> It would just look like a brown box with a shiny picture of lord of the rings or a Thursday night football promo on it no matter what’s inside!

Do people often find stolen/unopened packages in your neighborhood? Package theft isn't much of a thing on my block, but the couple of times I've found something in an alley, it's either just the item or the item and the ripped open box/envelope it was sent in.

> there are still way more Christian people in powerful positions

Why would 'Christian people' be the appropriate frame of reference here rather than Black people given what Smith actually said?

FYI, you have to put the http:// in a URL for the code to recognize it.

The road width's not good, but I'd say the bigger problem especially with Lombard is that it's so barren on the sidewalk. I'd guess more than half of the street-level property on Lombard between President and Light is either some form of parking or an inactive side of a commercial property. Two-way the road to slow down traffic or put 10' of sod and some trees to take away a lane in front of each sidewalk and it's still bleak.

All that said, I don't have any ideas for how to make the harbor a more functional neighborhood or welcome pedestrian experience, but I think any efforts to redirect rather than reduce vehicle throughput should be treated with great skepticism.

Absolutely up to you, but if you're not confident these ended up in your garden in the last week or so, chances are the owner isn't counting on finding them anymore. Don't feel obliged to put much actual legwork into this if you don't want to.

Oof. Again super relatable, the only time I've had a bike I'd bought new stolen, thankfully the shop had written down the serial number (I ...might take a hint and write all mine down this weekend?).

Hopefully somebody can give you good advice if BPD isn't responsive in terms of making sure it doesn't end up going to auction. Mine had been stolen out of my house as part of a burglary so they came and took the report but never confirmed they did anything with the serial numbers I'd given them. Between that and the bike having been a tragic money pit, as soon as the insurance check came through I'd started planning the bike I'd want whether or not the old one was ever found. As it turns out, it wasn't and it's all for the best.

Most probably keep their politics to themselves, but as a group of people, bar owners aren't wildly different than other small businessfolk--it's a life that both selects for and encourages reactionary shit.

More ill-advised/poorly stated than bad, the main thing somebody should've have pointed out to Smith is, for instance:

> “I can say anti-Semitic things, and Adidas can’t drop me. Now what?” West said at the time.

This didn't happen because antisemitism's some sort of unique bright line, this happened because Kanye kept forcing the issue and nobody's willing to make excuses for him anymore.

Beyond that, yes Black people are underrepresented in corporate boards/exec levels, and yes anti-Black racism is tolerated to a much greater extent in the US than antisemitism, and yes, Smith's entitled to his own perspective on this stuff but the biggest lesson here is Never Tweet.

He said Nazi shit in that interview too. People really need to dial back their takes on this. I'm sure somebody could glean something interesting from the fact that TMZ in 2018 and Tucker Carlson last week both saw a benefit to airing sanitized interviews with Kanye but by that point it's easier to leave Smith out of it altogether.

> Ye said a lot about black folk and no one in power or charge cared.

The difference between Smith on Wednesday and you today is, well, https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/27/entertainment/kanye-west-hitler-album

Oof, my sympathies. Leaving your bike unlocked for a few minutes is the sort of thing that should be okay and usually is.

If you haven't done so, see if you can find the serial number for your bike and report it to the police in case they end up recovering it. I'm not on FB these days but if you post in the Bikemore group, there at least used to be a couple of other groups for Baltimore and/or DC for missing/stolen bikes and people can share there or point you in the right direction.

Make sure you register your new lock and save the receipt bc kryptonite will want that if you ever have to file a claim with them. And fwiw I'll keep an eye out but I hope it turns up soon.

Uhh, well, the Big Dig remains a poor frame of reference. There's no direct link between 83 and 95, and all of the multiple options are surface level and tied into the traffic grid. If you wanted to bury MLK, you'd still need to make provision for at least some of the crossing routes, which would really undermine the area's utility as a park.

