And so we come to another week of triumph and tragedy in the city of Baltimore, whose True Believers happily trumpet the re-opening of the Parkway Theatre, North Avenue and Charles Street, and simultaneously lament the worst municipal homicide count in nearly a quarter-century.
The Parkway, whose history goes back to 1914 (if you include the years it was called the Five West and the years it was called empty and abandoned), is one more hopeful sign of new life for a section of town once declared dead.
But there’s no new life for the 108 city homicide victims so far this year, including five over the weekend. For the first four months of the year, it’s the second-largest homicide count in Baltimore history.
That body count is bad enough. But there are roughly 100,000 fewer city residents than in 1993, the last time the violence reached such awful levels. So many people have fled the city that it’s tempting to say that only the dead know Baltimore.
And yet there are so many people who continue the good fight to save the town, and to preserve so many of its pleasures.
The Parkway opens its doors this week after an $18.2 million renovation, with the annual Maryland Film Festival. Then, the theater will specialize in low-budget, independent films rarely seen at the big multiplex movie theaters.
The project is a terrific gesture of faith – not only in the allure of a new movie theater, but in the continuing resurgence of midtown Baltimore and the Station North Arts District.
Only a few blocks below the Parkway, there’s the Charles Theatre and a bunch of restaurants and taverns that do nicely with a mixed crowd of middle-aged types and young urbanites.
But for many, the key to the whole area is the continuing growth of the nearby University of Baltimore and Maryland Institute College of Art. Drive through those two campus areas some spring afternoon. You’ll be heartened by all of the young people milling about. They make the area feel like a college town.
The new Parkway’s counting on those young people, with their interest in the arts and in independent films, to help energize the project – and the area around North and Charles.
It’s an act of faith in a time when the city needs a distraction from the tragedies playing out in other, far less hopeful neighborhoods.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, most recently “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age” (Johns Hopkins University Press).
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