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Baltimore the monumental city. May
the days of her safety be as prosperous and happy, as the days of her dangers have been trying and triumphant.
Baltimore Heaven on earth. A place where you can drive less than five minutes and find something to do. Where downtown is amazing and charming in its own bright light, thank you hon, crab eating, drink soda not pop, way. Old bay is not just a seasoning, its a main ingredient. A little rough around the edges, but beautiful in its own way.
the greatest city in America Baltimore is the largest city in the U.S. state of Maryland and the 24th largest city in the country. It is located in the central area of the state along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. The independent city is often referred to as Baltimore City inorder wto distinguish it from surrounding Baltimore County.
seaport on the East Coast. Baltimore’s Inner Harbor was once the second leading port of entry for immigrants to the United States and a major manufacturing center. After a decline in manufacturing, Baltimore shifted to a serviceoriented economy, with the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins University serving as the city’s top two employers.
Founded in 1729, Baltimore is the second largest seaport in the Mid-Atlantic United States and is situated closer to Midwestern markets than any other major
At 621,342 as of July 1, 2012, the population of Baltimore increased by 1,100 residents over the previous year ending over six decades of population loss since
its peak in 1950. The Baltimore Metropolitan Area has grown steadily to approximately 2.7 million residents in 2010; the 20th largest in the country. Baltimore is also a principal city in the larger Baltimore–Washington combined statistical area of approximately 8.4 million residents.
Chesapeake Bay Home of the Blue Crab
The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States , and is an incredibly complex ecosystem that includes important habitats and food webs. The Bay and its rivers, wetlands and forests provide homes, food and protection for diverse groups of animals and plants. Fish of all types and sizes either live in the Bay and its tributaries year-round or visit its waters as they migrate along the East Coast. It lies off the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by Maryland and Virginia. The word Chesepiooc is an Algonquian word referring to a village “at a big river.” It is the seventh oldest surviving English place-name in the U.S., first applied as “Chesepiook” by
explorers heading north from the Roanoke Colony into a Chesapeake tributary in 1585 or 1586. The name might actually mean something like ‘Great Water,’ or it might have been just a village at the bay’s mouth.” The Chesapeake Bay is approximately 200 miles (300 km) long, from the Susquehanna River in the north to the Atlantic Ocean in the south. At its narrowest point between Kent County’s Plum Point (near Newtown) and the Harford County shore near Romney Creek, the bay is 2.8 miles (4.5 km) wide; at its widest point, just south of the mouth of the Potomac River, it is 30 miles (50 km) wide. Total shoreline for the bay and its tributaries is 11,684 miles (18,804
your part. There are many SAVE Do things you can do to help save
THE BAY
the bay such as: carpooling, planting trees, and using non-toxic cleaning products.
km), and the surface area of the bay and its major tributaries is 4,479 square miles (11,601 km2). Average depth of the bay is 46 feet (14 m) and the maximum depth is 208 feet (63 m). The bay is spanned in two places. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge crosses the bay in Maryland from Sandy Point (near Annapolis) to Kent Island; and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel in Virginia connects Virginia Beach to Cape Charles. The bay is known for its beauty, but in recent years it has been noted that the bay is becoming “emptier”, with fewer crabs, oysters, and watermen.
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Baltimore earned the nickname charm city because of its friendly neighborhoods & welcoming residents in the city.
Row House Charm
Inner Harbor
Little Italy
The best known of Baltimore’s neighborhoods is its riverside shopping and entertainment district bounded by the Patapsco River. Here, you can easily entertain yourself for several days without needing a car. Sample local crab delicacies with the Bay breeze in your hair at a dockside eatery or take advantage of family-friendly entertainment like the National Aquarium or Camden Yards baseball stadium. When warm weather arrives, the Inner Harbor bustles with street performers, boats big and small, and outdoor music at Pier 6 Concert Pavilion.
Directly to the east of the Inner Harbor along the water is Little Italy, a close-knit community of predominantly Italian-American residents. Between the scent of simmering marinara sauce from nearly two dozen restaurants, the water taxis that ply the harborside and the impromptu games of bocce, you might think you’re in Venice instead of Baltimore. In summer, the neighborhood comes alive with outdoor trattoria seating and free movies on Friday nights.
