Do You Know The (CT) Muffin Man?

Photo credit: Toby Gingold

Always a hospitable place, the center Slope branch of Connecticut Muffin on the corner of 7th Ave. and 1st St. has a lot of us wondering about the dapper man in the skull cap who is there almost every afternoon, obsessively making some kind of structures out of the straws, cups, lids and napkins that they graciously provide.

Some days he takes up two tables in this tiny place and they leave him alone. It started in the summer when he positioned himself outside, drumming very intensely on benches and tables, then he moved inside and began his "hobby," as they call it. His name Is Robert; they don't know anything else about him but have no problem with him unless he does his drumming inside or the café is full, i.e., during the early morning 321 rush. He's silent, absorbed.

Who is he, what's his deal? To some of us, it's a nice throwback to the old days of the Slope, when similarly eccentric souls were everywhere