Baltimore calls itself “Charm City” because they used to have a sense of humor. The city is one of the least charming places on earth and it used to be a lot worse. At its peak, Baltimore was a gray, dumpy industrial town. Today, it’s Detroit on the Chesapeake with a better tourist area. Otherwise, Baltimore is an unrelenting shithole that should probably be given the Dresden treatment.

That tourist area is a big draw, particularly the ballpark. I’ve been to most of the ballparks in the US and Camden Yards is right up their near the top of the list. The park is a great place to watch a game and the surrounding blocks offer some great places to eat and drink. The Federal architecture is some of the best you will see.

Beyond that, and much closer than the tourists realize, are my people. Most Americans just don’t know what’s lurking in many of our cities. They stay off of streets named Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Everyone knows where to avoid, even if they don’t exactly know why. It’s as if their mental map has these places labeled “here be monsters.”

But, urban reservations are not a great way to keep the blacks under control unless you are willing to enforce the borders. If you let the wildlings break free of their areas and get into the tourist areas, you get scenes like last night. The hoodlums and corner boys will join in the fun and start doing what they do best, cause mayhem.

Baltimore is a good example of what happened when Progressives are allowed to rule unchecked. West Baltimore is a scary black ghetto and the main hub for narcotics trafficking in the region. If you ever want to understand why I think libertarians are fools, go to West Baltimore, but do it in the morning hours when the locals are asleep.

The rest of the city is a mix of gentrified hipsterville, old industrial and un-workingclass whites. The poor white areas are just poor white areas. Modest crime, mostly drugs, but otherwise no trouble to anyone. The hipster areas are the tax base and the future of the city, it is hoped, but they are bounded by the more rugged areas of the city.

Unlike New York or Washington, Baltimore can’t ship their problem blacks out to the suburbs. Whites fled Baltimore in the 60’s and 70’s and they are wise to this tactic. Some of it has been done Ferguson style by preying on the poorer white suburbs just outside the city, but it is hard to relocate 300,000 blacks without people noticing. The result is they remain in the urban reservation system built up fifty or more years ago.

In years past, Baltimore has tried to import Hispanics into the city hoping they would drive out the blacks. The last white Mayor and current presidential candidate spent years begging Hispanics to move to Baltimore. This worked in DC, but there was a close suburb able to take the refugees. Prince Georges County absorbed the blacks from DC on Section 8 vouchers. This mostly happened in the housing boom, which is why PG County was one of the hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis.

But, Baltimore is not built for this type of ethnic cleansing. Hispanics prefer the safety of the surrounding counties where there are jobs and fewer black guys with guns. The result in Baltimore is sort of frozen in place. On the one hand you have the promise of the gentrified areas, but those areas are surrounded by a city run by the Black Guerrilla Family.

Drive around Baltimore and you can’t help but feel a little sad. There’s a lot of potential, but it is a city that seems to look for the wrong answer at every turn. Then again, the right answer, the one everyone sort of knows, can never be said, much less implemented. Frankly, shuffling these people from place to place like a bizarre game of Old Maid means someone gets stuck with the dysfunctional population. That’s Baltimore.