Swapping Neighborhood Stories
I stumbled upon another Baltimore blogger today who lives not far from me, just across Patterson Park. She’s been sharing some of her ‘interesting experiences’ from living in the city, from the eviction of the local women of the night, to the pharmaceutical salesmen on her block. See, I told you it was normal!
I’m reminded of times when I run into my neighbor and we talk for hours about the ‘characters’ that live on our block. And by characters I mean the old guy across the street who seems to have a lot of ‘girlfriends’ or the drunks that stumble out of their house at two in the morning and wake you up with their incoherent shouting.
There’s even a guy across my alley who lives in a shed. As in a cinder block shed located in my neighbor’s backyard. From what I can tell, he’s mostly harmless, but I think the years of drinking have rotted his brain. He just sort of staggers around, grunting at things.
And that’s part of the fun of living here. While my neighborhood has been very gentrified in recent years as evidenced by the Starbucks and the frequency of expensive foreign car sightings, there are still a lot of people who have lived here for a long long time. The contrast between the old Baltimore working class types and the new urban professionals is fascinating.