Too Little, Too Late?

May 1, 2022 Michael Olesker

A shot of East Montgomery Street from Baltimore's historic Federal Hill. (File photo by Joel Nadler)

How nice to be alive as the great political thinkers in Annapolis decide there are a few problems in downtown Baltimore, and they agree to send more than $166 million in assistance.

But I wonder if the money’s not too little, and too late.

I wonder about this because in the same week the $166 million is announced, I have three different attempts to meet people downtown rejected.

“Can we go someplace else?” they ask.

And this is merely an echo of a phrase I hear consistently now across many months, so consistently that I wrote about it in this space just over a month ago and here it is again.

“I’m not comfortable downtown,” they say.

“I’ll never go downtown again,” they say.

All these rejections in one week from people who have lived around here for years and ought to know better.

And yet …

Saturday night a week ago, my wife and I joined old friends for dinner at a Mediterranean restaurant, Twist, on Broadway in the heart of Fells Point. We sit at an outside table. The street atmosphere couldn’t be sweeter: a convivial, racially mixed crowd, lots of young people, laughter and live music filling the air.

And not to be minimized, the food so delicious that my wife and I go back the very next day for lunch and then a stroll around the neighborhood, which is filled once again, with pure conviviality.

It’s not until the next day, on Monday, that we learn about the deadly nighttime shooting on Thames Street that same weekend.

One idiot with a gun, and the ensuing public reaction wipes out every healthy vibe enjoyed over a terrific weekend.

It’s a reminder of something that happened a few weeks ago over in Federal Hill’s marvelous Otterbein neighborhood: a shooting, in the middle of an afternoon, on South Charles Street.

Middle of an afternoon.

In one of the great neighborhoods in the city of Baltimore.

Why bring up these two examples?

Because they’re downtown, barely out of the shadows from places where $166 million is headed.

And because they’re in neighborhoods generally considered “safe,” where the streets are filled with people of all backgrounds who mix easily and should therefore offer everyone a glimpse of the city’s future — and who assume gunplay’s not about to break out at any moment.

In a city with hundreds of shootings every year, here are two neighborhoods that look like what great metropolitan areas are supposed to look: full of energy, full of people from every conceivable background, spilling all over the sidewalks and the streets, meeting friends, falling in love, eating and drinking, finally getting out of the damned house.

And all of this is punctured by a couple of morons with guns who cause bystanders to say, “You see? You can’t go downtown anymore.”

In Annapolis, the great thinkers in the General Assembly are betting $166 million that you can go downtown. They’re betting that money can change perceptions.

Maybe it can. The truth is, the vast amount of gunplay goes on in the usual neighborhoods, where poverty and hopelessness and drug trafficking are mixed with short tempers and cheap guns and endless turf battles.

But if we put a blanket “downtown” label over our anxieties — in other words, if we lose hopeful neighborhoods like Fells Point and Federal Hill — then they can send all the millions they want into the city and they’ll find out it’s too little and too late.

Michael Olesker’s newest book, “Boogie: Life on A Merry-Go-Round,” will be published this spring. It’s the life story of Baltimore legend Leonard “Boogie” Weinglass, an original “Diner” guy who grew up to create the Merry-Go-Round clothing chain and donate millions to charity.