The City That Never Sleeps

What's truly striking about Baltimore's 24-hour surveillance plan is that for 23 and one-half hours, cameras will be trained on Reason's own Jesse Walker.

Odd, but not wholly unexpected.

Comments

[Mark Fox]

How long until we see the first footage of a suicide bomber at the moment of detonation?

If only the camera could leap off the pole and defuse the bomb...

[Spur]

another reason not to move to a horrible city in a horrible state -- the drinks are cheap on federal hill and the muesuem of outsider art is cool -- other than that why bother -- Bawlimor Merland sucks -- hey -- wheres my ink pen?

[Gary Gunnels]

I dunno, that revamped waterfront area is pretty cool - a few years ago (1990) at a SHOT conference we visited a cool museum that dealt with the economic history of 19th century Balmer - and the food was great too! 🙂

[TWC]

Big makes a good choice keeping an eye on Walker. The man is subversive.

[Iguana]

The true subversives are even now planning the most incredibly anti-American, yet perfectly diabolical plots....as they shower.

Who are they you might ask?

Sorority girls. A perfect disguise.

That's why I have my own privatized surveillance cameras deployed at strategic college campuses across the nation.

No thanks necessary. I'm a patriot.

[B'more college student]

Baltimore is so maligned but no one really gets why it is great. There is something great about the Charles Theatre, cheap housing, the accents, the neighborhoods... The history is outstanding, I mean the Deutchland took on supplies here during The Great War. Largest population of African American Catholics in the Nation. John Waters pervert extraordiaire. And really the simple fact is that when I go to the bars I like I can park in the ghetto in my ghetto ass car and it doesn't get broken into.

I am no fan of the cameras but I love the city. It sucks that what is seen predominantly is the junkies and whores. Not that they don't contribute to the urine stench but there really are great things about this city.

[chthus]

Cheap drinks in Federal Hill? Shit, maybe compared to DC, but that's a high brow neighborhood in Balmer. Head down to the Wharf Rat (Fell's point locale, not Inner Harbor) for 3 fer 3, that's a much better deal. Every day til 7, all night on Thursdays (one guess where I just came from).

Baltimore is a beautiful city, though I have outside hopes of one day renaming it Lil' Pittsburgh. There's nary a weekend from May through October that doesn't have some sort of festival going on. The Ukranian fest and Book fest are my personal favorites.

As for the cameras, it would be a fuckin' blight on the city. Those Homeland security dollars would be better spent on increased port inspections, and increased police patrols, if they are to be spent at all. But O'Malley has decided that these cameras are a better political gambit on his expected upcoming Gov race against Ehrlich. The fact that they are planning to first put them in the high tourist area of Inner Harbor and the high crime and high investment (mostly by UM) area of just slightly west Baltimore makes it obvious that they aren't so much for Homeland Security as just basic crime solving/prevention.

It might be too late, but I'm trying to figure out a way to fend off this assault on privacy. Suggestions would be helpful, especially if they are a bit more effective than 'writing your politicians', which is already underway.

[Grummun]

The scariest part is that they're taking lessons from England, which has the greatest number of security cameras per capita. They also have a Diversity Directorate and other fun stuff.

Anybody else here read _V For Vigilante_?

G

[SR]

All I can say to this is: eromitlab.

[Douglas Fletcher]

With all these damn cameras around, how's my baby going to walk the streets of Baltimore now? She might as well go back to Tennessee...

[Highway]

I like this part of a sentence in the Sun article, it explains a lot:

"The network is part of a comprehensive strategy in the Baltimore area to spend $25 million in homeland security grants this year and next to improve regional cooperation on terrorism concerns."

I like how the focus is spending the money. I don't really see how cameras IN BALTIMORE will 'improve regional cooperation', but it sure will help in spending money.

Plus, did the map work for anyone else? Or are all the cameras going to be located along the Howard Street Light Rail line (somehow I doubt this).

I do like Ag's idea about putting those feeds up for the public. Maybe they can use the same thing as MDSHA's CHART website to view webcams of local roads. Seems like a good idea.

[Ken Shultz]

I grew up in a small town a little closer to Washington DC than to the city this post refers to, and, just for the record, neither I, nor anyone in my family, nor any of my friends every said, "Ballamer". We might have thrown a "y'all" around every once in a while, but, as I once had to explain to my Latin teacher, the sound "y'all" makes when using the Second Person Plural is just a quirk of the Southern accent. The local teachers don?t teach the contracted version as a point of grammar, you know? It?s funny, but a lot of people who don?t think of Washington DC as a Southern city, think of Baltimore that way.

Not that I'm being defensive. I mean, I was culturally oriented more toward Washington DC. We were always Redskins' fans, and when somebody said they were going into the city, it meant that they were going into Washington DC. But it sure hurt when Satan...I mean...Irsay took our beloved Colts to the wasteland of America, and I did root for the Orioles, but then again, the Senators were long gone. Yeah, I knew a great deli in the Greek section of town, and when I was invited to another family?s house for dinner, if it wasn't fried chicken, it was probably crab. But, like I said, I was culturally oriented to Washington DC.

I have to admit though, when I was a kid, Reggie Jackson, who was considering coming to the Orioles from the Yankees, was given a tour of the city, and I took great offense when he said that the biggest problem with Baltimore was that it was in Baltimore. Like I said, I consider myself to be from the greater Washington DC area, but I always thought the city and its people got a bad reputation for no good reason, whatsoever. Some locals who did relatively well, John Waters and The Meatmen for instance, seemed to glory in the odd reputation of its people, but I thought the people in town were great, and some parts of Ballamer are really beautiful...I mean...Baltimore!

[Lisa Simpson]

Hey, there's plenty of LA neighborhoods with pedestrians: SM/Venice, Westwood, Melrose, Beverly Hills, Los Feliz, Old Town Pasadena, yada....

