This neighborhood has attracted people to its pubs since the first shipyard was built here in the mid-1700s. In 2013, very weekend sees a line of cars, backed up all around Broadway Square and down Thames Street (pronounced around here exactly how it looks) for hours, packed with Johns Hopkins students and professionals alike, all looking for a parking spot. Hundreds more are on foot, pushing in and out of bars, their footsteps becoming more unsure as the hour gets later. Did I say Friday? I meant any day at all.
When I moved to Fell's in 2008, I was attracted to both the historic seaport and the dangerously fun energy, which rises and falls depending on weather, sports, or if yesterday was a special event that everyone already went out for. I like both the rowdy pub crawlers and the quiet day-drinkers. I like the tourists who I see listening to the same stories that I've heard for years about ghosts, murder, and Edgar Alan Poe. In fact, by this point, some of those tourists are likely telling new visitors the version they heard from me.
Friends of mine who live in the French Quarter say they're constantly asked by visitors how they can stand all the noise, to which the answer is always, "Frenchman Street sounded like madness at 3 a.m. long before I moved here." I feel the same way about Fell's.
But some of my neighbors don't like what they say has happened to the area. While not as infected with frat boys and party girls to the degree of its neighbor across the harbor, Federal Hill, Fell's has become, inexplicably to longtime residents, a bar scene. A tourist attraction. Even worse, an upscale residential area.
Reading our local newsletter, The Fell's Pointer, you'd get the feeling that the influx of younger professionals is the worst thing that's happened since Hurricane Isabel. The writers often remark, in print as well as in person, how yuppies are always "checking their Rolex" and "rushing to work with a briefcase". Even if the story is about a local church's architecture, a jab is often worked in about "a 3-piece suit".
By the way, isn't that just "a suit" these days? Did Fell's Point get all its yuppies from the 1980s?
Other than their chronic desire to apparently be on time, I'm never sure what it is the yuppies are doing to ruin the integrity of what I've been told was, up until about 30 years ago, a rotting hive full of unsavory characters and break-ins. Sure, it was quieter, less expensive, and fewer college students were peeing in the square but there were way more fighting with drunks and getting stabbed for your wallet.
I live on a side street, "the alley", with people who've lived here for 80 years, a few young families, and some people who, like me, haven't been here long. Unlike the elite who write for The Fell's Pointer, no one's putting on airs in the alley, so, for the most part, we're thrilled when construction starts on brand new, mega-rowhomes, some of which sell for $460,000, because that's an investment our new neighbors are making in our community. There's still plenty of criticism in the alley, make no mistake, just not for what someone wears to work.
One of my neighbors, Earl, an 86-year-old former longshoreman who has lived in the same tiny house for the last 65 years, thinks it's crazy that anyone pays that much to live here.
When I moved to Fell's in 2008, I was attracted to both the historic seaport and the dangerously fun energy, which rises and falls depending on weather, sports, or if yesterday was a special event that everyone already went out for. I like both the rowdy pub crawlers and the quiet day-drinkers. I like the tourists who I see listening to the same stories that I've heard for years about ghosts, murder, and Edgar Alan Poe. In fact, by this point, some of those tourists are likely telling new visitors the version they heard from me.
Friends of mine who live in the French Quarter say they're constantly asked by visitors how they can stand all the noise, to which the answer is always, "Frenchman Street sounded like madness at 3 a.m. long before I moved here." I feel the same way about Fell's.
But some of my neighbors don't like what they say has happened to the area. While not as infected with frat boys and party girls to the degree of its neighbor across the harbor, Federal Hill, Fell's has become, inexplicably to longtime residents, a bar scene. A tourist attraction. Even worse, an upscale residential area.
Reading our local newsletter, The Fell's Pointer, you'd get the feeling that the influx of younger professionals is the worst thing that's happened since Hurricane Isabel. The writers often remark, in print as well as in person, how yuppies are always "checking their Rolex" and "rushing to work with a briefcase". Even if the story is about a local church's architecture, a jab is often worked in about "a 3-piece suit".
By the way, isn't that just "a suit" these days? Did Fell's Point get all its yuppies from the 1980s?
Other than their chronic desire to apparently be on time, I'm never sure what it is the yuppies are doing to ruin the integrity of what I've been told was, up until about 30 years ago, a rotting hive full of unsavory characters and break-ins. Sure, it was quieter, less expensive, and fewer college students were peeing in the square but there were way more fighting with drunks and getting stabbed for your wallet.
I live on a side street, "the alley", with people who've lived here for 80 years, a few young families, and some people who, like me, haven't been here long. Unlike the elite who write for The Fell's Pointer, no one's putting on airs in the alley, so, for the most part, we're thrilled when construction starts on brand new, mega-rowhomes, some of which sell for $460,000, because that's an investment our new neighbors are making in our community. There's still plenty of criticism in the alley, make no mistake, just not for what someone wears to work.
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| They even say hi. |
Actually, what he said to me was, "You know what I paid for my house? Those people are god-damned idiots. Who the fuck wants to live down here for that? Stupid. No god-damned sense."
$460,000 does seem like a lot for a house compared to what Earl paid; however, in all fairness, houses tend to cost much less when you buy them in 1948, they're 900 square feet, and they're in an area that no one wants to live in anyway.
$460,000 does seem like a lot for a house compared to what Earl paid; however, in all fairness, houses tend to cost much less when you buy them in 1948, they're 900 square feet, and they're in an area that no one wants to live in anyway.
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