brooklyn

with an evening flight i headed out for the wander that would be the most profitable with the time left. no retracing steps what was missed will have to wait to next time. buses that are reliable - looked at the schedules and worked backward from my departure time. it was to be more bus tag but wandering until the next bus came - with a day pass every point is a transfer point.

being social almost scuttled everything as even though i had to race for the 54, at mondawmin i missed the number 16 and had to wait an hour. i was so close that i waited as nothing runs to schedule here but after three others came up looking for the bus i reckoned that it was true and headed in to see the new targeted mondawmin.

a great place if you are under 20 food courts, cheap jewellery and shoes. koisks selling mobile phones. there was a closed book shop.

there were more people at the staging point of the buses than i had seen in all my time in baltimore and baltimore not the type of city that panics, had five different types of police force out and about. in my reckoning it was one officer of some form or another to every 10 citizens. they were in groups, there were walking about the crowds, they were blocking the bus stops with their squad cars, again baltimore mimicked a third world city of a few decades ago. it seems that schools closed early and everyone was either heading to or away from mondawmin.

30 minutes later the 16 pulled up filled and left.

bus etiquette -
take forever to load. don’t get your money or card out until you are at the cash box, if you have to show an i.d. wait until asked, it is slower that way.

if you enter with friends make sure you sit as far apart as possible so that you can yell back and forth across the bus.

stand at the front of the bus preferably bunching around the driver.

when leaving push the signal but don’t get up to quit the bus until the bus has stopped, waited and has begun to pull away again. this is the time to leave your seat walk to the door and yell ‘back door!’ for more effect add an invective.

a great ride the number 16. there is no logic in this route except to connect people to other lines. it is by far the slowest way to get any place along the route and certainly slower getting to the terminus. it heads west then south to go east. it skirts downtown all together. it parallels the city limits on the southwest side and i get to see, walbrook, rosemont, violetville and landsdowne before getting down in the brooklyn homes.

kept the camera pretty much hidden walking through brooklyn homes and gardens. this was irrational am having a hard time explaining it as after getting my initial bearings, i felt safe in the area. i think that it was that safety that had me put the joãozão away. walking through the residential area along 8th street i wanted to make some images of the street furniture and the way that people were taking pride in their property while differentiating it from their neighbours. i was mentally comparing this area with armistead gardens, and west baltimore.

when i stopped to make a snap there was always someone on their porch sitting, taking in the day. while with them there i felt safe, i also felt that i would have to do a lot of explaining if i slowed brought out the camera and made snaps. i - perhaps mistakenly - thought that there would be more than quiet curiosity and i wasn’t really in the mood to explain. a pity.

joãozão did come out when i hit patapsco avenue. the plan was to walk until the number 64 arrived, i would then hop on that, head to the horror and then decide. photographed the usual suspects, storefronts, churches, vfw halls, taverns. i must have been more nervous than i thought - or more sloppy - as a lot of the frames are tilted and not usable. i made sure that i didn’t bend at the hip as i did when in copenhagen causing all sorts problems.

along the avenue safety came from meeting no-one but when i did there was a greeting and not a puffing up and posing from the other person in some strange show of strength.

across barrett park over to hanover street more taverns, more shops and a bit of a worry. when i hit patapsco avenue a 64 and a 16 passed but reckoning it too early - good thing as it was a nice walk - i decided not to hop on either. here i was across brooklyn heading across the patapsco trying to determine whether i could make it before a bus came or if i should wait. the patapsco is no polite river it isn’t the chicago or the milwaukee barely a block long this was going to be a walk, this was to be as long as the walk so far. there would be a chance at the harbour hospital then again near port covington. i decided to walk. i had always wanted to walk the hanover street bridge, this was an excuse.

time became a factor, i started to reverse calculate again, if i made it to the metro by 3:00 i would be ok, if a bus came at ... revisions came every ten minutes as i checked my progress and slowed at a bus stop to see if one was coming. i keep forgetting how compact the city is and while i walked almost from the city line to the centre it only took a couple of hours. except for the buses there should have been no panic at all.

made it into south baltimore and and the cross street market before a 64 arrived and getting on was a mistake as it was so crowded that i could have walked to the metro more quickly. regretted the lack of time as there was a ball park in swann park hidden under I-95 and apart from south baltimore. thought it too much of a diversion.

