Thursday, December 09, 2004

The 20 Best Neighborhoods in North America

My great chum and cultural guru Richard Sassaman should be hired by e commerce firms as the data miner. This gentleman can find any needle you want in the internet haystack using his seemingly random powers of staying up all night, precussion, teetotalism, and fast typing (also, you should read his fab book Bar Harbor Police Beat).

A couple of days ago he unearthed this frankly baffling nugget from the Project for Public Spaces that lists the best neigborhoods in North America. Somehow the town where I live, Camden Maine, came fourth. The rest of the list is here:
Project for Public Spaces (PPS) - Placemaking for Communities - The 20 Best Neighborhoods in North America

Hmmm. I may be biased due to the poor road maintenance, terrible public spaces, and social class based system of snow plowing, but I spend most of my off hours in Camden figuring out how to get out of Camden into a more congenial town. I guess if you are a retired lawyer for Mass or NY state the houses in Camden must seem like a real bargain even when greedy locals start charging twice what year round folks can afford. To my jaundiced mind this place offers much to the over sixty, yacht owning, in-town SUV driving (real Mainers drive trucks if they want 4WD, yupster) non-ironic wearers of smocks to the farmers' market types only. For the rest of us, its a pretty place to visit but I'd rather live down the road in Rockland.

We have a municipal ski mountain, for christ's sake. No public transport, but a ski mountain. Great priorities.

Camden; fourth maybe but never forget its the real life inspiration for Peyton Place

Gosh! I'm mighty grumpy and negative today, aren't I? Anyway, enjoy the list but remember any survey that finds Camden so high up the chart has to fatally flawed.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You really shouldn't let people on to your true feelings of camden. why not bask in having other people think you are pretty damn lucky and successful for living where you do? enough with the naysaying! Millville is part of Camden so stand up and wave that Millville pride.

Wisdom Weasel said...

I have Millville pride in spades; it's the rest of the stinkin' burg that's killing me.

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