Cities of Summer: La Vie Charmante

Sometimes English just doesn’t say it.

There is a sign on the ground at the inner harbor of Baltimore set near a small though impressive installation of seagrass that reads “Seahorse and Seagrass” which then goes on to explain: Seagrasses are vital to the health of the Chesapeake Bay. Vast beds of aquatic vegetation provide oxygen and improve water quality. Steps away from this mini-paean to environmental issues and the workings of aquatic nature is posted yet another sign of a more simple sort:

Crab Cakes

Ice Cream

Cold Beer

Raw Bar

Steamed Shrimp

And not far from that sign is an outdoor restaurant display “thing” (for it can only be described as such) featuring a kind of gigantic, sidewalk diorama of the strangest misshapen little guy vaguely resembling ET in a straw hat and sunglasses attired in the weirdest Hawaiian shirt next to the tackiest fake palm I’ve ever had the pleasure of running into. It makes the sizable pink flamingo sitting atop the Café Hon (as in honey) in the hipster Hampden section seem like high art.

But the waterfront magic prevails just the same. There are places to sit and gaze and music in the air- electronic though it be- even at the ungodly hour of eight in the morning though the quiet of the harbor at that hour somehow makes it seem serene. There are cafes and a giant aquarium and joggers and World War II ships sitting in dock for eternity, and homeless souls sleeping like babies on the clean, metal benches for tourists and well-dressed professionals on their way to work and profusely tattooed guys with shmatah bandanas adorning their heads on their way to the job. And all around is a profusion of flora lushly and generously planted at almost every turn in various dazzling arrangements: begonias, impatiens, pansies, cedar and grape vying for the spotlight with lavender, black-eyed Susan, the most resplendent, sunniest lilies ever to be seen and foxtail grass as well. And some people still smoke like everywhere else in the world as the fit-as-fiddle joggers fly past them with their accelerated heart rates, and the cigarettes are probably not of the “e” variety.

But oh the triangles reminiscent of great sails are everywhere. Tall, green, glass edifices shaped liked sails. An outdoor concert space with an entire sail-evocative roof suggesting a conglomeration of horizontal billowing canvass, little bowed bridges for footpaths by which to cross the water, reflective sides of buildings like mirrors in the form of triangles. Terra cotta and moss colored rectangles of stone comprising the walkways reminiscent of something historic, and though only simulacra they still manage to work. The great, hulking Barnes and Noble that dominates the entire scene however is totally real and housed in the old early twentieth century Pratt Street power plant at Pier Four, the chimney and bolts still in place and running up through the middle of the entrance lobby, creating a humongous time warp of fascination; the exterior of the imposing structure authentic too, with terra cotta trim and steel frame construction, the entire façade covered in worn 1900 red brick with a huge guitar sitting atop this gigantic collage and touching the sky to remind you of the present. If this doesn’t get you to browse for a book, what will?

Along with the crime, the poverty, the drug scene at the other end of town in places that will freak you out if you get lost and find yourself driving through by accident, there are neighborhoods that will slay you with charm. Like many iconic American towns, there lives in weird co-existence the good child alongside the evil twin, and the Baltimore of the “The Wire,” a violent, scary trash heap of archetypal inner city woes and dangers made even more violent and scary by the sensationalism of the TV series itself is also the Baltimore of self-styled “Charm City,” where when they call you “hun” they don’t mean the marauding mobs of the failing Roman Empire but rather something quite the opposite, like “sweetie.” I must admit the place has an ineffable, eccentric factor of cuteness that blends the funky and dinky, the creative and the louche. Did I mention the ubiquitous hanging fuschia? The zillions of antique stores? The small, slightly tatty coffee shops that smell like perfect, finely brewed beans not the bitter corporate swill sold in Starbucks, with homemade, indescribable, totally high-fat muffins not shrink wrapped but done sloppily by hand? The perennial Christmas lights in shops that specialize exclusively in nostalgic junk? The slightly Mayberry feel of a fictional 1960’s TV show? It is after all the south. There are grits in those diners, make no mistake, and breakfast repasts named “Dixie Corn Cakes.” And these eateries sometimes are called by girls’ names that have the word “Miss” in front of them.

Aaaah, small town Amerika.  Love it or leave it, myth or reality, it definitely has its ineffable moments of kitschy charmante.