everything we did on stars hollow saturday

Hey! You’re here. Thank you.

Listen, I know it’s Gilmore Girls season. Trust me, I know. I know that as the weather starts to cool many folks begin to rewatch this classic work of American television. I love this. I also never stopped my rewatch. I imagine this is how football fans feel when everyone gets excited about the Super Bowl. So glad you are here but some of us never left.

When my friend Emily Poe-Crawford shared a few months back about an event in Hartford, CT called Stars Hollow Saturday, you could say my interest was piqued. I was cautiously optimistic, but harbored a concern that such a gimmick couldn’t live up to the hopes of a fan (freak) like me.

Readers, I was wrong.

We love Gilmore Girls because it’s a fictional world where towns are walkable, coffee is bottomless, junk food is plentiful and without consequence, free time is plentiful, nerdiness is celebrated, and everyone is deeply weird (and likely neurodivergent) and impossibly loveable. On Saturday, that fiction felt just a little more real.

Pratt St. is a small, pedestrian friendly street in the heart of downtown Hartford and the geniuses behind this event clearly did their homework because the whole day was a Gilmore Girl’s dream. From a performance by Hep Alien to a dance class from Ms. Patty’s dance studio to a dance marathon to close out the day, the details were doing all the work here. Speaking as someone with just a smidge of a hyperfixation, they nailed it.

Upon entering Pratt St. the first thing we saw was a long line of excited people holding coffee cups and yellow daisies. As one does, we got in the line first and asked what the line was for second. Turns out the line was for the book bus pop-up courtesy of River Bend Books aka Stars Hollow Books for the day. Now that’s a line I want to be in.

As we waited for our turn in the book bus, I watched people taking yellow daisies from a bucket just next to the area where the Hep Alien cover band was playing. I can’t believe that sentence is real.

me realizing what i’ve just walked into.

I know that Gilmore Girls fandom is not going to solve the world’s problems. I know this. I also know seeing everyone walk around with their daisies healed something in me.

I cried. Not for the last time.

This photo of the dancers from Miss Patty’s dance studio (New England Ballet Theater) might be one of my favorites from the day. People are so weird and fun and cool. We committed to the bit. One thing about Gilmore Girls fans and people in New England, we’re going to commit to to the bit.

These two overstimulated introverts barely scraped the surface of what this day had to offer. We shopped, we listened to the town troubadour sing our wedding song, we drank specialty iced lattes - The Sookie for Rebecca (cold brew with cheesecake cold foam sprinkled with strawberry crumbles), and The Stars Hollow swirl for me (Cinnamon Roll latte topped with toffee pieces). We people-watched, keeping an eye out for all the competitors in the lookalike contest. The number of people in little shorts and tie dye pink shirts with big black coats I’m telling you…

There was even one older woman in a full pink suit with a big pearl necklace. She was pushing past people in the Luke’s Diner line so maybe a little method acting there. Oh and we can’t forget the little girl in the big white sweater walking around with a box of corn starch. Respect. Real recognize real.

I hope that this day brought in tons of money to the small businesses who made it possible. I hope that it brought people to Hartford. I hope that the booksellers and dancers and retail workers and food service workers who managed the hordes of Gilmore Girls fans got overtime pay and time off on Sunday. I hope that it brought anyone else even a fraction of the joy it brought me.

I know that comfort TV shows won’t save us. I also know Gilmore Girls has gotten me through some of my toughest days and most desperate nights. I can show up to my own life because I know I have been held in this fictional, but very real world.

I know that sounds dramatic, but if you’ve ever loved a fictional world, and if you are here I bet you have, then you know what I mean.

The worst of us humans is so hard to ignore. These days are not good or easy. Spending a fine, blue-sky Saturday in October in a city in New England supporting local businesses and making inside jokes about our shared emotional support, millennial, early-aughts dramedy felt easy and good. It felt like the best of us.

We came home and told Dunkin all about it.

My only critique is that I didn’t see any dogs dressed up as Paul Anka. There’s always next year.

I love you.

I’m glad you’re here.

Love,

Rosamond