Hampden is better than Hon Fest.
When people are ragging on the Hon thing and Hon Fest, I hope they’re not crapping on Hampden entirely. There’s much more to this cool little neighborhood than the big-haired tourist trappings. I’m not saying that I hate Hon Fest or anything. Certainly not that I hate Hampden, where I grew up.
Hon Fest this year was kind of boring for me, though. It was the same thing as last year. Even more ignorant county yuppies, too. Not all people from the county and not all yuppies/buffies. It’s a special brand of white asshole who walks with zero awareness of other people (just how they drive, which is scary as hell); wears special boring white people clothing that you can only find outside the city limits; displays a sense of entitlement to own Hampden because they went to Cafe’ Hon once — at night! “Look, Chahllles, the city’s not so frightening!”
I think that a large part of Hon Fest’s popularity is that it’s an excuse for white people who fled the city to come back to it in a way that they feel is safe. Hampden is still mostly white, and most of the people at the festival are white, too. Don’t think pointing out a minority you saw this weekend proves me wrong. I said “large” and “most”! And I’m only half kidding.
Personally, I don’t enjoy celebrating Hampden’s “heritage” in itself. The Hon stereotype comes from a lack of money, education (if you say “lack of class” I’ll kick your nuts!) and exposure to other cultures. If you’re actually from Hampden, you know that the neighborhood’s non-Hon heritage involves racism, punks and blandness, underneath all the things Cafe’ Hon allegedly celebrates. The only thing to celebrate about Hampden’s past is that it’s gone.
Instead, when I celebrate anything about Hampden, I celebrate what’s new and better about it and about The Avenue. Places like Atomic Books and Atomic Pop, Salamander Books, Common Ground, Dogwood, Golden West, bike racks, a night life, people who aren’t all white — these are things worth celebrating. This is all much preferable to the shithole Hampden was in the 80s and early 90s.
Yes, it was a shithole. If you don’t know that, that’s not my fault. You weren’t here. But it’s true. What’s also true is that Cafe’ Hon didn’t save anything on its own, no matter how much that gets repeated. It took a lot of people and a lot of business owners to make that happen. I’m sick of seeing one person get all the credit, and someone who lives in the frikkin county at that.
June 17th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Thanks for this post. I’ve only lived in Hampden 1 year now but feel closer to your side than the county. When I was looking at neighborhoods to move to in Baltimore I noticed just how geographically isolated Hampden was from the city. I thought that this may have played a big role in how it was able to be what it was/is: wierd and real. With Wyman park on one side and Jones falls/83/Druid Hill park on the other, with Roland Park up top and the parks coming together on the bottom the place just seemed isolated. On todays maps that says “safe” but I’m sure on yesterdays maps it said “isolated”. And I came from the poor white working class of the Midwest so Hampden just makes sense to me. A lot of the city makes sense to me in that way.
The thing I find sadly ironic is that as Hampden gentrifies it uses the legacy of the white working class to brand itself but in order to do this it has to push the existing white working class away so it can sell the idea to the rest of the world. Shameful.
Nice post.