Fells Point To the east of Little Italy are the charming red-brick row houses dating from the mid-1700s that comprise Fells Point, a National
Historic District. The former port and shipbuilding community is a walker’s delight of quaint lanes and 18th-century nautical charm. Continuing a tradition centuries old when its pubs, bars and inns hosted reveling sailors and dock workers, Fells Point still has quite a night life.
Canton Canton hugs the harbor to the southeast of Fell’s Point and is bordered by Interstate I- 95 on the north. Once an industrial canning area, Canton is now a gentrified, hip residential neighborhood. Its heart is green, leafy O’Donnell Square, where you’ll find upscale gift boutiques, sports bars and restaurants serving briny oysters.
Federal Hill To the south of Inner Harbor is bustling Federal Hill, also referred to as the South Baltimore Peninsula. Civil War-era Federal Hill Park offers great views of the city from the top of its hilly peak. Cross Street Market, the epicenter of the convivial bar and restaurant scene on the peninsula, is a great place to get picnic fixings to enjoy in the park.
Mount Vernon Just to the north of downtown Baltimore is Mount Vernon, an elegant neighborhood of beautifully restored 19thcentury homes. Here you’ll find Baltimore’s Washington Monument, which predates the
one in Washington, D.C. It is also home to a number of cultural institutions, including the Walters Museum of Art and tony Charles Street, the crown jewel of downtown Baltimore. North of Mount Vernon is the residential area of Hampden, best known for its stunning, sparkling Christmas light display along 34th Street, which draws visitors from all over.
Poe Baltimore’s most famous resident
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first wellknown American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity
Edgar Allan Poe was orphaned young when his mother died shortly after his father abandoned the family. Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan, of Richmond, Virginia, but they never formally adopted him. He attended the University of Virginia for one semester but left due to lack of money. After enlisting in the Army and later failing as an officer’s cadet at West Point, Poe parted ways with the Allans. His publishing career began humbly, with an anonymous collection of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to “a Bostonian”. Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for literary journals and
periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary criticism. His work forced him to move among several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. In Baltimore in 1835, he married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin. In January 1845 Poe published his poem, “The Raven”, to instant success. His wife died of tuberculosis two years after its publication. He began planning to produce his own journal, The Penn (later renamed The Stylus), though he died before it could be produced. On October 7, 1849, at age 40, Poe died in Baltimore; the cause of his death is unknown and has been variously attributed to alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and other agents. Poe and his works influenced literature in the United States and around the world, as well as in specialized fields, such as cosmology and cryptography. Poe and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, and television. A number of his homes have been transformed into dedicated museums today.
RAVENS NATION
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FIRST THEY IGNORE YOU, THEN THEY LAUGH AT YOU, THEN THEY FIGHT YOU, THEN YOU
Win Baltimore Orioles have been a team that has seen little success in the last decade and a half. After an amazing 1997 season, the team maintained a steady downward trend that continued all the way to 2011 with more defeats then victories for 14 seasons at a steady trot.There wasn’t much anticipation of success in 2012 and even the most die-hard fans were finding little hope of reversal in fortunes. Against the odds, the year turned out to be one of the best the team has experienced for what seemed to be ages ago. The birds really showed their class and fought all the way through the 2012 season. Their will to go forward carried them into the post-season for the first time in 15 years. For the team that was
28 games behind the Division winners New York Yankees last year, this was no mean feat. Despite of losing to the Yankees in Game 5 of a hard fought American League Division Series, the achievements of the team were phenomenal. This unexpected outcome had many unexpected twists and turns along the way. There were many aspects of the team’s success that can only be described as being unusual in nature. For starters, the Orioles played some games that went really deep into extra innings. In the regular season, they played 16 such games and were victors in every single one of them. They remained just one shy of an all time record made by the Cleveland Indians in 1949.
