one of the most popular restaurants in town: Basso.)

More bad news: 8-30g – the state’s “affordable housing” regulation – does not include any units built before 1990. Westport has plenty of them, but unfortunately they don’t count for anything.

The good news: Legislators in Hartford have started to understand that 8-30g must be revisited. It’s a boon to developers, but not to most people needing affordable housing.

For our final example, let’s hail the good news first: In less than three weeks, Westport raised more than $250,000 for our new sister city of Lyman, Ukraine.

The bad news: There’s a grim reason we have to raise those funds.    

Dan Woog is a Westport writer, and his “Woog’s World” appears each Friday. He can be reached at dwoog@optonline.net. His personal blog is danwoog06880.com.