Antonius is considering moving to Bowley's Quarters. This will place him within a ten minute drive or 45 minute walk of his married friends, making it a location of mutual support in case of a grid down or social unrest event, or more likely, a broken down car situation, or in case one party is being threatened in his home and needs assistance. I will sketch the immediate location, then the area's exterior to this, before looking at the area itself, or the neighborhood.

If he needs to walk to his friends to the northwest, he should consider that it is all uphill and adjust his expected walking or jogging rate accordingly. Jogging between the locations for such a young man is a good idea for learning the area without the cops harassing him and he will be moving faster than the criminals think. Avoid jogging a park path. Jog across town along a southeast to northwest axis. I walked this route extensively for over 30 years and found that walking southeast improved my time by 15 minutes per hour over walking northwest. To save your knees and ass on the way back, jog out of town uphill and return walking downhill on high alert.

The apartments themselves had the following good features:

-Minimal window frontage

-No back access

-Fewer cars than apartments, which indicates that these folks socialize elsewhere [for this was a Sunday afternoon], work weekdays and don't have extra boy friends and cousins living with them. Just like 2 cars to a house is good, indicating a working couple, two cars to these mostly single bed room apartments suggests a mud shark with a drug dealer boy friend or an unemployed Baby Daddy whose other girlfriend is making his car payment. This renter only offers one parking space per apartment, which is ideal.

Holy Redeemer Cemetery to the northwest offers 20,000 model neighbors compared to the 20,000 hoodrats to the south.

Most of all, this few block area is better than each area 3 blocks to east, west and south and no worse than the preferred access point to the north-northwest.

To the west is worst, Belair Road and Parkside Drive, where I was attacked 4 times by packs and where my cousin Suzy was beaten and robbed by two Bantus 25 years ago and where my niece Megan was raped in the gutter at the bus stop six years ago. East from here along Parkside, the first block is Bantu blight, with men walking with their asses out in the middle of the street. Within 3 blocks you are in rarified, elite Laureville where rich ghost women dream of being gang raped by Bantu packs and rich men apologize for lack of pigment. This is the second best access-eggress route out of Bowley's Quarters.

To the north is Gardenville, my old area, where Moravia takes you quickly to the interstate eastward or to Laureville westward. Going North on Belair is a mistake, as it gets worse for 2 miles north. You want to go north on Whalther Boulevard, which starts at Parkside and crosses Moravia, and lacks all of the hoodrat support depots that Belair Road and Harford Road to the west and Sinclair Lane to the east, enjoy, such as dollar stores and panhandling corners at pharmacies and fast food joints.

South, well, that is worse than the worst at Parkside and Belair. If one travels south from Parkside and Belair, or interiorly from Bowleys and Manasota, on Manasota, through the park and past the five side streets that dead end at the park where it widens to the west, past the house where my wife used to care for retired Mister Mack 35 years ago, you will reach Belair Edison, one of the worst areas in Baltimore. Where Manasota crosses Erdman Avenue a block east of Belair Road, it turns into Edison Highway, which is a hoodrat transfer route from East Baltimore by bus, where the side streets feature burn barrel midnight dice games and daylight shootings. The Food Depot that serves this area had two clerks raped in the aisle by hoodrat invaders some 6 years ago. If one takes a left eastward on Erdman the survival prospects improve with every bock as that road becomes Northpoint and takes you into Lower White Trashistan, [2] past Armistead Gardens, the only tough ghost neighborhood in all of Baltimore.

If one turns right, westward across Belair Road—do not, ever, make a left at Belair Road and go down to North Avenue!

Turning right off Manasota or Belair Road and heading west across Erdman, one passes through Little Flower, a horrible row house ghetto running five blocks on the right to the north. Then, as the golf course looms on the left, at Saint Lo Drive, Chesterfield, the second richest area in Baltimore, with million dollar mansions, rises to the right. Turning right there, one goes four blocks to Herring Run Park and hits Chesterfield Ave, which is the street that skirts the south side of the park a half mile south of Parkside Drive. Chesterfield is habitable but dangerous all the way to Belair Road east, and then becomes a section-8 nightmare as you return to Belair Edison down the now narrowed street with only 10% homeowners.