Nine of these 16 matches went up to 12 innings or more. They also ended up winning games in the 17th and 18th innings in the same year, a feat previously only achieved long ago by Atlanta Braves in 1988. The Birds also managed an extra innings hitting record, with Adam Jones hitting four home-runs in the 11th innings or later. No other hitter has managed this feat in the history of Major League Baseball. The team managed an amazing 74 consecutive wins from the position in the regular season. The stats speak volumes of the abilities of the bullpen that the Baltimore Orioles posses.
The Baltimore Bullet
Silences his doubters by winning 19 th medal with gold in men’s relay
Michael Fred Phelps II (born June 30, 1985) is a retired American swimmer and the most decorated Olympian of all time, with a total of 22 medals. Phelps also holds the all-time records for Olympic gold medals (18, double the second highest record holders), Olympic gold medals in individual events (11), and Olympic medals in individual events for a male (13). In winning eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Games, Phelps took the record for the most first-place finishes at any single Olympic Games. Five of those victories were in individual events, tying the single Games record. In the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Phelps won four golds and two silver medals, making him the most successful athlete of the Games for the third Olympics in a row. Phelps is the long course world recordholder in the 100-meter butterfly, 200-meter butterfly and 400-meter individual medley as well as the former long course world recordholder in the 200-meter freestyle and 200-meter individual medley. He has won a total of 71 medals in major international long-course competition, 57 gold, 11 silver, and three bronze spanning the Olympics, the World, and the Pan Pacific Championships. Phelps’s international titles and recordbreaking performances have earned him the World Swimmer
of the Year Award seven times and American Swimmer of the Year Award nine times as well as the FINA Swimmer of the Year Award in 2012. His unprecedented Olympic success in 2008 earned Phelps Sports Illustrated magazine’s Sportsman of the Year award. After the 2008 Summer Olympics, Phelps started the Michael Phelps Foundation, which focuses on growing the sport of swimming and promoting healthier lifestyles. He expects to do further work with his foundation after the 2012 Olympics, which he has said will be his last.
You can’t put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the farther you get.
Bawlmerese
How to Speak With a Baltimore Accent If you want to fit in with the natives on your next trip to Baltimore then you’ll have to get an ear for the dialect they speak in many neighborhoods in “Bawlmer,” as the locals call their city The accent comes from the combination of Baltimore’s English colonial settlers with influxes of Irish, German and European immigrants, but “Bawlmerese” isn’t just an accent, it’s part of the whole “hon” culture.
1
Practice calling people “hon” until it sounds natural to use the word for strangers, no matter their gender or age.
2
Know that you aren’t speaking with a Baltimore, Maryland, accent, but with a “Bawlmer, Merlin,” accent.
3
Refer to groups of more than two people as “yoose all.”
4
Flatten out many vowel sounds to “ah,” especially a long “i” before the letter “r,” so you pronounce “fire” and “iron” as “far” and “arn.” Also flatten out the “oy” sound in words like “boil” and “spoil” to “aw,” so you say “bawl” and “spawl.”
5
Maintain good hygiene before eating by “worshing and wrenching” your hands, or “washing and rinsing” them, and do it in the “baffroom zink.” Then sit down to your “breffist” of “aigs and arnjuice.”
6
Pretend that the middle consonants of many words just aren’t there and blur the vowels together. To ask someone if they have eaten, just ask, “Jeet?” Or find out if they are finished eating with “jeet-nuf?” Take a trip to “Hawntin,” known on maps as “Highlandtown,” or to “Lit Litlee,” which non-residents call Little Italy. Count to a “hunnert,” call your forehead your “fard,” or wait until “tuhmar” to do what you don’t want to do today.
7
Express your opinion about just about anything with the allpurpose word, “s’aw-ite,” which can convey everything from rapture to disgust, depending on your inflection and your facial expression.
TIP
Study the accents in John Waters movies such as “Hairspray” and “Pink Flamingos,” which are set in Baltimore and make extensive use of Bawlmerese.
of dozens of characters. Each series focuses on a different facet of the city, including the drugravaged housing projects, downat-heel docks, crumbling public schools and corrupt political administration. Regardless of whether its characters are running drugs or running for office, The Wire refuses to make black-andwhite judgements about them. Its prevailing moral universe is grey.
