Mencken could also have nurtured a wit as subversive as John Waters. Suddenly nothing sounds so delicious as a shot and a beer, and you begin to grasp how a city that produced a critic as erudite as H. Hiding in plain sight is a world of genteel row houses giving way to working-class food markets, of enclaves of Greek Revival magnificence abutting scrappy quarters where plastic flamingos graze on lawns the size of beach towels. The impression is vaguely forboding, until you exit the freeway and the city’s quaintness catches you off guard, like a lily sprouting from the pavement. Then the skyline appears, the logos atop the buildings a testament to newer economies: finance and health-care giants, digital insurgents, and the sportswear behemoth Under Armour. As you approach Baltimore on I-95, you pass through a ring of weathered smokestacks and mechanical stalagmites that tell the story of a town shaped by the rise and fall of industry.
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