Tulips in guilford!
1
Too bad David Byrne associates with NYC and not Baltimore. He’s another strange and original voice.
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I'm so proud to be just one of the hundreds of folks behind the gray drapes who helped establish Hampden as one of America's Coolest Neighborhoods. The Mill Centre still stands as a model arts incubator, funded without grants or non-profit motives. The 70 small creative businesses there were the catalyst for raising home values from 35k to 300k over the last 30 years. The arts have value... in our local sense of safety, pride, joy, and security as well as our entertainment. Anyone who thinks that $1.50 per person is too much to spend on the arts (NEA) hasn't been to Baltimore, Hon! I'm a proud transplant!
1
Musician Thomas Dolby lives in Baltimore, too.
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Baltimore is a beautiful, underrated cultural hub with a vibrant art scene to get excited about. Tourists need not stress about the crime when traveling in safe areas and staying alert, just like every city (stay in the north/south strip of St Paul, Charles, Calvert, and Maryland between 33rd St and the Inner Harbor, then head further to Fells Point and Canton). Similar to Detroit, Americans love to dump on Baltimore, which is frequently excoriated for lamentable crime rates and hollowed out residential communities. There’s a lot to love in this city that has nothing to do with The Wire.
9
It is so sad that such a historically wonderful city has taken so many bad turns. The Orioles are an interesting parallel to the demise. I enjoyed many years of seafood and baseball and very nice people. One used to be able to safely park a few blocks from Memorial Stadium and safely walk to a game. Now, without a parking place it can be quite risky.
1
I grew up in Baltimore - still live there half the year - hate the politics, violence and weather - love the culture, food and people.
6
Lived in Baltimore for 27 years. One of the fun things about it is that Baltimore is pretty small but with a lot of interesting culture and science. This translates into bumping into famous people a lot. I've run into John Water and Senator Barbara Mikulski in the same shopping center. Ridden an elevator with a Nobel Prize winner. Worked out at the same gym as Laura Lippman and one of El Chapo's lawyers. A fun and unpretentious city.
I,as others, endorse the Vistionary Arts Museum. Great place.
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To all the young artists living in Baltimore, don’t be fooled by this article, leave. You deserve better.
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@DJ
You are basing this on...what? Have you lived in Baltimore?
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The composer Philip Glass is from
Baltimore.
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@Elise Bodtke
And don't forget David Byrne, who spent his formative years in Arbutus, one of the suburbs, and Frank Zappa who was given a bust at the local library.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/music/bs-frank-zappa-statue-dedication-pg-photogallery.html
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A welcome piece with several new insights even for someone who has lived in Baltimore for over three decades. Martin does, however, get a little lazy in relying so heavily on the Waters exemplar. Not just on Waters, but specifically on the breakthrough movie Waters made a very long time ago. News flash: Johnny Unitas is no longer the local QB here in Charm City! You also have to wonder whether the NYT, if if wanted to do a feature on, say, the quirky culture of Brooklyn, would turn to a writer who chooses to live in Greenwich, Connecticut. Martin, as he acknowledges, is from Columbia, MD, which is worlds removed from Baltimore in income level, diversity of population, and (most importantly for purposes of the article), the kinky/kooky factor. Columbia is the capital of business park-bland. The racial tragedy of Baltimore’s schools and streets and housing is in no small measure the result of the flight to the suburbs—none more so than Columbia—that has gone on now since Anne Tyler was a school girl. (BTW, I wish there had been a LOT more Anne Tyler in the piece.)
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Imagine an NYT story in which the author states "...I travel to NYC and its surroundings every year or two" and claims on the basis of those visits to understand NYC.
Said author would be laughed out of town or, more likely, simply ignored.
Yet the author of this story makes the same claim about his occasional visits to Baltimore and environs. Gimme a break. Or just fugeddaboudit.
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Having been here for more than half of my life, I've always thought of Baltimore: we could have been a contender.
On the other hand, I wouldn't trade it though because it would mean missing out on the Baltimore/Arbutus gal 3 decades ago and our wonderful Baltimore son now in college, who requested (could you bring some Old Bay when you come to visit), learned to sail at the Downtown Sailing Center as a kid and ended up working there as a counseling and instructor and who loves oysters.
I also would have missed working in early 80s at inner harbor bookstore in early eighties and hanging with MICA student coworkers, doing a summer job as community organizer in Southeast Baltimore where Barbara Mikulski had formed one of the streams that made up the national neighborhood movement, teaching in West Baltimore while going to evening law school at UB (and eventually Beth Steel in my early career and Under Armour later), exhibiting my sculpture with other Baltimore sculptors in the late 90s and early 00s, playing jazz in Fels Point and lately in Hamden's growing scene.
How could Baltimore not be a contender as an incubator for art.
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NO Tin Men ? No barry leveson?
