Public Bathrooms

     Public bathrooms are gross, more often than not. They require constant maintenance, and you never really know what to expect. But when it comes down to the point, they are "heavily trafficked" and a completely necessary commodity (everybody poops). When I thought about what to nominate as a weapon of inclusion, many things came to mind - public transportation, sidewalks, plazas, community gardens, free outdoor movies - so many features that characterize the city. But when I looked to a considerably more open city than Baltimore, and recalled my personal experiences as a visiting traveller in the midst of complete unfamiliarity, I had a very particular remembrance of something that, in many instances and on every occasion, I've had to deal with. The city I am talking about is New York, and I'm referring to being out on the streets all day and forever looking for a bathroom. New York is the only place where I've had the unique feeling of total relief at the sight of a Starbucks, guaranteed to be on every block. Each Starbucks store has no customer restriction on bathroom usage, and when I'm in New York I've come to depend on that. Walking about the city in all hours of the day, having to look for a restroom is a common thing. You familiarize yourself with it. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you'll be able to find one in a subway, park, or a half decent one at a gas station. Other times, you have to inconspicuously walk through a restaurant or bar. Especially if you're not from the area, chances are you might have a hard time finding the few places that locals know are user-friendly. One night, the closest place turned out to be a high end apartment building where my friend, who didn't even live there, knew the doorman because her best friend in high school's mom lived there (or something), on the floor just below Ludacris. 

     Obviously, public bathrooms don't open the city by enabling social interaction (usually?). People aren't brought together through them, aside from spatially. But when you think of rest stops, for instance, and how they free up long distance travel, the same notion is applicable to the streets. It is very difficult to really explore and maneuver any city, especially on foot or without money, if you lack, among other things, the necessary facilities like that of a bathroom. I feel like in Baltimore, where places and destinations aren't closely concentrated as they are in New York, the lack of said facilities can significantly deter both residents and visitors from branching out. You simply can't wander about, and therefore you miss out on encountering new and intriguing places in your search for relief, if you doubt the certainty of an accessible public bathroom. 

     Though finding myself in these situations of desperate search is always irritating, I am always glad I made the effort because I'll find a new, surprising place to return to on another day. And I am a little amused, still, by the sight of a distinguished looking gentleman coming out of a porter potty. 

The Jones Falls Trail

Arsenal of Inclusion Nomination: Jones Falls Trail

The Jones Falls Trail is a walking and biking trail that runs from Penn Station, and leads alternately to the Avenue/Hampden or to Druid Hill Park. Climbing the steep hill which leads to Druid Hill Park is always athletically satisfying, and it is even more so when one reaches Druid Lake, and the path which winds around it. There are always a number of people utilizing the space when the weather is right - runners, cyclists, people strolling, kids playing... The Jones Falls Trail is a direct vein from the centrally gentrified area of Penn Station, transporting you under and through Bolton Hill and Charles Village to arrive at the northern edge of Reservoir Hill. Druid Hill Park finds itself at the intersection of a diverse group of neighborhoods, and major roads like Reisterstown Road and Park Heights Avenue scour the borders of this 745-acre park. Click here to view a map of druid hill park on google maps.

The Trail opens the city by providing an alternative to the JFX, simultaneously making that alternative walk-able: there is a generously wide sidewalk that winds up this trail, and a good amount of gardening/landscaping has been done along the edge of the walkway and river. One passes tomato plants, goldenseal, as well as indigenous species of trees and shrubs. There is something to notice beyond the crafted facade: the fate of the Jones Falls River itself! The opposing side of the river is guided by a 20-foot tall cement wall which forms a harsh line along which the river flows. Although extremely polluted, one can observe fish, toads, ducks and other creatures still managing to utilize this ecology, adapting to the massive changes this river has undergone. Click here to read a history of the Jones Falls, on the Jones Falls Watershed Association website.

The uses of this trail are multifaceted. I will explain the major uses of the space heading north on the trail after entering at the intersection of Lanvale and Maryland Avenue.

1. Baltimore Bicycle Works is located within the first 200 feet of the trail, to your right, before you pass under the Howard Street Bridge. Baltimore's only union bike shop! link
2. Under the Howard Street bridge is used as shelter by a rotating population of homeless people. It is a generously wide bridge, and provides much needed shelter from the elements... though why there are not enough spaces in public housing for these unfortunate few, still remains to be answered.
3. The Baltimore Street Car museum allows visitors to experience riding in restored street cars that used to run through the streets of Baltimore. Costs $$.
4. Along the tracks of BSC museum, there is a larger, abandoned train cab, along with other giant pieces of machinery. It is a beautiful set of ruins, despite being apparently refuse of some sort of historical dumping site, and recently I have been passing a lone drummer who sits there at night.
5. Baltimore Street Salt Storage - bunkers of salt used to de-ice the street are approximately directly under the 28th street bridge, which passes over the trail.
6. Callahan Company owns a lot here where their utility vehicles are stored.
7. Beyond this point, the trail steepens, and half-way up the hill the trail continues on an offset sidewalk, which zig-zags its way up to Druid Hill Park. Hard to miss, but then again, this trail diversion does not explicitly announce what it allows you access to (i.e. The park, pool and lake)
8. Alternately, continuing along what is now Falls Road, one can turn right up another hill, reaching Hampden and the Avenue.