Could any Bawlmerite/Baltimorean-American here please tell me what kind of name Mervo is (as in "Mervo High")? It's been bugging me ever since I first saw Hairspray, 15 years ago.

[Ken Shultz]

I googled it, and Mervo (Mergenthaler Vo-Tech High) is apparently a real high school. I suspect the "Vo" stands for vocational. I'm guessing that vocational isn't being used in the classical, religous sense. I can't imagine God calling anyone to such a place unless, maybe, it was to sacrifice their firstborn. I suspect, rather, that it's a high school that doesn't sweat the prep courses and guides students straight to industrial arts courses and the like.

...not that there's anything wrong with that.

[Patrick]

What is it with all these little upstarts trying to beat NYC to the punch? First Boston decides to demand ID from transit riders and search their bags, and now Baltimore wants to spy on everyone in public? I am aghast that New York might lose its leadership in the area of denying freedoms to the public! C'mon Bloomberg, don't drop the ball on this one! We New Yorkers have proven before that we can rise from adversity; let's get those cameras up now!

[Agammamon]

Ya know, what might be good is to put the feed from those cameras on the internet. Since the stuff is ostensibly only what you would see in public anyway there's no good reason not to let the public have access to it.

[Jesse Walker]

I live a few blocks south of Federal Hill, and while I would never malign the beer at the Thirsty Dog, the drinks are cheaper down here in the Neighborhood That Doesn't Have A Proper Name. (Officially it's "South Baltimore." Unofficially it's "Riverside Park." I call it "SOFA," for "South of Fort Avenue.")

Anyway, Baltimore is a great place to live, as long as you can avoid getting shot. Say what you will about the place, but at least we aren't trying to be a "world-class city" or a misplaced borough of New York.

I just hope the cameras catch my better side.

[meep]

Seems to me like a better use of (less) money to just broadcast the camera feeds on local cable access rather than tying it in to the endless closed systems the article indicates. If they really want security, and the cameras are all in open public areas, let everyone see what's going on.

[rst]

If they really want security, and the cameras are all in open public areas, let everyone see what's going on.

The point is that it is no more secure...the cameras provide only the illusion of security to everyone else (i.e., the voter). A camera is a machine...once you find out where it is and how much of an arc it rotates through (if at all), the security advantage is gone. Along the lines of what Mark Fox said, the best you can hope for is more grotesque footage of a bombing for rotten.com.

Nothing that the government can do will protect you from terrorists. All they can do is put up vestiges of the police state to create that privacy buzz, fomenting the illusion that there is some kind of trade-off going on between "security" and "privacy." Peeps can still board planes with knives. All through last winter I had a 2-1/2 inch folding knife in the breast pocket of my ski coat. I had no idea it was there. Airport security in three airports never knew it was there, either.

[La La Paul]

Clearly, the problem is all that walking; creepy peepies can easily see people on sidewalks. Take a clue from L.A. -- stay in your car all the time! The only thing we have to fear out here is the occasional red light camera (and even those are getting trashed by the courts).

[The Lonewacko Blog]

The scariest part is that they're taking lessons from England, which has the greatest number of security cameras per capita. They also have a Diversity Directorate and other fun stuff.

There seem to be a lot of tourists who (for some strange reason) visit Baltimore. One way to combat this is for some good ol' Libertarian street theater. For instance, several L's with cameras on their heads walking down the street with other L's carrying laptops displaying the output of the cameras. Flyers could be passed out as well. Go to it, L's!

[Douglas Fletcher]

"I grew up in a small town a little closer to Washington DC than to the city this post refers to, and, just for the record, neither I, nor anyone in my family, nor any of my friends every said, "Ballamer"."

Yeah, but there really is/was a Baltimore-area accent that is still well known in Maryland, and it's one of the weirdest damn accents you'll ever hear anywhere. I mean, if you're from that area, you must surely have heard the commercials for "Mr. Ray's Hair Weave," way back when? I think the traditional Baltimore accent is basically the sound of people talking with oysters stuffed under their lips.

[kevrob]

I think Grummon meant to refer to V For Vendetta, written by the inestimable Alan Moore and drawn in haunting chiaroscuro by David Lloyd. http://tinyurl.com/28mwr

In grammar school, I was taught by an order of sisters who recruited heavily from the Charm City. They all said "Ballmur, Murlan." Since the mother house was in Fall River, MA, we heard a weird clash of accents from our instructors over the year.

I have read that a common element in the distinctive accents of Balt., MD, New York City - especially Brooklyn and the Bronx, N.O., LA and SF, CA is the high incidence of Irish immigration. Any linguists know if this is folk wisdom or the real goods?

Kevin
(A spalpeen up to shenanigans)

[Ken Shultz]

Mr. Ray's Hair Weave? I haven't thought about that in years!

Ha!

I live in LA now, so, for all I know, they're still on the air back home, but I used to think that, "Nobody bothers me" and Captain 20 were obscure references. But Mr. Ray takes the cake!

[Douglas Fletcher]

What distinctive accent is there in San Francisco?

[Douglas Fletcher]

I think Mr Ray is dead.

but...

Nobody bodder me eeder.

Captain 20 has a website. I'm not going to look it up for you though, spacebuddy.

[ANNE]

cAN ANYONE HELP ME? i GREW UP IN BALLMERE, BUT NOW LIVE IN pORTLAND, OR. I AM GIVING A PRESENTATION ON HOW TO SPEAK LIKE A BALTIMORAN. I KNOW ALL THE STANDARD CATCH PHRASES, BUT AM HAVING TROUBLE FINDING ANY REAL PATTERNS IN BALTIMORE'S ACCENT AND LINGO. aNY IDEAS?