At Home in B-More
I've been in Baltimore almost three weeks now. I'm really growing to like the city, even to love it in some ways. For example, my neighborhood, Hampden. I've moved into a 2 bedroom rowhome with one of my fiction classmates. My neighbors range from Hopkins students to elderly to young hipsters. It's a neighborhood in the process of gentrification and change, but it's at an exciting phase right now, when it still has diversity instead of hipster homogeneity.
We live in a 1920's brick row home with hardwood floors. The walls of the long living room are painted red. The walls of my bedroom are painted yellow and purple. I can climb through the window and out onto an upper porch looking over the alley. The sun sets over the backs of the rowhomes, I see into little yards where neighbors are conversing, a hound is braying, and potted plants are in the full tangle of summer.
We also have the funkiest, most unique bathroom in Baltimore. The walls are painted green, the clawfoot tub has golden stars on it with a night background, and there's a skylight with gold cloth hanging from it.
I'm a ten-minute walk from the classroom where I teach, and also a ten-minute walk from The Avenue. This is B-more's answer to Portland's funky streets. I imagine it is like Hawthorne Street must have been in the 90's, with old, unique standbys such as the Bagdad Theater, a few boutiques moving in, but also still spiced with all the old school charms of a neighborhood. This is what Hampden's Avenue is like, and there are some great spots, such as Golden West and Holy Frijoles, both hipster diners.
Hopkins: the campus is beautiful, not quite Ivy but pretty close. My favorite spot there for the first few weeks was a wooded area near the gym with sculptures of different animals-- an owl, a squirrel, a bear with cubs. Here I tended to the emotional wounds of lost love and leaving the wild spaces of the northwest behind. I read my Eudora Welty and jotted notes down for short stories.
Our writing seminars classes are held just beneath the belltower in Gilman Hall, the central building of the Hopkins quad and the Homewood Campus. There are 12 foot tall windows and we are truly in the ivory tower here.
On the other side of campus is Charles Village, where I stayed my first two weeks in Baltimore. It's where a lot of the Hopkins students live, and just a few blocks over is a year-round farmer's market, where I went last week.
I've also had the chance to get out of town a few times-- a visit to the Appalachian Trail at Harper's Ferry, as well as several visits to beautiful state parks and wooded areas about 20 minutes outside of Baltimore. Maryland's very beautiful, and I love all the old historic buildings here.
We live in a 1920's brick row home with hardwood floors. The walls of the long living room are painted red. The walls of my bedroom are painted yellow and purple. I can climb through the window and out onto an upper porch looking over the alley. The sun sets over the backs of the rowhomes, I see into little yards where neighbors are conversing, a hound is braying, and potted plants are in the full tangle of summer.
We also have the funkiest, most unique bathroom in Baltimore. The walls are painted green, the clawfoot tub has golden stars on it with a night background, and there's a skylight with gold cloth hanging from it.
I'm a ten-minute walk from the classroom where I teach, and also a ten-minute walk from The Avenue. This is B-more's answer to Portland's funky streets. I imagine it is like Hawthorne Street must have been in the 90's, with old, unique standbys such as the Bagdad Theater, a few boutiques moving in, but also still spiced with all the old school charms of a neighborhood. This is what Hampden's Avenue is like, and there are some great spots, such as Golden West and Holy Frijoles, both hipster diners.
Hopkins: the campus is beautiful, not quite Ivy but pretty close. My favorite spot there for the first few weeks was a wooded area near the gym with sculptures of different animals-- an owl, a squirrel, a bear with cubs. Here I tended to the emotional wounds of lost love and leaving the wild spaces of the northwest behind. I read my Eudora Welty and jotted notes down for short stories.
Our writing seminars classes are held just beneath the belltower in Gilman Hall, the central building of the Hopkins quad and the Homewood Campus. There are 12 foot tall windows and we are truly in the ivory tower here.
On the other side of campus is Charles Village, where I stayed my first two weeks in Baltimore. It's where a lot of the Hopkins students live, and just a few blocks over is a year-round farmer's market, where I went last week.
I've also had the chance to get out of town a few times-- a visit to the Appalachian Trail at Harper's Ferry, as well as several visits to beautiful state parks and wooded areas about 20 minutes outside of Baltimore. Maryland's very beautiful, and I love all the old historic buildings here.
posted by Franz K at 8:43 AM
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