Yesterday at City Uprising, I was tasked with canvassing the neighborhood. Along with two other ABTW participants, I followed Curtis (a colleague from the JACQUES Initiative) on a fascinating tour. We walked along blocks and blocks of abandoned or collapsing houses. Often it was hard to tell if a house was actually lived in or not. The sun beat down relentlessly, as there was hardly a tree or telephone pole in sight to use for shade. Walking through the cracked and potholed streets, we saw lots of murals, tags, and wall paintings, many with a political bent or to commemorate the passing of a loved one.
Perhaps the strangest and most interesting part of our walk involved a detour into the oldest established stables in Baltimore city. From the street, one wouldn’t even be able to tell there’s a stable, if not for the smell of horses. Stepping past a large chain link fence into the yard of what once must have been a garage or autobody shop, we met several men sitting under a tent playing solitaire. Though I couldn’t get names or photos for any of them, they were friendly enough to give us a brief history of the stables and let us walk around photographing the murals and horses. I spent part of my childhood in Kentucky - horse country and stable culture was the norm. Needless to say, this was unlike any stable I’ve ever set foot in. I don’t know when I’ll be back this way, and so I tried to get as many pictures as I could. With the surreality of the scene before me, I tried to absorb as much of the smells and sights as I could. We kept walking.
Our unusual coterie (ie, being three white girls in Upton) got several strange looks as we walked and one man even stopped his car to roll down the window and ask what we were doing there. Curtis told me afterwards that, for the most part, white kids only come to that part of town to buy drugs, and since that wasn’t our mission, it was puzzling and occasion for residents of the neighborhood to stare.
Overall, the day was a sensory overload that blurred into a haze of heat and noise. Today, as I sit in an air conditioned coffee shop, looking out onto a colourful, bustling street with trees and flowers planted along, I puzzle at the fact that I’m in the same city as I was yesterday. It felt like I was on another planet in multiple aspects - the architecture, the people, even the evidence of the socioeconomic climate. I suppose all I can do today is think, process, and write, and maybe I’ll piece a little bit of it together.
