Annapolis Main Street Fire - A Personal Account
According to televised reports, a serious fire has struck several Main Street Annapolis stores, destroying at least one and damaging several others. If you have not visited downtown Annapolis, most of the retail stores sit in rows of retail shops, crudely comparable to townhouse, with occasional alleys. Many of the stores are in historic or near-historic buildings, and the entire downtown district, business and residential, is governed by a powerful Historic Annapolis board.
As a kid, I would occasionally walk from my grandmother's house at 720 Second Street in Eastport (whose residents never fully accepted the annexation by Annapolis in the 1950's) down Second Street to Chesapeake Avenue, up Chesapeake to Sixth Street and then over the Spa Creek Bridge into downtown Annapolis. I took this route because my mother forbade me from taking any other route, my uncle having been stabbed on at least one occasion by walking in the dark into the wrong block. There was a hard liquor pool hall on my route; obviously forbidden for a 11 year-old bony kid. Now the neighborhood has gone hard-core yuppie; the most common crimes there now are probably tax evasion or state campaign finance law violations. The former pool hall sells, predictably enough, pastries and lattes.
On my trips downtown I would often visit Hack's, a hobby store that sold camera equipment, I think stamp collecting materials and, most importantly, Dungeons and Dragons materials. I usually did not have money to buy anything but looking at the stuff was neat. Hack's had been located near the center of this weekend's fire, if I understand the reports; Hack's closed long ago and was replaced by some other tenant.
Downtown was good for an 11 year-old; it provided some independence but was safe, and a car was a hindrance rather than a help. I suspect that downtown Annapolis is less kid friendly today, with the proliferation of high-end retail, lobbyist-oriented
haute cuisine and ubiquitous coffee shops. But two of the stores damages by this fire were an ice cream shop and a candy store.
I also enjoyed going into downtown to visit the bookstore there; whether from creeping illiteracy or the direct or indirect effects of the internet, that bookstore closed some time ago.
I did not hear of any injuries from the fire; obviously my best wishes for rapid recovery to all affected.
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Bruce Godfrey
