I Kan't Spell

 
Baltimore

Easy slips through drain and clinks on taps of bobby pin shaped levers way below. Hard clings to the sponge on the back of the sink. What isn't worth easy takes the last ferry down the water main. What passenger gets on with a ticket saying "Hard section 108 Row ww Seat 16"? None of them. Some tickets are just stamped that way.

Decimation, gun in your mouth talk. Speak the wrong words and you will get touched.

I walked through the knife wind. (Don't act as if you understand what that means unless you walk that walk to work and feel that knife wind. Walking to your car is more like a slap wind.) The knife wind made it hard for me to read my City Paper.

There was an article in the City Paper (not available online) called "We're Fucked". It was an interview with Tom D'Antoni and how much he hated Baltimore.

"I used to drive around and pick up criminals in a cab just to see if they would kill me."

Well apparently they never did. While I didn't really like the article because he seemed like a voyeur and a failed life lashing out at something he wasted his time on, it did get me thinking again more and more about Baltimore.

I walked to work talking to myself about the Charm City. And then I laughed because I called it that.

The harbor had my favorite water effect this morning. The salient and brine from the edges starts to move out to the middle and the bottom of the harbor. This causes large ripples about 20 yards off the piers, the Constellation, the World Trade Center, and that weird Submarine in the corner next to the National Aquarium. The water in this area is docile as if the harbor is sleeping below and waking up everywhere else. It really is quite beautiful.

It felt like home because it was so cold. It felt natural that it was hard today.

Baltimore as a city is the same way. It's a city where it's supposed to be hard. You wear that fact like a badge on your sleeve but I'm a fraud just like everyone else that lives in the happy parts of town. And if you are wondering if you live in a happy part of town, ask yourself if you are here to stay or just staying to have a good time. If you answered the second one - then - you live in a happy part. Baltimore isn't a badge of honor as much as it's a facade of charm wrapping that has a big lump of shit in the middle.

So many people claim to be from Baltimore. I'm not. I'm from Rosedale, the first semi-blue-collar suburb right outside the North East entrannc. Nobody I really know is from Baltimore. They are all from the county or Jersey or Carolina and moved here. They are all from lower middle class or middle class semi-blue collar families and now claim Baltimore as their home. They'll leave her just like everyone else and move back to what they know. Nobody down here looks like they belong here and not many of them give me the impression that they will stay.


Voted most likely to get mugged.


Baltimore is a strange town indeed. It's a double-sided mistress. If you know where to go and how to keep your head down and bullet free it can be homey, warm, enchanting and yes, even charming. If you don't know anything then this city can be oppressively bleak. But that happy image is just what we trick ourselves into believing. In actuality, it's low brow, boring, dirty, dangerous, and anyone with real talent or ambition either leaves or uses Baltimore and it's residents like a whore.

It's not New York where you have so many options to get lost. In just 2 blocks of NY you have as much as we have in an entire city. It's not Philly or Boston either where the municipal attraction of Universities, museums etc. can keep you busy for a stretch. Baltimore as a whole package in small in not only quantity but quality. You can name the boroughs, the good records stores, good restaurants, museums, and concert venues on your fingers and toes and need no extra appendage to keep track. I like this sometimes but I approach it with a smile that someone can only have for a rotten child that you can't help but love.

What's funny is this is what the City website considers the West Side. You haven't even hit MLK yet... lol - -

Charm city is always brought up with a wry smile or weary eye gleam. They should call it the "tongue-in-cheek town". Baltimore's compliments are usually proceeded by a "but..."

"Yeah the Harbor is really great for tourists and revitalizing the city.." - - "But...we had 7 murders on the West side last Saturday".

"Canton is booming with new affluent residents" - - - "But... in 3 years they'll really have overpaid because Baltimore will never be able to get crime, poverty, and filth out of it's bowels."

"The mayor is really putting the city on the map and we are getting positive press for the first time since Barry Levinson did Diner..." - - - "But, they ignore the other 95% of the city and people think John Waters has an accurate hold on not only how things look but how people act. Well he doesn't and neither does the media."