waited 45 minutes for a 54 so that i could pick up my bags and head to the light rail. the packed bus crawled up park heights - the driver threatening not to move until people moved to the back. there was a near riot was a randallstown bus decided not to stop meaning that some people would be late to work, the passengers were taking it out on this driver.

calm and in control again once on the light rail - the only mode of transport that seems to work in baltimore - i got down at lexington market for a pizza and a drink before heading to the airport.

met willie girts who told me about the music at the market asked on how the groups were chosen, found out that he was a musician and having chatted with me i made his snap along with using that as an excuse to photograph more in the market. the early evening light was great. the market was only slightly less crowded than the mondawmin bus terminal.

of course at the airport early even after slinking through the tsa line - only one checkpoint open - in homage my missed trip to the ram’s head, a pint of copperhead before heading to the gate where it seems that people use the same technique to board planes as they do buses - as the gate was closing -after the sixth announcement in six minutes saying that the gate would close in five, then four, then three minutes, ten couples came racing toward it hoping to board one person repacking their luggage to get it within the guidelines of the airline.

straight line wander... more or less

made the wrong turn. i was hoping to make it to mondawmin for the 16 bus to brooklyn homes but seeing the number 60 i hopped on and was at the light rail before i realized what i had done.

 

headed in to lexington market to make sure there were no liquids in me before a straight line walk up the centre of charm city – well more or less. passing the empty shops along the emptied lexington street looking up to see class mates names. when i stopped to make a snap the area in front of the camera would suddenly become populated.

 

it seems to always be sunday in downtown baltimore beyond howard street only a few tourists at mt vernon. the shops that i thought were closed for sunday were more permanently so. i liked the possibilities of having depopulated early evening light seven days a week.

 

heading up charles street i realized that it was the time that chi may be heading back from hopkins so started to guess what street would be the return route. between seeing how gentrified the area between madison and the station had become and trying to choose charles or st paul the walk had potential.

 

the most promising part of the walk was between north and 25^th street  empty  weed strewn lots, post boxes, modified corner shops.

 

charles village was a bit too green and bucolic and thus a shock to the system. watched students eat at food chains on the ground floors of buildings.

 

the mta was up to its usual standards of transport –  30 minute wait for the 22 when three came in succession. another half hour wait at park circle for the 54 passed the time making urban formal snaps of the boarded houses and the evening light passing through the chinese take-away. 

the person who told us where to find wrist bands for my mother.i was too lazy to get out of the machine

bus tag

although i have been doing it for some time, i have just put a name to it.

bus tag.

buy a day pass.
find a route that looks interesting - i.e. seems to be more concerned with connecting people than getting from a to b efficiently.
take it until there is a transfer point of a route that holds potential. switch.
repeat.

great rides of the past the number 5 - actually the old number 5 glyndon to cedonia, the number 77, number 51.

to-day it was the number 33. the number 33 for i knew the route of the 44 by heart. the 33 because it reached deep into places beyond east baltimore - middle river, dundalk. headed out in the late afternoon when the clean up was done for the day. i reckoned there would be about three hours of light but it wasn’t a photo wander but a reconnaissance, a wander of curiosity and half remembrance. took joãozão and a leiquinha.

here again comes the love hate relationship with charm city, the bus system here is great some aren’t the most logical routes but it is a rare place within baltimore that cannot be reached by bus. the metro and light rail are simply affectations of a city trying to be a metropolis buses allow me to travel into less savoury neighbourhoods hop down, make snaps and then get a bus out. usually the important bit happen at transfer points.

but one would think that baltimore only has one bus to run on all its routes. i waited 20 minutes for the 54, then another 30 minutes for the 33. people were insensed. one person who had waited longer than me would be late to work, another wished that he had stay on the 54 and transfered some place further along. i didn’t mind as i could watch the drug deals on the corner of park heights and cold spring.

when the 33 finally arrived we knew why the mta had all day passes, it took all day to get anyplace. the outing alternated between poor and rich with a great deal of blue collar. it was interesting to see how different areas with similar housing initially changed. pimlico, the area north of hampden, the royal farms and the mini village with its tasteful shoppes in the valley between roland park boulevard and charles street, the corner taverns, and food shops at york road, the attempt of a mix along harford below moravia.

