Before we even start, this post was written 17 years ago; and though I have not been back in person, I took a short Google tour of the area a few minutes ago and it looked very good! Upgraded and clean. So I suppose most of my impressions from long ago no longer apply. Nonetheless, it’s still a gritty memory.
June 13, 2009
I was on a business trip this week. It was mostly a meeting in Philadelphia, but I decided to take a detour down to Baltimore as well to see some associates. The business part of the trip was really good. I got lots of good stuff done. It was the after hours stuff that sucked.
I didn’t get a chance to get out in Philly, but I was done by mid-afternoon in Baltimore, so I Googled ‘Gay Baltimore’ and got the location of all the bars. They seemed to be clustered around Charles St. near North. The Light Rail Station was not far from my hotel at BWI and had a stop right on North, so I headed out.
First there was the train. What a joke! It made about 15 stops between origin and destination, many just a few blocks apart. It moved along at a snail’s pace, so slow that I’m pretty sure I’d have gotten there quicker on a city bus.
About the time we hit Camden Yards and the ballpark — where many of the people on the train got off to see an Orioles game (I should have done the same) — I struck up a conversation with a very drunk derelect sitting across from me. He had been sleeping and woke to ask me: ‘You know what the bestest nation in the world is?’
I thought for a moment. The obvious answer was the good ol’ USA, but that was too easy. I mumbled, ‘Carnation, Elimination, Tarnation?’
‘Naw,’ he answered, ‘It’s when God smiles on you and you open up your wallet and make a DONATION to a homeless person.’ I laughed. He laughed. I dug in my pocket and found fifty cents and handed it over. He nodded thanks.
‘You know,’ he said after a bit, ‘I drinks too much.’
‘Oh?’ I asked, feining disbelief.
‘Yeah,’ he went on, ‘Sometimes I forget where I’m at and I do mean things. I gotta start cuttin’ back.’ He began to rifle through a bag he had on his lap and soon produced a pint bottle of cheap vodka. ‘Course, I think I’ll start that cuttin back tomorrow,’ he said through a toothless grin, and turned the bottle up. Screwing the cap back on, he replaced it back in his bag and promptly went to sleep.
I started to notice that we were passing through some really trashy neighborhoods. I hadn’t seen so much boarding up of businesses, buildings and houses since I attended an Urban League conference in Detroit in the late 80’s. I told myself if it looked this rough when we got to the North Ave. station, I wasn’t getting off. Though it looked only slightly better, I told myself I was bigger and meaner than anything I might encounter outside the door and forced myself off the train.
I got my bearings and headed east, across and overpass in the direction I believed Charles to be. The neighborhood still had a bombed out feel about it but I started to notice art supply stores and some small theaters. Bad as it was, it seemed to be an artsy community and I fugured the gay bars had to be close by.
At Charles, I turned South and walked, and walked, and walked. I saw nothing resembling a gay bar. I saw lots of closed businesses, some real dive bars and more theaters. But none of the places I’d seen in my internet search seemed to be there. Strange. I remembered seeing the Eagle Bar on the map, back up and across North, so I turned around and headed that way.
Across the big street, things got even rougher. Every person I saw seemed to be some kind of thug. Even the women. Thug-ettes? Still I pressed on, one block, two blocks, three blocks . . . Finally at the fifth block I decided this was nuts and turned around to head back to the train before it got dark. On the way back down to North, I look to my right across the street. There, in a dingy window I saw a sytlized bird in unlit neon. That had to be it. But it looked closed. I knew it probably wasn’t: Eagle Bars around the country tend to look dark and decayed but they are almost always open. I contemplated crossing and checking it out but I was being eyed by a couple of rough looking kids sitting in a stoop next to me and decded to just pack it in.
I’m sure Baltimore has some nice stuff. I bet it’s a fairly artistic place. Like Cleveland. But the short and narrowly focused tour I took that afternoon left me not wanting to return ever again. Of course, I know that’s crap. I’ll be there on business I’m sure, probably within the next year. But next time I have a free evening in Baltimore, I’m not going out looking for gay bars. I’ll go to an Orioles game or to the movies, but not another trip to nowhere on the slowest train on Earth.