"Something positive happened to York Road"

Last Saturday, Towson threw a parade for Michael Phelps, Katie Hoff, and a paralympian whose name I have forgotten. I've loved parades for as long as I can remember.
I can remember photographing the Westminster, MD, Centennial parade in 1976; I still have those pictures (and they aren't too bad given the state of cameras back then available to girls)

I didn't participate in this parade but I've participated in the Charles Village Parade more than once, as well as the Baltimore International Rhythm and Drumming Society's parade.

Any day society makes a pedestrian more important than a car, is a pretty good day in my book; and York Road was blocked off to traffic for about 4 hours.

I mentioned to a senior citizen viewer of the parade, (who I see frequently in my region) that I think this just might be the only positive thing to happen to York Road in 50 years. She replied that it's probably the only positive thing to happen to York Road ever. She's been here her whole life. Brings me back to a simpler time that I would have loved to experience. The carless society. Right after the parade, kids skateboarded and skipped arm and arm right in the middle of York Road. I should have brought a camera.

A woman in my bldg. who has never ever spoken a positive word to me in 3 years, asked me if I had seen it and agreed that it was pretty exciting. Another woman who I saw in Bagelo after the parade (and who I see regularly in Bagelo) who never speaks to me, also initiated a conversation with me. Makes me think about the power of bringing the arts to blighted communities, and "inner city" schools for example, and how it excites people who don't usually get excited about much of anything.

It was only the 2nd time I'd seen any sense of community on York Road. (The other time was a safety festival, that I happened upon accidentally about a year ago on a 2 block section of York Road)

Despite the fact that there was and still is, major "PHelps oversaturation" in the media, and still is, parade watchers, and residents of Cedarcroft, Lake Walker, Stoneleigh , Rodgers Forge, Towson, are going to remember this event, with great emotional warmth, for years and even decades to come!