From a meeting in the driveway of a house with a reader who has moved away from Baltimore after experiencing its worst.
The menace, intimidation and threat you describe in your [Harm City] writing is so alive in my mind after living in Baltimore. We actually lived on North Avenue at the base of [redacted] Hill, next to some drug dealer. I don’t even want to get into any details because we still know people down there.
Up here it is so totally a different environment. It was almost a shocking experience, not to have to measure your step, narrow your eyes and run scenarios through your mind just going from Point A to Point B.
We do have our urban elements, somehow regurgitated out here by the Powers That Be, who just seem determined to seed every corner of the land with criminal elements.
I had not lived up here for long and made the cardinal sin of leaving my snow shovel on the porch after shoveling.
[Laughter]
You know in Baltimore that thing is gone in minutes. Of course I’m conditioned to the urban environment and step outside to check on the shovel, and sure enough some Dominican kid is walking off with it!
Before I can even do anything this really big Dominican man yells at this kid—thunders at him with anger—“Put it back! What the hell are you doing? Don’t you know this is why they hate us!”
And the kid brings the shovel back. So it’s not exactly like Baltimore—not even a little, really…[where you would have had a man supervising and supporting the theft, or a mother ordering it.]
I could tell that this man had come out here for a similar reason, to get away from the crime. It was a very interesting thing.
-Big Trippin
For more on Big Trippin’s experiences see also Big Trippin’s Myerhoff Mugging
