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Welcome to Baltimore, Huh?
If you're from Baltimore, you've probably found yourself somewhere else, talking to someone who's not from Baltimore who says something like this: "Oh, I visited Baltimore once. It was really nice—all that stuff down by the harbor."
And you know, they're right. It is nice to have all the restaurants and attractions and souvenir shops down by the harbor. But Baltimore is so much more, and knowing that—and wanting to share that information with future visitors—inspired the staff of City Paper, Baltimore's Free Alternative Weekly, to create this guide to our city.
Perhaps visitors focus on the Inner Harbor so readily because the rest of the city can sometimes seem a bit foreboding. You don't have to look too far from the Pratt Street main drag to spot evidence of Baltimore's faded industrial glory or the poverty that affects many of its communities. Though excellent television series such as The Wire and Homicide: Life on the Street may have earned the city some bragging rights, they also publicized its real-life entrenched drug trade and bloody homicide toll, the latter reliably one of the highest per capita in the country. But while Baltimore sometimes lives up to the threat implicit in one of its oldest nicknames, Mobtown, it also embodies a more recent handle that's just as resilient and as fitting: Charm City. Baltimore is a place of friendly neighborhoods and cosmopolitan delights and nowhere-else experiences, too, and it'd be a shame to miss that.
The tricky thing—and one of the things that makes a guide like this valuable—is that the city's welcoming aspects and its ominous aspects often exist side by side with each other, sometimes separated by a mere block or two. Baltimore is, as the local cliché goes, a city of neighborhoods, and while certain large generalizations hold true—large swathes of the east and west sides are struggling and blighted, while North Baltimore and the areas ringing the harbor are home to many of the city's toniest enclaves—individual districts can vary wildly. Mostly white neighborhoods abut mostly black neighborhoods, which adjoin comfortably (or uncomfortably) mixed neighborhoods. The housing stock varies from mansions, new or old, to classic middle-class Baltimore red brick/marble steps rowhouses to blocks of boarded-up vacants, sometimes within steps of each other. You can spend a morning browsing local organic produce and baked goods at one of the weekend farmer's markets only to stumble into an open-air drug market a very short aimless meander later. None of which is to say you need be afraid of the city, but you do need to be mindful of your surroundings and, at the same time, respectful of those whose neighborhood sidewalks you stroll.
This guide can't possibly encompass the ins and outs of every neighborhood, so we've decided to focus on a few areas where visitors and locals alike tend to congregate, and with good reason. Yes, there's the harbor, but venture out from the hotels and promenades due east and you may wind up in the narrow streets of Little Italy, where the local economy runs on red sauce. Continue to meander east along the water and find yourself experiencing the upmarket boomtown of Harbor East, crossing the historic cobbles of Fells Point, or soaking up the nightlife of Canton Square. Move away from the water to the northeast to discover the workaday bedroom community of Butchers Hill or the ethnic salad-bowl of the Highlandtown area. Head south from the harbor and the hot and cold running bars of Federal Hill and the sleepy slopes of residential South Baltimore greet you. Head north from Pratt and pass through the grand architecture and vibrant arts of Mount Vernon into the burgeoning subculture hub of the Station North area, and on into the leafy collegiate enclave of Charles Village. Indeed, many Baltimoreans are involved in the ongoing process of discovering and rediscovering the town from all angles, as indicated by the mix of old Baltimore holdouts and hip new spots in neighborhoods such as Hampden and Hamilton.
We love this place, even if we sometimes have a hard time explaining why to people who don't get it. Another of the clichés about Baltimore involves Baltimoreans' inability to leave. Our friends and neighbors sometimes move away, headed for higher profile cities such as Philly, New York, or D.C., but they always seem to come back. We know one guy who's had at least three going-away parties and he's still here. There's something about this city, and with the BaltiManual in hand, you're well on your way to finding out what it is for yourself.
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