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Old 12-28-2007, 09:00 AM
 
Location: 21231
315 posts, read 1,295,988 times
Reputation: 73

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Quote:
Originally Posted by guest2 View Post
When I bike the streets of Baltimore, through pleasant, tree-lined streets of rowhouses in Federal Hill, or through the housing projects in East Baltimore, I get to see layers of the city. All different, but all alive and contributing to a sense of place. When I go to the city markets to get produce or lunch, I see all kinds of people intermingling.
Guest2's posts are a great case in point. If anyone comtemplating moving to Baltimore thinks you can really bike through the projects in East Baltimore, they are in for a surprise. I spend a lot of time going around baltimore and somehow I'm missing the travelogue view.
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Old 12-28-2007, 12:06 PM
 
Location: Portland, Maine
4,180 posts, read 14,547,813 times
Reputation: 1673
A great suggested itinerary for getting a good sense of Baltimoreby walking is to do Baltimore Street to Calvert. Up Calvert to 33rd. Up 33rd to Lake Montebello. Around the Lake to Erdman. Erdman to Edison and Edison back to east Baltimore either Highland or Linwood. I have done it numerous times and you get a whole picture of the city without endangering your life.
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Old 01-02-2008, 07:09 PM
 
2 posts, read 9,620 times
Reputation: 10
Smile life is short, time is precious

maybe you should consider moving to the city of your choice, then after a year, receiving resident tuition rates. i don't know your situation, but you'll probably do better in school if you are happy


Quote:
Originally Posted by Terrapin2212 View Post
ITs family connections and financial reasons. I get in-state tuition if I stay in Maryland for either dental or pharmacy school. If I go to schools in Virginia, Texas, or Nevada or West Virginia (as much as I'm a Red Stater WV is TOO isolated for my liking) I'll be paying a lot more. But it just depresses me that the longer I stay here the more I'll be stuck in Maryland. I don't know where in Maryland you're from but growing up in Montgomery County (in Potomac no less) does put a damper on things especially if you are not rich and snobby like most people there. The East Coast is only for a certain kind of person and if you're not it then there's no way you can fit in.

Now most of my friends are here and same with family. All of my friends or family who have ever lived anywhere else in the country like it better where they used to live, with the notable exception of people from New Jersey and New York and Pennsylvania. I'm just afraid if I graduate professional school here it will be even harder to live. I've been to Las Vegas, Raleigh, Salt Lake City, and Boise and seen how cheap it is to live there, how wonderful all the houses are while here for the same prices I can only get a house half the size. The thing is that I don't know the hype about urban sophistication. I mean who goes to the opera every week anyway?

A house in the ghetto in a Maryland city is the same price as a house in Arizona with a swimming pool on a 2 acre lot. The notion of spending 4 years in Baltimore after spending 10 years in Montgomery County and 4 years in PG County just kinda drives me crazy, and my family really wants me to stay here. My mom is very much the East Coast type who can't fit in anywhere else and I'm the opposite, I just need to get out and experience life anywhere outside the East Coast, out in the real America. I also don't fit in politically because Maryland is so radically liberal and people will not accept you if you are not a liberal who wants to vote for Hillary Clinton. I had some hope when Ehrlich was elected governor but with O'malley all hope is lost. He wants to let illegal Mexicans overrun this state.

I don't know how people here lost our way. The East Coast is so out of touch with reality and how most of America is like. This past weekend I was at Deep Creek and spent an afternoon in this wonderful little town called Oakland in Garrett County. LIke out in the rest of the nation almost everyone lives in nice little places like that, here we're all into "urban life" in the big cities.

Wanting to leave isn't as easy as just leaving. Driving through Baltimore on I-95 just gives you that really dreary feel with all the crumbling buildings and ghetto housing projects and the industrial decay. The weather doesn't help either. Maryland could definitely use twice as many sunny days as we get, and half the snow we get!

