Horsing around in a vacant lot made their lives better

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For more than a decade about a dozen neighbors have been informally commandeering a vacant lot on East York Street in Kensington, and used it to build a ragtag community.

The lot is nothing special, just a patch of weedy dirt where three rowhomes used to be. But since 2010, it has been a daily respite for people who may not have otherwise known each other.

“We would come out after work. We’d have a bonfire. We would drink beer. Smoke cigarettes and talk about our day,” said Jordan Baumgarten, whose rented rowhome on Arizona Street backs up to the lot. “Talk about what was happening in the neighborhood. Talk about what was happening in the city. Sports.”

“There’s no TV back here, so we just talk and talk and talk,” he said. “And never ran out of anything to talk about.”

Last spring Baumgarten, a photographer, published his latest book, “The Group for Mutual Improvement,” documenting the people of the lot, their dogs, their children and the bizarre hijinks that arise when they create their own fun.

They built dog agility obstacles out of salvaged garbage. They made masks out of corrugated cardboard boxes. A neighboring family moved away and left behind a metal bunk bed, which became a garden trellis. Baumgarten attempted to teach himself knife-throwing in the lot.

“It wasn’t just a hang out. There were weird, like, ‘Hunger Games’–type competitions,” said Sadie Gray, who helped clear the lot when she moved to Arizona Street in 2010.

Antics in the lots include games such as playing tag with tasers, a game called How Close How Long, wherein players would see for how much tolerance their hand had for an open bonfire, and a jousting tournament on broken bicycles and piece of two-by-four lumber, which, as Baumgarten explained in a recent New York Times essay, was abandoned before it began.

“We all gravitated there. It could be something fun, like everybody was together for a party,” she said. “But then also it could be: I had the crappiest day and I just need people around me.”

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