Urban Perception

Rowing along the working waterfront with Captain Colleen. 
I am in the bow seat. Photo by Captain Dan.

When they say that a picture is worth a thousand words, they might have this long-winded geographer in mind. When I post photos like this online, I often write something like "in honor of the banker who told me New Bedford is not near the water." With this latest photo, I decided I should explain that bit of snarkiness. I am doing it here because there are -- I am convinced -- some important geographic lessons to be had from one offhand remark.

About a decade ago, we decided that we were interested in buying a weekend getaway. Literally -- we wanted to get away from our house in the middle of the college town where we were both working. NOT for the reasons some might expect -- unhinged weekend parties were an occasional problem, but of limited duration. What we needed to get away from was little-league football. Not the football itself, but the loudspeakers -- always set to 11 and running late into every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night because our town had bought bright lights and big speakers at the same time. Even some of the college students complained about the constant noise, but we were all castigated as anti-kid and (worse) anti-sports. 

So we started to explore options for weekends, especially in the autumn. A recent graduate from New Bedford pointed us to a sweet little house for sale in. the neighborhood where she grew up, and it seemed perfect. We would have considered a cottage in the mountains somewhere, but I had started this coastal rowing hobby and we were also interested in the various amenities that were becoming available in the city's renaissance.

So I went to the lender who had refinanced our Bridgewater home to ask how we could start applying for a loan. The answer surprised me. Before even looking at any numbers, the loan officer asked where this secound house was. "New Bedford," I replied. She immediately said that underwriters would not approve a loan for a second house within 25 miles of to the first house.

I said something between "What?" and "Huh?" She responded, "unless there was something special, like it is near the water or something."  I asked her to look up the house on Google Maps, where she could see that it was two blocks from THE ATLANTIC OCEAN. So she conceded that it might be possible and we did talk about some numbers and we did not have the kind of downpayment needed for any kind of second home. I was OK getting rejected on the merits, and we ended up renting a house on a very quiet island from a friend of a friend -- just for little-kid football season. 

Don't worry, Dear Reader. This is not the end of the story. I'm working my way toward a point! 

The following spring, I was rowing a whaleboat in the harbor (as one does) when the subject of a club house came up. A fellow rower mentioned that her family had a home in Fairhaven that they needed to sell. It was a cute little house much like the one we had been considering the year before, but on the opposite side of the water. Her grandfather had built it, and with the recent death of her grandmother, her mother and aunts were selling. 

At this point, our circumstances had changed because of an inheritance. So I went back to the same lender and inquired about a second home in Fairhaven. Without a nanosecond of hesitation -- and without any apparent recollection of our conversation the previous year -- she handed me a clipboard to start an application and we were off to the races. 

The Fairhaven house is one mile CLOSER to our principal residence than the New Bedford house had been. It is in a smaller, less diverse community and its crimes do not lead the nightly television news. My take on all of this is that the gateway cities that are the engines of our regional economy and culture are also the locus of many of our region's social pathologies and are disproportionately feared in our smaller suburban towns. But they are part of our region. -- not another planet.

One more picture, but not a thousand more words. I took this photo at Pope's Island Marina near dawn on the first day of summer in 2016. As I wrote when posting it online that day, "Nothing is nearer -- and dearer -- to the water than New Beige!"

I have not disclosed the identity of the banker in question for several reason, the main one being that although a single remark from her has stuck with me for years, it does not define her and I am willing to bet she does not remember it. 

Lagniappe:

We love living in Fairhaven, both because it is a lovely town in its own right -- with a 10-minute walk to the beach and lovely vernacular architecture. We also like that it has much in common with Cape Cod but without the traffic. Most of all, though, we love that from Fairhaven we can easily reach New Bedford for a rich variety of food, music, and events, We are active members of several organizations based in the City That Lit the World:

Whaling City Rowing
Azorean Maritime Heritage Society
New Bedford Whaling Museum
New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center
Cape Verdean Association in New Bedford 
The Zeiterion Theater

Coming soon: The connection between New Bedford and Yosemite.