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Jimmy Rouse!
5
Barry Levinson.
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I came here in the '70s to attend grad school at Maryland Institute College of Art and ended up staying, because I could sustain a life as an artist much more affordably than any northeastern city. Yep, it's a quirky and in some ways endearing place, and there are a lot of artists here I respect and value as friends. I'll never know what the effect on my career would have been had I moved back to New York, where I grew up, but my calculation was that having more time and space to focus on my art, and later to be able to raise a family while doing that, was ultimately a more sustainable way of life and therefore more of a guarantee I'd still be making art today than being somewhere I had to work 40 hours a week at a non-art job to survive. And I felt like being here would keep me grounded in creating art that had reasons for being besides illustrating some point about critical theory. Meanwhile, Baltimore is not the middle of nowhere: we have two major museums, New York is easy to get to, Philadelphia is even closer, and Washington closer still, so it's possible to be based here and keep up with the mainstream art world. What Baltimore lacks (and always has) is a robust commercial gallery scene where artists can connect with collectors.
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And your art is pretty darn fabulous!
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@KL DC Why thank you! That’s sweet.
Laura Lippman???
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Forgot to mention Barry Levinson.
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Bawlmore then (pre-King murder) was safe to walk around day or night. Bawlmore now is a dangerous place. You can live in your house but you can't live in the City.
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That’s probably a very easy statement to make looking at the City from one of the richest towns in Maryland. However, I live in the inner city of Baltimore and enjoy both my affordable home and the surrounding city and frequently walk from North to South Baltimore without fear, often with friends from out of town who remark on how beautiful Baltimore is. Maybe you should give the City a visit.
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I just re-read Happy Days, Newspaper Days and Heathen Days. Baltimore didn't begin with Waters.
1
I recognize exactly 1 of those 4 names.
Not exactly a Mecca.
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@AL while i'm certain you're cultural knowledge is vast and varied - i assure you that Baltimore does indeed have a lot of culture and lot of culture to give.
perhaps you should investigate some of the names mentioned? perhaps expand your already huge cultural library?
1
What's with Baltimore, and the Times? I lived there for a while and the best thing about the place is Johns Hopkins and the medical and scientific community, the O's and the crabs. I would not be putting John Waters up as an icon of anything, he's gross. The 43 miles between DC and Baltimore might as well be a million for all the differences. Check out the real estate values, tells the story.
3
Sorry, Baltimore's better days are far behind it. No, Charm City isn't Austin on the Bay. It's filth, disease, and crime that extends from the street to the political class. It used to be livable due to manufacturing. Now its abandon housing and free fire zones. Art? Well, I guess there's art in the nobility of survival. BTW, Columbia isn't a suburb of Baltimore. It was politically annexed by metro D.C. years ago losing all association with the real Maryland.
3
@Mike,not really. Living on the edge of Columbia for the past 20 years, there are more Ravens at the local grocery store, more O's, a 410 area code. Drive 3 miles down the road, across 216, and you've crossed the border to DC, but Columbia's a Baltimore suburb still. A sterile one, not quirky or strange, like the city, or upscale and pretentious like DC. But that's the burbs, everywhere. My kids live in Fed Hill, and I always feel that there's life and culture there, at an affordable price, in a city that I love. I spent 25 years in the DC suburbs and work there; I feel at home in both places. I go to DC for a great meal or the theater, but Baltimore to feel alive.
2
Anne Tyler?
Not for nothing but David Simon is one of only 9 accounts I follow on Twitter, and I am never disappointed.
2
Please don't forget that Edgar Allan Poe is among the very famous, arguably "weird" denizens of Baltimore.
Here's a little story about the extent to which folks in Baltimore enjoy battles to be best: many many years ago, in the bathroom of a Chinese restaurant competing with a certain Jimmy Wu's version of same, one couldn't help but see this insistent message written on one of the walls: "Jimmy Wu uses Minute Rice." Never pass up a chance for a little touche among competitors!
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@teach Just about every city up and down the Eastern Seaboard claims Poe as its own. I have lived in several of them (including Baltimore). For someone who died relatively young, he got around.
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@junewell baltimore doesn't claim Poe as "their own" - they claim to have killed him.
We are proud to have hosted the many dens of iniquity that brought the demise of a man arriving here already haunted by personal demons and weak to resist the allure of a seedy port chock full of temptations.
for better or worse - we have baltimore accept that part of our "character" is that the id of humankind has always prospered here.
1
One should come and walk around the city - it’s not all that bad in parts and the architecture is great if a bit worn. Take a risk and the best thing is Baltimore can be bought and invested in at a good price and hasn’t skyrocketed out of reach.
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@Craig Purcell, I agree. For sure, there's a lot of violence, but they really play it up in the news. You can walk around safely, I'd say, 95% of the time. You have to know what areas to avoid, though. Sometimes, I drive around the city just to remind myself that there are NOT shootings, killings, robberies going on 24/7 like the news highlights.
