It's all about attitude (Baltimore, Silver Spring: real estate market, city hall, crime)

[barante]

My wife and I just returned from the Farmers Market, which has been a downtown Sunday fixture for more than 20 years. A huge turnout of surprisingly many young people, couples in love buying fixings for Sunday dinners.
We go there almost every Sunday. We then head for the Book Thing, a warehouse full of free books on Vineyard Lane, off Greenmount Avenue just below 31st Street. Terrific stuff. The more you carry away, the better they love you.
It occured to me that whether you like or hate Baltimore depends totally on your attitude. If you get involved and do things, you are likely to meet similarly positive people and be happy. If you mope at home and read negative comments, however ill-informed, you will suffer.
Up to you. Having lived here since 1969 -- with eight years in between on overseas assignments -- I must say that this is a pretty good town.

[nanlev]

Barante,

I'm so glad for folks like you (and there are not many on this forum) that rather focus on the negative, will share with newcomers and people thinking of a move to Baltimore what the city has to offer that is POSITIVE. My husband and I are looking forward to our move up from the NoVa area.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by barante

My wife and I just returned from the Farmers Market, which has been a downtown Sunday fixture for more than 20 years. A huge turnout of surprisingly many young people, couples in love buying fixings for Sunday dinners.
We go there almost every Sunday. We then head for the Book Thing, a warehouse full of free books on Vineyard Lane, off Greenmount Avenue just below 31st Street. Terrific stuff. The more you carry away, the better they love you.
It occured to me that whether you like or hate Baltimore depends totally on your attitude. If you get involved and do things, you are likely to meet similarly positive people and be happy. If you mope at home and read negative comments, however ill-informed, you will suffer.
Up to you. Having lived here since 1969 -- with eight years in between on overseas assignments -- I must say that this is a pretty good town.

[barante]

Nanlev -- You are very kind. We look forward to great things happening in Original Northwood! We took a detour the other day to look at the neighborhood. Looks good.
I know that many posters on this forum are preoccupied by safety issues. I think it says something about Baltimore that not that many homes have iron bars in the windows. Surely compares favorably to many other cities I know.

[koofie]

Ok, being relatively new to Baltimore, I don't know where these things are... How far away? I think you said elsewhere that you are in Pikesville, so hopefully they are close. Also, how is the Pikesville library? I have yet to get there...

And I agree with you. I grew up in Silver Spring, outside DC, and have the same feeling here as I did living there - It's fun to go downtown, just keep your wits about you and you'll be fine. Plus, if you spend all of your time lamenting about where you live, you won't spend enough time enjoying the good things about where you live. If you try things out and you are still not happy, fix it or leave! Complaining gets you nowhere except a tired jaw.

Originally Posted by barante

My wife and I just returned from the Farmers Market, which has been a downtown Sunday fixture for more than 20 years. A huge turnout of surprisingly many young people, couples in love buying fixings for Sunday dinners.
We go there almost every Sunday. We then head for the Book Thing, a warehouse full of free books on Vineyard Lane, off Greenmount Avenue just below 31st Street. Terrific stuff. The more you carry away, the better they love you.
It occured to me that whether you like or hate Baltimore depends totally on your attitude. If you get involved and do things, you are likely to meet similarly positive people and be happy. If you mope at home and read negative comments, however ill-informed, you will suffer.
Up to you. Having lived here since 1969 -- with eight years in between on overseas assignments -- I must say that this is a pretty good town.

[carolott]

Thank you for this post, Barante. I was beginning to wonder if all I'd ever read on here was negative complaints about Baltimore.

I really love living here -- I have great neighbors who interact and socialize with each other, customers who have become friends, and my son and I have a lot of fun here. No, it's certainly not Perfectville...but good grief, what place doesn't have its fair share of problems?

Get out and explore the city, and experience all it has to offer! :-)

[Be More]

great title to the thread. I can say, without a doubt, that the last 2 years of my life since I have moved here have ...been the most exciting. There is something going on all the time in one neighborhood or the other. If you want Red Robin, gigantic malls, and a ton of traffic...then the suburbs are where you need to be. Thats not Baltimore.

