Today, I took the SAT. This required me to go into a place I don't often travel, a place known as Baltimore City. It is a terrible, terrible place. Did I mention it was terrible? Oh yeah, it's terrible.
The place I was going to take the test was a place called Baltimore City College. It looked like a nice old building, probably the only nice thing about the city. What I quickly learned when I entered the building was in fact that it was not a college at all...but a high school. Why on earth do you call it a college if it's a high school? It's semantics, sure, but it just struck me as incredibly stupid. The only refuge of it's claim is that it seemed to be intended for gifted and talented students, as shockingly, they somehow exist in Baltimore, hence maybe earning it something more of a title than a High School- but it's still just a high school, not a college. Blahg.
The atrocities of the city came to ahead when I left from the SATs(I think I did above average. Much like my ACT. I'm confident in my ability to do Above Averagely in most things.). It's particulary windy in Baltimore, and I quickly was freezing my ass off. I had to call and wait for my ride, since I'm far too impoverished to get my own vehicle or be able to even find someone with a decent enough car to teach me to drive. I figured since at this point I'd eaten nothing all day(I intended to eat before the test but was in a rush) so I set forth to just look for some place I could sit, get something hot to eat, wait for my ride and not freeze my fuggin ass off. A McDonalds, Wendy's, Burger King- a fast food joint. Should be easy enough, I'm in Baltimore, the thirteenth biggest city in the United States. Surely, these fast food entrepreneurs will strike at the gold of a dense urban area and I should have plenty of choice.
Nope. Nothing. Two miles around the city, and I couldn't find one viable fast food restaurant. Or a pay phone, what I must use because I'm too god-damned cheap to get a cellphone and join the 21st century. Couldn't even find one of those, but I could find COUNTLESS liquor stores. COUNTLESS churches, and flat out hilariously(to me anyway), a liquor store and a church in one building, right next store to one another. If it was funny once, it was ironic twice, and flat out sad when I saw it a third time. Yes, three buildings with both a liquor store and house of God right next to each other - and I doubt they dealt solely in the blood of Christ. In addition, I found three places to get my paychecks cashed, if I had a paycheck on me. One offered to prepare my taxes, but I think I'll save my money and do them myself, while avoiding the likely fact it seems like a prime place to get mugged. While I could find no fast food restaurants, I found no less than six, yes count them ladies and gentlemen, six, Chinese food take out places. I was not in Baltimore's Chinatown, mind you, for as far as I know the city doesn't have one. There's a Little Italy, but no Chinatown. But one would think, with so many Chinese restaurants, the market would be saturated and all but two or three would go out of business. No, Baltimore really really fuggin loves it's Chinese food apparently.
So there went my plan of a comfortable lunch while waiting for my ride. At that point all I wanted to do was find a pay phone, and if I had to suffer the annoying as hell winds, so be it. After another half mile, alas, I found one. Two, actually, but one had lost the receiver. Someone must of ran off with it, and apparently stealing pay phones is a common occurance because there were steel plates in place to keep people from yanking the phones out of the booths. I went to work on the one working one, having to un-stick the 6 key before I could sucessfully dial my home phone number and acquire my ride. That was easy enough, despite the phone quality being...well quite shit.
Speaking of shit, a bird shit on me. This isn't the cities fault, birds shit. Can't be helped. But it just seemed horribly symbolic of the city that of all the places for a bird to shit on me, I get shit on in Baltimore. It wasn't that bad, but it was just a shitastic top to shitastic revelations about the city that I call my hometown, mainly because explaining where Dundalk is too much effort and I'm only a half mile from the city line anyway. I just made a point, and rightfully so, to avoid the city.
The adventures in the city being shitty weren't over yet. I went into a nearby convenience store- which honestly, I would not been able to tell it was even open for business outside a single neon sign. Apparently there was no room for decoration and advertisement of sales because they feared someone busting through the window and robbing the place, so instead of advertisements, they had huge iron bars protecting the windows. As I hate advertisements, I am not sure if this is exactly worth complaining about. Entering the store itself, low and behold, yes, the clerk was paranoid to put himself behind a huge plexiglass wall to protect himself from the customers. Having just been shit on by the Birds of Baltimore, I asked for a napkin or paper towel, and was denied. In the county, this was never denied, regardless if I was customer or not, clerks would always happily give you a towel. Here, the clerk was a dick because I'm 21, which puts me at prime age to pull out a glock and rob his store. I shrugged, and looked to perhaps buying something to eat here, given at this point I'd eaten nothing for about 20 hours, and as a mildly obese man, that is hell. My senses got the better of me given the condition of the place, so I stopped myself from ordering a hot dog of some sort, and my instincts were proven right as it looked moldy and literally had a hair on it when I passed the rollers with the dogs on it. I decided just to get a sealed drink, which cost me $1.05. That seems kind of irrelevant, but it was a can of Arizona Orangeade, which carries a price of 99 cents right on the can. It says something about the store really I suppose when they mark up stuff with the cost right on the can where every other store I've been to has honored the 99 cent price tag.
I took it outside and sat it down. I spit on my pleather jacket and rubbed it against the brick wall to get the blatant bird shit stain from not being no obvious. I then cracked open my only nourishment for the time and drank it. It tasted kind of off, so I looked at the expiration date. Low and behold, oh my god, yes indeedy, it was expired. I payed 6 cents more for an expired can of Orangeade. I just didn't care enough to bitch and figured I don't see what in it could of killed me it was past it's "Sell By" date so I just drank it until my chariot to get me the fug out of this horrible city finally showed up.
This is only a rough account of the screwed up shit I saw around the city. I saw countless things in disrepair, and I'm sure one could go on and on about the shittiness of the city, hell I hate it and I wasn't even mugged, raped, or murdered, all of which have horrifyingly high rates in Baltimore according to Wikipedia. This isn't really any sort of political call to fix the city, cause I'm sure that's not going to fix anything. The city is the way it is sometimes, and my grievances are of ludicrously light concern(Spoiled Orangeade is really nothing. Just a small sign in a bigger picture) compared to most people's, but the whole point of this little tirade can be summed up in two words- Baltimore sucks. As soon as I get the money to do so, I'm getting the hell out of here.
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