finally made it to armistead gardens and was in the middle of it before i realised where i was. like wilbur and orville streets cross wright street. realised that was there when the streets narrowed housing was more dense but without the typical brick row house. i knew i was there with the hampden like individual decorations of the front gardens.

i brushed areas that i had been on earlier outings, linking them, i again was reminded how small area wise baltimore is.

wished that i could get down along pulaski highway with baltimore painted across a railway bridge, wondered what i could do with the modified big box stores and the now almost decimated malls built around them.

and then it was time to change - ended up at the essex park and ride after crossing back river no little stream this no puny tamed chicago creek, a real river with real width walking back over it, below the bridge an encampment of people fishing and hanging out, not too far to south the bay, i was pretty pleased that the bus terminal was across from a closed bingo hall.

then the hate again, the 30 minute wait for the 23, the person waiting was more upset than i was.

-it is too long too long.

when it came the community of the bus, smelling of crabs, a couple at the front were about to celebrate their anniversary - hence the crabs - and were comparing ailments with another couple heading to hopkins bayview. leaving they offered the riders their day passes.

duckish, i pass neighbourhoods with their flashing blue lights a corners telling outsiders where drugs can be bought - nice of the baltimore city police to be so accommodating when the metro heads above ground at cold springs they look like constellations in reverse.

noon wander

with the way buses run around here one has to travel when they want not when it is convenient for the traveller. going on line to find the bus schedule for the 58 which runs once a hour, i saw that i would have a good chunk of time to wander before meeting up with chi.

took joãozão and a leiquinha on a wander of the skinny streets of mt. vernon. streets instead of alleys as there were houses and they were named. it really didn’t occur to me to walk them until i saw a basketball hoop in tyson street just above monument. i was trying to find streets that i hadn’t wandered but knew that antique row of howard street held potential. that was soon abandoned.

forgot how nice it is to wander on sunday. less people about more shops closed, there seems to be less hassle when stopping - not getting in others’ way and and the ability to look into shop windows without having shop owners wonder. the walk though was more looking than making snaps as except for a few houses most of the backs were well protected.

up to reade street then down ploy street, more gawking to madison to morton. mt vernon populated with the homeless mixing with those heading to the peabody.

after brunch more mews and a few snaps but realised that i didn’t have to stick to them south of centre street. walking charles street most of the shops were empty making the street look like an upscale version of howard street. while more people were about they seemed to be fixated on making it to the inner harbour.

i made the odyssey back.

post preakness pimlico

the morning was perfect for what my purposes. mauzy, pissing rain meant that even less people would be on the street down at pimlico. i knew that i wasn’t really going to find any remnants of the preakness on the streets - while baltimore can make pimlico clean up their mess, the city cannot live up to its end of the bargain and clean up the housing mess around the racetrack. i was there for the shop fronts but kept me going were the churches

missed the bus and the way busses run here, thought it best to walk for who knew when another one would arrive. i was almost right as i was at menlo drive when the bus caught up with me. got on as i was going to get a day pass anyway.

automated sign on the bus

NORTHERN PARKWAY
TRASNFER POINT

park heights had that emptiness that made me feel fine as long as i didn’t see anyone. but became hesitant when that lone person was in the distance. the feeling dissipated a bit when i saw an elderly lady obviously off to church. pity i cannot say the same for her as after seeing me hop back and forth across park heights avenue to documenting both sides of the street before i had a plan - determinedly walked back to her senior living home.

as i had feared many of the shops had steel barriers covering the entire façade. the only thing i could do there was to play with what was dealt me formally. i tended also to divert off of park heights when i saw a church that was once any building that was ecclesiastical. the area seemed to abound in them. stop a bit when i saw a woman crossing a vacant lot but she turned back when she saw my camera. the block opposite the race track has become a west indian street, with shops and restaurants. most were closed but sometimes i wasn’t sure. i would walk slowly looking in before i would make a snap.

now and then a distant flash from someone running the red light camera activated signal. it must have been the winogrand of cameras as it would go off when machines were perfectly stopped at the line.

another church goer passes and throws me off guard by greeting me. i tend to start to do that with the next dozen people i pass, not the subtle nod but actually speaking, even to those people who are watching me from parked machines.

