Maybe your child just went off to college in another state, or maybe your best friend just moved to Chicago for a new job–in any case, chances are you know someone who is homesick for Baltimore. So why not send them Baltimore in a Box?
Tag: utz
Charles Street: Thoughts on Urban Duality
Baltimore Fishbowl intern Moses Hubbard, Mt. St. Joe ’11, wrote the following essay as part of his high school senior project. Moses and friends collaborated on “a multimedia artistic rendering of Baltimore,” ultimately completing a short movie with music. Moses’s writing served as the film’s poetic narration. “We felt a weird sort of pull from the city, like gravity, that none of us could ignore,” he says. Moses is a rising sophomore at Fordham University.
Charles Street begins undramatically. It sprouts out where I-95 runs through the south side of Federal Hill, after a stretch of water and some train tracks, between two gutted warehouses. This first block is more parking lot than road, and a few abandoned cars can usually be found parked at haphazard angles along the street or in the grass beside it. It’s a humble origin for what becomes one of Baltimore’s most dynamic and important streets.
Boston Dares Disrespect Baltimore with Planned Poe Statue
So apparently, Boston has commissioned a statue of Edgar Allan Poe to be placed in, get this, Edgar Allan Poe Square. The statue will depict the author walking in the direction of his birthplace. Can you believe the nerve of these people?
Sure, Poe was born there and, yeah, his first book of poems was signed only “a Bostonian.” But Baltimore is where he was found wearing another man’s clothes stumbling around deliriously just before he died. And he’s buried here. Plus, we need this! Without Poe all we’ve got are Mr. Boh, the Utz girl and Old Bay (and some moderately tenuous claims on Tupac Shakur, Frank O’Hara, and David Byrne).
After viewing the statue design concept that accompanies the Sun article, I feel confident that Boston’s monument won’t hold a candle to Baltimore’s in terms of a certain physical attribute (ever seen our statue really close up?).
I only hope that this Boston thing won’t embolden Richmond and Philadelphia to try to steal Baltimore’s Poe crown. You’d think that naming your NFL team after a poem — A POEM! — would send a clearer message. Poe is ours!
