<div> <div>I gotta say, I think that's a bit of an unfair attack on woj, because I will concur that it is just really, really tough to live in baltimore, whoever you are.  </div> <div> </div> <div>I've been a lot of fucked up places and the only one I would compare to baltimore is camden, -maybe- detroit.  The quotidian violence and theft and danger and misery bystanders in baltimote get exposed to is really not a fantasy.  The last time I saw statistics on it, between ten and twenty percent of baltimore's -entire population- was addicted to crack.  I have a lot of gallows-humor stories of baltimore, bizzarre and awful experiences that always connect somehow to the drug epidemic.  Lot of misery in the rust belt but baltimore really stands above the pack. </div> <div> </div> <div>All of which is expressed amazingly in The Wire, but that's another subject.</div> <div> </div><br> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">>I live in the city near the campus since I came to JHU in 1992 mainly<br>>because I like city living.  As a result of that experience, my attitude <br>>toward the underclass changed quite substantially.  As they say, familiarity<br>>breeds contempt, and a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged.  I am<br>>not a conservative, to be sure, but I have no sympathy toward the lumpen <br>>either.  I do not hate, judge or condemn them, I just do not want be near<br>>them.<br><br>Goodness, how terribly traumatic it must have been for you and your<br>co-workers, being forced to drive your Volvos through a stinking slum <br>to get to your ivory towers!  How insensitive of me to remind you of<br>it, I feel like a real prick.<br><br>Perhaps, no SURELY, there are various tax deductible charities<br>devoted to easing the distress of unfortunates like this? With <br>psychiatric and counselling sessions, subsidised car washes to get<br>the filth out, that sort of thing?</blockquote> <div> </div> <div> </div><br> </div>