Baltimore realizes 'It City' potential

Anybody who has lived in Baltimore for the past few years could have seen this coming. Two years ago, people were wondering why it hadn't come yet.

Just two weeks ago, standing outside a sold-out Death Set/Matt & Kim show at Charles Street's boho Lo-Fo Social Club, the skater kids in spastic-print hoodies and the disaffected young people alike were talking about it again, wondering if it had finally come and gone with little fanfare or if something bigger was in store.

"It" is the recognition of the Baltimore scene.

This week two major music magazines, the aging Rolling Stone and the younger "trashier?" Blender, have pegged Baltimore as the place to watch.

To the chagrin of local journalists and scenesters, the megamags have focused their rather unhip attention on Baltimore.

The fear is that the scene, the charm of finding your way through H&H and seeing Wham City shows for free or close to it, will be lost.

In music and arto often too much of a good thing means a lot of bad things move in to exploit and ruin it.

Will this national recognition draw more moths to the flame and boost up our sometimes low morale? Or is it a sign that the scene is over, that the underground has been exposed to daylight and is thus no longer cool? It all depends on how they spit it, and who actually reads these magazines.

Rolling Stone honored Baltimore in their "Best of Rock 2008" issue under the "Best Scene" heading.

In it they highlight the crammed shelves of Normals and the greasy southwest-style eats of Golden West, the Hamsterdam "best of Baltimore" mixtapes and of course Dan Deacon as bullet points on the city's checklist. Laid-back, BYOBoh warehouse venue, Floristree? Check. Spastic graphic-design-cum-punk-rock duo, Double Dagger? Check. Last great "these people actually know what they are talking about" record store in the city, Sound Garden? Check.

The whole piece looks and feels like a space-filling prod, rather than a genuine probe, into the city's artful underground. But the Saturday nights at the Talking Head Club aren't getting especially crowded, and the waitlists at most Hampden restaurants are still reasonable, so we needn't worry just yet.

The Blender shout-out in their unsettlingly demanding "Go Here" section enlists the help of "big names" in their profile. Baltimore Club and hip-hop DJ Blaqstarr (of "Hands Up Thumbs Down" fame) and Geologist (of Animal Collective fame) point out some of Baltimore's finer features like Paradox (for the dancing), True Vine (for the vinyl and the live shows) and Faidley's Seafood (for, what else, the crab). The entire spotlight is only about half of a page — as opposed to the full-page picture collage that decorated the Rolling Stone coverage — and is accompanied by a simple map of the city.

Number five on the list, "best resource to plan your trip" is baltimorecrime.blogspot.com and a little jab at Baltimore's not-so-charming murder rate which is advertised nationally on The Wire. The starkly simple blog has been mapping and following city crime since 2005 and Blender cites it, cheekily, as a way to figure out what city streets to avoid on your "windows-up, doors-locked tour of Bodymore, Murdaland." Oh Blender, every good Baltimorean knows that no block is any more or less safe than the other and some of the best times can be had on the dangerous ones. What up, Lexington Avenue?

With Blender doing their fair share of scaring (and baltimorecrime.blogspot.com is scary) and Rolling Stone doing little of anything, it's possible that Baltimore's fame will slip under the radar of evil, scene-ruining losers that will inevitably fall upon the city and venture past the Inner Harbor (gasp) if, God forbind, Spin mentions it too.

But isn't it nice to say "I told you so," every now and then?