A tale of two cities

Buz is a regular reader of 2 websites: the Baltimore Crime blog (baltimorecrime.blogspot.com) and city-data.com's talk forum on Baltimore. I am often confounded that the people on the site actually are talking about the same city! Your consultant thinks that the crime blog gives a more grounded, more realistic view of Bmore, it's bad, but in realistic context. Almost all the writers/commenters obviously live in the city and kinda have learned to deal with it (with some exceptions).

Then there are some posters on city-data.com who are what I call urban spearheads/homesteaders. Every place in the city is wonderful, it's great, there are festivals, blah, blah, blah. Some poor person will post that they are moving to Baltimore for a job, and will ask for a nice, safe, secure place: they're told, oh, you should live around Patterson Park, you'll love Pigtown, or especially Charles Village. Huh? If their number one concern is safety?

Well, they're both right, after a fashion. Baltimore certainly has a lot of nice places to live, but one has to calibrate living suggestions with the tenor and demeanor of the seeker, as well as the price they're willing to pay, and their commute situation. Usually, when they talk about a "safe" place to live, they mean no open drug-dealing or gang activity and murders on their street. But often it mean an absence of "disorder"--such as one might find in Pigtown, and parts of Charles Village, and "Patterson Park" ( a very loosely-applied generic name for anywhere near the park).

So, people, take the postings with a grain of salt, hook up with a trustworthy native, come early, and check out several actually available rental properties-as well as their adjacent neighborhoods.

If all else fails, get Buz