spotted: neighbors being awesome

For those of you who watch the show Gossip Girl (either secretly or proudly), you'll recognize the format of this here entry title. While our dear miss Girl tends to expose the gritty and scandalous goings-on of New York's richest, I aim to expose a different kind of truth about our neck of the woods: how awe-inspiringly cool our neighborhood is. Sure, we have our probbies here, and I'm sure they'll come up because I have no intention of glossing over our grit, but there's so much we have at our fingertips that can, nay, must to be celebrated and acknowledged, documented for prodigy and all that.

So anyways, back to my title... Spotted: Neighbors Being Awesome.
If you were to have walked by Three... Restaurant today on your way to the park, you would have spotted something truly GREAT: a group of a dozen or so brunchers crammed around two tables. So what? So look closer! You'd have seen people hearkening from all over the country (no, world! Z was there and she's from Czech!), of different ethnicities, professions, ages, interests. And that's straight up cool. We ate eggs and drank mimosas and talked about ways to solve social ills and how those ills came to be. And we didn't all agree! And it was ok! No one was mad, no one was offended. Because no one needed to be just like everyone else. And THAT, dear friends, is old-school cool.

Today I had the fortune of my best friend in the whole world visiting me. E and I have been friends since we were approx 14 (!!!) which puts us into our second decade of friendship, and I'd love nothing more than if she decided to move her after finishing her masters at NYU (urban planning! Perfect!). Showing off my neighborhood and neighbors to her and her girlfriend made me see our neighborhood anew, and you know what? I was straight-up proud. In one day, we had the aforementioned brunch, walked cobblestone streets, poked in stores (clothes, shoes, furniture, frozen yogurt), checked out booming new multi-use development, lounged by the water, cruised around the park, munched on food from the farmers market while in a planning meeting for a proposed food co-op...and we never went more than a mile and a half from my front door. The more we did, the more I wanted to do. My list of things to show them spiraled out of control - I need WEEKS not hours to show off my city, because it's just that freaking sweet. When E asked me, "So, you're happy here in Baltimore?" I replied without hesitation, "Sometimes I feel like I'm living in an urban utopia - sure problems come along, but most of the time, it's just. really. awesome."
love k.