Charm City. The Land of Pleasant Living. The Greatest City in America. A place that asks us to believe.
Lies. All lies.Here in the land north of the park of Blob, east of Oella, west of the hinterlands of Chesaco, and south of Ebenezer, the followers of Lord Baltimore live in anything but their Lord’s grace.
Charm? A simulacrum of a mostly white Baltimore gone by and trumped up by kitsch-loving, mostly white newspaper columnists, most of whom didn’t grow up here. Pleasant living? Save that shit for wistful memories of the clean, crab-heavy, skipjack-era Chesapeake. (Besides, they don’t brew Natty Boh here no more, hon.)
What, then, makes us so great, possibly even The Best?
We’re tough, asshole, that’s what.
For, just as the denizens of Biblical Egypt had to deal with God’s wrath and the 10 plagues He rained upon them in the book of Exodus, so have the geographic descendants of the Calverts been supremely tested by the testy gods.
-Best of Baltimore, City Paper, 2002