Because of the amount of uses of this space, and its alternative nature, I nominate the Jones Falls Trail as opening the city. While it is not a busy city street, it connects parts of the city which are usually under, over, or next to each other in a unique way. It is worth considering and visiting, and I hope everyone takes the time to visit Druid Hill Park, with the Baltimore Conservatory, The Maryland Zoo and the Palm House nestled inside of its luscious rolling hills!

24 HR DINER

Sip & Bite, a 24 Hour Diner located on the corner of Boston St. and Van Lill St. just east of Fells Point, is a second home for many college students and Baltimore residents, old, young, black, white, Italian, Jewish, Hispanic, Asian, Greek, transsexual and even disabled. And often around 2 in the morning a parade of prostitutes will come flocking in with their clientele, they are always welcome. And no matter what time, 1 in the afternoon or 3 in the morning people are always eating, talking, laughing, working or just enjoying the candid atmosphere of the 24 HR Greek American Diner. At night it becomes a small nook of warmth and nourishment, attracting all kinds of people who merely have the desire to eat.
Outside, the night sky is colored orange with purple exhaust and can be especially dangerous here in Baltimore. Paper bags full of empty beer cans roll back and forth across the empty avenues keeping time track of the time. Blue lights persist, a stagnant row of desolation receding into the distance. Bulbous heaps of clothing breathing against the sides of broken buildings, sirens echoing just around the corner and smashed glass that sits on the brick ground occasionally crunching underneath the wheels of a steady paced car. The night is long and its city is undesirable.
So I come to realize Baltimore as a daytime city, where most of its pedestrians, at least in central Baltimore, are commuters from the county and the surrounding suburbs, and at night when they begin to filter out in long lines of traffic and leave their paperwork and their offices behind, they also leave behind the city, making many neighborhoods quiet and empty; at night.
But nightlife does exist in Baltimore, for one, the prostitute, male and female, can be found on many corners all over the city but probably isn’t inclusive of too many people. And of the same nature, there is the Red Light district just north of the Inner Harbor, which generates a fairly consistent buzz throughout the night. There are several theaters around the city with showings as late as 10:00, The Apex Theater on Broadway, which always has 2 new adult films, The Charles just below North Ave which plays many independent and foreign films with revivals every week and The East Inner Harbor Theater just below Eastern Avenue’s western dead end, that plays Hollywood hits. And there are many music venues like Sonar and Ramshead down by the Inner Harbor or The Ottobar up on Howard and 26th or The Hexagon, The Windup Space, Joe Squared, Zodiac, Single Carrot Theater and Load of Fun all of which are in the Station North Arts District. And there are also the DIY venues, like The Copycat, The Annex and The H&H building but even still, these places create only temporary atmospheres whose visitors will eventually dissipate back into their remote and separate dwellings. And so the beauty of the 24 HR Diner and its main attraction as a reliable home for people to come and to eat and to relax for as long as they want and whenever they want creates an atmosphere that is essentially never ending and expands through all of the various demographic shifts throughout the day and into the night and back. This infinite atmosphere is highly conducive to the arsenal of inclusion because of its role as a permanent and active dining establishment for the entire city.
Not to get me wrong, all of the theaters and venues do bring people together, but they’re all generally and exclusively inclusive of specifically and consistently similar groups of people; they bring people together of the same age, ethnicity and cultural interests so that there isn’t much diversification and I would argue then a lack of inclusion. The 24 HR Diner has the capability to appeal to everyone, always, infinitely.
The 24 HR Diner is gritty, cheap and quick and in a city can be made fairly accessible to everyone. Its purpose is to serve hot food whenever and for whomever (as long as they have money), but places like Sip & Bite have become much more than simple eateries. The 24 HR Diner has created a culture for itself and each 24 HR Diner has its own family of customers who treat its tables like a second home and its employees like relatives, but it remains constantly open to new customers, truckers driving long distances, or even urban wanderers (?). The 24 HR Diner’s simplicity is its beauty; it relies on the basic human instinct that humans need to eat. Most of all, the 24 HR Diner is comforting, it provides a place of refuge and escape, a place where there are other people, even in the darkest hours of the night.

