We started watching The Wire (finally) and it just reinforces for me that I have a problem. My problem? That I find Baltimore still has this horrible magnetism for me. The seedier the better. Every time we have gone to visit I have been terribly disappointed by the utter yuppification and how it has become just another suburb of DC in some ways. Obviously, I am just not going to the right wrong neighborhoods.
The sight of a boarded up row house brings the sort of wave of nostalgia that most people only have for their favorite bakery or park. I was always attracted to the bad areas in a completely voyeuristic way. I had no desire to live or even walk around them, but I would arrange my driving routes to include as much squalor as possible.
My best/most terrifying trip was through the west side and I accidentally forgot to merge where rt 40 split. I ended up on Pulaski Street stuck at a stoplight. My friend Sakinah and I were more than a little concerned by the crowds of unsavory characters milling around, when we saw a sight I will not soon forget. A prostitute, who was rather on the thick side and wearing black hot pants not ample enough to cover her white granny panties, stepped into the middle of the intersection, legs spread. She took a hearty drag on her cigarette and, throwing her arms out wide, exhaled such a volume of smoke that hung in the humid air, obscuring her and everything else from view. It was a nerve wracking several minutes until we extracted ourselves unscathed, but traumatized and exhilarated, from the area.
I retraced my missteps on more than one occasion, but it never was quite as spectacular as that fateful day. And for now, safely ensconced in bucolic Vermont, I have to watch on DVD what I miss so much. There are projects here. There are raggedy people. There is drug traffic. But it just doesn't get my adrenaline pumping like my dear Charm City.
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