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Row House Held Up By Wood Contraption at Hollins & Fulton

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Today’s ride took me from Charles Village out to UMBC for another day of my winter session class. I was in a good mood after a productive morning, so I pedaled happily along, using that easy peasy gear for hills into the headwind and reminding myself that I wasn’t in a race, not at all. I decided to vary my route a bit to avoid Monroe’s speedy traffic, so I took a left on So. Carey and a right on Hollins. I stopped to catch my breath and take a picture of this row house just before Fulton that is all strutted up so it doesn’t fall in the street. Construction is a seriously creative endeavor! This street mostly looks like Brooklyn to me, and few of the houses look like vacants to me, though the surrounding streets certainly have their fair share. A woman stepped out of her house and asked me if I was just in the neighborhood to take pictures of vacant houses. We struck up a conversation–rehabbing this house has been on hold for months due to danger of collapse, her wife just quit smoking, I quit smoking years ago, isn’t it great, do I want a ride, etc. Turns out she runs a life coaching business and is putting together a mentorship program for girls at local schools, and I have a bunch of students who might make great mentors. INteresting! Let’s talk! I got back on my bike and thought about how these sorts of lovely happenstance meetings are impossible in cars. Walkable and bikeable neighborhoods are just better for life itself. I got to campus, choked down lunch, taught about globalization, economic restructuring, and the production of poverty in the Third World before getting back on my bike and rolling past the detritus of Baltimore’s own structual adjustment on my way back home.

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Empty Lot and Row House at Lafayette & Fremont

We had another unseasonably warm day today, at least in my estimation, so after a busy morning, I hopped on my bike and headed to campus to take advantage of what they keep telling me is one of the last few warm days before winter really gets here. I flew down the hill and then made the Park Avenue climb to Lafayette and took my left. It’s amazing how quickly the neighborhoods change along this street. Once you cross Eutaw Place, for example, it’s like you’ve entered a different universe. On the ride back I was struck by how once I left Marble Hill for Bolton Hill, the asphalt turned that smooth black of brand new road. When Crossing Pennsylvania Avenue into West Baltimore is even more pronounced. All of a sudden the trees disappear, as does the stately red brick, replaced by row after row of abandoned row house. I snapped this picture of a row house at Lafayette and Fremont (which is not the same as Fulton–I made that mistake once, and it took me a looong time to correct it). This empty side suggests another row house used to be cuddled up next to it, those patches maybe marking windows, or just the shared walls. Off in the distance more and more of these vacants line up, but some of them are redone and occupied. How hard it must be to share the neighborhood with these, and the empty lots filled with crumbled buildings and trash that dot the neighborhood. So often when I’m riding around Baltimore I wonder, where did everybody go? I know, I know, the suburbs, but where did everybody go, and what are we going to do with all these empty and decaying blighted properties? I continued my ride, and when I got to Arbutus, just a couple miles further, I was reminded again of how many different cities are all butted up against each other in this place, some of them just ghosts.

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Red House at 29th & St. Paul

I meant for today’s ride to take me to Hampden for a little shopping and some coffee, but instead it took me around the neighborhood, trying not to feel to sick and tired for a bike ride. I walked slowly slowly, pushing the bike past row house after row house. But they aren’t all row houses here. Sometimes they’re like this red and stone gingerbread house on the corner of 29th and St. Paul. I turned the corner, and I was back to row houses, but the painted ladies with all their cornices and stuff, not the plain-fronted ones on Maryland, built after row houses were big money. Aesthetic injustice, it’s a scourge. I made it home, put the bike away, and tucked myself in. Tomorrow’s another day, for another ride.

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View of the Reservoir at Druid Hill Park On An Unseasonably Warm Saturday Afternoon

I don’t know what’s going on with the weather, but S. called on Saturday afternoon and told me to drag my sickly self out of bed and put myself on the bike to enjoy the mid-60s weather we were having. I pulled on my summer skirt and a sweatshirt and headed out. She was right–it was absolutely beautiful out, and even the sweatshirt was a little warm. Continue reading →

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Bike Parking at Penn Station in Baltimore

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I woke up early early, threw on some grown up clothes, and wrapped my reflective safety triangle belt around myself and my bag before hopping on the bike and flying down the hill to the train station for a trip to DC and an all-day meeting. It was dark and cold and my eyes watered as I groggily pedaled along, and I was happy it was a short ride. I snapped this picture of the nearly full bike rack. Yep, ride to the station-parking’s expensive, and so are cabs. I went a lot of places today and never had to get in a car, and that’s just how I like it. Now we’ll just see if the bike’s still there when my evening train arrives.