Reverse Ark Workshops

Inclusionary tool: Free and open workshops that occur in public spaces

This past summer, in correlation with the FutureFarmers exhibition at the contemporary, there were a series of workshops that were open to anyone in the city and applied the ideas presented in the show to real, educational situations. These events allowed attendees to reclaim the role of student, but in a way that was very experiential and focused on the city itself, and how we exist in it.

I think these stand as good examples of inclusionary events because they existed with the goal of teaching. Teaching, itself, could be thought of as exclusionary, or elitist, as some types of language and organization can be difficult to follow, but the Reverse Ark events focused on the group experience above all else, which allowed the students discover their shared level of understanding. The workshops led by people from out of town (as opposed to from MICA) felt more successful in achieving this sense of inclusion because everyone in the situation was forced to experience something completely new. This newness also seemed to make the attendees even more attentive and interested in the subject matter. I found it fascinating that anyone could submit a proposal for a workshop, which seems in line with what the Baltimore Free School does (though less formal).

I found out about these workshops through friends and posters in and around the MICA community, but generally wasn’t familiar with the subject matter before attending. Many of the attendees were people I knew already, but working with these people in different ways with a specific goal in mind allowed me to understand them better. I was always excited at these events when people I had never met were in attendance, or when people wandered in during a workshop and asked to participate. It was reassuring to see that people outside of the specific MICA population were interested in learning about these things, and that they weren't afraid to put themselves in a foreign situation.

Impromptu Open City: The Extended Flight Layover or Flight Delay

Airports have arguably served as examples of both exclusionary amenities and inclusionary amenities for cities.  On one hand, cities with airports, especially international ones, declare a global status that enables worldwide traffic, promotes a greater probability that people will visit, and is a source for global city importing and exporting, trade, and commodities.  On the other hand, cities with airports can also mean the people who use them can have nothing to do the city’s they land in.  For example, many people who claim that they have been to the city of Baltimore have done nothing but sit in the terminal for a few hours, yet having never set foot outside it’s airport walls.  Ways in which the airports themselves can be exclusionary is how they are only open to the customers who can afford them (and those who can make it past the security gates).

The price of flying today far exceeds the budget of any low-income leisurely traveler.  But perhaps a way to solve the problem of these extremely segregated groups of people, the people from the interior to the exterior, or the poor from the wealthy, are the occasions when flights are delayed for extended periods of time.  Although this is unfortunate for the people who have planned flights, or places to go in a timely manner, the opportunity opens up for people to then interact or explore the city outside the terminal walls.  This, of course, is only possible and depends on the amount of time it takes to leave and re-enter into the airport, the amount of time allowed during the flight delay, and also the amount of time it takes to transport to and from the city from the airport. 

The experience of exploring a new city can sometimes become enhanced when there is a limited time period, as explained by Situationist Guy Debord in his 1958 writing “Theory of the Dérive, “…a derive often takes place within a deliberately limited period of a few hours.”  What perfect setting then could a flight delay set for opportunity to wander into new undiscovered areas?  Baltimore, is an example of a city that has an airport readily accessible through a variety of transportation systems.  For Christopher Alexander, city accessibility greatly depends on well-designed connections that make getting from point A to Z easy, low-cost, and timely.  The public transportation infrastructure must have open connected systems that exemplify successful “grid-like” functionality, connections that Christopher Alexander would find favorable from his essay, “The City Is Not a Tree.”

In cases such as getting from the Baltimore’s Thurgood Marshall Airport to Baltimore City, there are several system options that are available, one being the most cost-efficient way, using Baltimore’s MTA light rail system.   By default, there are other ways of transportation, such as by taxi or city bus as well.  Arguably, Baltimore provides enough opportunity for a more heterogeneous interaction to occur (although an airport such as John F.Kennedy in New York City, centrally located in the middle of the city is an even better opportunity.) 

If only now every flight a person booked required each passenger to embed at least a few hours for a chance to explore the city they had a layover in.  Certainly, people would want to do more than stay inside the terminal for that entire time.  Unfortunately, for now, the only people who have that opportunity to participate in the open city are the ones that are forced to.

The Spin Cycle

In the parking lot of the Save-a-Lot on Howard, there is a 24hr laundromat known as the Spin Cycle. Due to its premium location and infinite hours of operation, it is the ultimate weapon in the arsenal of inclusion, and opens the city of Baltimore like a busted stitch opens a wound. (Or like a coat hanger opens a car door? Eh?)