And, subterranean infrastructure costs so much that if we're ever able to swing it again, it'd be a waste to use it on cars rather than to build even a little bit more of a subway network. We need people to drive less no matter what else happens.

I'm not sure any transit system works like that--usually transfers are for a limited time window and can't be used on the same route specifically to avoid people using them for round trips. IMO as far as overall fare things to adopt, I wish more American cities would do like London where if you pay per ride up to the level of a particular day/week pass, it just converts you to that.

But as for paying fare itself, I more mean that our MTA welcomes too much delay at the farebox. A $1.90 fare absolutely encourages people to turn out their pockets to make exact change, and refilling CharmCards on the bus was slow and error-prone (but also necessary bc we don't have much other transit). It's just such a stupid self-own not to prioritize getting passengers to board/deboard as quickly as possible.

Chicago's also just got a very different relationship with Lake Michigan because of the lack of other bodies of water around. What would the actual point be of a beach at the harbor?

Number of stops is a much smaller problem than :gestures broadly:. Buses in most cities stop every couple of blocks (most of the locals in Manhattan are standardized at every other block, IIRC).

Reckon we need more buses and traffic prioritization first and foremost, but also ffs more streamlined fare payment pls. Make the cash fare $2 and spread out any future increases to stick to (at least) quarters, and I suppose ideally look toward contactless payment for the future.

Well, the dumbest thing about the Big Dig was the basic idea--what if we take an ill-advised urban interstate and fix it by putting it underground?

Baltimore's been lucky not to have highways routed all the way through the city, and while it would be great to have Pratt/Lombard/etc. narrowed, any infrastructural work remotely on the scale of the Big Dig should be about reducing vehicular traffic as much as anything else.

Above a really basic level, a better bike lock's a deterrent rather than a guarantee. I'm not sure what to attribute it to that theft by portable angle grinder isn't more common in Baltimore.

That said, if you're riding an e-bike, there's no reason not to carry the extra 5 or whatever pounds a good chain is vs. a cheaper one, bc deterrents are good in and of themselves.

Suppose it really depends on the policy, but IIRC rental insurance has a pretty broad definition of what it covers and includes basically anything habitually kept in the residence.

That said, anybody with rental insurance and an e-bike would do well to confirm if it's covered with their insurance company.

The absolute dumbest form of local pride is getting defensive about Baltimore delis. We're a shitty bread town, probably mostly because H&S is here.

I think Maranto makes kaiser rolls, but god knows who carries them/uses them since the Korean place at Broadway market shut down. But most places you can get an egg sandwich in Baltimore, you're paying more, waiting longer, and getting a worse thing to eat than you'd get at a random bodega in NYC.

I like their chef's style (I add garlic and parm to wing sauce when I'm making them at home) and am partial to fried hard because it holds up to the sauce better. Have never had an issue with dry/tough meat there that I can recall.

Well, chances are they're not in PPL bc tourists, but rather bc there was an already built out pizza kitchen?

And cheese isn't that cheap. Mostly just saying that there's a clearer economic case to be made for a $22 cheese pizza than a $70 whatever it was quoted elsewhere in this thread. No idea what's up with BOP, but the real pizza absence in Fells is Italian Graffiti (especially under first owners). Shoutout to Little Italy on Broadway for the free peel when they were shutting down, though.

Underground's prices aren't even that ridiculous? I'd be surprised if I could make a full size Detroit pepperoni pie for less than $10, assuming commercial ingredient prices.

Uh, guessing you've never been to Chicago if you think Millennium Park is waterfront? It's about as close to the lake as any of the hotels on Light Street are to the harbor, for the exact same reasons.

And you can tell they do both by the, uh, content of their character, hm?

Payment for what? Do you have a repair estimate? Is this something that would be worth reporting to your insurance, or is it something you can/would drive around on?

Figure out what you'd do (and what it would cost) if you're on your own, and that'll help figure out whether it's worth chasing this guy? Chances are the dude doesn't have thousands of dollars set aside for this.