You saw Homicide: Life on the Street, right? You know, that gritty TV police drama set in Baltimore. What? Ah, no, you’re thinking of The Wire, that other gritty TV police drama set in Baltimore, the one with Idris Elba and Dominic West.
Homicide predates The Wire and was filmed largely around Fells Point and along Baltimore’s historic waterfront. The former City Recreation Pier, which stood in for the police department, is now a swanky hotel, the Sagamore Pendry Baltimore, in whose comfortable embrace I have just wallowed.
Baltimore doesn’t have a great reputation. Whenever I tell American friends I’ve been there they affect horror and ask what on earth I was thinking. Couldn’t I have gone to Boston, New Orleans, New York, Washington D.C. instead? Heck no, Baltimore is just as entertaining – and, only eight hours from London, a fine place for a long weekend.
I love Baltimore and I particularly love Fells Point, which has spruced itself up considerably since I was last there but, happily, not too much. Mischief is still to be found. A quaint, cobble-stoned, edgy amalgam of Soho, Covent Garden and the grubbier bits of London’s East End, Fells Point is still rough enough around the edges for police cars (real ones, not TV ones) to cruise round every evening, keeping an eye on the dealers, hookers and disorientated out-of-towners.
Enjoying a ruminative Old Fashioned in Kooper’s Tavern opposite the hotel, I asked my neighbour at the bar how best to describe Fells Point. He took a long sip of his bourbon, pondered and said: ‘Put it this way, if my wife doesn’t know where I am, she knows where I am.’
Despite the convenience of Kooper’s Tavern and despite the outstanding cocktails in nearby speakeasy Poe’s Tower (named after local boy Edgar Allan P), I made V-No Wine Bar my HQ every evening during my three-day manoeuvres. Set right on the water, it’s a deliciously boho spot and I was won over not only by the commendably tasty wines – many of them from Maryland, a state home to some 90 wineries – but also by the very droll server who, on asking what I wanted to drink and whether I’d like a quick glug of something first just to check, stole my heart when she added: ‘I’m afraid all my favourites on the list have sold out. I drank them.’ What a girl.
That first night, I plumped for one of her second favourites, the local 2022 Bent Wine Co Chardonnay (motto: ‘Drink Wine. Get Bent!’) and darn good it was too. Indeed, I did jolly well on the food ’n’ drink front in general. Highlights included the Rec Pier Chop House within my hotel. Although dining alone, I was served enough pork chop, caramelised apple, creamed spinach and rustic fries for four, and the waitress wasn’t in the least bit put out when I left three quarters of it: ‘Wanna doggy bag?’
The very droll server told me: ‘I’m afraid all my favourites on the list have sold out. I drank them.’ What a girl
Miss Shirley’s Café served a similarly vast brunch of buttermilk chicken, cheddar green onion waffles, andouille sausage, eggs, stoneground grits, bacon and fried green tomatoes, washed down by the finest of Bloody Marys, served by the pint. And as for Watershed in Cross Street Market, their insanely thick, gloopy cream of crab soup and crab cake sandwich were things of memorable beauty.
I’d hate you to think that all I did was eat and drink, though. I had to work up an appetite and thirst somehow and did so by taking in as many of Baltimore’s museums and galleries (the city has more than 60) as I could. I started at Fort McHenry, where the British fleet was sent packing in September 1814, an event which prompted Francis Scott Key to write ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’. This in turn led me to the Flag House and Star-Spangled Banner Museum, where Mary Young Pickersgill sewed the vast 30ft by 42ft, 50lb flag which flew over the fort and which inspired Key’s verses, adopted as the national anthem in 1931.
I swung by the B&O Railroad Museum, the Maryland Center for History and Culture, the George Peabody Library, the Dr Samuel D. Harris National Museum of Dentistry (no, nor me, but I got to see George Washington’s dentures and Queen Victoria’s dental instruments), the National Aquarium and all four ships in the maritime museum, Historic Ships in Baltimore, including the unnervingly claustrophobic second world war submarine USS Torsk.
Most wonderful of all was the American Visionary Art Museum, dedicated to the work of self-taught artists, many of whom drew their creativity from addiction, trauma, abuse, grief, war, natural disasters and mental health problems. No, don’t you dare snigger. It’s astonishingly moving and inspiring, and the exhibition dedicated to the fibre art of Judith Scott – deaf, mute and born with Down’s syndrome – had me in tears. I wasn’t the only one.
I couldn’t stay off the booze for long, though, and after several chilled glasses at the Wine Collective urban winery, listening to some even cooler live jazz, I concluded operations with a brace of mezcal sours in the Wurst in Federal Hill, entered via a commercial freezer door. I was happy as a lark. I love Baltimore.
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