2
David Byrne and Frank Zappa are two other "interesting and creative" artists who were from here.
8
Baltimore also has a world class orchestra headed by a world class music director.
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No portrait of the historic culture of Baltimore is complete without notice of H. L. Mencken, a genuine original who did his own clear thinking about his city and country, wrote well about it, and was remarkably influential.
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Born and raised in Baltimore, until I left at age 21 to go into the Army. In my youth it had a solid blue collar economy based on shipping, steel and food processing. It was a minor league town, which is why people became so fanatical about the Colts in the 50s when they got good; we had never had a championship anything before. My father called it a "branch office town."
As has been pointed out, the real Mason-Dixon line runs somewhere through Baltimore, which was both southern and northern. This will give a sense of the kind of place it was back then. My mother despised what she called "hillbillies" from West Virginia and the Carolinas, and the worst thing she could think of to say about them was that they were "worse than the colored." On the one hand, Baltimore immediately de-segregated its schools after Brown v. Board. On the other, the new schools constructed in the 50s and 60s to add the classrooms required by the baby boom were sited so as to be convenient only to either black or white neighborhoods; the new high schools intended for white kids were built almost out to the city limits.
Rather than comparing Baltimore to New York and other large cities, I think a comparison of Baltimore to another city like Pittsburgh would have been more appropriate.
Culturally, I would pit Rachel Carson, Fred Rodgers, George Romero, Andy Warhol, August Wilson and 'Bored in Pittsburgh' against anyone or anything Baltimore has to offer any day of the week -- though I defer to Baltimore's superior claim to a higher degree of weirdness, a mantle they are welcome to keep.
And to Steve Beck's comment, I'd submit that Pittsburgh is the most eastern City in the U.S. For example, unlike midwestern cities, the Pittsburgh papers never ran Billy Graham's column.
5
So many outstanding exports of art from Baltimore, but I'm compelled to mention the music of one more: Wye Oak. Although they've since moved to greener pastures, their work while in Baltimore is unparalleled. Andy Stack is a master percussionist. And if Ma Nature had selected just one voice to project her "agony-in-ecstasis" from the bowels of the Earth, it would be Jenn Wasner, who also plays a mean guitar when she's so moved.
3
Baltimore has long been one of the country's (overlooked) cultural capitals. Glad to see an article that captures some of the unique personality that makes Baltimore such a compelling community and place to live.
4
For years, my wife and I would go back and forth from New Mexico and Baltimore. We finally decided it was too much to do this and ended up permanently in NM. Baltimore still has a place in our hearts. A great museum, Baltimore Museum of the Arts, a great symphony orchestra, and great crab cakes. What more can one want! We're going back to visit in a few weeks.
8
It's the most northern of southern cities, the most southern of the northern cities, the most eastern of the western cities and the most western of the eastern cities and that explains it all.
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@Steve Beck I'dgive you the North and South part, but I think Pittsburgh takes the most Western of East and Eastern of West place.
5
@Steve Beck
We say that about this town.
1
Good article but he has the years of “The Wire“ wrong 2002 over five years ending in 2008. You might want to go in and correct that
4
"an otherwise relatively inconsequential midsize city"
Now you wait a gosh darn min---
actually, on second thought, I'll take it.
18
Try the American Visionary Art Museum - spectacularly weird. The painted screen doors (a uniquely Baltimorean art form) alone are worth the price of admission.
35
Interesting timing for this article just two weeks after your negative cover story about Baltimore in the magazine. Feeling guilty at having represented a challenged but vibrant city in such a bad light? You should!
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@LEL I had the same reaction -- weird to celebrate the city after notifying us of its terrible downfall so recently.
4
@LEL
Baltimore has some serious problems. Sometimes that is where the creativity occurs.
Some of NYC's most notorious era produced some of it best art. That was before big real estate (which has always had an out-sized prominence in the city) went out of control and completely ruined it for struggling artists.
8
It's pronounced "Bawlmorese," not Baltimorese.
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@nuttylibrarian Sounds good, hon.
What about having just the right proportions of various urban sub-cultures and overall size which in total make Baltimore a city where a drag queen running down a street is memorable? Baltimore combined into a rich cultural stew white collar corporate, blue collar industrial, suburban housewives, prominent gay community (Baltimore has many gay bars in the 70s and 80s), a bona fide demimonde, a long term homophonic closet case mayor, strong gay friendly and hostile churches, cheap rents, a decent art school, some world famous institutions, European immigrants combined and southern blacks who migrated to Baltimore. A largely Catholic city with a predominant German immigrant population, Enclaves of East and Southern Europeans adding figurative and literal flavors to the city.
