Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Baltimorons

Ah, Baltimore, my hometown: the history, the harbor, the neighborhoods, the RAVENS (and, ahem, the Orioles), the harbor, and...the CHARACTERS!

My hometown characters are a continual source of amusement. Some of my recent favorites:
  1. The older gentleman in a wheelchair parked outside of Lexington Market directing drug traffic as he took user's money and directed them to the yo-boy around the corner. Meanwhile, folks are milling in and out of the market, and no one's paying any of this a  bit of mind (then again, at Lexington Market, so much other stuff is going on, it's hard to pick just one thing to be surprised, appalled, or amused by;
  2. The crackhead-ish gentleman scurrying down Belair Road on a rainy afternoon using a giant umbrella from a patio furniture set to keep him dry. Now maybe it actually was his umbrella, but I'm suspecting some family was pissed that they were going to have to go and by another one;
  3. The pretty young mother standing on a downtown corner on a beautiful late summer day, who had the top of her sun dress flipped down, with her infant snacking on one breast, while she covered the other with her hand (receiving blankets aren't that expensive, are they?), all the while carrying on a conversation like everything was everything;
  4. The independent cigarette merchants on practically every corner selling "loose ones". Can you make a living off this?
  5. The Patapsco Avenue hookers, with more teeth missing than present and accounted for. I'm guessing some of them have more crabs in them than in Curtis Bay. And not any amount of Old Bay would do anything for those crabs...
Just of few of my favorites; I'm sure I'll have  more to report later...

    2 comments:

    1. I have no problem with number 3 but I'm bias. Yay for a young BLACK woman breast-feeding.

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    2. I have no problem with public breast feeding (nor of dangling bare titties), just tripping over the absence of a blanket or anything but her hand covering up anything while standing on the corner of Howard and Fayette Streets...

      ReplyDelete