Controversy after a stabbing along a Fort Avenue pub crawl this past weekend has raised questions about tensions in a neighborhood and gentrification, and now it seems there is an effort afoot to require pub crawls to get permits, according to Evan at the City That Breeds blog, who attended a community meeting on the topic last night. It seems a good time to revisit a story from a few years ago by former reporter John Woestendiek, who visited nearly every bar along the strip.
It's worth reading (expanded grafic and key) in light of what happend Saturday afternoon involving a pub crawl to raise money for a flag football team called the Hitmen. Two fights broke out, one ending in a participant stabbed three times in the back at East Fort and Covington, near a convenience store.
The incident has resulted in voluminous commentary on this blog and elsewhere and sparked an angry debate over visitors who drunkingly parade from bar to bar, old-time South Baltimore residents and newcomers who are part of a trend (albeit slowing) gentrification movement.
John's story illustrates the old and new while exploring how the groups mix and mingle, more often than not in harmony. Here is a taste of what John wrote (complete story here):
Fifty years after it opened, the Victory Tavern had become a haunt for the defeated.
Outside, prostitutes paced past a stern, if grammatically incorrect, sign on the once-proud bar's peeling paint exterior. "If Your Not Buying," it warned, "Don't Come In." Inside, drugs were bought and sold, and the patrons were a glum, down-on-their-luck bunch.
Everybody didn't know your name at the Victory Tavern, nor did anyone really want to.
That was less than two years ago. Step inside today and you will find well-dressed, wine-sipping young professionals, two flat-panel televisions and lively discussions about mutual funds or the playful impertinence of the zinfandel — a scene so civilized you would think it was an entirely different bar in an entirely different neighborhood.
And, essentially, it is.
The Victory, as it was named after the outbreak of World War II, is now the Vine. The corner it sits on - Fort Avenue at Hanover Street - is changing as well, part of a neighborhood once considered plain old South Baltimore, but now increasingly referred to as "Federal Hill South."
What's going on along Fort Avenue and elsewhere in a changing Baltimore is gentrification: Young, moneyed professionals move in. Prices and taxes go up. Older, working-class residents move out.
What is gained in the transition is immediately visible — from roof decks to day spas, from coffeehouses to condos. What is lost along the road to historic Fort McHenry first paved in 1852, is less concrete.