It’s a Lambertville Life!
👋 Hello, I’m David. I built this website. Here’s why...
My first visit to the New Hope / Lambertville area happened when I was sixteen years old. My friend and I cut school one day, and we drove from northern New Jersey to Hunterdon High School where we snuck inside and blended with the local students so we could search for our girlfriends.
After walking the halls, we found them outside in the smoking lounge. They happily took the day off with us, and we spent the afternoon flipping through LP records and swiping through clothing racks in New Hope thrift boutiques.
A decade later, I worked in a multimedia computer lab at Bucks County Community College. My contract ended in the spring, and then I spent the summer in a work exchange doing repairs on a professor’s home on Ney Ally in New Hope. In the fall, I got a job at a small multimedia company in Lambertville.
Although I had been in New Hope for three months, I hadn’t crossed the bridge to go into Lambertville until I started working in the gray building on the corner of Cherry and Main. Lambertville just wasn’t a destination back then. In fact, people in New Hope sometimes referred to Lambertville as “No Hope.”
Hopeless or not, I found Lambertville’s old houses positively charming. With my new job offer, I considered staying in town and buying a place. However, I was also applying for jobs in New York City and eventually moved to the Big Apple.
My “little house in the little town” dream was left behind, but not forgotten.
20 years later, after having spent a decade on the west coast, I was living with my partner, Gwenn, in an apartment one block from the beach in Surf City, NJ.
Summers were noisy and crowded. Prices went up. People vacationed aggressively around us. Political boat parades converged on the bay.
Winters were quiet, and cold. A woman down the street killed herself. It was a fitting place to endure the COVID lockdown, but politics, gray skies, and isolation turned me into an out-of-shape, doom-scrolling depressed robot.
When it was safe to go out again, Gwenn and I started visiting Lambertville for art, music, and walks. Lambertville rejuvenated us, so we chose to move here.
We looked at a few houses, and I fell in love with a fixer-upper. Unfortunately, it had structural issues that were beyond our skill set—and our budget. We didn’t buy it. The house sold for $250,000, and flipped for $875,000.
My ‘little house dream’ lives on, but it increasingly feels out of reach as Lambertville grows more expensive. Still, relocating here has altered my life for the better. I go out more. I pet dogs more often. Gwenn is happier too. We’re surrounded by nature, creativity, music, and friendly people.
You probably have a story to explain why you love this place. Maybe you grew up here. Perhaps you like to decorate for Halloween or sing carols door-to-door during the holidays. Lambertville is a good place to raise a family, or retire, or to just be yourself in a community of people who are also being themselves.
That’s why I made this website—to serve the people who love and live in Lambertville. Life here is a little slice of heaven. Let’s keep it that way by telling our own stories instead letting our story be told for us by public relations firms.
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