I had a speaking engagement yesterday in Baltimore, after which I caught a great dinner with friends at a fabulous Afghan restaurant in the Mt. Vernon district called The Helmand. I had the koufta challow, which was fantastic.
On my way out of town after dark, penalized for my indecisiveness at taking a poorly marked offramp to I-95 South, I ended up on the wrong freeway. I only drove about a half-mile or so off course, knowing all the while that I needed to get myself turned around. It was easy to take the next exit ramp, but I ended up in a neighborhood that — well, let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised to see it featured prominently in an episode of The Wire, whose third season Eleya and I just enjoyed on DVD over the last few weeks. I’m sure it sounds awfully provincial but frankly, even though I don’t mind visiting once in a while, I’m just not an urban dweller at heart. And a fish that knows when it’s out of water, I would say, is a wiser fish, or at least less likely to backflip out of the bowl into a hot griddle.
I was grateful for the dearth of stop signs, and made my way with not a little haste back to the freeway. I had to get back into downtown to make a safe turnaround back to the original I-95 ramp, but made good time getting home. I think I prefer experiencing the Baltimore mean streets on DVD for now.
well, at least you can take comfort in baltimore’s exceptional crime statistics.
look at the bright side: by escaping unharmed, you have lowered the overall rate for homicide (now only 5.48 x the nat’l average).
interestingly, though violent crime in baltimore is much higher than the nat’l averages, for the category of “forcible rape”, it’s 0.87 times that avg. this may be explained in part by first determining if rape after homicide is still considered rape.
that’s not even remotely funny. feel free to delete this comment.
please. 🙂