Olde Pigtowne

[oh, contentment]

Every Sunday during football season (starting this past Sunday, when the BlackNGold made the Browns look like the fools that they are), I go and watch the Steelers play at this bar that used to be called the Purple Goose, but is now called, ridiculously, YNOT Bar and Grill. I go there because it is the home base of the Pittsburgh Steelers Fan Club of Maryland, and we have a rowdy good time singing the Steelers Polka and reciting the "Chew Tabacca..." etc, etc...

All of this is sort of irrelevant. It's all leading up to the fact that until Saturday, I'd never gone to Pigtown, the neighborhood in Baltimore on the West side of MLK Blvd near Camden Yards, for any other reason that to watch Steelers games. Because that's where the Goose is (was).

















[generating collective memories]

It was the weekend of the famous Pigtown Festival, a sleepy little street fair in which several confused pigs are corralled from one end of Washington Blvd, Pigtown's main street, to the other, in an absurd "Running of the Pigs,"...

















[meh. meh. stop lookin at me. stop takin my picture.]

...while jerks like me eat pulled pork sandwiches off to the side...






















[you smell that, you filthy swine?]

...and Michael Sarbanes gets a chance to glad-hand one last time.

















[no, seriously, tell me the truth. does my breath smell?]

That is, by the way, Sarbanes, in the flesh, leanin' in on that guy. He's the man who, if all goes well, will be president of Baltimore City Council after tomorrow's elections. My friend Malka-Seltzer volunteers for his campaign. Kat thinks he's really hot, but I don't see it.

Oh, and my buddy Karla sang some jazz standards with her trio:






















[take my lips, i want to lose them. take these arms--i'll never use them]


and some happy-go-lucky caricature drawers sang along...

















[you on point, girl? all the time, robbie]

...and the hairiest O's fan around sat and drooled...

















[aroo?]

Pigtown, as the history books will tell you, is called as such because they actually used to run the pigs down the street, merrily on their way to the slaughterhouse. There's a similar place in Pittsburgh called Washington's Landing, where the boathouse I used to row out of in high school is located. During winter practice we had to run up this massive incline called Pig Hill, which supposedly the pigs had to run down on their way to meet their gruesome fates.

Now Pigtown is a middle-class neighborhood, very much mixed racially, but heavily populated with DC MARC-train commuters who walk to the nearby station on the Camden Line. It's a pretty nice neighborhood, very Baltimore with its dumpy rowhouses, but very clean and wide sidewalks. I shot a few street scenes:






















[waitin' for my man]

This one's totally Cartier-Bresson:






















[kickin' it on the corner]

KB and her two dirty cousins:






















[oink, oink]


The local house of worship...

















[new, solid, rock]

The local hair-cuttery...






















[most powerful man in the neighborhood]

and that's Pigtowne...






















[squeal!]