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.