[Rikrich]

Originally Posted by barante

My wife and I just returned from the Farmers Market, which has been a downtown Sunday fixture for more than 20 years. A huge turnout of surprisingly many young people, couples in love buying fixings for Sunday dinners.
We go there almost every Sunday. We then head for the Book Thing, a warehouse full of free books on Vineyard Lane, off Greenmount Avenue just below 31st Street. Terrific stuff. The more you carry away, the better they love you.
It occured to me that whether you like or hate Baltimore depends totally on your attitude. If you get involved and do things, you are likely to meet similarly positive people and be happy. If you mope at home and read negative comments, however ill-informed, you will suffer.
Up to you. Having lived here since 1969 -- with eight years in between on overseas assignments -- I must say that this is a pretty good town.

Yes, there are a few good things about BALTIMORE, but those very few good things about the city were not enough to keep me there. I lived in Baltimore City from January of 1990 to January of 1999, when I moved to Dundalk (Baltimore County. I finally left the area, and the state of Maryland on 3 September 2002 and currently reside in Indianapolis. I respect your opinion, but Baltimore city can hardly be considered a pretty good town. A matter of opinion, and I don't recommend visiting West Baltimore during anytime of the day or night. Even though I have been gone nearly five years, I don't imagine West Baltimore has changed much anymore than East Baltimore has changed. I lived in Hamilton during my last three and one-half years of residence in the city, and that was a nice area close to Parkville.

[MobtownManiac]

This has got to be the most inaccurate, misinformed, propagandist, negative forum on the internet. I love how 90% of the negative posts always include something like "I haven't bothered to go there in over a decade, but listen to my accurate assessment of how things are!"

This city's real estate market is booming in a time when the state's is slumping.
There are billions of dollars in developments going on right now.
Harbor East is spawning Harbor Point - these are virtual additional downtowns for the city, there is no way to negatively spin this.
The demand is such that the city is now landing luxury lines of residences - The Ritz Carlton - which are being sold to such celebrities as Oprah Winfrey.
The office vacancy rate for the city is less than 10% - this is an extremely healthy mark for city business.

Most of the complaints I read on this board are facts of life if you live in ANY city. The rest seem to be borne of what someone recently saw on The Wire. There are good areas & bad - like any city. There are problems - like any city. There are drugs - like any city. There is crime - like any city. There is murder - like any city (and BTW, unless you're a drug dealer or gang-banger your chances of being killed here drop to near non-existent).

Anyone with actual curiosity about the city - what's going on, what's going up, what there is to do - should visit SkyscraperCity - Powered by vBulletin & take a look at the forums over there.

You won't find the melodrama of people who don't live here any more, never lived here, or can't be bothered to enjoy city life.

Meanwhile, Baltimore is booming. Whether or not this board feels like acknowledging it.

[emsgoof]

Well, there really is nowhere for it to go but up... it certainly can't get much worse!

[barante]

emsgoof -- You are wrong. Baltimore is doing well and may experience of real renaissance. But if things go bad, it could get far, far worse.
I have always believed that a dysfunctional city will ultimately have a dysfunctional leadership. So far we have been lucky to avert that. We got pretty close under City Council President Lawrence Bell, a goof-off, and Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, a very decent man of interesting ideas who simply was no manager at all. As a result a typical City Hall meeting ended up with everyone smiling but no one having any idea as to what, if anything, was decided. There was no follow up.
Just think. What, if instead of Martin O'Malley, Bell had been elected? We would have had Baltimore's own Marion Barry!
I have never liked Sheila Dixon, and in our dealings which used to be frequent she always knew that. She is not very smart (as in polished), she has a racial chip on her shoulder and if you listen to her closely, she is difficult to understand because she handles the English language improperly, using words that don't have appropriate meanings.
But, by golly, she has surprised me in the past seven months. Whether it's her or her staff, someone is on the ball. She may ultimately disappoint us all. But Baltimore could do far worse.