Heading east along Bowley's Quarters on the interior, or on Moravia to north or Erdman to south, one dead ends on Bowley's at Sinclair Lane and crosses it on Moravia or Erdman. The north and south crossings are great escape routes in case of attack or urban unrest to points east in Baltimore County. Erdman and Sinclair is home to a private high school which is a non-crime zone while Moravia and Sinclair o the north hosts a project and a public school and are high crime locations. Bowley's dead ends across from a brand new and nice looking section-8 [3] project designed to look like real housing, and has a three-story brick project to the left. Do not linger here or drive here slowly by night. Get to Erdman or Moravia ASAP and head east.

Bowleys Quarters itself is safest nearer Moravia to the north and most dangerous to west, east and south. But, traveling north or south the areas get progressively more dangerous and traveling east and west quickly become less dangerous. The safest rout out of Bowleys is north and then immediately west to northwest.

Crime on foot is most likely from the projects and schools to the east and will peak in the afternoon and then again at night.

Crime from the west will be mostly at night and feature older, less numerous and more deadly criminals.

Crime from the south is limited due to having to cross the narrow bridge over Herring Run and the lack of a dense target population like in Belair Edison, which has four times the population density of Bowleys. Garden apartments do not house as many hoodrats as row houses on narrow streets.

The dominant single family home layout of the southeastern portion of Gardenville across Moravia to the north, makes for a less dense criminal population, with the high crime row house area three blocks further north towards Frankford Avenue and Belair Road, which is almost as dangerous as Erdman and Belair and Parkside and Belair.

The problem in this area of Northeast Baltimore is Belair Road, an invasion route from Central and West Baltimore, just as Edison brings criminals from East Baltimore and Harford Road Brings them from downtown and West Baltimore.

Beware, that Parkside Drive, after taking you east through nice wealthy Laureville, will turn into Argonne Drive where Herring Run Park ends, and take you into Morgan State college housing and to the crime ridden areas of Chinkapin, Alameda, York & Woodbourne and Govans.

Herring Run Park itself, south of Bowleys and north of the large stream gully [impassible by hoodrats except on Manasota and Belair] is not safe just south of the projects, with the ball field there and the playground in the center causing the homeowners [who make up 90% of the residence on Bowleys Lane] to bar their doors at 70% across from the ballfield, 95% across from the central playground, and 60% across from the treed strolling area nearest the three apartment complexes, marking this as the safest zone. Bad shit has obviously happened during the day and at night at the playground,

In the center of Bowley's towards Parkside, is a small grocer. I would shop there, but a young ghost should not, as he might be mistaken for an out-of-town rube.

In between the apartment complexes is Hobbits liquor store and a small convenience. I love back street liquor stores because they are good places for me to experience contact with learning criminals and also to make truces with experienced criminals who will assume I am an old ghost returned from a decade long murder stint in prison to his old haunts. Do not use these shopping venues, as they will serve to trace you to and from your lair. Shop at a location near your job site and bring groceries directly home. Use the apartment as a lair to hold up from and strike out into the world that hates you. Do not try and become part of this transient community.

Warning, being on foot in this area, and also circling in your car checking it out, will invite police scrutiny from one of the most corrupt and predatory police departments in the world. Being pale and on foot screams “drug buyer.” And, since it is open season on palefaces for hoods and pigs, avoid on foot exposure. Use the park freely in the morning all days, in the early afternoon on the weak days, never at night and never in the afternoon on weekends.

When The Brick Mouse and I walked the area, a couple female home buyers watched us, an African playing his drum on a park bench ignored us in his trance, some mamas and their whelps recreated in the playground. And, as we walked through an overgrown lane where men gather by night to drink malt liquor [1] and run their capers, some 9 to 12 year old boys, who had been playing in the field and seeing us, darted into the woods, continued their play, marking my as an evil cop who was hunting them, and playing a game of “oh, he can see you, he can't see me, you done,” which made me grin, that these boys were simulating police avoidance as a game.

Only the hunter and the hunted need venture here by night.

I can recommend Bowley's Quarters as hide for a young paleface to spend a couple years learning the skills of navigating a world dedicated to his extinction.

…

Notes

-1. Cans were spare, but the broken glass was so thick on the asphalt path that I could hear and feel it under my boot treads, convincing me that this covered bend by the wooded creek-bed and within easy access of the projects is a mustering point for nightly raiders and a place were drugs are bought and sold, women are rented, liquor is drunk from bottles at midnight raider debriefings and where stolen goods are fenced or handed off.

-2. Dundalk, East Point, North Point, Colgate, Berkshire and Gray Haven in Baltimore County

-3. Federally subsidized housings for criminals