If you’re looking for beer, go to Bar right around the corner. Owl shop for whiskey. Anchor Spa and Ordinary for cocktails. Owl Shop, Anchor Spa and Ordinary are all within a block of the music hall.

Same. Go for the food more than for the cocktails, though they are still good, but probably don’t go if you have a vegetarian or vegan in your party. If you don’t, then go.

Sunday/Monday, Barcelona is pretty much your only option for that. Most good places in New Haven are closed those days.

Pre-pandemic they were really good in my experience. Haven’t been back since hut haven’t heard good things post-pandemic either.

I wouldn’t really call any of the places listen above diverse at all. But they do fit your criteria otherwise and are very nice towns. If you want more diversity, you would just have to go a bigger town like Norwalk or Stamford. CT is still very segregated in some ways, due to historical redlining.

Wear whatever you want. People might be a bit surprised to see someone wearing a cowboy hat up here, but I can’t really imagine many people judging or be weird about it, especially once they can tell you’re from Texas.

Good bar and restaurant scene. Definitely a younger city, but a good mix of ages overall. Travel to New York is easy. Pretty good music scene. Sporting events not so much though. We don’t really have any local teams in New Haven, so the most you’ll really get is Yale home games. Because of Yale and all of the other universities in the area, everyone is very used to newcomers so making new friends and acquaintances isn’t difficult, at least in my experience. I’d recommend Trinity and Christopher Martins for pubs.

Bridgeport definitely gets a bad rap, but it’s not perfect either. There’s bad neighborhoods and good ones. I live on the Stratford line in a nice quiet little neighborhood and have never had an issue. If you’re used to being further into Fairfield county you’ll probably enjoy Black Rock, which is on the Fairfield side of town, and would still be much more affordable than Norwalk or Stamford living by yourself. Just be wary of rush hour, it gets pretty awful going south bound.