Country Music Car Trouble

We're heading toward Nashville at the moment, the cars been funny since we left Westminster.

Baltimore, Maryland, is the most depressing fucking place ever. We drove into Baltimore on the 29th to play at a loft/venue(?) in some warehouse complex neighborhood in the outskirts of Baltimore. First, in all fairness of Baltimore, I did not nor did I have time to venture to downtown Baltimore but the feel I got from where we were at and from the residents of this not so fair city, is that it's all kind of the same.

The fist notable things I noticed were the two po-po cruisers parked awkwardly beside a house with their light flashing, followed by some more cruisers not to far down the road en route to some murder, probably. My favorite part was that there were randomly placed (seemingly random) poles placed with flashing blue rotating lights on top. These are somewhat of the same variety that are among college campuses in cases of need, except these lights were three times as tall and I saw at least a dozen or so going off as we were searching for our destination.

As all of this nonsense was occurring, there were people casually walking across the street in a hurry but still as if this wasn't too out of the ordinary. There was still a feel of cautiousness afoot though. I also forgot one detail: it was probably nine or so at night.

We moved most of the stuff from the car to the loft when we arrived on account of the chance someone may decide to bust into the car and steal a plethora of small band shirts.

There were maybe thirty people there, all nice indie kids that live in a sketchy neighborhood. From talking to Amy, others, and just from some field research/notes or what have you; there seems to be a reoccurring theme of white indie kids living in sketch-ass neighborhoods. I've been told that this is because those particular areas are "edgy" and equates to "hip" or something to that degree. One example is the Tenderloin district in San-Fran proper. According to Amy (since she is indeed a bay resident), the mission is the main place in San-Fran where most of the hipsters reside. Recently (unspecified time range) the new place for the hipsters to go is the Tenderloin district that is chopped full of homeless and crack-heads. I took a walk through that area during my SFO Halloween stint and didn't really notice too much of that but I was also, per chance, a main drag cutting through there. I also cut through that area on the way to a venue I needed to see (the Boom Boom Room) but didn't see any Tenderloin-esque activity on account that the entire fucking bay was raining buckets that day. I walked three miles under those buckets and have the photos to prove.

The edgy neighborhood thing has indeed been a reoccurring theme that I have noticed on this trip when coinciding with loft or collective spaces and I have some input on why:

A) These neighborhoods are cheap. Think of it; if there is a bad neighborhood that average people won't live in on account of potential danger then it's probably going to be cheaper there. My Aunt and Uncle live in a part of Park Slope in Brooklyn that they bought their house at about four years ago. It was a complete reck at the time, which knocked down the value of it but also because the neighborhood was not the best then The house, if they choose to sell it now, would be a quarter more of the original price they paid for it, which is a lot if you knew the original price. In any case, it would be worth more now to sell because of all of the fixing up they did on the place but more importantly, in a few years the house will be worth more since there is a gentrification process occurring. This hasn't yet reached their neighborhood but it will. As neighborhoods are being dolled up to become more attractive (via residents, city actions on the neighborhood, blah-blah) the property values go up.

There's more to say about this but the point I'm leading up to is the neighborhoods may be terrible which leads to them being more affordable and as us young people have it, we're willing to take more risks because we're young. Older people tend to... Well not. So, the affordability probably tends to lead the younger crowd to those neighborhoods

B) It's fucking hip to be in an sketchy neighborhood. There is nothing wrong with this other than maybe getting raped/mugged/murdered. It's not exactly the ideal living conditions but if you do want to live in an area where you have potential like-minded individuals or a particular social group you can associate with then sketchy neighborhoods may one of the ways to go. It's a way that you may fit or not fit into a neighborhood. It's affordable and in some cases it's a social bonus.

There have been a few lofts that I've been quite fond of and most of them have been incredibly cold. It's winter and heating is expensive, so it makes sense. It's something I couldn't really do in the Winter- I could but I wouldn't want to- unless if it was at the Department of Safety.