You, yes, you. Get up! Get out of the chair! Rub your dead mackerel eyes that are by now so glossed over from looking and looking at Facebook and Twitter and tiny, tiny text in Adobe Reader that you are already starting to develop Presbyopia. My name is Eleni Katherine Padden, and I’m writing this here article to give you instructions on how to do yourself a colossal favor. It’s going to be the single most beneficial thing you’ve done for your existence since you decided to give Sriracha a try. Is this an advice column? Whatever. It is now an advice column.
The thing I’m going to tell you to do costs exactly zero dollars, and you need exactly zero additional items apart from your legs/feet/probably eyes to execute the plan I am about to lay out. Are you ready? You think you are ready? You’re not. Brace yourself, matador.
Here it is: You are going to take yourself for a nice, long walk. That’s right. A walk. Without your stupid clicking, zinging phone or your backpack-turned-yoke or a single deadweight textbook. Maybe bring a magazine (or... dare I say it... a book to read for pleasure?) to settle down with on any nice, inviting patch of grass you might happen upon. Scared that you’re gonna be without Google maps? What if you get lost? This city is big and bad and the gutter rats can smell fear from a mile away, and they will come in packs and eat you alive like in the movie Deadly Eyes, right?
How about this: cry me a goddamn river. If you can’t follow the directions I’m about to give you without nervously glancing at your phone every forty seconds, you shouldn’t be allowed to use a toaster or dress yourself.
YOU WILL DO WONDERFULLY. YOU WILL NOT GET LOST. YOU WILL FEEL THINGS.
It will be good to unplug your brain and breathe and look around at stuff you don’t normally look around at. I swear.
Okay, alright, enough with the fervent emotional-appeal-spiel. Where in the Hell am I sending you, and why? Here are the bones of your journey, which are really and truly all you need, although I’ll give you some tips about directions and stuff to look at/do along the way: you’re gonna walk straight, straight, straight down Howard street, across the big yellow bridge (name? does it matter? It’s big, it’s yellow, it’s a bridge). Hang a left on West Preston Street, then walk on West Preston Street for a couple of blocks until you hit Charles Street. Hang another left, this time onto Charles Street, and follow it home, all the way back to jolly old Hohns Jopkins.
It’s quite literally a route that just forms three sides of a rectangle — no weird, squirrely little turns, alleyways or steam tunnels (although let the record state that I personally encourage investigations of all of these features, but for your purposes on this first maiden voyage I forsee you wanting to keep things obvious).
Howard Street is a fantastic street because there’s a lot of different stuff to see and a lot of places you should stop at along the way. Start off walking away from campus (duh), crossing 29th Street to get over to Howard. If you don’t know where Howard Street is by now (come on, dude, tighten up), an easy way to think about its location is simply that it’s just one main street (Maryland Avenue) over from Charles Street, towards campus (going in the opposite direction would get you closer to the Waverly neighborhood).
Anyway, you’re starting off at Howard and 29th, chugging along nicely. I’d stay on the left side of the road. Look at the row houses you pass — people live here! There’s traffic on Howard, which is exciting — life! Sneezing parents coming home from work! Kids with soccer balls in minivans throwing nature valley bars at each other! It’s not such a heinously busy street that it’s intimidating to walk next to, but it’s good for car-people-watching.
There are also a lot of nice trees here, which automatically means shade. In a few more blocks, you’ll pass by Charmington’s, a teeny coffee shop that has gargantuan chocolate cookies and killer sandwich specials and espresso that could wake up Smaug in a matter of nanoseconds.
Ottobar, a groovy little music venue and gloriously cheap bar, is another block down. Make a mental note to go there on Tuesdays when drinks are two-for-one. Pick up a City Paper from one of the big yellow boxes on the corners of cross streets. Keep walking. Look at the sky. Before North Avenue, there’s an opening between a couple of buildings where people have done some of the most vibrant graffiti I’ve ever laid eyes upon, and it’s awesome because it totally encompasses the entire little space, eats it up entirely. Look at this, too.
Don’t die crossing North Avenue. You will be fine. Walk over the massive yellow bridge. Look at this. It is beautiful. Look out at Baltimore. Baltimore is beautiful, too. You’ll have a good vantage point. To your left, you can see highways crisscrossing like basket fibers and a sunsoaked Penn Station, and if you look down, you’ll see a grubby and fantastic river and half-waterfall amongst some wasted concrete boulders. There’s a black cat that hangs out there a lot. I call him Sam, but you can name him whatever you like if you see him. Keep walking.
Hang a left on West Preston Street. This shouldn’t be too far away from the bridge, maybe seven minutes or so. You’ll cross some train tracks. This is no big deal. Walk past the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, where the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra plays. You should probably go there some day. I have heard that the BSO is made up of transcendent musical geniuses. Keep walking on Preston. After you pass Maryland Avenue but before you hit Charles, there’s gonna be a soup shop on your right, called Soup’s On. I would say “ya can’t miss it” but for the fact it’s completely a hole-in-the-wall and is a prime example of a place you could definitely miss. Look for it. Get soup. Get sandwiches. I know I didn’t factor in these expenses at the beginning of my spiel when I said this venture would cost you exactly zero dollars, so let it be noted that soups and sandwiches are optional. Also maybe you are genuinely crafty and can figure out how to barter your way into a meal. Drink some water. Read. This is my favorite place to eat, ever. I honestly don’t go there often enough. Look up the menu online before you go because it changes every day. They are awesome.
Keep walking, hang a left on Charles, sit on the multicolored metal chairs in front of Penn Station and people watch until your brain hurts. Walk home (or if you’re being a weakling, take the JHMI, since it comes right to Penn every fifteen minutes on weekdays). If you walk, which you should, do exactly what you did on the way there: keep gawking at stuff shamelessly.
Remember things. Quit thinking about your phone or your test or your laundry. Talk to a person. Pick up a penny. Breathe.