Baltimore: as seen on T V No other series in history has attracted such critical praise, not least from the kind of high-minded cultural arbiters who would usually only watch a US crime drama with a peg on their nose. According to these critics, The Wire isn’t merely the best thing on TV; it merits comparison with the works of Dickens and Dostoevsky. As the entertainment industry magazine Variety observed, “When television history is written, little else will rival The Wire, a series of such ambition that it is, perhaps inevitably, savoured only by the appreciative few.”Until very recently, this was true: The Wire was minority pursuit, an “unmissable” TV show that most viewers on both sides of the Atlantic had managed to
miss. On HBO, the US cable network which produced and first broadcast five series of The Wire between 2002 and 2008, it attracted a zealous but relatively small following of around 4 million viewers an episode. In the UK, fans of The Wire were even thinner on the ground. When the fifth and final season reached its climax last year on the digital channel FX fewer than 70,000 viewers tuned in. Last Monday, however, the appreciative few became the appreciative many as the BBC aired The Wire’s very first episode, introducing the drama to a mainstream terrestrial audience for the first time. BBC2 is now showing all 60 episodes nightly, Monday to Friday. The drama
made further headlines this week when the British actor Dominic West, one of the show’s stars, criticised the BBC for drowning its schedules with costume dramas and failing to make any “high end contemporary stuff” to rival The Wire. Regardless of whether you agree with West’s sideswipe at the bonnets and britches brigade, he has a point about the “contemporary stuff”. The Wire is a TV programme like no other. Its central character isn’t a cop or a criminal but a city: the faded industrial port of Baltimore, Maryland. Over the course of 60 episodes and multiple storylines, The Wire portrays Baltimore – and by extension urban America as a whole – through the eyes
The Wire’s power derives from its authenticity. “All the things that have been depicted in The Wire over the past five years – the crime, the corruption – actually happened in Baltimore,” says David Simon, one of the show’s creators. “The storylines were stolen from real life.” Simon wrote from experience: he is a former journalist who spent years working as a crime reporter on The Baltimore Sun. The series’ co-creator, Ed Burns, is a former Baltimore homicide detective. In fact, The Wire is so unflinching in its portrayal of the city and its problems that Sheila Dixon, the Mayor of Baltimore, has publicly criticised it for being “overly negative”. (Incidentally, Dixon was indicted in January of this year for charges that included theft and misconduct in office.) While in 2005, during a trial in New York, members of a drugs gang said that they had been studying episodes of The Wire in order to learn about the latest police surveillance techniques, such was the show’s realism. Baltimore’s fallen world of drug dealers and urban decay will strike some viewers as a depressing subject, which it is. The Wire is deliberately dense, dark and difficult to watch. Storylines take whole series to unravel, characters move in and out of focus – or are killed off without warning – as the labyrinthine plots develop, and
some of the characters use street slang so impenetrable viewers are often forced to turn on the subtitles. David Simon, despairing of and despising most mainstream US television dramas, wants to force viewers of The Wire to concentrate and work hard for the show’s rewards, just as they would when reading a challenging book. In a sense, The Wire’s aims are literary. “Our models are the big Russian novels,” says Simon, “and also writers like Balzac. We’re trying to do with modern-day Baltimore what Balzac did with Paris, or Dickens with London.” This isn’t quite the boast it sounds; The Wire’s contributing writers include several novelists, including Simon himself and the acclaimed crime writers Dennis Lehane and George Pelecanos. By making the show “difficult”, Simon hopes to wean them off the pat plots and formulaic characterisation of most TV drama, and give them something to chew on instead. By contrast, The Wire has never won an Emmy and often appears to have been watched by more enthusiastic TV critics than viewers. Perhaps now it is finally being aired on a terrestrial channel, The Wire will be savoured by more than an appreciative few.
“ I’ll do what I can to help y’all. But, the game’s out there, and it’s play or get played. That simple ”
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