On Tuesday evening of June second I took a walk down Belair Road from the city line, attempting to establish some intelligence on Crazy Mark. I was nervous, not having been in contact with anybody local other than Ron, Sol, Chuck or Aldo for five years, and not having much familiarity with the hoodrat tribe on that north-south axis, which runs parallel to Harford Road, the axis I live on two miles to the west.

My first order of business would be to look for familiar faces on the street and in bars, headed down the left side of the road. If I find no one I know, I might be able to strike up an acquaintance with someone who might know Mark. Mark never patronized bars, but people know him on sight, and the white guys that still drink in these bars would be about our age and work in the trades. Since he was stripping copper out of houses in this area maybe some of these guys had had an encounter or sighting. This is phase one, a one-mile barhop that will basically map the urban blight and demographic tilt.

I was out from 6:30 to 9:30, getting home at about 10:00.

This is a narrow linear bar with small tables to the back, seating a total of 30.

All the patrons were white men from 50 to 70. One was a drinker, two played poker machines, and six were engaged in a shuffle bowl game in the back.

The barmaid was a pleasing brunette in a football jersey of about 40, who was enjoying the music on the juke box and playing shuffle bowl. The music was Tom Petty, Great Train Robbery and Skynard.

The tap beer was limited to Bud and Coors light. It is a predominantly bottled beer joint with my 8 ounce Rollin Rock costing $3.50.

The beer and drink selection is calibrated not to appeal to blacks or young people.

There are two TV monitors with the news on.

I knew none of these men.

Half of this sprawling white trash bar has been rented to a guy who runs a burger stand and does more business than the bar. There is a back area for smoking and sitting outside under an awning, which is reserved for the bar patrons.

The bar itself is a square room around a central pillar or boxed in staircase in three sections: the far section having two pool tables from where the deck is accessed, the small table seating area with three high three-seat tables, and the bar at the front door, a small 13 seat rectangle with a bottle beer cooler under a large screen TV.

The barmaid is a very good looking and well dressed small girl of 50. This girl is the classiest barmaid I’ve seen in a dive like this forever, making me wonder if she owns it.

There are nine patrons, all white working class guys in the trades ranging in age from 35-55. Four play pool and smoke on the deck while five sit at the bar.

I order a shot of Petron, as there is no draft. Keeping draft out of your bar pretty much prohibits a black male clientele. There are also no forties, no malt liquor, and no fortified wine in the case. The Patron sets me back $8!

I don’t know any of these guys, although I can see how it would be easy to engage them in the future, as the news on TV starts up some conversation. These are not the “let’s forget and be merry” crowd up the street where I just left.

A gentrification attempt at a mixed race sports bar, complete with curb to door awning and a towering painting of celebrity football felon Ray Lewis screaming his African American angst, has been closed for some years now.

This bar has changed hands for decades, closed between owners as often as not. I can tell by the neighborhood and the exterior that this is a mixed drink bar for older black guys who do not want to have to deal with young thugs or the wife. I will find no news of Crazy Mark here, but will stop back sometime.

This was Ricks’ bar when I moved to town in 1981. I worked with a black guy who shot the place up and did time after the redneck patrons chased him out for coming in with a white girl. He was a nice guy.

Rick’s son eventually got in a fight with another white trash guy from Waverly and got his nose bit off. Soon after the bar changed hands.

From 1995-2012 it was owned as the Hubcap by a retired city cop, who was a real asshole, but a good bar owner. He fed cops breakfast for free and kept a good kitchen. I would eat breakfast there often. He had a huge selection of movies that the patrons would enjoy and discuss, and a pool table in the back. A guy I knew was murdered behind this bar by three dudes who never even got charged, his head smashed in with the concrete end of a pulled up fence post

The bar has now been bought by a Pakistani family who has also bought the VFW lodge across the street! I will check that out on my next jaunt.

The kitchen has been replaced by a ghetto carry out six-pack and liquor selection with its own separate counter and clerk.

The barmaid is amber, with amber skin, amber hair, and a curvy body seemingly designed by a God who wanted to wow black guys across the color line. She dresses like a slut, dances behind the bar for tips, and slings booze like a pro. I’d say she’s a well worn 30. Behind the bar with her is a Pakistani security guard—the kind with a baggy khaki shirt long enough to conceal a tulwar or an AK-47.

Outside stand three brown men of undetermined race who work for the bar in some capacity and seem to have quit for the day.

The bar is long dark and narrow, with the package goods side long and well lit. There is a good selection of bottle and tap beer as well as rail drinks.

In the front sits a fat white man of 50, a good looking white woman of 30, a pretty black girl of 30, a skinny white guy of 35, and, all the way to the back and filling the rest of the 20 bar stools are 16 black guys, mostly in their 20s shouting at each other as rap music blares so loud that I decide not to get a drink

I recognize no one.

As I select a six pack of Resurrection ale to take over to Chuck’s house, who is one of three friends who live in the area, I notice that the nighttime security man is coming on duty, a six foot five inch 280 pound wall of Caucasian muscle armed with a nine millimeter and a flashlight, who Chuck later tells me searches everyone who enters for weapons. When you get here, to the point where a neighborhood package goods and bar needs to have what is essentially a paramilitary presence to stay open, then you have hit the hard ghetto. You are in the hood, right in The Boned Zone where every midsized city neighborhood with a majority black population holds on, before either weathering the storm, or blighting out.

Consider that these 16 loud young black men are most likely working guys, who have sought a much safer drinking venue than is normally available in majority black neighborhoods. I may not like their music or their manners, but they were friendly enough, and have actually sought out the protection of a Pakistani merchant clan, who have hired a guy who looks like he was designed at Black Water, to keep them all alive and attached to their wallet while they unwind from the day and party into the night.

Having had enough, and honestly not feeling up to finding out what the Garden Inn has turned into down the road, I head over to Chuck’s for a beer, and then head home in a misty rain with my head on a swivel.

As I look for Crazy Mark and anyone who might know of his whereabouts I’ll file a report on the rest of the bars along the remaining four miles of this five mile stretch of blighted urban road. I’m a mile in and it’s already looking grim.