Arts + Culture

For Love of the Game

Article by Sara Gaynes Levy One of the hottest trends in Westport right now is actually quite old: classic games like mahjong and canasta. These games are, of course, booming all across the country: this summer, I went on a mahjong retreat at Canyon Ranch Resort in Lenox, Mass., where attendees from places as far-flung as Dallas and Atlanta spent three days playing on beautiful tile sets strewn around the property by Gold Coast Mahjong partner Claire Mohamed. But we didn’t travel to Canyon...

Shopping

A Merry Mahjong

Accessories in holiday hues to start your season right. Article by Zac Mathias There’s something about the holidays that puts me in the hosting mood, and I love to decorate. While I love a big holiday party, I’m also craving more time around the table with my closest friends playing mahjong.  That’s what makes mahjong such a great category for holiday gifting: whether you’re shopping for the seasoned player or the friend who has been begging you to teach them, there’s something for everyone...

Professional Services

Congratulations, You’re Fired.

Westonite Jodi Rabinowitz wants to change the narrative on job loss.  Article by Lauren Brown West-Rosenthal | Photography by Jenaé Weinbrenner Career transitions are tough, personal, and deeply emotional. Maybe you are looking to pivot but feel stuck; maybe you’ve been out of the workforce for years and feel intimidated watching peers climb the ladder; or maybe you’ve landed in one of the most vulnerable positions of all: fired. In those moments, calling up an executive coach feels like the...

Life + Culture

40 Years of Wishes

Connecticut’s Make-A-Wish celebrates four decades of making dreams come true. Article by Sara Gaynes Levy | Photography by Courtesy Make-A-Wish Connecticut Four thousand eight hundred. That’s how many wishes Make-A-Wish Connecticut has granted for critically ill children since the chapter opened in 1986. The last 40 years of wish-granting have made some incredible moments happen for kids and teens across Connecticut, and so we at Westport Lifestyle thought that this milestone anniversary...

Life + Culture

Radical Honesty with Maria Bamford

Meet your favorite comedian's favorite comedian. Article by Lauren Brown West-Rosenthal | Photography by Bruce Smith Earlier this year, Maria Bamford’s brilliant, hilariously eccentric world was captured at the Sundance Film Festival in the documentary Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story , co-directed by Judd Apatow and Neil Berkeley (and now streaming on Netflix). But if you try bringing any of that glowing praise up to Maria herself? She’ll just shrug it off with the sweetest, most...

Food + Beverage

Snack of the Month

Sourdough from Flour Water Salt Bread Article by Madison Vitale | Photography by Flour Water Salt/Clay D. Rodriguez Madison Vitale, one of the eponymous sisters behind the food-review social media brand @sistersnacking, recently moved to Fairfield County. (A Connecticut native, she and her sisters were on the cover of our 2024 Food Issue.) She’s been tasting and trying restaurants and cafés all over the area ever since. In her column for Westport Lifestyle, Madison will be sharing a small...

Food + Beverage

A Very Foley Thanksgiving

Photography by Marika Domińczyk Foley Back in May, actor Scott Foley appeared on the TODAY show to promote his new Amazon Prime series It’s Not Like That . While chatting with anchor (and Westporter) Craig Melvin, the conversation turned, as it often does for Scott, to his annual Thanksgiving grocery runs with his wife Marika. “It just became a thing,” he told Craig of the viral holiday content. “Every Thanksgiving, we document this fantastic, terrible time that every person in the United...

Health + Wellness

For the Thrill Of It

A peek behind this Weston family’s dive into the amusement park business.   Article by Ali Schwartz Balbes If you had one superpower, what would it be? Telepathy? Invincibility? For Weston resident Rob Cannon and his family, the answer was taking flight. “Everybody loves to fly,” Rob tells Westport Lifestyle with the conviction of a man building an adventure park empire to prove it.  The Cannon family—Rob, his wife Lisa, and their daughter Caroline— has become the proprietors of a...

Life + Culture

Editor's Pick: Sound Coffee

Article by Sara Gaynes Levy As we gear up for the holiday season, there's nothing more important (in my humble opinion) than having excellent coffee on hand. One, for serving guests who may be staying with you—nothing says "I'm a world-class host" like offering freshly-brewed coffee to people waking up in your home. And two, because we need all the extra energy we can get this time of year. Bridgeport's Sound Coffee offers some of my favorite beans in Fairfield County, and they've recently...

Health + Wellness

What's Next In Pet Medicine

Article and Photography by Scientific advances in medicine are happening more frequently—and with more powerful results—than perhaps they ever have in our lifetimes. And this isn’t just true for humans. For our pets, veterinary medicine has also adopted cutting-edge technologies that can improve longevity and wellness for our four-legged friends. In Westport, Spot On Vet is offering many of these new treatments and therapies with the goal not just of extending an animal’s life, but of giving...