oddly i feel safer when i see more people as they are workers at the racetrack leaving to catch the number 27. again they seem more wary of me but then this could simply be the characteristic paranoia that runs rampant in charm city.

crossing belvedere - could there be a name more mismatched for a street - the population grew. it seems that liquor stores can and do open early on sunday and there were people in front of most of them. all looked down at my now retracted joãzão trying to determine what it was i am guessing either that or determining whether they should duck or was it a bible. everyone was watching and i missed a perfectly mediocre photograph due to this. one of the few leftovers from yesterday. outside a laundromat someone had set up a food table complete with brolly and fake cloth. i walked by twice hoping buddy having a ciggie would finally go inside. furher down a nice window display but again buddy keeping his eyes on me.

was to stop at belvedere but there was church - then two, then three - around garrison. once out of that one block i was alone until i turned up spaulding. there were a few gents in the carpark behind an old bank that was a church and while i was photographing the store front that was a now a church three machines came stopped and people sat watching.

it seems that they arrived a bit early and were awaiting the church to open but all those eyes... i nodded as i passed.

the snap i should have made

вероника, the server at mari luna in pikesville who wondered why - when i said большое спасибо after she brought me my coffee - i could speak russian

не за что

i was wondering why someone from ukraine would be working in a latino restaurant.

всего хорошего

schizo city

mixed feelings about charm city arise again. getting down from the plane - thurgood marshall makes milwaukee mitchell look like deer lake there were shops real food and people riding in on the light rail however i felt i was in the third world. passing baltimore highlands the train filled and it seems that no one knew what an inside voice was. the best is when people would board together then sit on opposite ends of the carriage and yell to each other. howard street felt like some fail southern country. the metro was a little different but quiet time on a train is seems not to exist outside of heading straight north.

then it came to me baltimore is two cities. there is the working class city rapidly gentrifying around the inner harbour and slinking up charles street with pockets in canton and highlandtown. and there is the third world city - west baltimore, southern baltimore - not south baltimore - and the northwest. to do a digital ding dong ditch in mount vernon, i decided to take the 54 bus to mondawmin then the metro to state centre cultural centre - catchy name isn’t it - so that i could walk down reade street. crossing northern parkway i wanted to get out and make snaps - jamaican grocers, churches and hair salons, vying for space with chinese and fried chicken takeaways. wanted to photograph the churches then figured what the hell go for broke the area isn’t large - just under 2 km and this week-end it is “safe” as the preakness is here. it was pretty evident never seen so many white people around pimlico.

by the time i had made a decision i was out of the area and more fascinated in the yelling from one end of the bus to another. everyone seemed to know one another and everyone got down at mondawmin.

reade street was quiet, like baltimore as it isn’t overrun by starbucks, there were three cafés along reade street two selling books, there was another weird pizza place - the name escapes me but it was almost as good as the egyptian pizza restaurant that i saw up reisterstown road near the sam’s club. this one at cathedral and reade had the same middle eastern italian cuisine.

forgot about the alleys in the neighbourhood mad a note them but was on a mission and didn’t want to be sidetracked. only a few images made but was carrying too many cameras again. made snaps of clothing left behind with the digital, it seems to be a thing here. jackets hung on trees, or fences, caps left on railings. took the digital for the ding dong ditch, in reade street some snaps of some strange façades remnants of when the area stopped being baltimore’s haight-ashbury and became antique-land. more snaps around mercy hospital and even more down at baltimore and st paul.

this felt good as until now i was making the amount of snaps that would keep me in full standing as a full time faculty member at the dukedom - none. walking down st paul i thought that maybe i could make something of the pimlico snaps if i got around to making them, am pondering the mess before and after the preakness but i also wanted the storefronts. here i have to get them when they are open as closed there is only steel. i want the signs i want the stuff on the windows.

thought about taking a bus back up to mondawmin to see more, the number one tends to make it there as if the route designer were a bit pissed that day. not being able to find the stop and when i saw the route thinking it wasn’t really pissed enough opted for the metro to the third world again.

at north and pennsylvania which in orwellian balamer speak is now penn-north. they changed the bus stops, instead of in front of the library that i used to go to, i went to in front of the old met theatre which was replaced with a metro exit with ambience of many men relieving themselves after a night at the tavern.