New Orleans has a lot of poverty but also a lot of charm, like the archtecture of the French Quarter, the jazz culture (as opposed to hip hop and gangsta culture and the rough Irish and Italian neighborhoods) as well as historical southern style buildings. Also New Orleans and Louisiana has a slower, friendlier pace of life. I would go back in a heartbeat (moved here at age 7) but the government just won't do enough to fix the levees enough.
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Old 01-02-2008, 09:31 PM
 
Location: Cheswolde
1,977 posts, read 6,780,613 times
Reputation: 573
Default From a Saluki to Terrapin

I proudly reveal my true colors, Terrapin. I'm a Saluki, having gone to Southern Illinois University. Take it from me. Your student years are the time to experiment, broaden your horizons and meet people from various backgrounds. From what you are telling us, you should go wherever you want to go, study whatever it is that you want to study. You don't want to stay in Maryland? Then don't.
As hard as you will be studying, those years are going to be your last years without the cares that come when you enter the work force and start putting down roots. Feeling as you do, you will regret it forever, if you stay here.
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Old 01-05-2008, 02:46 PM
 
66 posts, read 246,136 times
Reputation: 32
Quote:
Originally Posted by Terrapin2212 View Post
Bmorelater, thanks for the perspective. Now this makes me curious with all the crime and gangs in Phoenix too, how come Phoenix and other Sunbelt cities don't have the negative reputation places like Baltimore (or PHilly, Newark, Detroit, Pittsburgh, etc ) have? To think of it its interesting how the Rust Belt cities are so often associated with crime and decay. Even New Orleans was known for nightlife, history and food rather than violence/poverty prior to Katrina.

They don't make crime dramas in Phoenix or set a lot of crime or gangsta novels there nor do I believe a lot of rappers perform about the mean streets there, though I could be wrong about the last one
Cities in the west are truly different. The level of crime and the size and general scariness of the bad areas is nowhere near what you'll find in the east.
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Old 01-05-2008, 03:40 PM
 
757 posts, read 2,544,917 times
Reputation: 283
Quote:
Originally Posted by bawlmer View Post
Guest2's posts are a great case in point. If anyone comtemplating moving to Baltimore thinks you can really bike through the projects in East Baltimore, they are in for a surprise. I spend a lot of time going around baltimore and somehow I'm missing the travelogue view.
I've biked through the housing projects north of Fells Point, the ones that used to be in the newly-redeveloped Jonestown area, and the ones on the west side of Federal Hill near the stadiums on the Gwynns Falls Trail, and I've never been shot or mugged. I wouldn't recommend lingering or taking photographs, but some of these "scary" areas aren't as bad as people make them out to be if you mind your own business.

Also, I'm LOL at Terrapin2212's post about New Orleans prior to Katrina. Yes, it was a great city, but it had enormous violence and poverty problems prior to Katrina. When I was there, I was told not to walk from my hotel downtown to the French Quarter, even though it was less than a mile away. I saw more panhandlers than I've ever seen in Baltimore. Driving around the city, it appeared that much of the city outside of the historic districts was composed of run-down shotgun shacks and housing projects.
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Old 01-05-2008, 04:07 PM
 
Location: Pigtown!! Washington Village Does NOT Exist.
689 posts, read 3,205,860 times
Reputation: 129
I have to walk through the Sharp-Leadenhall projects to get to Federal Hill -- I've never had a problem during the day or at night. At night I won't cut through the park to get to Otterbein, but will walk down Hamburg Street.

And by "at night" I mean around 10 PM. Not 3 in the morning -- I'm not an idiot.
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Old 01-06-2008, 09:35 AM
 
Location: Portland, Maine
4,180 posts, read 14,547,813 times
Reputation: 1673
Many of these projects are not even around any more having been torn down and replaced with mixed housing, some at and above market value so riding a bike through housing projects in Baltimore is becoming more and more of a mute point. But, I digress because there truely are neighborhoods in Baltimore I would not want to ride a bike around or walk in. Sadly, a fact about our city.
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Old 02-03-2008, 07:30 PM
 
2 posts, read 4,646 times
Reputation: 11
Quote:
Originally Posted by Terrapin2212 View Post
That was a typical perspective from that girl, especially one from up in Connecticut. The typical, rich, snobby Connecticut to be exact.

