Travel to New Hope, PA

Despite the weather forecast of rain and thunderstorms all weekend, Saturday turned out to be a gorgeous sun-filled day. I peeled back the top of my convertible Volkswagen Cabriolet and hit the road, heading towards New Hope. In high school this was one of my favorite places to go, often taking day trips there with my mother, especially during my senior year of high school when I was homeschooled. New Hope is a little hippie haven on the PA/ NJ border. The streets are lined with quaint ancient buildings with back alleys leading to a run-down canal and there’s an old train line where tourists can ride up and down the tracks in antique cars. New Hope is famous for its antique stores and vintage clothing shops and boutiques offering treasures from every corner of the world. With its close proximity to Philly and New York, the artsy urbanites would flock here to go antiquing and many transplanted to open up art galleries or studios. I should say….this is how it used to be.

I arrived in the early afternoon to streets packed with tourists in big hats and khaki shorts. To my dismay, New Hope was looking a little less quaint. I cruised around looking for parking, and finally settled on a lot near the train where a new mall had been constructed. I was starving and thirsty from the drive so I jumped into the first restaurant I passed, a Tex/Mex place. I liked the decorations with orange and yellow and blue paint, Aztec calendar mandalas covering the walls, and a particularly awesome sculpture of a Mexican mariachi drunken skeleton. I ordered a taco salad (after one caught my eye coming out of the kitchen) and sat down to wait, sucking down a rootbeer.

My meal came, a big fried tortilla bowl with rice, refried beans, lettuce, tomato, cheese, sour cream, and guacamole. I doused it with salsa verde and munched a few intermittent pickled peppers (my favorite). Half way through the plate I couldn’t eat anymore. The food was mediocre, and maybe Taco Bell would have even been better. I surveyed the tables of other customers and realized everyone had a variation of these same ingredients. Nothing different, nothing special, nothing that looked any better. I guess that’s how Tex/Mex places are. The meal left me feeling full and my stomach never quite settled the food.

I stepped out into the hot sunshine. The restaurant was right next to a vintage clothing shop I use to like. It was closed, boarded up and all. I turned the corner and headed towards my favorite record shop. I had once gotten a Patti Smith record there and a Souxsie and the Banshees album for about 5 bucks. I found it also closed. Things were looking down, and my food still felt like it was bubbling up into my throat.

I headed towards the river, and the main drag. The sidewalks were swarmed with summer tourists, fat old men and shi-shi women. A dirty hippie decked in mismatched tye-dye was spotted every couple of blocks through the drone of people. The roads were at a dead stand-still with traffic. Solitary men with one ear pierced blasted 80’s dance music from their convertible Porsches and BMWs and a meaner sort of men dressed in leather chugged by on motorcycles, out to enjoy the verdant ride by the river down route 202.

I reached the corner, and to my dismay the famed vintage/ curio/ novelty shop was now charging customers 20 cents to enter. The shop windows were lined with signs reading “No Photos.” This every inch of this shop is cluttered with curious objects, antique wedding dresses, fishnet stockings, old metal lunch boxes, dirty playing cards, punk rock buttons, and other little trinket treasures. Somewhere they must have changed their politics, and were now charging people money to enter. I thought this absolutely absurd and refused to go in. Why would a shop charge people an entrance fee? This just seemed greedy.

I walked further down, and browsed the 500 shops all called “Shop of India” and all selling the same few brass statues of Hindu gods, Nag Champa incense and hippie clothing from India that Indians don’t actually wear. Some time someone must have gotten a huge shipment of these items, and never restocked or tried to find anything more unique.

After perusing shop after shop, I found one man who had imported a ton of knick-knacks from Bali. One sculpture stuck out as a jewel among the rest of the rubbish; a wooden image of Hanuman, meticulously carved in detail to show each and every hair.

I searched up and downs the streets for a used book store that use to have excellent deals, but this too had been swallowed up by the new commerce of New Hope. This was the final straw. New Hope was no longer for me. All the things I had loved about the place were gone. All had been replaced with pricey kitschy tourist shops. The artist seemed like ghosts, and the crafts were all cheap, imported, mass-produced. I guess an end comes to everything good. I know for sure I have no desire to go back to New Hope.