looked for the woman i bought a snow cone from a couple of years ago.

men were selling turtles on the corner. a woman bought one and got on the 54 bus after me.

sitting in the back, looking at the plastic box with a plastic palm tree she kept banging the side to see if it were still alive. it seems they gave her cat food to feed it, one woman told to her get some lettuce, another said to put a couple of stones in the box so that the turtle could get out of to the water from time to time.

arising from my dukedom stupor. it happens the atmosphere among the full time faculty is so charge that one needs a rest - from talking about theory - i was inspired by zoë strauss, reading america i saw that she asks many people to make their snaps and gets turned down a lot, when the bus emptied a bit i asked the woman in the red top holding a clear plastic box with a green top being bathed by caravaggio lighting - if caravaggio has a mta day pass and was heading up park heights - if i could take her snap.

with me looking like this?

the turtle reminded me of the ones that i had long ago.

made two. she got down in the area where there are more boarded up houses than not.

buddy who was trying to chat her up and i think got her number asked if i lived around here.

no born here, father ran cherry hill, etc. am back for a bit...

zoë strauss completely taking over my body i said that now that we have spoken i would have to do him also. so in that same lighting made his snap before he got down.

on a roll i strolled upper park heights between garrison and northern parkway forgetting where i was and said hello to people i passed. a few snaps made of the churches but this being a warm day every shop owner who didn’t have a customer was out front trying to figure out what i was carrying or when they saw me make a snap what i was photographing. thought that i would fold into the pre-preakness crowd but wasn’t swearing enough nor did i have khaki shorts with leather shoes.

changing film at the bus stop at northern parkway chatted with a woman who was also waiting, telling me how they keep to schedule and how one would be there in 12 minutes as she said that not one but two pulled up.

of course we know her fate...

have to take more busses.

here i was again, where walworth and rock counties meet between I-43 and and US 12, east of johnston centre and avalon. here there is a sound to the space. a mini great plains that i usually skirt heading to madison. by the road a farm implement, in the distance a manure spreader, i always wonder how a place can be empty and intimate at the same time.

the plan was to do an urban wander in madsion, no the plan was to attempt a ding dong ditch the the condo complex of the big o, then an urban wander.no the plan was to getup early enough to photograph the road houses before their opening then ... i didn’t know what the plan was. in truth any plan would be fine. however i wanted better than fine.

heading out a bit later than planned, stopped along county trunk a for two taverns, stopped at the cow of janesville to attempt the same point of view as the old oasis restaurant, then opted out of the interstate for us 14 through janesville parkerland for more taverns and other roadside businesses.the outing was to be not only secondary roads but no bypasses around town. a closed restaurant in evansville between the newer suburban section and the preserved centre - failed for being between two trends. a tavern in union with outdoor games, oregon again with “suburbs” a distance from the quaint preserved centre, i preferred the area by the railway.

the ding dong ditch was a failure, these condos are so secure that there is no place to leave a packet no concierge, no mail room. it is like the dukedom, no i.d. no entry. except for a slight exploration due to my curiosity about an offshore drive, island road and jetty drive in a landlocked subdivision - should have guessed when i came to shenandoah way and antietam lane - that it was more wishful thinking. turned down the blue ridge parkway.

spent so much time trying to decide where to walk that there was no time left to do a decent one. stopped at a victor allen’s and had an atypical madison experience - nothing vegetarian. took this as a sign and headed back via the interstate to newville to see how swollen the rock was and to scope out the place where the second attempt at collodion would take place, thankful that the ride along I-90 didn’t have me revert to making time.

due to the rock i was out of a gridded road system, again a resort where i couldn’t find a place to park and walk. die hard year rounders were out and about taverns on koskonong
were open but empty.

still a nice day took the sandwich bought at milio’s to the park in johnston centre thinking that i would sit out and not graze while eating. did foresee that the park was now a parking area - no benches. ate with the car door open.

but did turn down county m into that mini plain, fields were being prepared, had already photographed the road house at the rock/walworth line after the curve in fairfield where i was using the road as a short cut, i started stopping again, the lone house that looked abandoned, tractors parked in the middle of fields, the great bear made by someone shooting at a stop sign at north and creek road and that sound.