GPS: 39.33116473798193, -76.63368210196495
Current home of the Hampden Chess Club, an open-air society dedicated to the friendly pursuit of excellence in the game of chess. Most commonly occupied by members of same on random weekend afternoons and early evenings. Schedule varies, membership informal.
Shares a common intersection with Chesapeake Pawn (home of many questionable DeWalt tools I sometimes eye up, Sandy’s (a local place to buy Ravens jerseys), Grano an Italian pasta bar with a very nice owner, the True Vine (uber-hipster record store = limited selection, depending what you’re into), Squidfire (another t-shirt store?) in the old Hampden Atomic Comics location, and Redman’s Hall, a place which as far as I can tell contains no actual “red-men” in relation to Native American Indians, or what-have-you.
Mostly neighborhood white dudes as far as I can tell. They seem to sit around and drink beer is my guess. Apparently they might have “bangin’” shrimp salad, but its a club to which I’ve never been invited.
Also on this corner is a subs & pizza place called Philly’s Best (even though this is Baltimore), and they also carry some Indian dishes… though I’ve never tried any. Some Chinese place I don’t know the name of and probably won’t ever venture into, and The Golden West, which is really the frosting on the cake for a variety of reasons…
To use an art school word, it’s a real juxtaposition. Lots of different things happening culturally and within the neighborhood, even with many different nationalities. It also kind of divides part of the hill in the neighborhood topography. The one way street comes down the hill from Griffith’s Tavern, down past the Foreign Legion on the right and Red Men’s Hall immediately after that. The niche I set up in is kind of the back of an old church which is now mostly abandoned except for some offices in the basement. I figure it’s a good place on the sidewalk not in the way of thoroughfare, but still in the action, and there’s no business interest right there on my side of the sidewalk who might complain. Cops drive by all the time and seem not to notice. A couple beat cops at Hampdenfest stopped to look, but only because one of them wanted to play a game.
“You must have fun when you get stationed at events like this.”
“Huh, what?” the cop is watching the game.
“This must be fun, to work these things,” one of the UMBC kids I was talking to said to the cop.
“Oh, I have fun no matter what I do…” he walks off with an approving look. “Whatever keeps me outta trouble.”
A double shooting happened on this corner recently. During high commercial evening traffic hours, excerpted from the Baltimore Sun:
Will Bauer was having a late dinner at Grano Pasta Bar on The Avenue when the shots were fired on the street outside.
Some customers hid underneath tables, while others cried out in fear. After about a minute, nearly all the patrons scurried to the back of the establishment before police arrived and it became apparent that the two people shot were not seriously injured, he said.
Bauer, who lives in Hampden, and several other residents and business owners said Tuesday that they don’t believe crime is a serious problem in their neighborhood and that they think the shooting was an isolated incident.
I’m not trying to change the world or anything, but David Shenk, author of an excellent chess history, entitled “The Immortal Game”, writes on the history of chess as the pre-cursor game chaturanga and shantraj:
In a critical departure from previous board games from the region, these games contained no dice or other instruments of chance. Skill alone determined the outcome. “Understanding [is] the essential weapon” proclaims the ancient Persian poem Chatrang-namak (The book of chatrang), one of the oldest books mentioning the game. “Victory is obtained by the intellect.”
This was a war game, in other words, where ideas were more important and more powerful than luck or brute force. In a world that had been forever defined by chaos and violence, this seemed to be a significant turn.
I’ve also never had a problem here, and I’ve been out on this corner usually between the hours of 5-9pm weekend nights, and a couple weekday nights this past month since I’ve been back in town. People, for the most part, have been cool with me. That or they just ignore whatever they think I’m doing. I like to think at this point that I’m just becoming background noise.
“This is like something you’d see in Paris,” one of two upper middle class ladies said today, just after I got set up. They were very excited, but not ready to commit to a game. Some people take pictures, but never play. It means different things to different people. That’s the nature of public spaces though, they can become a stage for us to create meaning as a community.
- END -
ASSOCIATED CONTENT @TMBCHR (Auto-Generated)
- I need a place to live!!
- Time Botcher
- hf_talktalk_cl_ws_silver
- Seeking: Tri-Corner Hat
- Hampden Honfest Juggler
