Poll: Baltimore as a Destination

Quote:
Why is Baltimore not on your itinerary?
There is no CVS!

Ulladh said:

The CVS at Fells Point/Little Italy is open 24 hrs.

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If I have to explain a (admittedly bad) joke...

Granted, the crime is rampant in certain locations, or hot spots as some have chosen to designate them as, however, you have to pass through those locations to reach the somewhat safe realm of the inner harbor. That is, unless you happen to be good as a sky diver and decide to parachute in.

As for comparing it to other major cities, keep in mind that Baltimore is relatively small in comparison, but it's RATE of violent crime is very high per capita. And, also keep in mind that a lot of this goes unreported by the local, liberal, very biased media. When you work in an inner city hospital ER and OR, something I did for the better part of 15 years, you get to see this first hand. The victims of muggers who were nearly beaten to death for chump change stream into the ER and Shock Trauma nightly. Individuals with stab wounds that would never reveal the perps for fear of recrimination is unreal on any summer weekend. There are NO safe neighborhoods in Baltimore - NONE! If you happen to reside in Baltimore and sincerely believe your neighborhood is safe, just tell me how many times you left your doors and windows unlocked at night. Tell my why all those homes in the affluent districts have bars on their windows and doors. A physician I worked with lived at Bolten Hill for a couple years after going to work at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He worked in my division, and was a really good pulmonary physiologist with a young wife who also worked there as an RN. Really nice couple. One night, when he arrived home about 7 p.m., from a long shift in the OR, he exited his car, and in broad daylight, three thugs smacked him in the back of the head with a pipe, grabbed his brief case, which only contained some medical records, and ran down the street. He was brought into the ER with a fractured skull, major concussion, cerebral hemorrhage, and went into cardiac arrest a few minutes after arriving. Fortunately, he managed to survive, but he was never able to practice medicine again because of the brain damage. Bolten Hill is considered one of those elite Baltimore neighborhoods.

So, if you really believe it's a wonderful place, just keep those dreams alive - maybe, just maybe, one day, you will be right, but I seriously doubt it. And, if you have children, just think about the wonderful, dumbed down education system that Baltimore provides for it's children. $17,000 a year expended for each student and most can barely read or write when they graduate high school, let alone do complex math problems such as division and multiplication.

Good luck,

Gary

4arch said:

I don't disagree but I also don't get why Baltimore is painted with a broad brush while people are more willing with almost any other large city to make distinctions between areas and neighborhoods. People distinguish between South Central and all of LA, between the South Side and all of Chicago, and between Manhattan and the Bronx - so why is Baltimore just Baltimore? I especially don't get why people from the surrounding suburbs paint with this same broad brush as in the end the more negatively people see the city, the more it reflects badly on the region as a whole.

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After having worked in law enforcement in lots of big cities with crime, Dallas, New Orleans, Miami, Baltimore, and Atalanta, I would easily peg Baltimore as the worst place I ever had to work (and I did six years there).

Yes, most of the time, Fell's Point and the Inner Harbor is safe. But, both are very close to bad areas and tourist do get attacked everywhere in Baltimore.

A Secret Service agent I knew, killed an armed robber who pulled a gun on him at the ATM near the ESPN Zone, around 8:00 pm on a weekday night. When he shot him, he started running back toward the hood and dropped dead at the shot tower. That is not considered a bad area. But when a good area is really close to a bad area, like Fell's Point and the Inner Harbor area are, it is crazy not to take into that account.

Another problem is not having local knowledge. I can't count how many times we were in the office in all of these big cities, and heard about a homicide of some tourist who had wandered a block in the wrong direction, and we all said, "What the hell were they doing there? Have they never been here, before?"