Thank the Government for the Ghetto

One of the conditions of employment as managing editor for Whiskey & Gunpowder—aside from rabid adherence to Austrian School economics—was relocation to Baltimore. I really didn’t think much of it at the time. I’d spent nearly my entire life in one of the four boroughs of the City of New York (anyone who’s lived there can tell you that secession-longing Staten Island doesn’t count) and I was ready for a change of employment and venue. Writing for Agora in a smaller and more affordable mid-Atlantic city seemed the perfect prescription.A couple of trips to Baltimore during the interview process only served to convince me that life here would be much better. Agora’s “corporate campus” is comprised of a handful of beautiful buildings in the center of the Mount Vernon neighborhood, one of the best-preserved bits of historic urbanism in the U.S…and I’m an absolute sucker for historic urbanism. I’d be able to live in an architecturally lovely part of a cheaper city, just a couple minutes’ walk from work that I would truly enjoy. What could be better?
I even did the usual due diligence and wandered around a bit at night to get a truer sense of how safe the neighborhood really was. Thing is, a cursory walk-through cannot substitute for actually living in a place. For example, I’m sure even downtown Baghdad has its moments; you’d have to stick around a bit to see exactly why the property values are so low in places. I’ve since come to know just how unsettling this otherwise lovely neighborhood can be in the dead of night. I’d heard endless stories of how rough Baltimore was (“Haven’t you seen the wire?”) and I knew it looked bad on paper, but what I’d seen of historic Mount Vernon assuaged any doubts…until I actually moved in…
My last neighborhood in New York was historic as well—in fact, last year it became NYC’s newest designated historic district—but it felt safer by an order of magnitude. I would often venture out to the local 24-hour grocery stores or all-night food carts at 2 or 3 in the morning. There were many other times I couldn’t sleep in the hours past midnight and would walk the ten blocks to the 24-hour gym. I can’t remember once feeling the least bit afraid while doing so. New York has had the distinction of being the safest big city in America for a while, a phenomenon I’ll address in a bit. Baltimore’s not nearly as big…nor nearly as safe.Ironically Baltimore does resemble the fictional New York in the movie adaptation of the classic Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend. For those of you who didn’t catch that Will Smith vehicle, the plot in the movie is as follows: a treatment that was supposed to cure mankind of an age-old plague becomes a virus that transforms over 99% of humanity into violent, blood-sucking, mindless monsters.
I hope you see where I’m going with this.

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