Not the robots. The city…I’ve been watching over the last few years and my city is changing all around me. Some of it is good, some of it is cool, some of it sucks arse. It makes me think about my younger days and the things I loved in the city. More than anything it reminds me that you can’t manufacture cool. Let’s hold up two areas for comparison.

Charles Village:

around late 90’s early 2000 I spent alot of time around this area. I could walk there from where I grew up and I knew a lot of people who lived in the area. The majority of them were college students or dropouts who lived in the apartments all around. The rent wasn’t crazy, but at that age you needed roommates and they were mostly Three story converts so each had some personality to them. Golden Temple was right next to Wazobia’s so you could buy (if you had the money) a Carlton Marshall and some incense then grab a dope salad (best salad bar ever). A few blocks down Charles St. there was Concious Heads where you could get a cut and buy a book. You could walk to the park and kick it or eat on a roof top of one of the apartments. There were decent liquor stores in the area so you could always get a Stout and even some Woodchuck cider if you felt like it. Perhaps it was the high number of students (and drop outs), but there were alot of artists in the are. I can think of two different recording studios on one block not to mention what may have been tucked away. In a word…it was cool. Harmonic convergence kind of cool. Even if for some reason no one I kne was home, I could still go to Charles Village and kick it. More than likely I would randomly meet someone who I become familiar with….especially the opposite sex…Charles Village was a great place to meet women. Either at Golden Temple, a Hopkins party (sisters at Johns Hopkins were so lonely) or just randomly in the street. There were also several “black market venues” in the area. It makes me glad I’m reformed because then I learned that the sad part about dudes who sold weed was that they tended to be home so everyone could get to them, but nobody hung out with them. I always felt a mixture between wanting to invite them along and wanting to hurry up and leave to do my thing. Ahhhh youth. I’m quite sure I heard more new music, wrote more songs, tried more food and flirted with more women in Charles Village than any other place in the city.

Harbor East:

This is the new….when I was really running around this town there was no Harbor East…it was just the end of President st. You could walk through Little Italy to get there…but the only reason would be to get to Fells Point (which was and still is cool). Now there are several things in this area…Whole Foods, Landmark Theatre, Roy’s, Teavolve (which used to be closer to S. Broadway)….there’s a lot of stuff there. The problem with it is this: it feels like it’s trying to be cool which makes it a pretender. I like Landmark…I go to that Wholefoods…I just don’t have the urge to hang out in the area. Harbor east is like that kid that had all the new toys and video games…but no one wanted to go there house. You would avoid them to hangout in someone’s yard throwing rocks. It wasn’t that you didn’t like them…they just tried to hard so they weren’t as much fun. Plus they relied on their toys too much. Harbor East I think, has a bad location if you really know Baltimore…there’s good food in Little Italy and on S. Broadway. The Harbor has a bunch of stores and food spots, but S. Broadway has just as many and you don’t pay tourist money. If you want to do both you can jump on a water taxi that will take you to the heart of either. Harbor east is literally surrounded by these areas and on the south side…water. The area was plenty of new condo’s and parking garages there’s a good place to buy wine and some cool stores. Yet it’s just not cool.

This is what happens when people try to manufacture cool. Charles Village had things in the area to patronize, but it was cool mostly because of the people that came into the area. Harbor East doesn’t have that. Actually it never will. I mentioned this to my girl and she quoted some show that said if you want to find an “up and coming” area, look for where artists live. Eventually that area will be built up and this way you can get in before it prices rise. The bad part about this is…once it’s all built up the artists won’t be able to live there anymore so what initially made it a cool area has been pushed out by….people’s desire to live in a cool area. You can’t manufacture cool…you can be cool, you can join in on cool…but you can’t build it from the ground up, not when we’re talking about a city or part of town. It’s not about stores and design that make and area cool it’s about what happens there. Hampden is similar to a lot of places in various cities…but how many bother to have a festival? South Broadway benefits from it’s proximity to the Harbor and the Water Taxi, but there are stores there that attract certain people. In the end you get a decent mix of people. However, that area has been like that for years. The Harbor has been there for years….but no one really wants to hangout there either. Most people I know wonder why tourists bother to come there in the first place. You can’t manufacture cool.