The great thing about living so close to my very favorite bike shop is that it was just a quick twenty minute walk down the hill to collect my tuned-up bicycle to take it for a ride on this unseasonably hot autumn day. I headed back up the hill, taking Falls Road to a right on Chestnut–I should have gotten into a much easier gear before taking that turn. I pumped my way slowly up to Hampden for lunch and a much-needed session of acupuncture. I zipped silently down the hill afterward–my favorite part of a clean bike–and took my turns to East Oliver where I picked up my weekly coffee allotment from the new outfit in town, Thread Coffee. I’ve ridden up and down Oliver Street, but never this tiny stretch, blocked by the cemetery on one side. At Barclay it is suddenly a completely different neighborhood; the every-other-house-vacant business vanishes as the blocks are taken over by new modern construction and the City Arts building on the far corner. I snapped this picture as I walked north. Just half a block away and its empty lot filled with broken glass, and another half block up and it’s the east Baltimore I’m used to from riding the Oliver Street on the other side of the cemetery. It’s amazing to me how segregated this city is, not just neighborhood to neighborhood or even block to block, but corner to flippin’ corner, but I’m guessing some folks think this block is an example of integrating a neighborhood. Huh.