Struggling against the almighty tides of eventuality

I wrote this about a week ago, in response to a then-current news item. Fearing a tide of Charles Village people (or anyone, really) who would read into this that I just didn’t give a shit about someone dying, and come and harass me, I didn’t post it. However, I guess at this point I’m either going to have to post it or delete it, and I’m getting tired of deleting the thoughts I have. So, while no longer timely (and thoroughly unedited), here’s my thoughts:

If you’re one of the people who follows me from Baltimore, you’re probably aware of the homicide that happened in Charles Village this weekend. I definitely am; it was at the end of my street. I wasn’t made aware of it until the next morning, somehow I missed the commotion that must have been made. However, I haven’t missed, for the past three days, repeated news crews, and a press conference the Commissioner of Police himself attended. Huzzah, you might be expecting me to say, the city is responding to a violent crime in my neighborhood with a swift hand and recognizing that there’s a problem.

Except I’m not saying that.

The thing is, and I know I’ll sound callous and unfeeling for saying it, is that Stephen Pitcairn is a small number in a large statistic. Baltimore is not a safe city. There have been one hundred and twenty homicides in the city limits this year so far. And while Mr. Pitcairn was doing valuable research, every single one of those other people were flesh and blood just the same, and so few have received the attention he has. It’s partially due to who he is, and partially to do with where he was when it happened.

And that’s really the problem. I don’t want people to marginalize his death, but I don’t want people to marginalize the 119 other people who’ve died this year, either. But they are marginalized, because so many of them occurred in poor, black neighborhoods where that’s just part of the deal. We just finally caught some of the spillover in our little hamlet between multiple sections of town people colloquially call “ghetto.”

I’ve seen a number of extra police in the days since it happened, typically buzzing around the exact location, as though there’s a mystical significance to that specific spot and any future murders would only take place there. I do not feel safer for the over-the-top show. I don’t feel any less safe than I did last week, as a matter of fact.

Because this is Baltimore, this is one of the murder capitals of the world, and if you felt invincible cause your house had some cute paint and you can walk to a farmer’s market in a parking lot, even though you can hear the semi-automatic fire that periodically rings out from Waverly, then you’re a fool. You’re not any less safe than you were before, your eyes have just been opened to the reality of where you live and you’re hysterical. And it’s disrespectful to the people who, when murders happen around the corner from them, are ignored.

It’s a major tragedy that Stephen Pitcairn died. It’s an outrage that the people who did it were released repeatedly into the world after apparently committing other robberies. But it shouldn’t be so much more than when someone else dies senselessly. The city is dying all around us, and we can’t just draw a line in the sand and say “Not HERE. You can kill them THERE but we will HAVE our painted ladies, damn it!” Cause the problem with a line in the sand is that when the wave comes crashing down it gets washed away.

Saturday, among other things, I went to the Windup Comics (“Comix”?) Fest[ival]. If that wrestling match with punctuation didn’t completely turn you off, you’ll now be entreated to a review of that experience:

I actually really liked it. Like DC Comic-con, it was pretty much a single room, i.e. The Windup Space on North Avenue in Baltimore. It had a completely different feel from that convention, though. More on that “feeling” thing later; first, location: fortunately for me, it was within walking distance (only about 6 or so blocks), so I didn’t have to worry about parking. Had that been a concern, it may have been less awesome because North Avenue isn’t always the nicest of streets. It was my first time at The Windup Space, and it seemed like a nice enough little bar. I can’t speak to the quality of drinks or service, though, cause I was mostly focusing on the comics (and I was poor that day).

As I said, this gathering had a completely different feel than my sole previous experience at a comics gathering. I think that’s because this event focused primarily on the artists, and not the retailers. There were a couple of retailers, but most of the people were actually local, independent, artists and writers. That can be attributed to the difference in who was the chief organizer: from what I understand, DC was organized by a retailer, and Windup was organized by an artist (in fact, one with whom I went to high school) and an art studio. Suffice it to say, without dragging out the comparisons much longer, I walked into DC Comic-con with a decent amount of money and nothing I wanted to spend it on, while I walked into this place and found plenty of stuff I wanted to buy but had almost no money with me.

The artists were all really friendly, and that was pretty great. I came in towards the end of the day, since it started about 1pm and closed at 7pm, and I wasn’t able to make it until after 5:30. In spite of what I heard was lower turnout than expected (maybe due to the rainy day and this being the first such event), everyone was pretty happy and readily willing to interact with me, explain what they were doing and selling, and just be generally quite congenial. I found a couple of things I really wanted to get, a couple of things I thought would be cool to check out, and a couple of things that were neat but not really my speed. Fortunately everyone had plenty of business cards and flyers, and I managed to get something from almost everyone so I could remember to check them out later.

