I've seen this t-shirt around. As a Baltimore native, it sort of irritates me even though it's tongue in cheek! It assumes that Baltimore is a bad/unlikable place that people need to learn to love (or need to convince others that it's worth living in).

In fact, I think there's a lot to like about the city right off the bat and that many people are drawn to it without feeling like they're being forced to live there.

I don't know, maybe we can start with the positive image of the city rather than having a base assumption that it's some kind of hellscape. Doesn't mean we should ignore the negatives, just that the negatives don't need to precede the rest. I don't hear NYC residents say "New York...it isn't all rats and homeless people!"

Certainly, there is a media component to it. I live in Minneapolis. If you ask my relatives in wisconsin, they’d say that ‘Murder’apolis has been, and continues to be, a flaming hellhole of constant arson and carjackings ever since George Floyd was murdered. They watch local television news (with a sprinkling of Facebook garbage newsfeed) and don’t know enough to realize their entire mental model of the place is wildly skewed.

Likewise, I’ve never stepped foot into Baltimore, but I’ve watched The Wire so…

Portland, Oregon here. For a few years now if I'm out in the suburbs or conservative exurbs and tell people I live in the city, I hear, "sorry for you. Portland's a shithole." That view went national over the summer of 2020, with a lot of help from Fox news. (The president declaring our city an anarchy zone and sending in unmarked humvees with DC plates to black bag protesters didn't help). And yet it's an incredibly livable, fun, interesting town. Outside perception rarely matches the reality.

Resident of Washington, DC, here. When we moved into the city, a friend of my father's--both men had lived in DC in the 1950s--resident in Arlington said dire things. Now, parts of Arlington are great, and in other parts of Arlington gangs were going after each other with machetes. I cannot say that my part of DC is as safe as I'd like, but a lot of suburbanites--including some who could throw a football across the city line--have a pretty lurid picture.

New idea for a t-shirt. “Baltimore: Trump hates it.”

From Trump's POV, Baltimore is a flyover city.

My grandparents came from Baltimore and I spent some time there with cousins. My grandpa owned a bar in West Baltimore during segregation. He was Russian. Lot of stories there. It seems like a cool town. It's definitely got a depressing, kinda inward vibe about it. I should probably go back and hang out again, but most of my family has moved away now.

Having lived in Baltimore for 8 years, I consider it a hellscape. One of the worst things about Baltimore imo is the way its fans idealize it as some kind of regular town where bad things only happen to bad people. There's an unbelievable amount of crime and danger. I invite any skeptics to check for yourselves: join a Baltimore community like /r/baltimore on reddit and see how often people post about break-ins, muggings, shootings, carjackings, not to mention corruption in the government.

In matters of taste like breweries vs vineyards, it doesn't matter if you encourage strangers to move and that they might like it; the risk is just that they find they preferred the other option. When the risks are becoming a victim of random crime just walking down the street or having an apt with ground-floor windows, it's irresponsible.

Is The Wire real?

I think it's as real as is possible for a piece of fiction to be

Yes. Worse things happen everyday in every hood in America.

I can't speak to the general case, but I have to give the show that the grain elevator did get turned into condos [1].

[1] http://www.silopoint.com/

no, the real omar was unfortunately heterosexual.

The part about the police culture is Pretty spot on

No, it's a fictional TV show

I'm glad I didn't ask about Santa then.