Today is my sister’s wedding anniversary. A year and a half ago, I was astonished to find out that the best cake maker in Maryland had set up shop in Hamilton, five blocks from my old abode. Talk about optimism. She had ordered her cake months in advance. I was not too interested in helping taste the sample cakes at the rarified ceremony. But Megan, her ultra-cute BFF was going to be there and the temperatures had risen high enough on that spring afternoon to positively influence her wardrobe, so I attended.

While we were there the baker was noticeably uncomfortable with my sleeveless shaven-headed presence. Then this fat whale of a yupster in a Hawaiian shirt entered, drinking a Fat Tire brand bottled beer against the open container ordinance, with full confidence that it would not be applied to him, when officer crudely would have been making me dump my beer in the gutter while he ticketed me. This pig actually had a cute wife, who must have been stronger than she looked to hold that gut of his out of the way while he huffed and puffed and—It’s a tragedy to consider, let alone wasting a good pun on him…

Then the Riots and Purge hit Baltimore and it is no surprise that that shock and the ever increasing unreported violence in the area drove these faɡɡots out. The block the Hamilton Bakery was situated on was subject to three lootings: The jeweler, the Pharmacy and the Pizza Shop, and after Inchon John saw those Dindus walking by with bats and a gas can, he closed shop. Now a Pakistani man and his two armed sons own the liquor store.

Then the anchor Business, Clementines, owned by the head of the Hamilton association, the guy that hires the janitor and arranged for uniformed police security through the overtime desk of the BPD—that guy, the Baltimore gentrification poster child—closed up.

Now, on her anniversary, Siss and her Permasqueeze cannot get the prepaid anniversary cake…another sign of Dindustan Rising. If I had known before coming out here, I would have stopped by Brother Usef’s corner spot at Erdman and Sinclair and bought them two bean pies. Sorry Theresa and Gene, for forgetting your anniversary—but hell, I forgot mine 17 years running.

-The White Devil here, reporting from the Bowels of Dindustan, 9/20/16