Local Artists' Media

Ultimately I had to whittle down my must-purchase list to one item, which was the Floppy Boy comic on the left. While many things caught my attention, as I said, I stuck with this one because I thought it’d be particularly cool to have something written by someone I know personally. I wound up with Volume 2 rather than Volume 1, though, so I’ll have to pick up the rest of the collection later. It’s a collection of former-webcomics (the server blew up, I think, and if I remember correctly I was told it was “a long story”), which Gavin admitted were pretty hit-or-miss with the comedy, but I thought were pretty entertaining.

I’ll try to remember to update this later with links to the artists, as was my original intent, as the picture of a stack of flyers is clearly not legible enough to make them out, but I don’t have the physical copies with me. Hopefully in the meantime this link to Interrobang’s page on the festival (with list of artists) will suffice.

In closing: it was really an awesome show, and I’m glad I went. From what I heard from the organizers, they’re going to try to do it at least annually, if not twice a year, and I’ll definitely head back for more. If they can keep the same positive energy going towards it, I think it has the potential to turn into a Pretty Big Deal.

This is mostly in response to this post by another Baltimore native, in addition to some conversation I’ve had with him since. The feelings I have simply could no longer be expressed in 140 characters or less, and I’m not a fan of the long-form multi-tweet thought.

I realize that Baltimore is not a city in the north or in the midwest; 3 feet of snow is not something that happens every winter. After all, we tend to get a nice “wintry mix” of about 3 inches of wet snow that melts the next day and it sends most people into a blind panic. Given that the entire city hasn’t collapsed into a swirling vortex of despair, I’d say we’re doing pretty well. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think we can do better.

Given that we got hit with two storms in quick succession, a good two feet followed a few days later by another foot or so, I realize that there’s much to be done. Streets that were formerly plowed now need to be gone over again, and in the middle of a city there’s not much place for all that snow to go. However, my street was visited by a plow about an hour or two before the first flakes of second storm. That’s fine, it helps keep the total amount to be plowed next time down. Of course, that’s assuming they actually plowed. After sitting at the end of my block for a good few minutes (I’d assume they were digging out, except they’d have to have been doing it by telekinesis), they trundled down our street, plowing about halfway before lifting the scoop up and continuing on out of our block.

It’s not a terrible thing to take a break, as I’m sure those guys had probably been driving around city streets for many hours. But, if you’re actually going to resume plowing, I’d appreciate it if you plowed the whole street, and not just a little bit. Sure, it’s a business at the end of the block and not houses, but we still need to drive there. Since that time, like much the rest of the street, there is now a nice patch of packed-in snow sitting on top of a sheet of ice. Very nice.

Again, they have a whole metric shitload of snow to move all around the city, and it’s not unreasonable to assume that a silly residential side-street will get less attention than the main thoroughfares. But I actually ventured out into the city in my car for the first time since Thursday today, and I was delayed a good few minutes by a snow removal crew. The street was fine; they were clearing parking spaces. For that, I wouldn’t fault them, because I know people have been complaining about parking spaces, snow removal routes, etc. However, they weren’t in front of houses, or even a heavy business district. They were clearing spots in front of a church, and a garage (access to the garage was already available). At this point, I’d say that maybe their time would be better spent clearing out the side streets.

I say that because, after eventually getting back to our house, I had to grab a shovel and spend 20 minutes trying to break up the ice in the center of the road so that we could have enough traction to actually park in our carefully-cleaned spot. As an aside, here’s a note to other Baltimore city-dwellers: we did not put a chair in our spot; that crap is tacky. We got lucky and got our spot back but were willing to grab a shovel and make another one if need be. We shoveled a patch of pavement; doesn’t mean we own it. Back to the topic: there’s definitely an issue with organization. Could I do it better? Probably not, but I didn’t run for a seat in the city government.

If it sounds like I’m ragging on the city too hard, it’s just a form of tough love: for someplace where the average annual snowfall is less than one of two storms that hit it in a week, it’s doing pretty well. Don’t just take a pat on the back, though: there’s still work to be done, and ways it can be better. And for city residents, it’s hard to refrain from being shrill, but many snow-removal crews have been working pretty damn hard to make up for a lack of preparation, so a little slack might not be out of order.