Baltimore

[mallorys_camera]

Baltimore was the Big Fun.

I had a delightful time there although, of course, three days—really one day and two half-days—is not enough time to do anything more than skim the surface, and as a big fan of The Wire, I was a bit disappointed not to hear Omar whistling The Farmer in the Dell from around a corner or visit Stringer Bell’s CopyMat.

Still. The American Visionary Art Museum is a sui generis in my admittedly not extensive experience with curated art collections. I would go back to Baltimore just to visit it again. World-class acquarium, too. And it was fun just walking around, trying to figure out what part of what I saw was unique to Baltimore and what part was the vision of some frustrated city planner, thinking, What can we do to get people to come to Baltimore without thinking of “The Wire”?

I met up with lookfar there. She is excellent company! Having a sympatico traveling companion definitely enhances the traveling experience. We each experienced A Small Setback in the course of the trip—she lost a beloved earring that she had just bought! I had one of those insomniac experiences I have from time to time—and I think had either of us been by our solitary, these setbacks would have been enough to invoke the dreaded Pall.

But together, we were able to disburse the negative vibes by planning and normalizing—we would simply go back to the American Visionary Art Museum and she would buy another pair of earrings! I would drink more than my customary two morning cups of coffee and sleep on the train! Thus, the setbacks were mere blips on the Big Fun panorama.

Some pictorial highlights:

I walked down Charles Street from the train station to our hotel in the Inner Harbor. Baltimore’s Pennsylvania Station has this oh-so-bizarre and what-were-they-thinking statue pondering its generic Beaux Arts façade:



Charles Street, Baltimore’s great east/west dividing line, took me through the pleasant Mt. Vernon neighborhood, which is filled with parks and elegant brownstone mansions, now subdivided into apartments and offices. This church (which I thought might be modeled after a forelorn sandcastle its architect once dribbled on some horrible seaside vacation during his lonely and neglected childhood) is actually some sort of Methodist cathedral. No, seriously!!!!!!



The Mt Vernon neighborhood is filled with Himalayan restaurants for some reason.

Here is the Inner Harbor. It reminded me a great deal of that dirty scrap of San Francisco Bay alongside Oakland’s Jack London Square.



Three things I noticed right away.

(1). Remember when electric scooters were popular in every American city with a population over 100,000? Most American cities with populations over 100,000 did away with them over liability issues—because if you had an accident on one, sure you’d sue the scooter company. But you’d also sue the city because deep pockets!

Baltimore did not get rid of the scooters. Scooters remain immensely popular in Baltimore:



(2) People in Baltimore still throw their cigarette butts on the street. You hardly ever see cigarette butts on the streets of NYC anymore. But the streets and sidewalks of Baltimore are littered nwith them.

(3) Baltimore has a very diverse population. But—from this one outsider’s view at least—it had a bit of a The City and the City vibe to it. You’d see white people and Black people strolling outside, enjoying the wide promenade that leads along the waterfront. But you didn’t see white people with Black people. Very few integrated couples or friendship groups—this in sharp contrast to NYC, which is the city I’m most familiar with.

In fact, lookfar and I spent half an hour Saturday afternoon watching kids play in a fountain that had been turned into an impromptu water park. And the kids of different colors did not acknowledge each other. I have watched similar scenes in NYC parks, and whatever the grownups may think of each other, kids of a certain age who are playing in close proximity are quick to make friends. But not here.

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Here are lookfar and I taking off for the American Visionary Art Museum. Don’t we look fabulous?



lookfar’s hair endears her everywhere she goes! I think maybe a hundred people stopped her on the street to exclaim, I LOVE YOUR HAIR!!!!!!

She has great fashion sense, too! Altogether, an exemplary travel companion.

The American Visionary Art Museum is beyond fantastic. A relatively small collection, thank Gawd, because I looked intently at every single piece and therefore reached Total Museum Exhaustion relatively quickly—I absolutely love museums, but being inside one is a little bit like being inside a nuclear reactor for me because if you look at things, really look at them, it is very intense.

My two favorite exhibits:

The Fart Machine:

Watch on YouTube

Surrounded by fart art!!!!





And then this tropical jungle that was apparently devised for a Bergdorf Goodman window back in the days when the department store windows along Fifth Avenue were veritable museums in and of themselves:





What the hell could such a window display have been selling?

And then there was the museum gift shop, which simply was The Best Museum Gift Shop EV-AH!!!!!!!!

I went wild! Purchased fabulous new eyewear!





And Zoltar sends his best ❤️LUV❤️ to smokingboot:



I could write tons more but not today. I have other things to do.

Oh—one more thing:

Nafisa called this morning to offer me a COVID booster shot.

“Don’t you have to wait a certain amount of time after you get the second shot? If you got Moderna or Pfizer?” I asked.

“We don’t give according to interval,” she replied. “I love you. I am concerned to you—do you say ‘concerned to you’ or ‘concerned for you?’”

Nafisa lost her mother to COVID. In Sudan. From whence she and her family had just returned.

Still, I am fairly certain she is wrong and that the proper interval is eight months.