Southfield Area: Diversity, Boats, Hoods

A reader recently wrote a heated comment on Would You Like a Drug Deal With That? In that post, I wrote about the Southfield area of Stamford, where I lived for four years. My neighborhood was in between a gated community and a run down area. My reader took issue with the word "gated." Other than that, she shares my opinion that SF is a kickass place to live. I've had the Southfield area on my list to write about since August, so this seems like a good time to do so.

Quibble: you have to admit, that little community, I think called Dolphin Cove, is gated; there's a little guard stand. But is there actually anyone in it? If not, I take back the word gated. The intersection by the guard shack was the site of my most spectacular rollerblading wipeout. More about that at the end of this post.

There are three parts of Stamford that jut into Long Island Sound: Southfield, South End, and Shippan. (Zoom in on this map if you want.)
Southfield, the southwesternmost part of Stamford, is officially called the Waterside area, but I call it SF because of Southfield Park. And, I could only see a tiny sliver of water from my window, and only in the winter.

What I liked about SF/WS, as the reader points out, is that it's one of the few areas in Stamford where people of varying socioeconomic groups live in VERY close quarters. I think of the area as having three parts. From south to north:
1) Gated community, in which some houses have their own docks on another inlet. There are a few newish condos, and the Playtex and Conair buildings that bring in a good chunk of (speeding) employees every AM.
2) My neighborhood of families, middle-aged residents, and older people and their renters. I lived in a 2nd floor apt with 2 roommates, above our awesome Italian landlords and their yappy dog. Southfield Park is on the inlet, as are the gigantic Avalon apartment buildings.
3) A popular summer restaurant called Crabshell, a very nice marina, the run-down area by Café Moja, and I-95 and the RR tracks. People call this section the “hood,” but I’ll tell ya, I read the police reports, and most crime is NOT in that area. (It’s in the South End, the West Side north of the tracks, and the Cove area near the Grade A, where my bank got robbed.)

A 2002 New York Times article, about the building of the Avalon complex, describes the area in more general terms:

“Luxury Apartments Open in Former Industrial Area”:
"One of the most diverse neighborhoods imaginable lies between the west branch of Stamford harbor and the border of Greenwich between Interstate 95 and Long Island Sound. A vestige of old industrial Stamford called Waterside, it covers a little more than a square mile, into which are crammed small, well-kept working class homes as well as houses that are falling apart; contemporary office buildings and dilapidated old industrial buildings; tumbledown stores and yuppie restaurants, a marina, $400,000 condominiums, private homes and an affordable housing project called Waterside Green." The article says that the Avalon complex cost $ 60 million to build, and that the houses in Dolphin Cove are valued at over a million bucks.

There are a lot of great areas in Stamford, and I think Southfield/Waterside is definitely one of them. I highly recommend Southfield Park for a weekend visit. It has a baseball field, tennis courts, a playground, and a NICE path along the water. I have a feeling the majority of Stamford is unaware of this park, because the tennis counts are often free.

The rollerblading incident: I’m not a good rollerblader, but Dolphin Cove is a good area for blading because there’s hardly any traffic. So, I roll out of my hood, up to the 3 way stop by the guard shack. As I roll up, so do three other cars. Well, I can’t stop, so I hold out my arms in a grand “STOP PLEASE, COMING THROUGH” gesture. I take maybe three strides, then hit some gravel and TOTALLY WIPE OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE INTERSECTION, landing right on my back. Well, the cars can’t very well drive over me, so they have to wait while I look up at the sky for a moment, carefully pick myself up, and roll away. This wasn’t one of those “when you look back on it, it’s really funny” incidents. It was really, really funny at the time.

I don’t fall too much. Since I can’t stop, I don’t go very fast. And, after my “throw self onto grass to avoid high speed descent” on a slope in Darien, I know to avoid hills. I suggest the very flat Cove Island Beach for your rollerblading pleasure.