Pigtown

Let me start off my saying that after two days of my encounter, I'm exhausted! But let's re-trace my steps...
I started off in Pigtown (or as it's more formally known, Washington Village) on Tuesday the 19th. The neighborhood is very close to the M&T Bank and Oriole Stadiums and is bordered by MLK Blvd., I-95 and the B&O Railroad museums. Originally famous for it's dollar a piece houses, Barre Circle and other parts of the neighborhood are attracting up-scale housing because of the great location. Don't be fooled by this upturn, however, because organizations like Habitat for Humanity (HFH, where my mom is a regular volunteer) still work in the area to help lower income families purchase their own homes.
I am quite familiar with the area not only because of HFH, but also because I spent the better part of a summer volunteering at the kids' summer camp offered at Paul's Place, a community outreach center that works to re-vitalize the neighborhood. In fact, I had a full circle moment when I stumbled upon a community garden that I remembered planting many years ago-- there was also a plaque validating my claim, in case you had any doubts.
So about the murals...
One of my favorites aspects of the more rough patches of the city is this cross between anonymity and community that exists. You can have two families in adjoining town houses sitting on their stoups having a grand old time and right around the corner is the local grocer with one simple sign and no other advertisements because everyone who is an anybody already knows where it is. I saw one such example of this with a fried chicken cookery (for no way is there a KFC in Pigtown!). Instead, the only thing that alerted me to the best fried chicken for miles was a glimpse of a rotisserie chicken in the window. This cross between anonymity and community surely showed in the murals.
On the corner of Ramsey and Scott streets, a house literally turned into a mural when the house design rolled over on to the side of the building.

Elsewhere a mural (which, by the way, was not on the list provided by the Baltimore Office for the Promotion for the Arts) was painted in an ally so narrow that I couldn't even get a picture encompassing the entire mural. Like many of the other murals it had a dedication as well as description of the painters.



There were also several murals with trains as the subject as if to make sure that every single passerby was aware that yes, in fact the B&O Railroad Museum is Pigtown and we are damn proud of it.







And of course, you couldn't have Pigtown with out a mural with pigs...