The Text and Subtext of Urban Signage, Part I

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Baltimore has become a city of transplants. According to an article in the Baltimore Sun this weekend Under Armour alone plans to hire as many as 5,000 employees over the next few years, and the vast majority of those will come from outside the immediate area and be encouraged to live in the city. That’s how Under Armour (not to mention Hopkins) wants to ‘control the experience’ of Baltimore’s recent arrivals.

Personally we’ve been hearing a lot of chatter and questions lately about the city’s different neighborhoods. ‘Is Butchers’ Hill a good neighborhood?’ ‘How far east can you go from Charles Street before it gets ‘sketchy?” and other queries along these lines.

Of course, everyone’s definition of a good neighborhood or ‘sketchy’ can vary pretty drastically depending on their own outlook and experience. Many of Baltimore’s new arrivals are recent college graduates who have never lived in a proper city before. When Kevin Plank says he wants to ‘control the experience’ that’s really just a natural extension of many Millenials’ lives before they arrived in Charm City. For anyone who grew up on the Crabgrass Frontier and went directly to a college campus their experience has been controlled for their entire lives thus far. They can’t be blamed for not knowing their way around a city and relying on other people’s equally uninformed and worthless opinions about various neighborhoods.

It is these folks who would do well to pay attention to this week’s series of posts. Knowing what kind of neighborhood you are in, what kind of people live there and how ‘good’ or ‘sketchy’ the immediate area is can be as easy as literally reading the writing on the wall if you know what to look for.

When traveling through our city, or any large city anywhere, you’ll see thousands of signs. The great majority of them have to do with traffic or parking and aren’t terribly informative about the immediate area. Still others offer things for rent or advertise products or services. These might give a few clues about the area, but are typically general enough that they don’t signify much.

But certain signs have both text and a subtext that can speak loud and clear about the immediate vicinity. This week, we’re going to feature a series of posts that illustrate what signs say about their immediate urban environment. We’ve taken the trouble to survey the signage in many city neighborhoods recently, and we’ve found that certain sorts of signs correlate to different neighborhoods depending on their populations, crime rates and economic situation. There are signs in Hampden that would be completely out of place a mile over near Mondawmin, and there are ones in South Baltimore that would never appear across MLK in West Baltimore.

We’re talking just about general signage, mind you. There are also very great differences in things like what kinds of business locate where and other visual signifiers that provide vast amounts of information about different blocks and neighborhoods, but those are outside the scope of these posts. We’re only dealing with signs this week.

We’ve taken a few dozen photos as examples, and we’ve broken them down into signs that appear in better neighborhoods, marginal neighborhoods, and worse neighborhoods. We’re going to post one group each day this week, and maybe a bonus post on Friday.

Stay tuned.

2014 Mobbies & The Chop’s Year in Review

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At this time last year we were kind of down about the state of blogging in Baltimore. The post we wrote about last year’s Mobbies contest detailed what was happening to sites across the Internet, including this one. The blogosphere shrank considerably in 2013, and we were concerned about its future. Fortunately a last minute rush in Mobbies nominations was a positive sign, and going to the awards party it was particularly encouraging to get to socialize with some online friends in real life which we probably don’t do often enough.

We also had the honor of winning the Editors’ Choice award which was pretty sweet. We’d like to thank the Sun again for that.

This year’s Mobbies nominations close today. You can view the nominees at that link and nominate anyone that’s not there. Voting begins on Monday. Please vote for the Baltimore Chop.

Since last year’s contest we’ve adapted to the scaled-down blogosphere by scaling down our own site. After a few hiccups we got a new (free) theme which we think is working out well. We stopped posting five days a week, and racking our brain to churn out copy about things that are only mildly interesting. We’ve tried to make an effort not to repeat ourselves on things we’ve written before. No more posts for posts’ sake. We also began making a serious effort to use as many original images as possible like the shot above from last year’s award ceremony.

