Get the cone while it lasts.

School starts next week, which means the after-dinner ice cream run is about to get a lot harder to justify. Mr. Frosty’s sits at 6 First Street in East Norwalk, on the corner that has been selling cones since the early 1960s — it was Mr. Chubbie’s for years before the current owner bought it in 2007 and put the old Mr. Frosty’s name back on the sign, a nod to the original shop and its owner, Art O’Boy. The hard ice cream is made for them up in Milford and comes in fresh twice a week. Cones, cups, shakes, sundaes, banana splits, Dole Whip. Take the kids one more time before the bell.

That lawn has been hosting Norwalk for a very long time. Saturday afternoon the Norwalk Conservatory of the Arts puts a program of Broadway hits on it — an outdoor concert in the park at 325 West Avenue, in the shadow of the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion, starting at 4 PM. The Conservatory trains musical theater performers a few blocks from here, so this is the local bench doing what it actually trained to do, outdoors, for the neighborhood. Bring a blanket or a lawn chair, get there early enough to pick your patch of grass, and let the kids roam. Tickets and details are on the Conservatory’s page — worth checking before you go.

Tickets & details →

Connecticut Renaissance Community Day

Four hours on the Norwalk Green, free and open to everyone: music, games, prizes, snacks, and a long row of local organizations with health, wellness, and community resources at the table. It’s the practical kind of block party — the sort of morning where you show up for the kettle corn and leave knowing three services you didn’t know existed. Good timing too, with school about to start. Come early, the Green fills up.

Event details →

Pre-K & Kindergarten Back to School Celebration

The NPS Family Center and Norwalk Mutual Aid throw a proper send-off for the smallest students in the district — incoming Pre-K and kindergarten kids and their families, Friday afternoon at 46 Concord Street. Free backpack for the first 40 students, and every child goes home with a book. If you’ve got a four- or five-year-old about to walk into a classroom for the first time, this is the low-stakes way to take the edge off it, for them and for you. There’s no event page up, so call the Family Center at 203-854-4100 to confirm before you go.

NPS Family Center →

Every box of Constant Comment in America used to come out of Norwalk. Ruth Campbell Bigelow blended the first batch in the kitchen of her New York brownstone in 1945, working from an old colonial recipe she’d dug up, and named it for the steady stream of remarks it got from anyone who tried a cup. When the orders outgrew the brownstone the Bigelows sold it for twenty thousand dollars and bought a factory in Norwalk in 1950, renting out part of the building to cover the note. They rode out the Flood of 1955, moved to a bigger plant here in 1957, and bought their first tea bag machine the year after that. Bigelow spent roughly forty years in this city before opening the Fairfield headquarters in 1990. So the orange-spice smell that used to drift across town on a good day: that was ours.

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