You’re a hypocrite unless you’re a vegetarian

Doing that does work for people. The rep you get connected to has a directive to try their best to keep you as a customer and will offer you discounts. Some people call it “a ritual” every year, but I honestly have had zero complaints with speeds/connectivity/etc with them over the combined 8 years I’ve dealt with them in Baltimore (and I’ve lived northeast, east, and southwest in the city).

And is /u/jdtoast your fiancé? They just posted a very similar post on here!

Call and say the words “I would like to cancel.” You’ll then get on the line with someone whose directive is to try their best to keep you as a customer.

If you’re on the SoBo peninsula then you might be able to get Verizon FIOS. I don’t believe they have it west of 395 though, so your other option is mobile Internet from Verizon or T-Mobile. FWIW, I’m in Pigtown and my phone’s 5G signal rarely goes out - my speeds are currently 40 down / 4 up. Idk if that translates to the signal home mobile Internet would receive from them though.

I’d call Comcast and negotiate, and compare that to whatever the others are offering.

I’m just saying that regardless of where the region was grouped 150-250+ years ago, that today is not the same.

> the enormous number of confederate flags in the schools in western maryland/Frederick co and on the shore

I grew up on the Shore and have zero clue what you’re talking about.

Also, you can find Confederate flags in NY. You can even find them in Canada - people who fly them aren’t always thinking about Southern pride…… And although biggest in the South, the Klan wasn’t just a Southern thing - like they had a big presence in the Midwest and failed in spreading more around Boston because they’re anti-Catholic (like, funding the Calles government in Mexico in a civil war because of laws against the Catholic Church, or their campaigns against Al Smith, JFK, and Biden).

> Our public high school vehemently referred to the civil war as a war of northern economic aggression, all the way through AP US history. That, to me, is a meaningful and modern reflection of values and ideals in the state that wouldn’t be common in most of the north east.

Yeah that wouldn’t be a thing in Maryland. You might hear some people say “the War of Northern Aggression” in certain places but, growing up on the Eastern Shore, it always sounded slightly unserious and we were never taught the Lost Cause narrative in school.

The good thing in your comparison is we just had a Republican Governor for 8 years and we’re still lightyears better than Missouri!

The Baltimore-Washington area as a whole is pretty good for what you’re looking for. There’s decent variety in communities throughout the area that you will probably be able to find the type of place you like (I mean vibewise - dense downtowns, rowhouses on rowhouses, detached homes in cities, suburbs, rural areas, waterfront towns, small towns from the Bay to the foothills) and all of those are decently close to the cores of both cities. In fact, Baltimore and DC‘s central train stations are less than 40 miles from each other and have a bunch of different trains that can get you between the cities in 35-50 minutes. (Also I might as well mention here something that’s rare elsewhere but plentiful here: free museums. Baltimore’s big two art museums are free as are all the Smithsonian museums in DC.)

There are plenty of things to complain about Baltimore (crime worries, very humid summers, dreams of a better transit system), but if you’re looking at it as a region and not just a city then I think you’ll find a lot in common and a lot you’ll like. If you want to live in the city proper and are worried about crime then do research on neighborhoods - just like any city, there are better and worse areas.

I mean, you’re using a line surveyed 260 years ago because of competing colonial claims as your basis of culture today. The Maryland claim would’ve included Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania claim would’ve included Baltimore and nearly Georgetown.

Things have changed a lot since the 1760s and the 1860s. Baltimore and Washington are pretty squarely Northeast cities.

> I’m not sure exactly how you determined Baltimore would be any safer a place to raise your children

I believe they mean raise them in a place that doesn’t have book bans and a litany of other personal autonomy issues. The grander Balt-Wash area also has far more opportunities in it than St Louis has.

Also re: that park in St Louis, Patterson Park from end-to-end is just over half a mile; Forest Park in STL is around 2 miles wide. To be fair though, not a lot of cities have parks that massive, and places like Philly, Baltimore, and DC do have decent river-valley parks on their falls lines which are nice.

I think something that folks from other parts of the country might be surprised by is free museums here. Walters, BMA, and the Smithsonian museums in DC are all free, and as someone who grew up here I didn’t realize that was rare.

> someone reached out to me to say that "uppity" is a racially coded term?

I’m super interested in hearing the logic on that one from whoever contacted you

They’re going to keep doing this to people because they got away with it without legal repercussions.

Between the beersnake and the lemons, I think the Defenders fans are squarely from Baltimore

Weird from all the Putin propaganda you’re spewing

There’s even a street named for her

Um, you signed a contract for $16.5k of work and then they didn’t honor it every step of the way. Contact the Attorney General.

Deleting comments because everybody in the city subreddit disagreed with you just to preserve Internet points and to make it seem like you weren’t so horribly wrong (especially when the thread can still be accessed otherwise…) is possibly the saddest and most narcissistic things I’ve seen on here. And per reveddit this seems to be your MO, along with insults and ad hominem attacks.

Did you literally just rage-delete all of your very downvoted responses to me to copy-paste and reply them again so the karma would reset? Wow. That’s just kinda sad.