As it turns out, the new normal of a scaled down blogosphere isn’t that bad. Writing posts now feels less like a chore that has to be done and more like something enjoyable that we want to do whenever we sit down to it. There’s less content, but we do feel that most of what is there is in many ways better content.

Since today is Halloween and it’s exactly a year since our last Mobbies post, and since it’s still October and the whole Internet is not yet sick of year-end best of lists here’s ten of our best posts from the past 12 months. If you missed any of them go back and take a look. We think they’re worthy of your Mobbies votes.

10. A Modest Food Truck Proposal laid out the case for a permanent food truck corral in Baltimore and suggested incorporating it into Lexington Market’s renovations.

9. Horse Betting Tips for Amateurs gave better Preakness wagering advice than the boilerplate exacta explainers most sites crap out around Triple Crown season.

8. Leaked!!! The Real Inner Harbor Master Plan lampooned city hall’s ridiculous yuppie-pandering growth strategies, including a proposed bridge across the harbor.

7. A Guide to Non-Downtown Hotels in Baltimore was written to help aid culturally minded visitors in getting away from the Inner Harbor when they come to town.

6. Going Pro: A Longtime Fan Becomes an Usher at Camden Yards was a guest post that provided a firsthand account of what it’s like to go to work for the Orioles for a year.

5. Taking Sides in the Great Workwear Debate details the need to keep personal style in the context of a man’s personal life.

4. The Best and Worst of Baltimore Buses features some interesting visuals including a time lapse of a boat trip across the harbor, a creepshot of some junkies about to nod off on a bus, and the circulator routes laid over a census map of race. It also calls Jack Young a pussy.

3. Baltimore’s Cyclist Assaults are Motivated by Race, Class Told the truth about an ongoing problem in Station North in a way that news reports on the issue could not or would not.

2. Guided by History: Race, Class and Neighborhood Choice in Baltimore City examines how the city grew from the time of its founding, and explains how the character of our neighborhoods today was shaped by factors like racist housing policy, industrial history and the rise of the automobile.

1. A Reference Guide to Baltimore Rowhouse Types was our most popular post this year and chronicles the history of the city through its residential architecture with photos of each type of rowhouse found in the city from the era of wood houses to post-WWII neocolonials.

Before we end this post, the theme for this year’s Mobbies party is “the 1990’s.” Part of this year’s contest includes a Bloggers’ Challenge for writers to name something they’d bring back from the 90’s if they could. Since every single band we like from the 90’s has already taken it upon themselves to reunite and tour anyway, that’s out. Since we’re a bit too old to go around in flannels and Doc Marten’s that’s out too. We’d like to go back to a time when Baltimore didn’t have a Subway, Chipotle, 7-11 or Starbucks on every fucking corner but that’s taking something away, not bringing anything back. (Although we would like to bring Nice n’ Easy back to Fell’s Point.) So after much consideration the one thing we’d bring back from the 1990’s is none other than Big Daddy himself: William Jefferson Clinton!

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The first paragraph of his bio on whitehouse.gov pretty much sums it up. “During the administration of William Jefferson Clinton, the U.S. enjoyed more peace and economic well being than at any time in its history. He was the first Democratic president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second term. He could point to the lowest unemployment rate in modern times, the lowest inflation in 30 years, the highest home ownership in the country’s history, dropping crime rates in many places, and reduced welfare rolls. He proposed the first balanced budget in decades and achieved a budget surplus. As part of a plan to celebrate the millennium in 2000, Clinton called for a great national initiative to end racial discrimination.”

The Chop was a teenager throughout most of the Clinton years and we definitely did not know how good we had it. If we had any inkling of how dark and horrible George W Bush’s America would be we might have actually gone to work for the Gore campaign. This list of Clinton accomplishments is impressive, and most of these have to do with things like taxes being low, wages going up, and the deficit becoming a surplus. We’d love to bring back a time before our other current New Normal, when wages never beat inflation and everyone is just used to being broke all the time. That list also doesn’t mention not going to war in Iraq as an accomplishment but maybe it should. Clinton even told W that Bin Laden was the US’ top security threat. would have been nice if he’d listened.

