Called the “jewel of the Eastern Shore” by “Southern Living” magazine, Fairhope is a place where time is measured in the petals of flowers. “It’s on the bay and you can’t ask for a more beautiful place,” says native Frank Smith.
A small town where life is sweeter, if not more colorful. “People are from everywhere,” says Virginia transplant Brenda Pisarkiewicz. “They love the climate, they love the atmosphere. There is theaters.” What folks who live here may take for granted, others find fascinating. “It was like going back in time. Everybody said hello, everybody said good morning, anywhere you walked.”
But all is not picture perfect in this fair city. Fairhope is also on a list for one of the snobbiest in the state.
“I thought that was funny when I saw that,” says Chamber of Commerce executive director Heiko Einfeld. “I thought well, you know everybody has that everywhere you go in every town. For the most part, when you walk in town and especially into the stores, southern hospitality just oozes out of each and every one of us.”
“I’ve always thought it was really friendly and most the people I know here are friendly,” says Smith. “I don’t know who they talked too. They interviewed the wrong people.”
A melting pot of 16 thousand and growing, “Everybody told me when I first came here don’t tell anybody about us,” says Pisarkiewicz.
The secret may not be a secret much longer as the little village by the bay is once again nationally recognized.
The city of Florence, on the edge of the Tennessee River, is the only other city in Alabama that made the list of 20 of the south’s best small towns.
