MARC FISHER: In Baltimore, finding more than just true grit – The Post
My favorite former Metro columnist wrote an amusing column about the next city up the Northeast Corridor/Interstate95 from D.C. – Baltimore!

But I never got into the true-grit romance of Baltimore. Those black billboards that Martin O’Malley put up around town when he was mayor, urging his dispirited constituents simply to “BELIEVE,” struck me as more pathetic than stirring. I loved HBO’s “The Wire,” especially the episodes written by Washington novelist George Pelecanos, but its depiction of Baltimore didn’t exactly make me pine for the place, let alone want to pop up for a weekend getaway.

So when the Travel editors suggested that I check in on our neighbor to the northeast, I admit to a certain grumpiness, informed by decades of hearing Randy Newman’s pained wail (“Oh, Baltimore, man, it’s hard just to live”) in the back of my mind and by a pesky allergy to all things John Waters. (I enjoy a great beehive hairdo as much as the next guy, but camp, ultimately, is as empty as Baltimore’s rubble-strewn vacant lots.)

Fisher is provincial about Washington and his native New York. Does he mention being one of the Yankees fans who takes over Camden Yards? Of course he does.* He’s not just trolling “Charm City,” he’s trolling snobbish Washingtonians and New Yorkers i.e. himself.

I don’t spend a lot of time in Baltimore — mostly I drive through, but I’ve made three trips in the last three years, including the Maryland Zoo and the B&O Railroad Museum. I’ll probably be back this spring and maybe next winter we’ll take my son to the aquarium. I think I’d be up for a trip to the top of the Bromo Seltzer Tower too. Just not Oriole Park.

The CityPaper has a good roundup of Baltimore reactions to Fisher’s piece.

*I used to be among them, but I refuse to give Peter Angelos ANY of my money — can’t reward the bad behavior towards D.C.