by Paul Bass | Mar 27, 2011 10:41 pm

(12) Comments | Commenting has been closed | E-mail the Author

Posted to: Downtown

They hugged. They shivered. They laughed, and they cried. In the end, hundreds of people who jammed Pitkin Plaza Sunday night to mourn the death of 23-year-old cycling and underground-music enthusiast Mitchell Dubey demonstrated the life he brought to two vibrant communities.

The emotional scene took place late Sunday afternoon on the Orange Street plaza that has hosted performances of underground bands and that leads to the front door of Devil’s Gear Bike Shop.

Mitchell Dubey was an integral part of both scenes. Until a little after 10 p.m. last Thursday, when a man with a shirt pulled over his face walked into the Bassett Street house where Dubey lived, ordered Dubey and his housemates to sit down, and after Dubey pleaded, “Dude, just put down the gun,” fired a deadly bullet into Dubey’s chest, then fled. Police are investigating the case.

Two of those housemates told the crowd at the Pitkin Plaza memorial service Sunday night that they were grateful to be able to offer parting words to their friend before he died.

“Andy was the first one to realize in the house that this might be the last time he gets to say something to Mitch,” said the other housemate, named Emily. (She asked that her last name be withheld.) “And I know Mitch heard him. Mitch was alive and Mitch heard Andy say, ‘I love you man.’”

“And I got to tell him that he didn’t do anything wrong and that he didn’t deserve it.”

Click the play arrow above to watch her tearful comments.

The randomness of the killing—and the the combination of passion and gentleness Dubey displayed with people throughout New Haven in three short years here—provoked an outpouring of emotion in town. Click on this thread for an example.

For days following the killing, Devil’s Gear, the bike shop where Dubey worked and was a generous, friendly fixture, stayed open, more to serve as a communal gathering place than to move merchandise. Some people came to check in. Others brought flowers, gift cards, offers for places for Dubey’s family to stay while in town. One customer brought in a used bike; sell it, he told Devil’s Gear, and use the proceeds to help the family pay for the funeral.

Devil’s Gear owner Matthew Feiner invited people to stop by the shop at 5 p.m. Sunday to share memories along with Dubey’s mother and sister, who were flying in from Los Angeles.

So many people showed up that Feiner had to move the event out into the windy, chilly plaza and borrow sound equipment. There musicians, cycling enthusiasts, friend and relatives shared stories and tears. Stories about Dubey’s bike repair lessons and generosity with his work colleagues. About his travels with bands and concerts he loved attending, some of them vegan potluck affairs in his or his friends’ homes, part of a “straight edge” community underground circuit of booze-, meat- and drug-free hard-charging musical gatherings.

Kyle Anthony, one of Dubey’s closest friends, described Dubey’s reaction when the band at one such concert played a Black Flag cover.

“He went apeshit,” Anthony said, eliciting chuckles throughout the Pitkin crowd. He climbed on a couch and prepared to jump off, apparently a trademark act. First he threw his glasses off behind him.

“I’ll just go get ‘em later,” Dubey said.

“We were like: ‘He won’t be able to see anything!’ So we went to look for his glasses,” Anthony recalled.

Two weeks before his death, Dubey visited his family in L.A. His sister, Lauren Dubey, who’s 24, told the Pitkin crowd that he told her then that he might want to move back home.

“You’ve made such an amazing life for yourself in Connecticut,” she remembered telling him. “You’re not ready. You need to stay there.”

His reply: “I know. You’re right.”

Her reply to his reply: “I’m always right. I’m your big sister.”

Her tear-filled message to the Pitkin crowd: “We had no idea his family in Connecticut was so big ... We are so grateful.”

In conversations apart from the rally Lauren Dubey and her mother Randi Dubey described how friends offered them places to stay (they chose to rent a hotel room instead), how they ferried them around town, helped pack up Mitchell’s belongings on Bassett Street Sunday and ship them back to L.A.

“What a great community of kids,” Randi Dubey said. “These kids are pure. They’re real people. They say what they mean. They do what they mean. It’s helping us grieve.

“I wish we could take them all home with us.”

Some of the young people, such as Tabar and Byram, plan to fly out to L.A. next week for another memorial service for their friend Mitchell.

Sarah Ellis plans to be there, too. She lives in San Diego. She flew to New Haven for Sunday’s gathering in Pitkin Plaza.

Joining a throng hanging out in Bru Cafe before the event, Ellis recalled how she and Dubey became friends through the music scene out west. They had a short-lived two-person folk-punk group called Blinketforce.

“We didn’t do much beside record terrible songs in my room,” she said, chuckling.

Craig Berndt met Dubey out west, too. Berndt drummed for a band called the Flaming Tsunamis. The band was touring. Dubey joined the tour. That’s how he ended up in New Haven, where he stayed.

Berndt left the band, and New Haven, in 2007. He kept in touch with Dubey. And he came from his home in Long Island to New Haven for Sunday’s memorial.

Lauren Dubey described New Haven detectives working the case as “very wonderful.” They’ve shared information and gave the family “full-time protection as were were packing up the house.”

They and the housemates told the family how a man came to the door last Thursday night. Dubey and his housemates opened the door.

“They have no idea who this person was,” she said. “He had his shirt pulled over his face and a hoodie on.”

He ordered the housemates to sit on a couch. “Dude, just put the gun down,” her brother asked the man, according to Lauren Dubey. That’s when he fired the deadly shot and fled the house. (A week earlier someone had burglarized the home when it was empty. Police haven’t yet said whether they’ve determined if the two incidents are linked.)

The housemates asked Lauren if she wanted to hear the rest of the story. “Some of it I’m not ready to hear yet,” she said she told them, “I’m not ready to hear yet.”

Beyond their remarks to the crowd Sunday, the housemates said they’d prefer not to discuss details of what happened that night. They will no longer live in the Bassett Street house, Andy said.

A memorial concert will raise money for the Dubey family. It takes place at the Madison Arts Barn on April 3 at 6 p.m. Featured bands: The Flaming Tsunamis, Call It Arson, My Heart To Joy, Slingshot Dakota, and Brunt Of It. $10 minimum donation. No alcohol.