April 9, 2004
Baltimore's Upper Fells Point: Worst of all worlds
When living in a generally poor Northeastern city such as this, one might reasonably expect to have one of two possible constellations of problems in your neighborhood.
Maybe you're in a rough area, with drug dealers on the corner, pit bulls owning the park, and so many car break-ins that you just leave a taped shopping bag in the window to avoid your third call to the insurance company in a few months.
(Not just our sedan, but many others in the neighborhood wear paper-bag windows, and sometimes my walks take place through a sea of shattered, celadon-green safety glass.)
Or you might be a bit luckier and live in a Yuppified district, where higher home values have driven out the hookers and hillbillies (who actually can be far more intriguing individuals). But in this case parking becomes impossible, with each 15-foot-wide rowhouse needing spaces for two SUVs. Your once private roof deck is ringed by others, with satellite dishes set up exactly to block your water view and chimes hung by those who have never read letters to "Dear Abby" by neighbors driven insane by those who crave quiet.
In an improving neighborhood, some rowhouses become home to three or four twenty-something girls and their rotating boyfriends, chewing up most of the block's parking spaces, and oblivious to how their drunken revelry at 2 a.m. Sunday morning travels undiminished into your rowhouse bedroom.
Welcome to Upper Fells Point, Baltimore's eastside neighborhood with the worst of both worlds.
The neighborhood that first enthralled me when I arrived in Baltimore in January 1987 seems quite tarnished now. Despite constant rehabbing in these parts, and the more than doubling of our house value, life often feels crowded and mean.
The drug corner
Walking our two shelties the two blocks to the nearest park crystalizes the problem. The walk has turned into a virtual gauntlet. A drug gang arrives each evening at the corner store at Ann and Pratt streets, slinging bicycles over the entry steps and loitering with pit bulls under the benevolent eye of the Sri Lankan shopkeepers.
DeWitt, Erika and their crew of dealers arrived exactly two years ago. We had a flurry of calling the police on them, but I think everyone eventually realized that the shopkeepers want their trade and are the crux of the problem. And the more we called police, the more the kids' most hard-core friends arrived to make trouble.
I know one neighbor who just left Ann Street because of the constant "transients" the store attracts and is much happier on her quiet street in Canton.
If I steer clear of that corner, I must cross one-way Pratt street outside of a crosswalk and in the blind spot of turning drivers.
Dog poop
One block up Ann Street, an unleashed dog with Yuppie owners (new) on the north side of the street charged us on Wednesday night. The south side has long has Jake, another frequently unleashed dog. We can now walk in the street I suppose, or take Regester Street, strewn with broken glass.
I pick up after my dogs once at the park, stepping carefully around giant piles of turds left by apparently 95 percent of the other dog owners. For this trouble, I was visited today by Animal Control, with a complaint that I (!) don't pick up after my dogs. I showed the officer my stack of plastic bags sitting right beside the front door and demanded to know who reported that I didn't pick up after my dogs.
Oh ... the complaint is anonymous. Hmmm, do you think it could possibly be a drug dealer, or one of their sympathizers?
The drug kids operate with complete impunity, and their cohorts work the system to load petty irritants on the taxpayer.
The neighborhood is now packed with unleashed dogs (and snapping leashed pit bulls) making every walk tense.
Rehabbers
Adding insult to the injury of petty and/or criminal neighbors are the rehabbers, including the flaming jackass who did the property next door and rammed a new roof deck against our chimney with no gap whatsoever. The inspector made him cover the side of the (flammable wooden) deck with a sheet of metal. So much for our water view. How the new neighbors are supposed to stain and waterproof their wood, jammed against our brick wall, is a mystery.
Our rehabbers, including out-of-town dilettantes who read somewhere that property investment was the next big thing after the dot.com collapse, take up parking spaces with their waste containers, spray acid everywhere when they clean brick, and make our neighborhoods filthy, dirty, gravelly messes. Supposedly this should eventually improve Fells Point, but it is a painful process when you have so much substandard housing stock that rehabbing looks like a 30-year permanent condition.
Some of our neighbors point to our increasing property values. What happens when you simply decide you don't like where you live very much any more?
Yuppies
I moved to Baltimore with a mind to exploring it like a foreign country, and was amazed by my early encounters with neighbors including Crazie Margie, Crazy Bob (you can see a certain nickname pattern developing ...), Cissy the porch-sitter with the foghorn voice, her nefarious and delinquent grandsons Karl and Bonzo, and Melvin with his safety pin holding his coat together and his "I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up" ballcap.
Now, our neighbors are people from ... Montgomery County, Maryland, where I'm from. Nothing against that, except that one redeeming feature of being in a discordant area is a few laughs from the colorful characters. Now all these characters have moved, to Pennsylvania and Ohio, no doubt after careful investigation into various Social Service entitlements.
Let me distinguish between yuppies, who are big into catalogs of home furnishings, and homesteaders, also young professionals but with a certain toughness and realism about real life in the city. I would put my neighbors Blaire and Linda into the homesteaders category.
What's left for us homesteaders? A yuppie suburb, with more crime!