Simply because you don’t know where you’d be teaching yet, I would hold off on looking for a home to buy considering your search perimeters regarding walkability/transit. Like I could suggest Fed Hill to you because it hits all the marks you’re looking for, but if it turns out you’re working up in Clifton Park then that walkability nor MARC access isn’t going to help much to get to your school.

I would suggest coming back for suggestions once you know where you’ll be working.

> but a house in the $225k range that meets your criteria may require a bit of work

Hard disagree. In Fed Hill and Pigtown, houses in that range (and lower) are newly renovated.

Also property tax is built into your monthly mortgage payment and can be tax deductible / qualify for incentives to bring the burden down. If you’re paying rent it isn’t, and you’re paying a premium on top of the owner’s mortgage to them and they are generating the equity off you.

What’s been shown in studies is that groceries stores are far healthier than corner stores. That leads me to either incentivizing the development of full groceries or other fresh food outlets in these communities (I’m not a tax professional or lawyer or anything so I can’t speak to how specifically to do so), or collective/government action that either creates spaces for such or runs such (as in, creating more food markets (not food halls) and keeping those spaces well-funded and renovated, or running grocery stores).

Personally I would prefer collective solutions that promote community and potentially keep money in the community/region rather than some TIFs for national/international chains, but again I’m not an expert. But I have seen both expansion/reinforcement of city markets and establishing government-run groceries in the most affected communities as solutions before from advocates and officials so it’s not a wild idea.

I’ve never heard him living in Texas. He has homes in Baltimore, SF, NYC, and Provincetown and is around town here often.

I recall this program, I believe it’s a Federal effort. From my experience in my neighborhood, though, I’m unsure of its impact - but data might prove me wrong.

I do agree that proximity usually trumps quality, especially in neighborhoods with limited options and populations which predominately don’t have private transportation. However, that’s also why prioritizing those underserved areas with quality grocers providing healthier options should be the focus, because that can also do the most positive impact.

Like I live in an area that is now considered a food desert after the closing of Mount Clare Junction’s supermarket and my car’s been in the shop for over a week - if I was less financially fortunate I would be having a tough time finding fresh grocery options via my local corner stores (they’re almost all of the plexiglass model where almost all the area within is prioritized to snacks, sodas, and tobacco and you’re lucky to find produce, fresh baked goods, or good dairy).

Ad hominem attacks aren’t going to help you - and I’ve never heard anyone from here call them bodegas, just NYC transplants. (Notice how none of what you just linked to, which are actually about Baltimore this time, say the word “bodega” once? Yeah…)

From your first article: > Most probably never paid the prices that these stores charge for the hot dogs, snacks and other packaged goods they sell and which are usually higher than those for similar items in a Harris Teeter, Trader Joe's or Wegmans.

So they’re more expensive…

From the third article (the study): > Study Results At baseline, our sample of 118 stores had a mean healthy food availability score of 7.06 (standard deviation: 4.28) (Exhibit 1). Behind-glass stores had the lowest overall healthy food availability (4.53 points), followed by convenience stores (5.14 points), corner stores (5.96 points), and supermarkets (16.31 points). In multivariate models, corner stores differed significantly from both supermarkets and behind-glass stores but not convenience stores.

So convenience stores and corner stores are helathier than nothing, but overall below average and significantly worse than a grocery store.

Your own articles agree with me that they are more expensive and don’t provide as good of healthy / processed-heavy options.

Now if you do want to talk about race without just resorting to calling me racist out of nowhere, here’s another finding from that third link, the study:

> Stores in census tracts with more than 60 percent black residents had the lowest scores at baseline (6.40 versus 8.19 in tracts with more than 60 percent white residents and 8.76 in tracts without a majority).

That aligns with the food desert crisis in Baltimore disproportionately affecting majority Black communities. It aligns with the city’s history of redlining and disproportionately lower investment outside the White L. You see it all the time on here too with people yearning for Trader Joe’s in their affluent neighborhoods while corner stores seem to be “good enough” for the places that actually need good grocery stores.

Here’s a link to the food desert map from 2015 (the year of that study) so you can see how it aligns with both the study results and the Black Butterfly.

Two stories about NYC bodegas doesn’t mean anything to Baltimore’s corner stores and convenience stores. Baltimore does not have bodegas. I’m surprised the second even contends that DC “has a bodega culture” because it 100% does not.

Our corner stores look closer to 7/11s than they do grocery stores. They don’t actually fill the food desert gap in our city.

Convenience stores are usually more expensive then actual grocery stores and usually don’t have the freshest/least-processed options possible.

The Northeast in general has relatively aggressive driving, I wouldn’t say it’s just Baltimore-Washington. Pretty much every stereotype of Jersey drivers or Massholes can be assigned to us all.

That being said, the fact that Baltimore-Washington has so many non-native drivers (both to the region and country) means you see a lot of varying ideas of what the “right” way to drive is. That’s obviously bound to cause issues.

1. BWI and JFK aren’t at city center, so there’s still commute time that would need to be added.
2. Amtrak is cheaper when booked in advance.
3. Amtrak doesn’t usually have delays in the Northeast due to owning the rail.