> The TV shows "The Wire" and especially "The Corner" capture the flavor of the rough parts of Baltimore more than residents would like to admit.

I think The Wire was pretty accurate and a lot of Baltimoreans aren't in denial about what kind of city it was/is. However, if you're only hanging out and working with folks who don't leave the White L[1], you'd think the rest of Baltimore is pretty awful and if it wasn't for work/family, they'd leave ASAP. Not to discredit the concerns folks have, just saying that the loudest voices also seem to be the most negative without being constructive (just check various FB "safety" groups, e.g., Mt Vernon Safety, or Nextdoor).

I recently moved from Baltimore to Philadelphia and in many ways it seems like a bigger version of Baltimore. Lots of white/black segregation, crime (it's already above 300 homicides for 2021), potholes and generally poor road maintenance, poorly run city gov't, etc. Yet somehow there doesn't seem to be the same level of negativity about the city here.

[1] https://www.baltimoresun.com/citypaper/bcpnews-two-baltimore...

I think part of the reason is that Baltimore has pumped up murder rates due to it being an independent city. The situation is bad, but that inflates the number.

> Yet somehow there doesn't seem to be the same level of negativity about the city here.

Baltimore has its merits… but Philly has a lot more going for it.

(Source: currently in Balto, went to college in Philly).

> but Philly has a lot more going for it

You mean Jobs? Philly definitely has more. But I found Balto to have more going for it, despite being tiny in comparison. Culture-wise, Baltimore has loads of everything (except the "we're pretending we're NYC-lite" that DC and Philly push). There's loads of green spaces, festivals, multicultural cuisines/neighborhoods, industries. Baltimore even exceeded Philly in things like hackerspaces/makerspaces/tool libraries. And Balt has [some] free public transit! And though the history isn't pushed much, there's a ton of it all around. I'd also argue the Inner Harbor exceeds any Philly tourist district in terms of interesting ways to waste a saturday for a wide range of people. Then you've got the stadiums right near the harbor, the light rail to whisk you up into the lush suburbs, and more quirkiness and charm than practically any city in the US.

But I might be biased.

Baltimore didn't boo Santa Claus.

All good points, except Baltimore was/is a heroin town, not a crack town, and The Wire was more like 80s/90s Chicago than Baltimore. Baltimore's drug trade (when I lived there) was run by many little gangs largely made up of childhood friends and just claiming a few blocks as territory. This actually makes it more dangerous, not less. The Corner is accurate, however, probably because Charles Dutton was involved.

Just like every city, it works hard to make sure upper-middle class white people are safe, but definitely don't leave anything valuable in your car. Don't even leave pennies in a tray visible from the outside.

> by many little gangs largely made up of childhood friends

This is my impression of how most gangs work. Did the Wire give a different impression?

The Avon Barksdale gang is a professional, almost corporate empire. The inner circle is family but it runs from neighborhood boys as foot soldiers all the way up through a “COO” type (Stringer Bell) attending business school in the evenings. At one point the various gangs of Baltimore are amalgamated into a trade association that meets in hotel ballrooms and follows the Roberts Rules of Order. Leading to one of the greatest exchanges on TV ever:

“Is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?”

“The Roberts Rules say the meeting got to have minutes!”

I love these commments. Now the distric attorney needs to tell the police to do their jobs. (Really tired of resources being wasted on marginal tickets/dui's, instead of zeroing in on real crime.)

If we're still talking about the Wire, it had quite a bit to say about the District Attorny's office as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAZZdL1qhk8

Re: JH APL, also, there's the Space Telescope Institute, which will be running the James Webb Space Telescope.

> Public schooling is a hard no-go unless you really get involved and enroll your kids in a carefully selected charter or magnet school

You can go to these schools, ultimately it is about whether you are okay with your child being a racial minority. BCC is one such example of a school (maybe you would put that in the carefully selected magnet category).

>You can go to these schools, ultimately it is about whether you are okay with your child being a racial minority.

You're assuming crispyambulance is white. If crispyambulance is black then crispyambulance wouldn't be a racial minority in these schools (I think that's what you're saying). If crispyambulance is Indian then crispyambulance has no choice and will be a racial minority at every school.

Yes, I absolutely would put "BCC" in the category of select magnet schools which are appropriate for college-bound kids.

> As far as safety is concerned, like other big cities, it's not really a problem for folks that would read HN, unless you enjoy hanging out in bars at 2am and getting into arguments with armed drug-trade people.

Again, completely inaccurate and misleading statement, despite yourself pointing out how residents don't like to admit how bad Baltimore is. Having worked in IT in Baltimore, a coworker of mine got mugged, a black eye, and had to take the next day off work just because he was strolling through a very popular park on a weekday evening. Wealth and education don't protect you if somebody targets you on the street, and it happens way more than Baltimore residents will admit.

The key thing is "like other big cities".

What happened to your coworker can and does happen in any large city with lots of people. Are you saying this could not have happened in NYC, Los Angeles, DC, or Philly?

I perhaps should not have said "not really a problem". Crime/safety is a problem in Baltimore, but it's not drastically different than many other urban areas.

Since you bring up NYC, LA, Philly, Baltimore is top 3 in list of total violent crimes whereas the other cities top out at 24 for DC, 25 for Philly, 32 for LA, and 59 for NYC. So Baltimore is in fact drastically different from NYC/LA/DC/Philly. You only proved my point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

"Total violent crimes" per 100000 population is a very blunt statistic that tell you very little about a city and virtually nothing about any particular neighborhood. It mashes together a lot numbers that mean different things to different demographics. And most importantly, those stats say absolutely nothing about the actual context of these crimes.

Sorry you had a rough time in Baltimore. I was there through the O'Malley years and saw amazing improvement in my old neighborhood, Patterson Park/Butcher's Hill. Some other places didn't fare so well despite occasional promising signs (Sandtown-Winchester, Hollins Market).

Baltimore is not for everyone, and that's OK. We all have/had our reasons for being there. There's no good reason to trash Baltimore or call any city "a hell-scape". It didn't get the way it is overnight, and it won't improve overnight. It will take many years.

I gave numbers and I gave context, and you have shown that you're not genuinely considering the idea that Baltimore might not be a great city for most people, you just have your opinion and aren't entertaining any alternatives. If you love Baltimore, great. But saying Baltimore is just another city when only 2 other cities in the entire country have more violence is like saying some country in the middle east some city in Pakistan isn't so bad because every city has bombings. Glad that comforts you, but it isn't true.

> There's no good reason to trash Baltimore or call any city "a hell-scape"

I will call Baltimore a hellscape 7 days of the week and I consider it 100% justified. I actively hope people don't move their for their own sake; I already left, it doesn't matter to me what happens there anymore.

I also encourage anybody who hasn't visited and doubts me to check for yourself and make your own opinion, not believe me or crispyambulance. Look up crime/violence statistics, reddit.com/r/baltimore, facebook groups, government corruption, illiteracy rates, crime maps, etc and decide for yourself whether what happens in Baltimore is "normal" for the US (let alone the entire world when there are many cities much bigger than Baltimore with a fraction of the crime).

APL space stuff sounds pretty good, but they move so slowly that 4 months notice isn't enough. I simply didn't have the time to wait for them.

Wait for them for what?

To respond to applications. Even when you have good leads it's 3 months to get a second round of interviews. I'm not so comfortable that I can choose to not work in between moves.