It's as though the city had cosmetic surgery on a 65 year old woman riddled with cancer. "Wow look at those new tits and her face is smooth and wrinkle free.." - - - "But, she'll be dead in a week because her insides are rotted."

You always get this feeling as if Baltimore just sweeps the West side under some rug somewhere reserved for the 6 pm Channel 2 news. And let's be honest, when I say West side I mean poor black people vilified for basically being poor and having no alternative but to be packed in together causing black on black crime and a sense of hopelessness. Because, let's be honest, race is a large issue in the world, maybe other than poverty or distribution of wealth, it is the largest issue we face in America. It is our original sin and may well never heal for 8 more generations. Since we are race oriented and divided along many lines, seeing your own race hurt your own race is doubly terrifying.

White people on the East side of town aren't friggin angels but for there aren't as many murders so their cocain sales and thievery goes unnoticed - oh - and they are mostly white. White crime isn't as sexy enough I guess to make headlines. They murder each other but somehow blame it on a black guy somewhere. How many times have you heard this on the evening news "Two men in Dundalk were shot in a robbery homicide today. Two black males are suspected in the crime.."? I believe this about as much as I believe half the people that say they are from Baltimore that have moved down here from Ellicott city or the Glen or White Marsh. The East side isn't the same by any imagination but it isn't pretty either.

Respect the West side, if for no other reason then you couldn't cut it there if given the predicament.

I think I started all this Baltimore thinking 2 years ago and then it really boiled over this weekend.

Roughly 2 years ago a crack addict Johns Hopkins student was shot in his home trying to buy crack and heroin from a drug dealer. The drug dealer entered the house, robbed him and shot him. Sound familiar? Yeah it happens every week in this town. What's the sexy part? Well for one the student was white and went to Hopkins. What I found funny was that at first he "was wrongly killed in a happenstance robbery." Later it was found that he was an addict who happened to be attending college. But the fact that he was white and possibly affluent made this a daily headlining news story for more than 2 weeks. It even got the kid a scholarship fund.

Last week I was watching the news when the whale in the Thames died. I thought that was an interesting piece until I remembered that it wasn't. After this "headline" piece Channel 2 News Baltimore decided that 5 members of a family brutally murdered and or injured as a result of attempted murder, in their own home, with ages ranging from 5 - 45, was the second most important story. Of course they were black and poor so it wasn't that important. Not as important as the stupid whale and surely not as important as a crack addict white college student. But then again I'm sure that a 12 year old little girl wasn't worth the attention. This hypocritical attitude is found in every city I'm sure. A little girl gets killed sitting on top of a mailbox in Brooklyn wouldn't match a Tax Attorney mugged and killed while shopping for designer clothes on Houston St.

The tongue-in-cheek never stops in this city.

Such a strange town full of so much earthy richness and at the same time it's a bunch of lookie-lous and secret societies. Jewish, Greek, Italian, Irish, Black, and Polish clubs run the city block by block and if someone asks you about the good places to eat or about the best place to go, as a resident or native, you aren't easily inclined to tell them. You don't tell them for two reasons. The first reason is because you may think they won't understand that the Chipparelli's salad or Bill's Crab shack is great to us and second they won't know how to act or how to get the most out of the experience. I.e. they'll get lost. But to add to that second reason, you feel as though you will get laughed at if you told someone where to go and then vouched for it.

It's a low-wire town hung over a shark tank full of broken glass. It's a treasure buried under a landfill. It's a sham. It's a joke. It's my home.

I like the way the water looks in the winter.
I like when it feels hard.
I like the smoke out of the potholes and the hooded drug dealers on the corner of Pratt and President.
I like the burned out houses on the way in to town via train.
I like the smile I get when I get off that train and people look at me as if I were crazy.
I like that every time I get off that train from NY or Boston I stretch out my arms to hug the city.
I love that I feel at home.
I hate the hypocrisy but enjoy that I see it and call it out.
I like that I know where it's soft.
I love that I know where it's charming.
Link posted by JVMM : 11:15 AM