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Blighted Factory at Hollins & Warwick

A couple of cold days in a row made today’s 38 degrees and sunshine feel downright balmy. After finishing up a little of this and that at home, I layered up and hopped on the bike to head to campus. It was so warm I didn’t even need my fancy pants gloves! I flew down the hill on Maryland, went around that growing sinkhole just on the other side of North Avenue (can we at least spray paint around the thing?), and then up through Bolton Hill and Marble Hill. Continue reading →

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Salon Nine-E at Beechfield, West, & Ridge in Arbutus

Yep, I’m back at school again, this time teaching a three and a half week winter session course. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I’d rather be lazily reading, writing, and bicycling instead. Due to this resistant attitude, I spent my morning getting a massage and then stopping by a music store with S., who needed to do little to get me to shell out for a ukelele. Yeah, it’s time to pick up a new hobby, and besides, a ukelele is small. I could take it camping on my bicycle. But alas, it was finally time to get myself to school, and S. kindly dropped me and my bicycle there. And guess what? Continue reading →

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The View From Leone Riverside Park in Federal Hill

Ok, it’s actually really cold all of a sudden, and also really windy, which meant today’s ride took me straight to the bike shoppe for some super-fancy and expensive bicycling gloves. I handed over my credit card, put them on, along with my recently purchased bike hat, and shivered out for a ride. The thing is, once you get pedaling, you warm up considerably, and that was true today, too. I made a quick stop for lunch and some writing and then rolled down the hill and around the Inner Harbor for a tour of Federal Hill. Continue reading →

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Entrance to the Jones Falls Trail at the North End of Druid Hill Park

It’s New Year’s Day, which means it’s time for the first bike ride of 2012! If I’m being honest, I wasn’t really in the mood for it. I had a most lovely new year’s eve, and I was perfectly happy to stay in bed all day, lolling around and eating last night’s cheese plate, but you can’t miss a ride on the first day of the new year, right? By the time I was out of bed and ready to get on the bike, the rain had started to fall, but only in sprinkles; I was tired and the left side of my head felt like there was a party last night, so I decided to head to Druid Hill Park to do a couple of easy laps. Continue reading →

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Pedestrian Underpass at Bank Street & Eastern Avenue

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Today’s afternoon ride took me to Harbor East to catch a couple of closing exhibits at the Lewis Museum–Roberto Clemente was an awesome dude lost too soon, and there’s an important and often invisible history of African American/Native American relationships (though I think telling those histories is important for reasons beyond recognizing people’s identities, but that’s a different blog). The exhibits were of that new-fangled pop-up museum style, so hopefully they are travelling to a museum near you next. The day was unseasonably warm, so afterward I headed out for a ride with no plan; it had been far too long since I did that. I pedaled along, following the signs first to Patterson Park, where I watched a whole bunch of people feed a whole bunch of pigeons, and then toward Greektown by way of Highlandtown. I snapped this picture half way across the pedestrian underpass on Eastern Avenue. Now *this* is an underpass–spacious, covered in art, brightly-painted bridges above, carrying a train and framing yet another abandoned factory, but I’m guessing that just can’t be helped. I zipped through and around, did a quick turn on some Bayview side streets, and then headed back, hoping to be somewhere familiar by dusk. I passed through Brewer’s Hill, marvelled at the speed by which neighborhoods change and how a blighted warehouse district can become expensive lofts in virtually every city I have ever been in, stopped by Canton Waterfront Park for a photo of the sky on fire with sunset, and took myself to Fells Point for a cocktail and some fancy tapas to toast myself out of 2011, a day early. It has been a banner year for me, and I’m looking forward to my first bike ride of 2012, January 1. Oh, I do so like riding a bike around Baltimore.