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A Wander Through B-More, 2 April 2008
The Crown Journey series asks established writers to wander through a city or area they live in or know well, and then write about it in a way that introduces the outsider to that place. I've read two others in the series, William F. Buckley's one on Washington, D.C. (my hometown), and Chuck Pahalniuk on Portland, OR (where I went to college). The former is pretty terrible, focusing on the standard federal and historical haunts while mostly ignoring the 500,000+ people who actually live here. The latter does a pretty good job of capturing Portland, with an emphasis on the quirky. After D.C., Portland, San Francisco, and New York, Baltimore is probably the next city I know reasonably well -- it's only a 45 minute drive north, and I've probably visited it somewhere between 50-75 times since the early '80s.
Bell is a 20+ year resident of the Baltimore area, and arranges the book as a series of walks through various parts of the city in the company of friends steeped in local lore. Many of these areas (Fells Point, Inner Harbor, Canton, etc.) are well known tourist destinations, others (Dickeyville, north Charles Street) much less so. His general mode is to embark on his promenade and alternate descriptions of present-day street life and architecture with odds and ends of local history. While some of this historical context is interesting, it does drag the book down at times, as does his preoccupation with architecture.The book is much stronger when he focuses on social history, rather than the "founding fathers" stuff that tends to dominate.
Similarly, Bell is at his best when he turns his novelist's eye to the various bars and characters he encounters along the way, bringing them vividly to life in a way he simply can't with the historical material. The dominant theme is one of constant change and transformation, running from the great fire of 1904 that leveled most of the old town and required massive rebuilding, to the scandalous land grabs of the '60s, to the rapid-fire redevelopment/gentrification currently underway throughout the city. On the whole, a quick and readable introduction to the city for the uninitiated.
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