THE NUMBER 27

One of my traits when I am below the 49th parallel is my propensity to rush. Here that means walking over to the Metro at Rogers Avenue – walking is the faster means waiting for a bus would take longer – getting a day pass and hoping that I didn’t just miss the train.

Sunday I did and seeing that the number 27 bus would arrive before the next train I left the station and boarded the bus.

Day passes are great a little more than double the fare $3.50 – I can get on and get down as much as I want. Needless to say they are great for wandering.

What I had forgot was that buses are great for sightseeing. It is so cosmopolitan to ride the metro/underground/subway but nothing is seen.

I realised this in London when I rode the tubes but couldn’t get my bearings and noticed it even more when living in tubeless Camberwell. It really became apparent one afternoon in New York when I went underground in Union Square and re-emerged in the 80’s wondering where the grime went. I walked back to find out.

Buses here are more like buses in small towns where it is more important that they reach as many people as possible than actually get to the destination on the front.

The 27 supposedly goes south east to Port Covington – that mythical place that I have yet to visit – but in doing so heads east then north then west then north again so it is further north than the northern terminus before heading south. Prefer this to Chicago buses that pick a street and stick to it.

I thought that I knew the areas as before the metro this would have been – more or less - the number 10’s route I am in Mount Washington to take the light rail and I know downtown.

What I had forgot was the third world conditions between these places the closed shops the boarded houses with people living in ones beside them the wreck of a business district just south of Pimlico.

Just as I was getting used to this scene, I was in leafy big lawned Mount Washington, separated only by Pimlico. Brochure like Baltimore continued down Falls Road into Hampden which they seem to want to make into clichéd Baltimore with Café Hon, bee hive hairdos and Aqua Net along the Avenue.

An area that I would have been lynched - literally – when I was growing up has become hip, nice shops and boutiques other cafés and restaurants outside of Hon, specialty shops that sell everything from old records to electric trains – remember to walk Hampden.

Then blight again as below Wyman Park a neighbourhood in transition within spitting distance of Johns Hopkins University. Local fat laden dirty greasy spoon take-outs with gratings over the windows and doors, no other shops at all. this continues down Howard Street past M.I.C.A. – under Bolton Hill into the burned out section of the old downtown of my first Sunday wander.