jekyllandhyde

"You know what the trouble is, Brucie? We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in another guy's pocket."

--Frank Sobotka, The Wire

I think I'm going to lead off every new blog post with a quote from The Wire (well, probably not, but maybe the next few posts). There are just so many good lines there.

My girlfriend and I went to Baltimore this weekend to look for apartments. That city's fucking expensive; worse than Austin. The main prospects we found were a downtown high rise (Charles Towers) with a 2-bedroom for $1,375/month (but that includes utilities) and an extra $140/month for parking and some cheaper places out in White Marsh, about ten miles away from downtown. But there's no guarantee that a place in Charles Towers will open up for us in time because they only require their residents to give 30 days advance notice of when they'll be leaving. The places out in White Marsh might be our best bet; there's a Barnes & Noble out there where I could work and a lot of convenient amenities. But of course I would have to drive ten miles every two days to get to class and then again whenever else we wanted to hang out downtown, which will be often. Living in the heart of downtown would be damn cool, but also damn inconvenient; there are really no gas stations or supermarkets or anything anywhere close to the apartments. At least out in White Marsh there's a B&N, restaurants, gas stations, movie theaters, and even a mall. Those places only charge about $800-900/month for spacious 2-bedroom apartments. My girlfriend also just told me about some other suburb areas she wants to look at, but White Marsh actually has a place where I could walk to work and maintain my good pay rate without having to start all over at the bottom of the ladder. I'm just getting burned out on searching for apartments. At one point while we were over there, we were sitting down to lunch and I was just slumped in my chair and echoed McNulty's favorite line from The Wire : "What the fuck did I do?" I only half-jokingly considered telling the University of Baltimore thanks but no thanks and reapplying everywhere else next year, but that was just the frustration talking.

We started to drive out to a place that advertised a 2-bedroom for $675/month, but we quickly realized that we were driving through the bad parts of West Baltimore -- probably one of the worst places in America. You know that warning feeling you get that tells you to get the fuck out of where you are right now? Yeah, I got that big time. We turned around about halfway to the apartment and didn't call back. I saw a few buildings there and in East Baltimore that I know I've seen on The Wire, which was kind of cool but also a sign that I was in the wrong part of town.

It's funny; the worst parts of West Baltimore are only about ten blocks away from downtown, but it's like there's an invisible barrier that separates the two. Downtown citizens don't venture out there and the Westsiders don't go downtown. In addition to watching The Wire, I've also been reading David Simon's two books Homicide and The Corner, which deal a lot with that area. It's almost like an entirely different planet. Homicide was making me nervous about moving to Baltimore at first, but now it's actually proven quite helpful because it's shown me where not to live.

I hate moving. Especially to a city very far away where I don't know anyone at all. Moving down here to Texas was hard enough, and I have family here in Austin. It seems like I just did that, and now I have to do it all over again. I think it's worse this time.