Final Baltimore post

Okay friends, readers, countrymen (and non-countrymen), this should be it for Baltimore posts. I absolutely need to get this written and out there before my short-term memory goes on the blink.

So let me talk about some highlights from Tuesday, October 21. With many of the Baltimore museums closed on Monday and Tuesday, I decided I'd have to find something else to do. I saw something on my phone about Billie Holiday murals in the city (as Billie Holiday, though born in Philadelphia, grew up in Baltimore--and had a difficult childhood to say the least). So I ventured out to find these murals, headed east on Pratt Street and then north on Caroline Street. I walked and walked, headed away from the "touristy" area until I came upon the short and utterly nondescript Billie Holiday Court, which seemed little more than a gray, weedy alley with no murals to speak of. "What the hell?" I consulted with my trusty Galaxy S22 and discovered to my chagrin that I went to the entirely wrong place. Sure, this little alley was Billie Holiday Court, but the Billie Holiday murals weren't actually HERE. They were in Fells Point (Durham Street, to be precise), back where I had come from. So I chuckled at my gaffe and retraced my steps south.

I headed to Broadway Square in Fells Point and sat on a bench for several minutes recovering from my long walk and plotting my next move. I decided I had to see those murals.

When I finally arrived at the murals on narrow Durham Street, the same lane where earlier that morning I'd seen the 1890s rowhouses that Frederick Douglass built as housing for Black families who couldn't find homes elsewhere in the city, the artwork was as bright and colorful as I'd seen in photos. The artist was working on another mural at that very moment and I made sure to praise her for her fine work.

After admiring the murals for a few minutes, I commenced meandering again, this time quite accidentally meandering to the Greedy Reads book shop at 1744 Aliceanna. I made small talk with the cheerful and friendly clerk (who I learned has a sister who went to the University of Michigan). After browsing for at least a half-hour, I settled on buying Carrie Brownstein's memoir Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, which I have wanted to read since it was published in 2015. (Hard to believe it's been ten years already). I didn't really need to buy a book, but I try my best to support indie bookstores.

Then it was back over to Thames Street and, inevitably, Sound Garden again. I poked around in there for about 45 minutes and was excited to find the 2024 re-release of the dB's album Repercussion. Music purchases in Baltimore were successful and finally complete.

In the evening, we returned to Fells Point to have dinner and beers at Max's Taproom, which literally has hundreds of beers on tap and was decked out for Halloween. (Baltimore takes Halloween seriously. It must be the Edgar Allan Poe influence). Max's also operates like a real British pub, where patrons order their food and drink at the bar and provide the bartender with the table number.

And with that, I will finally put this Baltimore trip to bed.