Add institutions such as the Charles and the American Visionary Museum, Baltimore brings the every day to edges and the edges of culture to the quotidian of culture.
Watch “Pecker.” Where NYC meets Baltimore. As well as any film this shows why Baltimore is Baltimore.
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@George Seely As a lifelong Marylander, who lived in Baltimore until I was 18 and still own a house there, who in the world are you referring to as "a long term homophonic closet case mayor?!"
4
@MJ I’m guessing he’s referring to William Donald Schaefer. That was before my time in Baltimore so no idea if he’s correct.
Is he speaking of William Donald Shaffer? Never thought of him as homophobic, when I moved to Baltimore in 1990, I was told he might be gay, but no one seemed to feel to strongly about it one way or another.
Small cities often produce corps of artists who have much wider, if not world historical, influence. Pittsburgh's Homewood neighborhood is the setting for John Edgar Wideman's novels and August Wilson's entire cycle of plays. Most famously, Dublin was a poor, provincial backwater when Joyce wrote Ulysses.
11
A review of Baltimore's artistic output and cultural influence and no mention of life long Baltimore resident H.L. Mencken? I know you have to dip back a few decades before Waters' time but the man left a very long cultural shadow and it stretched out from Baltimore. Mencken was a racist anti-semite who refused to recognize the dangers of Nazism till far too late who also coincidently engaged in historic battles with censorship all while acting as founder and editor of both "The Smart Set" and "The American Mercury" publishing Theodore Dreisler, Sinclair Lewis, and F. Scott Fitzgerald among others. Apart from being the role model for generations of journalists before he was found out, he was also, arguably, the most important literary critic of the 1920s. Throughout his career, this one time journalistic/literary icon was simultaneously on the exact wrong side and exact right side of so many issues it makes your head spin. What do you do with the legacy of a man like that? Well, in Baltimore you turn his old house into a museum and have the Baltimore Library hold his archives.
21
"Mencken was a racist anti-semite ...."
He was a man of his times who was also a great friend and benefactor of many blacks and Jews.
For a fuller and fairer assessments, read:
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/rediscovering-mencken/
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/04/20/the-h-l-mencken-show/
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41211810?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
3
possibly you have visited Spittal's in Glen Burnie, a deafening biker bar infamous for crabs boiled in brine, served on kraft paper, and accompanied by "silverware" straight out of a toolbox: a hammer, a screwdriver, and a pair of pliers, all elegantly offset by a roll of paper towels shared along a table set for
50. the seafood was served by carrying it from the kitchen in bushel baskets, which were upended on the table so the diners could just dive in. I think the bar is gone, but I look for it every time a plane swoops into BWI. more than the Inner Harbor Rouse redevelopment, the memory of Spittal's is Baltimore to me. and crab cakes.
6
Crabs are never boiled in Baltimore. Always steamed, usually with a thick coating of Old Bay.
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@Pottree
Except for the deafening biker music and screwdrivers, that's pretty much the way we eat crabs at every place here.
19
I suppose this article is somehow supposed to balance the March 12 NYT Magazine article titled "The Tragedy of Baltimore," which among other frightening facts pointed out that Baltimore's murder record exceeds that of Chicago, a much larger city.
Why is anyone surprised that violent crime in Baltimore has skyrocketed to astonishing heights in the past few years?
As a result of cop-bashing by local politicians and demagogues (sometimes one in the same), police in Baltimore have become reluctant, even afraid, to attempt to control crime out of totally understandable fear that they might face not only disciplinary action but legal prosecution for doing their jobs.
I find it ironic--and tragic--that more and more Baltimore residents are now "pleading for police officers to get out of their cars and earn their pay--to protect them."
This is not, as the prior article described it, "evolution," but an obvious example of cause and effect, or negative reinforcement.
The author of this article notes "But, with any luck, [Baltimore] will continue to be the odd, ambitious place where murderous drag queens roam the streets." I am sure this statement, and the prior article, will be powerful disincentives for newcomers to visit or move to Baltimore, and for current residents to stay.
25
Blaming the murder rate in Baltimore on some sort of post-Freddie Gray reluctance by police to “come out of their cars” is incorrect. The murder rate is part of the drug and gun epidemic that has been at the heart of Baltimore’s problems for decades. Illegal drug manufacturing and distributing is a lethal industry. No amount of policing will stop heavily and illegally armed people from murdering each other.
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@Mal T Glad to know you're safe in the Midwest without any hope of encountering a place half as interesting and vital as Baltimore. Enjoy your small-minded bigotry, dude. More fun for those of us who love Baltimore and support the people, communities, and institutions working to make it a better place for all its citizens.
5
@Betsy Gordon Please read the March 12 NYT article on Baltimore for varied acknowledgments, including those of the author, that the murder rate in Baltimore does indeed have some relationship to the current reluctance of police to risk censure or prosecution for doing their jobs.
2