What Should Go Into Baltimore’s 2015 Time Capsule?

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It was reported yesterday that a worker conducting the ongoing renovations at the Washington Monument discovered a 100 year old time capsule behind a plaque in the monument’s base.

There’s still no word on what’s inside the copper box. It’s being moved to the Walters Art Museum and hasn’t been unsealed yet. Some reports have mentioned old copies of the Sun, which seems like a pretty boring thing to put in a time capsule. Maybe they didn’t forsee the invention of microfilm or, you know, the Internet in 1915 but reading an old newspaper seems like something that modern man can do pretty much any time he’s so inclined.

It’s almost a certainty that The Walters or the Mount Vernon Place Conservancy or City Hall will make another time capsule and stick it right where they just found this one. They’d be blowing a nice little PR opportunity if they didn’t. So the question is what should they put in it? Here are a few suggestions from the Chop:

Beer. A mixed six pack from local breweries seems like an obvious choice. With craft brewing getting bigger and better all the time the inclusion of some popular flagship brews like Resurrection and Duckpin would be a good snapshot of what people are drinking these days, and beer bottles seem like they’d have a pretty good chance of surviving 100 years in a monument.

Records. Vinyl records probably wouldn’t be playable after sitting around for 100 years but they could document what’s going on right now. We’d recommend a mix of the dominant art-pop like Future Islands and Dan Deacon as well as a few solid Baltimore Club selections.

Orioles/Ravens Media Guides. Most fans never even see a media guide but they are like an encyclopaedia of a professional season. They list every fact and statistic about the players, team and stadium that you can possibly imagine.

Restaurant Menus. You can’t put a Chap’s Pit Beef sandwich in a time capsule for a century, but you could throw their menu in there along with some other important points on the food landscape like the Charleston, Aldo’s, or The Helmand. The last decade has seen a number of venerable longtime establishments close their doors and it’s almost certain that 100 years hence the dining scene will look quite different than it does today.

A Big Boyz Pen. They’re ubiquitous, and they’ll probably turn out to be an interesting anthropological item by 2115. Will the JFX and the Jail still stand by then as they do today? God, we hope not.

Photographs. After 50 or 100 years the most interesting pictures tend to be candid shots of nothing in particular. Portraits of people or photos of civic events are nice, but the ones that are really fascinating are just random snapshots of the streets that show what the buses and newspaper boxes and store signage looked like, or what people were wearing in a crowd or other minutiae like that. Some photos from neighborhoods around the city would be a good choice.

An Inner Harbor Visitors’ Guide. The Inner Harbor has changed a lot in the last 100 years, and as we begin to knock out the ugly Brutalist mistakes of the 1970’s it’s bound to change just as much in the next 100 years. A visitors’ guide would be a good snapshot of what’s around the wharves today from Pier 5 along the waterfront to Rash Field.

Under Armour Apparel. We’d suggest something that seems plain by today’s standards, with the UA logo and made of one of their signature fabrics. Under Armour has become one of the most important firms in the city in 2015 and as they continue to grow that importance can only increase.

A no-touch thermometer. If you were going to have your temperature taken 100 years ago they would have told you to bend over. A no-touch thermometer is a pretty neat and relatively inexpensive piece of current technology that most patients are familiar with. It’s also a symbol of the importance of the Healthcare sector, which has long replaced Steel as the dominant industry. This item should be accompanied by a bit of current literature on Johns Hopkins and University of Maryland hospitals.

Got any more suggestions? find us on Twitter @thbaltimorechop and let us know what you’d add.