Personally I'm sick of that kind of life. I've lived in a place like that in Montgomery County through high school and that's pretty done it for me for the state of Maryland and the Northeast in general (yes, the transplants have clearly made Maryland a northern state and not a border one). The only part of the state I like is Cumberland westward and the Eastern Shore, and while those parts are beautiful and friendly its hard to find employment there after I finish school.

I'm applying to both pharmacy and dental school at the Univ of MD campus in Baltimore City and I'm just completely depressed even though at least for pharmacy I think I have a good chance at getting in. My folks really want me to choose Maryland over out of state schools. For dental if I get in I really want to go to UNLV or Texas A&M. The idea of being in Baltimore really makes me dread. I don't see anything good about the city.

For one thing, the weather is miserable and its no doubt the entire Northeast AND Upper Midwest has been hemorraghing population to the Sunbelt states in the SOuth and Southwest at a rate that increases every year. The only place where you hear good things about Baltimore (or PHilly or Pittsburgh or Cleveland or Detroit) is from tourist bureaus. I have being cooped up indoors in the bitter cold from the middle of October all the way till beginning or middle of April when I can live in Nevada or Texas or NOrth Carolina where the sun always shines and though NC has a colder winter at least its not as long.

Baltimore just feels like a decaying, dreary city though ironically the East Coast is also snobby, arrogant, and elitist when it really doesn't have anything to be snobby about. I know people from both the DC and Baltimore areas who really look down on other parts of this country and as a native of New Orleans this really ticks me off. People here act like only the East and West coasts matter and the rest doesn't. Also Baltimore and Maryland are both ridiculously, insanely liberal. O'malley wants to give in-state tuition to illegal immigrants and use our taxes to build labor centers for the illegals. Eventually they will succeed in overturning the gay marriage ban. Our public schools indoctrinate kids in anti-Americanism, to be ashamed of American history when in fact they should be promoting patriotism and national pride.

There's just so much about the Northeast in general and this state in particular I can't take anymore. If I stay in Maryland it will have to be in a small city or town and even then the weather is still miserable. In the DC and Baltimore there are only 2 kinds of people that I've noticed. One if the ghetto thug, in your face, openly hostile type. The other is the typical snobby, arrogant, elitist, cold, rude Yankee, many of them originally from New Jersey. Whether next year or in 4 years I'm outta here.
Wow! You're homophobic and anti liberal. You better go home. Thank God I don't live where you're from. BYE!
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Old 06-02-2013, 01:03 PM
 
Location: Rocky Mountains, CO
66 posts, read 84,737 times
Reputation: 10
Quote:
Originally Posted by guest2 View Post
Let me preface my comments by saying that I am a very satisfied transplant from the upper midwest. I had a chance to live in San Francisco, but opted for Baltimore. I couldn't stand what San Francisco had become, a place of artificiality, like much of America.

I'm extremely disappointed to see that a lot of the rants on this forum come from people who have no stake in Baltimore, and are unwilling to take responsibility for living here.

Baltimore is a place you can authentically call home and create rich, enduring connections. It's not a place for the transient trendy set, or suburban aspirants. If you're looking for either of those types of experiences why even consider Baltimore? I liken Baltimore to a person with a deep and interesting history, full of triumphs, failures, and everything in between, with a determined heart, ready to face whatever comes with courage and optimism.

To those considering moving here, I suggest you take a look at an op-ed piece from a Hopkins freshman to understand what being a Baltimore citizen means (for that matter, you should also read H.L. Mencken, watch some Johns Waters films, read Anne Tyler's and Laura Lippman's novels, even watch The Wire). In it she writes "I have realized how important it is for students to be proactive in engaging the city, rather than simply reacting to the imperfections." She goes on to describe how volunteering to clean up an elementary school in the inner city removed her fears and allowed her to connect to Baltimore's residents. She concludes that the most important thing is in "helping to improve Baltimore rather than wasting precious time criticizing it" (Engaging the neighborhood, contributing to the city - Opinion).
Well stated. I am seriously considering the area...but the ongoing negative rants are intimidating. As a 40 something professional looking for a new place to call home, I look to this forum to offer somewhat of a realistic, honest perspective. Although a subjective offering, it is difficult to assess what Baltimore has to offer. Then again everyone raved about Charleston, SC and I was not bitten by the bug.
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