Posted on 06/08/2009 5:08:47 PM PDT by FromLori
If anything, The Wire makes it seem better than it is.
We recently had the chance to visit Baltimore, Maryland to see a baseball game. And though the stadium is very nice, we came off thinking that in a sense the HBO show The Wire, actually makes Baltimore seem better than it really is. Because if you watched The Wire, you might conclude that all the messed up parts were confined to some section of the city, rather than the whole thing itself. But it's really all pretty miserable. We regret not putting it on our list of depressing cities.
Even downtown by day is pretty sad, given the prominence of once-glorious money manager Legg Mason (LM). And then at night it's just kind of miserable.
Anyway, we're not the only ones with no interest in The Charm City.
peHUB posts a copy of a letter to the editor from New Enterprise Ventures, a VC firm that's moving out of Baltimore. This part is particularly rich:
Our decision was a result of the high level of crime in our neighborhood. Over the last several years, many of our cars have been broken into resulting in very expensive repairs, our employees have been robbed at gun point, drug needles and used condoms have been left on our front stoop, and psychotic homeless people have menaced our employees and threatened to kill them. We have voiced our frustrations to the local community leaders and police, but the environment has only worsened. The recent local beatings by roving teenagers during the day in this neighborhood, the raucous club in the basement of the Belvedere, and other gang violence throughout the city reinforces the appropriateness of New Enterprise Associates’ decision to move in order to protect its employees.
Yeesh!
All joking aside, it really is tragic, since on the surface there's no reason the city needed to be that bad. It's got a beautiful spot on the water, in what should be a successful Eastern Seaboard state. And unlike Detroit, it wasn't married to a single industry that got absolutely gutted over the past several years. Why do we keep losing our cities? It's an embarrassment.
What do you expect from the city that spawned Dawn Davenport?!
You know I remember in the early 1970’s when articles appeared everywhere condemning the people for fleeing from Milwaukee the newspapers all had huge headlines “White Flight” and said how horrible and racist the people were for leaving. Now over 30 years later they are still wondering why the cities are such cess pools? Same old, same old doing the same things over and over and expecting different results...Insanity Reigns in those cities. St. Paul used to be a nice city not anymore! They just kept welcoming the trash and now the city is trash.
“no reason the city needed to be that bad”. really? I can think of quite a few reasons the city couldn’t escape it... TCBE’s and many of ‘em.
You can visit areas in west Baltimore which you will think you are not in America.
Thanks for the travel tips. I’ll try to check out those areas (cautiously) the next time I’m down there.
We also get the police helicopters buzzing around with the spotlight on.
If it weren’t for the tremendous infusion of federal dollars into Maryland, it would probably rank near the bottom of states economically. Its proximity to DC means lots of federal workers and federal contract workers. The Gov, who was the mayor of the failed city of Baltimore, now has 4 BILLION stimulous dollars to dole out to his favored ones. It’s a state of limousine liberals and government dependants.
Nancy Pelosi’s daddy Thomas D’Alesandro didnt help, Her brother Thomas D’Alesandro III was worse. Martin O Mally ,better known as M.O.M. sucked and then along came Sheila Dixon.
When is her trial to start anyway?
Ya know, it makes me think of starting a new reality show, After Dark with Smith and Wesson.
Sad part is, I would wind up in jail. This country is so screwed!
Hmmmm.....lemmee think....
And it’s not only white flight. Minorities who are productive members of society and want to live in a better area flee the cities too.
Because of political correctness, it’s hard sometimes to talk about the problems of the cities. But it’s not so much racial as it is that the cities have critical masses of people who are :
uneducated, unemployable, unable or unwilling to live in civilized society, youth gangs whose “job” is criminal activity, the homeless, many of who are mentally ill, baby mamas, poor people.
Can we ask Obama or other good Democrats about the war on poverty, and what their exit strategy is? That war was started by a good Democrat, Johnson, along with a heavily Democrat Congress. Hubert Humphrey declared we would eradicate poverty in 10 years. We’re way off that schedule, with no end in sight to the war on poverty. Poverty won the war on poverty. It’s not so much a poverty of money as a poverty of values and upbringing. Such a tragedy, such a waste of human life. And Democrats are never called on it.
Baltimore - Zimbabwe on the Chesapeake.
I lived in Towson for two years in 1987 - 1989. That was enough for me and I made a beeline for Texas. What ever happened to Curt Schmoke, the mayor of Baltimore during the late 80s? Did he end up in jail?
Once the weather gets nice, the knuckleheads starting coming out in droves. In all honesty, it's relatively safe - notwithstanding the A.A. county cop who was shot 100 yards from my home last year. However, there are parts of Baltimore that look like third-world countries - you just have to avoid them.
He didn’t end up in jail, but they still talk about him.
He has been the dean of the Howard University Law School since 2003.
I'm thinking about making a beeline to Texas myself in a couple of years. Two of my favorite things are guitars and guns, so I would probably fit right in in the Lone Star State after I lose my Bawlmer accent!
I’d love to see the Eastern Shore politically separated from the rest myself.
&&&
I’d vote for that! I live in Tolchester.
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