When I was taking out the recycling, the homeless man who rummages through my trash asked when I’m going to throw away anything good.

I’m so glad I wasn’t the only one who saw that guy walking around. I was on my way back to my car and he came up and presented me with a choice — I take his photograph, or I face his kung fu.

Mount Vernon can really be a magical place. Sorry I didn’t stop in to say hello formally or anything; I wasn’t sure if you would be working, and I am a giant social scaredy-cat.

But next time I’m up that way, I will definitely come in for some coffee and ask for refills with a big, cheesy Bawlmer accent.

Strobing blue lights turn vintage cars strange shades of purple in the dingy orange light of Brooklyn Park. The clock says 9:00. Shattered bottles sparkle brightly in their potholes, illuminated by a white neon cross. Broken rowhomes face off on yet another Baltimore North-South street, where crooked laughs spit out between the clink of bottles on formstone. And still that police light. Men stagger along the cracked sidewalk. A stoop party breaks up, people disappear into the alley and still their crooked laughs linger.

I try to focus on my viewfinder. I’m trying not to think much of it.

Steady red light filters unevenly from the Domino Sugar sign through power lines on some nameless alley off Clement Street. The clock says 9:45. The cars are pristine, adorned with “13.1” and “BLIEVE HON” stickers. Sturdy, clean-faced brick houses form pretty promenades where girls in track shorts walk handsome dogs down leaf-strewn paths. Giggles of giddy college girls trickle out of a bar. An SUV pulls by; a man in loafers steps out and vanishes into a lamp-lit doorway.

I keep focusing on the viewfinder. I’m trying not to feel sick.

For twenty minutes I crouched beside a parked car on Fleet Street, my camera and attention aimed on a thirty-foot ladder leaned against the side of Super Linens. I was waiting for someone to walk underneath it, to capture the would-be baptism of nearly a decade of ill-fortune.

Not a single person walked under it. Not a trio of barhounds evacuating the cramped alleyway of Regester Street, not the bumbling, topsy-turvy family of churchgoers on their way into the Point for brunch. Even a homeless man jumped into traffic and back onto the sidewalk in order to avoid the curse. It did not dissuade him from trying to sell me a scratched and water-logged copy of a Stephen Marley CD (asking price was a dollar; I had fifty cents — I was promptly told to fuck off).

At best, I captured a pair of elderly men with their walkers and orthopedic shoes maneuvering precariously along the curb to get around the ladder. They looked at me and laughed. My knees were dirty from kneeling in the gutter for so long.

Oh well. It was worth it to learn that superstition is alive and well. I could not be happier.

I just don’t have the time of day for fay, pouty-looking girls.

Tumblr is a wonderful vessel for revealing how completely out of touch with the rest of society I really am.

I have grown up a bit since that last picture.

I am in fact 23, now, and going on 60.

…and don’t mind walking a few blocks, you should stop by my place for candy and a snapshot. Ours is the one with three pumpkins out front (one of which is a ghost, how fitting :) on Eastern Avenue by the 7-Up Saloon.

Happy Halloween!

I had to eat all the apples in the fridge today to make room for the nearly 40 rolls of film that just arrived.

How my wife tolerates me, I will never know.

Whenever I leave the house, I always quietly wish to myself that I’ll be able to run into some of the awesome Baltimore tumblr crowd. The rate at which you guys are coming out of the woodwork, it’s only a matter of time.

So if you ever see a scrawny, 6’4” white dude with thick-framed black glasses creeping around the streets at night, or fiddling with a camera that looks too old to be operational, stop over and say “hi.”

I’ve been very intrigued lately by the relationship of people and environment — so much so, in fact, that I’m considering breaking my cardinal internet rule of real-life seclusion and avoidance. If you’re interested, I would like to photograph you in your neighborhood: but I want to get it right. I want to photograph you in your favorite restaurant, or in front of your favorite landmark, or riding the bus, or catching a smoke in the alley behind your house. I want to document you being in your natural environment.

If you’re interested (perhaps you need a new Facebook picture, or a new drinking buddy) let me know, and we can work out a time to meet and go on a shooting rampage.

There is a bar on the opposite end of Castle Street from our house. It is home to a troupe of the finest white-trash ever assembled in one location in the city of Baltimore (for demographic purposes, Dundalk was not considered in this hyperbole).

Presently, there is one mullet in a black Eagle-American-Flag t-shirt, a man with severe scoliosis smoking found cigarette butts, two puckered looking old men in trucker hats and severely over-sized, sweat-stained white t-shrts, and one woman with what appears to be a debilitating form of dwarfism that requires her to ride in a Rascal scooter.

All of them are drinking tallboys, and the “lady” in the Rascal is discussing her history of “turning tricks” on North Streeper some years back.

Christ almighty.