Geo Poe (The Reading) @ Westminster Hall Tonight

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If you’re like us (and we’re like most of you, no doubt) you’ve never done a geo-caching adventure before. The first time we’d ever heard the term geo-caching was well before the smartphone age. The only people who were carrying around GPS devices were the kind of dirty hippies who have an REI charge card and think a week in a National Park sounds like a fun vacation. They were out there hiking around for 60 miles a day anyway so may as well make a game of it, right?

Being a city dweller we’ve always preferred bar crawls to geo-caching. If we want some outdoor time when the weather turns nice we can always change it up by drinking beer at a street festival or something, you know?

But the Geo-Poe project that went on throughout October was a Horse You Came In On of a different color. We could do it by bike and we wouldn’t have to go anywhere more remote than Leakin Park. (Oh who are we kidding we’re not even trying to go to Leakin Park.)

But strictly speaking the whole thing wasn’t really geo-caching was it? We didn’t actually need our phone’s GPS. As you can see on the event page it’s more of a scavenger hunt than a geo-caching thing. And some of those clues require a fair amount of Googling, even for someone pretty familiar with Baltimore. And since the page says that most of the stories have disappeared anyway, and since we’d rather hunt down thrift store finds than stories, and since we’re going to go hear the stories read by their authors tonight anyway we just kind of bicycled around to some of the sites and still haven’t actually done any geo-caching. More’s the pity.

But as we say the reading is tonight from 7-10 at Westminster Hall downtown, which is the site of Poe’s Grave. It features 14 very well respected writers reading stories that are somehow all connected to or inspired by Poe. We expect an interesting and lively crowd to turn out. It’s perfect for packing a flask of cognac, learning a bit about Baltimore history and getting spooked a bit before Halloween. Best of all, it’s free. You can register here, or if you can’t email us at thebaltimorechop@gmail.com and we’ll send you one of the extra tickets we ended up with.

Sharon Van Etten @ Ottobar Tomorrow

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There are a couple of things worth noting about tomorrow’s Sharon Van Etten show at the Ottobar. The first is that it’s not sold out. This might be because it’s on the same night as a Dead Milkmen reunion show which is sold out. As great a band as the Dead Milkmen were (high school favorites of the Chop) we’ve still not overcome our distaste for the whole 90’s nostalgia reunion circuit.

Even as we write this people all over the Mid-Atlantic are frantically refreshing their browsers to buy Sleater-Kinney tickets and vinyl reissues while two of the very few remaining rock bands in Baltimore, Roomrunner and Dope Body are stating publicly in City Paper that being in a band in 2014 is stupid and dumb and difficult and discouraging- that there’s a noticeable lack of places to book shows and people coming out to them.

Without taking anything away from Sharon Van Etten she reminds us of Cat Power. So we’re just going to forge ahead with that comparison. If that’s the kind of thing you like you can wait for Cat Power to come around: but that’ll be at the 9:30 Club or Merriweather and tickets will cost you about fifty bucks. You can see the same caliber of performance tomorrow at Ottobar for $16, and you don’t have to drive a great distance and be crowded in among thousands of rapidly aging Gen-X’ers trying desperately to reclaim their late 90’s glory days.

These are the glory days for Van Etten right now. After releasing her fourth record recently it’s safe to say she’s squarely in her prime as an artist. If she’s this Generation’s Cat Power, this is the Moon Pix era. You can go to the show tomorrow or you can lie about it in 20 years and say you were there.

The final thing worth noting here is that as the Internet progresses and changes and gets bigger and more complicated every day, YouTube has (perhaps oddly) become the one indispensable tool for checking out new music, or even for just listening to music you don’t already own. For what-you-want, when-you-want listening it’s got all of the streaming services beat hands-down. Users who make playlists and upload full albums are making life much easier for the rest of us.

Two of the best of the best channels going on YouTube are Seattle’s KEXP, from which this video of Sharon Van Etten comes, and NPR Music whose Tiny Desk concerts are more unique and interesting than anything you’re likely to find on Bandcamp. You should subscribe to both if you haven’t already.