- posted by jbelliveau at 4:53 PM in The Neighborhood
- Comments
So did you know that if you type "Upper Fells Point" into Google, the 2nd overall link to come up is your belly-aching about the great neighborhood we are working so hard to turn around? That's a real pity, don't you think? Maybe you should try and look at the bright side of people moving in and trying to save the neighborhood. Believe me, it isn't hard to see the positive in it. Average home value has tripled in 3 years. Wow, that's bad, huh? Statisitcs show crime is going down in our neighborhood every day. How horrible. A massive new, high-profile bio-tech park is being built to your direct north which will provide good jobs -- jobs held by people who will be moving into the few remaining vacant homes in your own neighborhood. As a matter of fact, I am amazed you see so much negative when so much positive is blooming all around you. Heck, even the Orioles are winning these days. No one we talk to in Upper Fells shares your pessimism. Could it be that maybe the problem is you?
Sincerely,
An apparently unwelcome home-renovating yuppie
Posted by: Your Neighbors at April 30, 2004 3:41 PMI agree with "Your Neighbors". Although some of the things Miss Belliveau said is disheartening but this is the city. Things like this are going to happen. Rehabbing can only improve the hood. Eventually, I hope, it will become a highly sought after area and the Park will be maintained more and more each year. One of the problems with this City is that they DON'T have enough profressionals living in the city. Not enough higher income people to fund the coffers. Also, it's a Democratic city, which isn't a bad thing but Democrats cannot manage money.
Miss Belliveau is a problem identifier, not a solver. We need more solvers.
My wife and I would fall in the Homesteader category. We just moved in from VA.
Posted by: Homesteader at May 4, 2004 4:41 PMI would like to comment on your analysis of the Upper Fells Point neighborhood, where I too reside.
You wrote: “Let me distinguish between yuppies, who are big into catalogs of home furnishings, and homesteaders, also young professionals but with a certain toughness and realism about real life in the city. I would put my neighbors Blaire and Linda into the homesteaders category.
What's left for us homesteaders? A yuppie suburb, with more crime!”You distinguish between the undesirable yuppies and the desirable homesteaders (into which category you place yourself) by noting that the homesteaders have “a certain toughness and realism about life in the city.” Despite your claimed “realism” about city life, you lament the drug dealers, pit bulls and car break-ins, which are ever-present attributes of city life. Even assuming that the yuppies have differing expectations than the “homesteaders,” how exactly does that impact you or the quality of life in Upper Fells Point? Aren’t neighbors with higher expectations more desirable than neighbors who are complacent towards such a negative environment? It seems as though your efforts to find some fault with the yuppies is a thinly-veiled attempt to rationalize your obvious hatred of yuppies. There are plenty of areas within walking distance frequented by the “more interesting” prostitutes, hillbillies and “crazy people,” of whom you are so fond. That is one of the great things about Upper Fells Point—such diversity of people and things to do within walking distance.
Parking Problem and Twenty-Something Girls
Honestly, do you really think that the single-family homes occupied by three or four people are the primary cause of parking problems? I believe that you are ignoring the tenements in the neighborhood that house ten to twenty people that bring many operating and disabled cars to Ann Street. Also, the ongoing rehabilitation of homes in the neighborhood, which you also lambaste, will reduce the number of cars. The trend in rehabilitations is to convert multi-family houses/apartments into single-family houses. This trend will reduce the number of Ann Street residents and give you more open spaces to park your car. While I’m on the subject of parking, I must say that parking in Upper Fells Point is hardly a problem. You cannot always park outside your front door, but if you live in the city, you have to be realistic, don’t you? I have never had to park more than one block from my house.
Ann Street Market
Your comment that the owners of the Ann Street Market are the “crux of the [drug dealer] problem” really floored me. Give me a break. I suspect you have no substantiation for such a comment; or even evidence that drug dealers hang out at the market.
Dogs
I fully understand your concern with unleashed dogs. While I rarely see an unleashed dog, when I do, it causes much concern. You also complain about snapping leased dogs, which is a category that your own dogs fall into.
You wrote: “Some of our neighbors point to our increasing property values. What happens when you simply decide you don't like where you live very much any more?”
I dunno. What does happen when you decide you don’t like where you live very much anymore? I guess you sell your house and move. I have the names of some realtors if you are interested.
Posted by: Unwelcome Neighbor? at May 5, 2004 12:13 AMI love these 'homesteaders' who are so close minded and reluctant to positive change. Were they not new to the neighborhood at any time? Does the acceptable cut-off date for moving into the neighborhood stop at 1987 when you moved in? And why must the neighborhood remain in a constant state of mediocrity for them to be content with it?
As far as the drug problem goes, I doubt you'll see us 'yuppies' standing in line for crack...we're too busy being productive members of society-working full time jobs, improving our homes and the neighborhods we live in....it's a little difficult to work 40-60 hours a week and be a drug addict at the same time. If you watch these drug corners for a few days - you'll get a good idea of who the regular customers are - low to middle income, late 20's to 40's white and black males and females who grew up in this neighborhood. Sounds like what you're looking for is another Highlandtown where unwed uneducated teenage mothers slap their 3 babies around on the front steps of their homes all day while their parents nurse from a 40 of Ripple and play Scratch off lottery tickets.
The influx of young people coming into Upper Fells Point and buying and fixing the houses has had a positive impact on property values and community resources like Patterson Park. If anyone wants to see a positive impact that old members and new members have brought to the neighborhood TOGETHER...just check out
www.upperfellspoint.org
Posted by: Upper Fells Point is the BEST place to live at September 13, 2004 2:32 PM