On the many occasions that I have taken advantage of this particular laundromat, I have encountered a great variety of neighborhood folks. Once a slimey guy handed me a business card for the Kitty Cat Club, and invited me to its barbeque (which I missed because of a preexisting engagement, despite his promises of all you can eat ribs). Another time a baby clarified for me the fuzzy lyrics of Beyonce's 'Halo,' and told me about her own dreams of fame and glory. Yet another time a stupid boy told me about breaking his skull open "at a punk show," and how he didn't realize it for seven days, and how now he can't play chess because he mistook his brains leaking out for symptoms of the flu. Even a lady's simple speculation of the possible cost (in five minute increments) of the dry-time for six pairs of jeans can create a forum for further shit-shooting about Judge Judy and The Bowel Cleanse Diet.

Not only the Spin Cycle itself, but the entire area surrounding the establishment is mega-inclusive. There are guys pacing around trying to hawk stolen DVD's, there's a secret mechanic operation that changes oil and performs tune-ups on the sly, hack-taxi drivers are loitering around spitting sunflower seeds, and there are hooligan kids pretending that the parking lot is a paradise.

There are a few reasons why I nominate the Spin Cycle as one of the most open parts of Baltimore. Firstly, there is truth in the age-old phrase about 'airing out the dirty laundry;' when you're folding your tattered dainties alongside everybody, there really is useful shamelessness and a facility for interaction. Secondly, the vending machines are significantly cheaper than most, which is a tangible and friendly sort of openess. Thirdly, all sorts of people have to be there around the clock: children, olds, night shift security guards, hard-working moms, club girls, construction guys, friends, acquaintances, you know, everybody. Finally, the laundromat's role as a functional - yet fun!- utility of the lived everyday seems a more satisfyingly organic opener, rather than the standard commercialization that city's tend to apply as an opening tactic. The Spin Cylce zone is a spontaneous and necessary inclusionary tool.

Summer is a time for Brats. And last summer, my roommates and I cooked them often on top of our roof with a smoky joe grill and beer. One specific leisure-filled afternoon stands out in particular. Having just lit the charcoal we kicked back in our rusty lawn chairs to properly take in the last bit of warmth from the low afternoon sun. Relative quiet followed. One that allows you to notice the intricate sounds of the city. My head back and eyes closed, I was able to pick up on the distant sound of police sirens. Listening intently, I tried to pinpoint the sirens location and track their movement throughout Baltimore. In a few second the sirens grew louder, and louder. Soon, it seemed there were more sirens and getting closer to our location. At this point it was weird and this not-so-unusual sound in Baltimore became very unusual. Screeching tires, sirens from all directions. Whatever the occasion it was now in my block of Calvert Street and we were in the prime position for a bird’s eye view.

Without hesitation we immediately climbed to the higher level of our roof and witnessed a TV style police chase in progress. Police on foot were scurrying through the alleys with guns in hand, police cars blocked roads and then, we saw it, the perpetrating vehicle, fly past the front door of our apartment, miscalculate a right hand turn the wrong way on Preston Street, jump the sidewalk, and crash straight into a light pole, which broke from its base and crashed into the middle of the street. The driver took off on foot only to be tackled by a plain clothed policewoman wearing shorts. I wondered if I was watching the filming of a scene from The Wire.

It was an absurdly loud show that drew the attention of many in the neighborhood. It did not take long for people to appear on the sidewalk down where all the action was taking place. From our vantage point, four floors up, we also noticed others who had roof access struggling to catch a curious glimpse of the commotion on the streets. A block away,out of a rooftop window, a shirtless potbellied man looked down with eagle eyes puffing on a cigar.

It was at this moment the city became open. This chance scenario uprooted everyone from his or her own secluded world by the common concern of “what the hell is going on in my neighborhood!” I, too, enthralled with the spectacle, pranced like a giddy schoolchild down to experience the street level milieu. For about thirty minutes, the neighborhood was transformed experientially. Walking up to the scene, I felt a sense of community I had never before in Baltimore for the simple reason that there was physical evidence of other people living in my neighborhood. Collectively spirited and emphatic we stood on that sidewalk mutually concerned (but mostly curious). The veil of introversion which plastic wraps many Baltimore neighborhoods like mine had been broken.

But remembering the brats and my beer getting warm on the roof, I snapped a few pictures and ran back into seclusion. A bit later my roommates and I recounted the experience. I can remember pointing out this feeling of community, but only since learning about these theories of Open City have I thought about it in these terms- that the spectacle of a police chase, a concerning event, a disaster, which momentarily jolt our prevailing self-centered tendencies, or out of necessity bring people to the act of community, can in fact open up the city and provide a situation for legitimate interaction.