Editor’s note: Baltimore Fishbowl publishes occasional personal essays from local writers exploring local themes. Here, Baltimore writer Steve Mencher shares why he and his wife moved a mile north, from Charles Village to Guilford.
After six years in Charles Village, my wife and I are moving exactly one mile north, to Winthrop House, in Guilford. Here’s what we’ll miss when we move to our lovely, but much less diverse and convenient home.
In my six years in Baltimore, I’ve come to understand that no neighborhood is an island, and that’s what makes our current place work. Remington, Hampden, Waverly, Better Waverly, Abell and Harwood all are adjacent to us, or nearly so, and the mix of Black and white, gay and straight, student and family, make the streets come alive, and the Saturday 32nd Street Farmers Market shine.
When we moved into our current apartment, a friendly drug dealer held court downstairs, our next door neighbor had lived in his apartment since the building was overhauled decades ago, and there were a couple of other non-students mixed in to the 20 apartments. It seemed like a place 60-somethings could thrive. But with our neighbor evicted, it’s now all students, and getting more and more run-down from their comings and goings. I supposed it says something that our friend the dealer was a source of stability for the building, that is, until the police started busting down his door, and the clientele waiting outside for handovers moved from high schoolers to middle schoolers.
Over the years we’ve been here, we saw the long-delayed opening and quick shuttering of a Busboys and Poets on St. Paul Street. On paper, it must have seemed to them that the perfectly mixed-up quality of our neighborhood would allow them to bring people together across differences as they do so brilliantly at their branches elsewhere in the DMV. But they never seemed to get Baltimore, and worker-owned Red Emma’s on Greenmount Avenue is now connecting people from the neighborhood and beyond, in a city that’s not always welcoming to outsiders.
But mostly, what I’ll miss on 41st and Charles is what I wrote about a few years back, the “15-minute city,” which allows us to get almost all of our daily needs met in a short walk. A big and small grocery, CVS, hardware store and a dozen restaurants, the green of the Hopkins campus and the cool stone of the BMA make this an urban wonderland.
I’m not naïve enough to believe that there are no hidden costs to what does and doesn’t work in our current or soon-to-be neighborhoods. Baltimore’s long history of segregation and control, with areas of adequate housing and personal safety famously envisioned as a Black Butterfly, have as much influence on the geography here as anything benign. Hopkins, with its new, armed police force, and its clear-cutting agenda, has an uneasy presence here, even as the security guards they post outside our building add an element of safety.
And, although our move merely a mile north will result in greener, cleaner streets, we’re giving up a lot to live in a building where our packages won’t disappear, where we can jump in the pool on hot summer days, and where fewer folks will be begging on nearby pavements.
We also fault the architecture of our current neighborhood for chasing us away. We looked long and hard, and unsuccessfully, for a place that wouldn’t require steps in or out. And we are tickled that our soon-to-be primary bath includes a roll-in shower.
Soon, we’ll be just a 20-minute walk away from our current place and its conveniences. That’s fine in spring and fall; but harder in summer and winter. How long can I keep up that pace? I’m aiming for at least another decade.
