About

About the blog…
Travel your hometown. That’s the intent of Neighborhood Nomads: To encourage us to experience the places we know best with fresh eyes. To notice and appreciate our own cities and towns like a tourist would. You know that feeling that comes from hauling on your backpack and walking out the airport door into a new city? It’s a great feeling to have everyday.

Neighborhood Nomads is a collection of stories about our homes, our neighborhoods, and the power of physical places in a virtual world. It examines people’s connections to the neighborhoods they know best, to the geography that has shaped them, and to the cities, towns and landscapes where they’ve put down roots.

This is a travel site flipped on its head. The content is not focused on what it’s like to visit a place; it’s focused on what it’s like to live there. The site features interviews with people who love where they live. All of them are seasoned travelers who have explored the world, moved around, seen what’s out there, and deliberately selected a place to call home. It is full of conversations with neighbors, friends, writers, artists and insiders. They are all nomads in their own right, eager to share authentic and layered knowledge of their own hometowns.

Neighborhood Nomads will give you a million reasons to love this place, whether you call it home or are just passing through.

About its beginning…
In June 2011, I made a commitment to spend one year returning to each of my many hometowns to learn more about the places I’d lived. With ample vacation days, multiple frequent flyer tickets, many tanks of gas and several bicycles, I covered extensive ground in twelve months, studying great neighborhoods — my great neighborhoods — in Montreal, St. Louis, Toronto, Arlington, Va., Baltimore, Md., Stamford, Ct., New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Annapolis, Md., Southport, Ct., and Washington, DC. The project, then called Neighborhood Nomad: One Year of Travel Through My Many Hometowns, is documented on Year One of this blog.

In exploring my neighborhoods, I examined what makes a place a joy to call home. I took note of factors such as architecture and design, transportation and access. Often, I just watched my neighbors go about their days, observing the pulse of the streets and the character of the neighborhood.

I finished the year-long project certain that there are nomads everywhere who love where they live and are happy to discuss what makes their neighborhoods tick. I decided to focus extensively on their narratives upon completion of my personal project.

About the author…
Kate Barrett Gallery is a journalist and traveler who lives on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Her experience includes work as a news writer at KRON-4 television in San Francisco, a web producer at ABC News in Washington, a reporter on Capitol Hill, and a summer backpacking guide in Canada, France and Spain. Kate received a journalism degree from Northwestern’s Medill School in Evanston, Ill. and a history-sociology degree from Columbia University in New York City. She has lived in 27 houses or apartments in a dozen cities or towns. She has always been a neighborhood nomad.

About you…
Are you a neighborhood nomad? Participate in the project by clicking here.

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