Recently I posted about Bill White's recommended Christmas Light tours. I hope that caravans of new SUV's are taking White's tours, because he publishes his recommendations every year. Bill, after all these years, has his job down almost on autopilot; Christmas light tours, Eating his way through Musikfest, Cake contest at fair, Grammar columns, Hall of Shame, Worst sentence writer. etc., etc.
Anyway, I recommend that nobody take my light tour, it's in the hood in center city Allentown. Actually, the block shown has had its share of crime in recent years. The alley is narrow, so there is no passing another car. The double parkers get very annoyed if you beep your horn. Best to stick with White's tours out in suburbia, with the inflated decorations that are flaccid during the day. Personally, I prefer the center city house decorations. There is something so much more inspiring about decorating a low income house, many of which are rentals. It makes me feel better and more hopeful about downtown.
reprinted from December of 2017
If my math is correct, your original article is now 7 years old. Does the narrow Allentown block in your photo still go all out when decorating for Christmas?
ReplyDeleteCould you identify the location so we could check it out?
Like you, I prefer decorations put up by actual residents. While glitzy McMansions decorated by professionals are fun to look at, there’s something special when neighbors living close to each other go all in together.
One of my all-time favorites was from one of Bill White’s articles. It was a similarly narrow block (I believe one way) over in Fountain Hill (I think). The homes were tight yet almost all of them had large inflatable characters on their porch roofs. When you drove by on their narrow road, there was something special about the scale and having to look up to see the enormity of it all.
That was decades ago. I often wonder if they still decorate that way, and I wish I could remember the location so I could look for myself.
It was the 900 block of Maple St., which is the alley between Hamilton and Walnut. I have not checked out that street in a number of years. Although my post sounds judgmental on Bill White, his annual columns were very popular.
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