Working on Saturday nights is a pain in the ass, as I have to take a bus downtown, and then another out of town, to compensate for the lack of late night cross town service.
I sat on a city bench for 20 minutes waiting for the #19. During this time, three cop cars, with two cops each, used their lights to get through the red light at the 7-11 so that they could enjoy an urban repast. For 10 of these minutes a tall thin thug of about 18 sat next to me, mumbling about the schedule on occasion, but reserving most of his energy for spitting, which he did every 4 seconds.
The #19 rolled up on time and was packed; the first fully loaded bus in a month. I sit across from a tattooed white heroin addict who I used to chase off the store lot six years ago. His tattooed skin is sloughing off like snake scales in rolls of blue and green as he tries desperately to hold onto his guava juice, which is spilling all over the socked and sandaled feet of the standing thugs who are discussing their plea bargains and terms of parole. They demonstrate no anger toward the “fiend” who is mere comic relief, and show courtesy to two women who are offered seats. The bus accommodates one terrified white woman for about five blocks. Other than that the passengers number five working black women, me, the fiend, ten working black men, and over 20 men who may or may not be employed, but are not coming from or going to work this night.
Beatings of rivals are discussed.
Dice games are discussed.
Drinking plans are discussed.
Other meetings are discussed in code.
The police are discussed and laughed at when a car of two is spotted.
On Baltimore Street, Baltimore’s infamous red light district know as “The Block,” I offload with a skittish out of town African couple and two individuals.
The lighting is poor, looking like a Sin City scene.
The concrete sidewalks, from years of constant spitting by thousands of daily mouths, is stained and crusted with a dark patina, making the raised walks seem like a muddy walkway, like an inverted main street in a gritty western.
Traffic is about half of normal, almost exclusively local blacks. I spot no tourists—zero.
With the main police precinct a block away there is normally a foot patrolman. He is nowhere in sight. There are also no patrol men cruising at regular five minute intervals as would be normal.
I see 17 homeless men sleeping in the darker corners—nothing compared to the fifty or so crowded onto the covered porch of the pharmacy just before the bus went under the #83 overpass, but twice normal, as the cop that typically rousts them is not present.
As I walk between the parked cop cruisers at the precinct I notice twice the normal amount of cruisers parked there—I suppose, since cops buddy up now.
Drug deals are in evidence, which is normal, police or no police.
There is an absence of street vendors selling stolen goods. It was the last day of the month, with government money still days off.
When I board the #23, running ahead of schedule, which is unheard of, it is not full. This bus, coming out of West Baltimore and headed to Eastern Baltimore County, is normally standing room only. There are half the number of working women returning from evening shift jobs as normal. There is a complete absence of families out shopping until we hit the county-to-county Eastpoint run, and then pick up a mother and two daughters with shopping bags. There is also an absence of hardcore thugs of the type that abounded on the #19. The men are all returning from uptown culinary jobs, discussing their sexual conquests, fist fights born in the kitchen and resolved on the back dock, plea bargains, plans for their future, family outings, and their terms of parole for unspecified crimes.
I offload in the county with two males and the family, who all fix me with worried looks, and wonder at the shift in these two bus line demographics as I walk to work.
The #19, running from Central Baltimore County, would normally have 5-10 sleepy passengers just getting off work. It is loaded with men going somewhere. The men I overheard were discussing underground entertainment venues such as dice games and unlicensed drinking dens, perhaps made easier to attend with lax post purge policing.
The #23, comming from West Baltimore County—just over the county line from Edmonson Village—is usually packed with returning uptown and Westside employees headed to their Eastside homes, as well as Eastside families returning from uptown and a sprinkling of hoodlums out partying and looking for trouble. I am guessing that the missing bus patrons no longer have a Westside job to come home from, and—in the case of the absent families—no longer feel safe bringing children out into the night air of Baltimore.
It might do the new reader some good to compare this ride to work on a Saturday night with these others in recent years. My personal feeling is, that while Baltimore has suddenly become far more lethal for black men, that attacks on whites have returned to their high pre purge norm, and that with serious drug world business to attend to, that many of the free range thugs and hoodlums that would normally make my commute less serene, are elsewhere, doing what they do.
