The Trouble in Mt. Vernon

[monument square's pride, held captive]

Hombre, I know it's been like 6 months since I last rapped at ya, but things have been busier than Eliot Spitzer on a Saturday in Amsterdam around here. I'm living in Baltimore now, have started a new job as a development reporter at The Daily Record, a small business/legal newspaper downtown, and I've been running around like crazy doing freelance, moving in/out of houses, traveling (Austin, Kansas City).

I'm going to try to write more on this thing, especially because I don't think I do enough writing outside of my regular dayjob work, and also because Carey has been bugging me about it. So for starters, here's an observation with some current events and personal relevance.

There's trouble a-brewin' in Mt. Vernon. That is, for the unanointed, the Mt. Vernon section of Baltimore, a beautiful, historic neighborhood in central Baltimore with a ton of pretty old rowhouse mansions, restaurants, apartment buildings, and centered around Washington Square, a big public park that runs in four directions out from the circular intersection of Charles Street and Monument Place. In the middle, of course, is the famous statue of George Washington, perched on top of a 178-foot Doric column. The surrounding four-piece park is filled with green grassy space, benches, fountains, and generally elegantly-designed public space where people walk their dogs, wait for buses, eat picnics, read, etc. In the summer, the local college radio station, WTMD, puts on monthly outdoor concerts there. When it's warm, a lot of homeless people sleep there. Or spend all day there.



[see it in the distance?]

Anyway, a few weeks back, as part of the Beyond the Compass, Beyond the Square art project, a joint venture between MICA and the Walters Art Gallery, which is putting on a totally-sweet sounding exhibit all about MAPS, some MICA student put up a gold-painted fence all around all four public park sections, effectively barring entrance to regular park-goers.

This work of "art" has gotten a ridiculously hugely unnecessary amount of ink in the local media, and I don't really have strong feelings about it, because (a) it's only up until March 29th, (b) I think if the idea is to make people appreciate public space more than they already do, a less-used public space probably should have been selected, and (c) the weather's only been tolerable for about a week or so now, so no one is really using the park anyway, aside from the dogs and the bums.



[good fences make...]

But here's what's really astonishing: the retards who spend hours (and believe me, it's hours, because I asked them) protesting this project, on the grounds that it's "exclusionary," it's "rich-kid art," and that it's "shameful." Seriously, the other day, some guy was standing at the corner of Charles and Center streets during rush hour, which is a spot usually occupied by a guy dressed like and posing like the hooded torture victim at Abu Ghraib with a bunch of quaker peace protesters around him, holding a sign that said, "Shame on MICA and the Walters for this fence crap." People were actually honking as they drove by.




[fools gold]

So every day, when I walk from work to Washington Square to catch the Peabody/JHU shuttle home, I've been noticing the goings-on on Monument Place, and as much as I tried to resist it, the other day, I just had to talk to these fools. I mean, what are their lives like? Who has the time to daily protest an art project that has such miniscule impact on anybody's life? The conversation went something like this:

ME: So how many hours do spend out here, typically, per day?

GUY WITH SIGN: About an hour and a half, maybe two hours. As much time as I can, after work.

ME: And what does that mean, exactly, "Bad Art"?

GWS: Huh?

ME: Your sign says, "Help, I'm Being Held Captive by Bad Art." What is "bad art"?

GWS: It's art like this.

ME: No, I know you don't like the fence. But what makes art good or bad?

GWS: It has, you know, a bad aesthetic.

ME: What does that mean? What's a "bad aesthetic"? How is it different from a "good aesthetic"?

GWS: It's just, you know, my opinion.

There was this loud-mouth guy with his t-shirt tucked in and a cowboy hat walking around, yelling "As far as I'm concerned, this fence is vandalism!" over and over again and taking pictures of the guy with the sign. As I walked away from these two jokers, I heard the sign guy laugh and say, "It's funny to me how seriously people take this." And I thought, yeah, you're right, because I'm the guy who spends two hours in a sandwich, and not the one who just asked you what you mean by your protest. Oh wait, I'm not. That's you.

Some people. Just look at this blemish on the fine, fine, Washington Square landscape....



[first meth]