dent Robyn Quick, 47, during a back- alley barbecue Aghevli orchestrated last June. “I’m really convinced that there’s not sufficient evidence that gating does what people say it does.” Quick mentioned a young man
whom she and her husband, Joe Cas- tor, 47, befriended when he was a child. “He’s someone we may not have met if he hadn’t been allowed to come in to the alley.” Others at the cookout had come
to support the project. At first, Rafael Reyes said, he thought the gates would limit personal freedom. But after suffer- ing two rear-entry break-ins, one while he and his family slept, “everything changed.” He bought a gun. And he no longer opposed alley gates. But the point of gating is not just to
keep out would-be burglars, said Reyes’s wife, Tracy Ducoty. She was weary of cleaning up used condoms in the alley
before letting her children out to play. “Living in the city with kids is hard enough,” she said. As of press time, the project re-
mained stalled.
Last spring, Mayo watched young
metal artists install the gates for her alley. Welded into a tableau of a raven nestled in a tree, one gate pays hom- age to Baltimore’s pro football team. Five winsome tulips grace the other gate. Soon, the alley sounded different to Mayo. Strangers’ curses no longer pierced the air. Neighbors chatted. The couple who resisted the gates now let their grandchildren loose in the alley. Having block residents weigh in on
the gates’ design “maybe took away all of the feelings that this was meant to keep people out,” said Mayo, who also wrote a tool kit for community projects based on the gating effort.
To varying degrees, Mayo’s neighbors
approve of the new amenity. “It cut down a lot of foot traffic that used to go behind the homes,” said Rosalind Victor, a block resident for 14 years. Still, she said, the gates will “take some getting used to. It wasn’t something I would have done myself.” Late last summer, the couple’s grand-
children planted flowers in bright ce- ramic pots arranged along the alleyway. Now, the gates define the block and connect its residents, said Ronald Maca- joux, 32, who has lived on the block for a little over a year. “It’s like a closed feeling, and you
think: Yeah, you’re my neighbor. You have a key to the gate. With the alley
open, you never know who’s who.”
Stephanie Shapiro is a writer based in Baltimore. She can be reached at
wpmagazine@washpost.com.
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