“And they hide their faces
And they hide their eyes
‘Cause the city’s dyin’
And they don’t know why”
Randy Newman - Baltimore

As much as I like it here there are some things you can’t deny. The circles, they intersect. No matter where you go there you are. I always laugh when people talk about the nice part of town. Here the nice part of town is a few square blocks and right around the corner is west hell. Places with their own community patrol are across the street from places where survival is the way of life. Homes like the ones in the picture have an alley between them and 400k productions. If you walk with your head down the whole world may have changed by the time you look up again. It actually took me a while to realize it, but as I got older and the bad parts got worse it’s just to obvious. When you walk through a block with groomed lawns and flowers and two blocks later only 3 houses on the block aren’t vacant…and one of them you’re not sure about. Where even the France-Merrick is a stones throw from the Methadone clinic. The expensive new lofts across the street with the Starbucks on the corner are signals that let me know soon I’ll be in Pigtown. On either side of Martin Luther King Blvd. the rent for a house can go from $1800 to $450 a month and the scenery changes to match. The saving grace is actually rapidly dissapating. It used to be good to work in D.C. and live here. A D.C. salary paying Baltimore rent was good. Now it’s starting to mean you just have a long commute. As much progress is made there are more ratty blocks that are void of residents and only contain life that can’t afford to move. People stop you to sell you anything. Last year my man bought a Laptop (liberated from University of MD) for $80 and today someone tried to sell me shampoo and soap stolen from the Hilton for $5. When I told him I only had $2 and I hadn’t ate that day he offered me half of the bag and his Cup of Noodles for what I did have. The affluent sit on community planning councils and the residents don’t know they exist. If I wanted any type of financial assistance on my salary I’d need to have 5 people dependant on me. Yet, for some reason I’m usually broke. Despite the fact that a nice area is a stones throw away some people have never even seen them. They exist in their pocket like a little biosphere. A controlled habitat. The Safeway I go to has a Starbucks, a Dry Cleaners, a Kosher section and a Vegan section. It’s not very close to my residence. The Safeway in areas like mine wouldn’t even show a Starbucks on a map within a 5 mile radius. Crossing streets changes tax brackets and lives. When Bethlehem Steel was open, a man without a Diploma could get a job, buy a house, a car and take care of a large family. Now I know people with a degree doing Janitorial work. The city is dying…or rather it’s being killed. At the same time small pockets are being built up so that people who live a block away would need a winning lottery ticket to afford to live there. This new breed of residents does show some fear, however, it’s tempered by the knowledge that soon these people won’t be here anymore. Soon the new coffee shop will open and a few properties down the Yoga studio will be available. Cove Cleaners will hang on, but they better not suggest to Mr. Handakis that Washington Village would be a better name than Pigtown. He knows that Washington Village doesn’t exist and he might tell you so in a colorful manner. He’s been in Pigtown for years and owns what’s probably the oldest surviving business. He’s an old Greek man and when I say hi he replies, “How you doing son?” At the same time some of the new residents are trying to avoid me all within the space of 6 feet and 5 seconds. Little do they know I work at the Neighborhood Planning Council. It wouldn’t be fashionable to steal their car when I sit a few feet from the public safety office and the local Cop. I guess they just don’t know. Then I wonder if they know that on the next block over is someone who probably is scoping their car out. Even though he lives way too close to be stealing this guys car he doesn’t care and his man who would’ve got him to chill out just got killed. I know the Board members and the Bums. Cops and the Criminals. Victim and the Victor. That’s Baltimore. The circles intersect and you can walk to the “nice” part of town. Just walk slow cause the scenery changes fast.