I moved away from Baltimore about two years ago, after 12 years in Charles Village near Johns Hopkins. My wife & I began to fall in love with the city almost as soon as we moved there, helped along by a great newspaper, the Sun, which cultivated excellent writing on local affairs and culture (see, for example, Rafael Alvarez and Dan Rodricks). Baltimore is a poor city, struggling with crime, poverty, decrepit housing—all the ills that now beset older cities in the US. Yet it is a wonderful place to live: compact, full of character, culturally rich, historically dense; it has a distinct identity despite the proximity of Washington and Philadelphia. Mention rowhouses, Memorial Stadium, North Avenue, the Bromo tower, Domino Sugar, or Fells Point to almost any ex-resident and you will likely set off a torrent of assocations and reminiscences. I could go on…
