NFL & NBA destroy cities

[bort]

...poor Baltimore: ' just a few too many miles away to not *quite* be in the "metro area" of D.C.

Baltimore has tried to capitalize on it... Areas around the train stations (Camden Yards and Penn Station) are regularly advertised in DC as affordable alternatives to living in DC.

Apart from that, it seems that many people in Baltimore really could care less about being close to DC. We're close to a lot of other cities and DC is just another one of them. It's a different place with a different feel entirely. Classic Baltimore apathy...

[Mojo workin']

...poor Baltimore: ' just a few too many miles away to not *quite* be in the "metro area" of D.C.

And thank God for that.
Baltimore=Blue collar town

DC= White collar town with a noticeable lean to the left, even more so than Baltimore.

[pierre]

To compare D.C. to ANY OTHER CITY in the United States is ludicrous; D.C. will NEVER DIE - NO MATTER WHAT...and no matter what idiotic decisions are made by its leaders - as long as it is the nation's capital and is able to vampirously drain lifeblood from every other locale in the country.

I guess we can add DC to Bloke's list of places where he'll never live.

[Rick Denney]

...poor Baltimore: ' just a few too many miles away to not *quite* be in the "metro area" of D.C.

And thank God for that.
Baltimore=Blue collar town

DC= White collar town with a noticeable lean to the left, even more so than Baltimore.

I have to agree. When I first drove into Ballmer, I smelled the air and said, "This is a town where they make things."

All they make in DC is hot air and piles of paper.

Have a hobby that requires a relationship with a local fabrication shop? Machine shop? Welder? Metals supply? Or even a really good auto parts store? Chances are MUCH better in Baltimore than DC.

But they are better still in, say, Houston.

Speaking of Houston, they built one of the first stadiums built with public money. And they made a fortune off of it for decades, renting it out every week of the year. It's called the Astrodome. It's the people who manage such efforts that make the difference in the outcome, not the mere fact that they work for government. Of course, I have zero expectation that Reliant Stadium will deliver the same good deal to the citizens of Houston as did the Harris County Domed Stadium.

Rick "thinking Ballmer and DC both have more than their fair share of wall-leaners" Denney

[sungfw]

Speaking of Houston, they built one of the first stadiums built with public money. And they made a fortune off of it for decades, renting it out every week of the year. It's called the Astrodome.

[Pedantry alert]

The Astrodome may have been one of the first stadium in the US built specifically to house a major professional sports franchise, but there's a LONG list of city/county owned and managed stadia and arenas predating the Astrodome that were built with public money, a small sampling of XX century examples of which include LA Memorial Coliseum (1923); Municipal Grant Park (later renamed Soldier Field, 1924); Cleveland Municipal Stadium (funded by a voter-approved special tax levy, 1929); Buffalo Memorial Auditorium (1940), Baltimore Memorial Stadium (1950), Allen County War Memorial Coliseum (1952), J.S. Dorton Arena (1952), Milwaukee County Stadium (built specifically with the hope of attracting a Major League Baseball team, 1953), War Memorial Coliseum (renamed Greensboro Coliseum, 1959), etc., etc., etc. (And, of course, the stadia of Classical Antiquity, e.g., Colosseum, Stadium of Domitian, Olympia, Plovdiv Roman Stadium, Panathinaiko (Kallimarmaron), the Hippodrome at Ephesus, etc., were funded with public money. )

[/Pedantry alert]

[bort]

I have to agree. When I first drove into Ballmer, I smelled the air and said, "This is a town where they make things."

Spot on. Baltimore is (though arguably not as much as it was) one of the largest and most important seaports on the east coast (in part because it is easy to load the goods onto major national rail lines).

Few visitors realize that the Inner Harbor used to be full of warehouses, docks, and heavy industry until the mid 70's. And before it was transformed into a tourist area, the harbor almost became covered by highway overpasses and bridges.

DC ain't all just monuments, military, politicians, and hipsters, but I can't think of one heavy industry that operates from there.

[kingrob76]

I have to agree. When I first drove into Ballmer, I smelled the air and said, "This is a town where they make things."

Spot on. Baltimore is (though arguably not as much as it was) one of the largest and most important seaports on the east coast (in part because it is easy to load the goods onto major national rail lines).

Few visitors realize that the Inner Harbor used to be full of warehouses, docks, and heavy industry until the mid 70's. And before it was transformed into a tourist area, the harbor almost became covered by highway overpasses and bridges.

DC ain't all just monuments, military, politicians, and hipsters, but I can't think of one heavy industry that operates from there.

D.C. doesn't have a heavy industry per se because it's not located somewhere you'd actually gravitate towards when it comes to such things. The rivers are shallow, there's no harbor, and much of the city proper was built on swamp. If the founding fathers hadn't decided the capital needed to be located somewhere in a place that didn't already exist, it would probably still be in Philadelphia most likely. D.C. was never built or designed with the idea that it would be anything other than the seat of the Federal Government.