Having slaked my hunger for both breakfast burritos and nostalgia with the goods purveyed by the good folks at Sheetz, we proceeded northeasterly through the Old Dominion state, past places I knew once and again, but have since forgotten. Up through the Shenandoah Valley, briefly into West Virginia, across into Maryland and back into Virginia before returning once more to Maryland and closing in on the terminus of our second day: Baltimore. Our AirBnB was in the Federal Hill neighborhood, set off from the road by a tiny courtyard-style front patio cut into the wall of nondescript, fungible, red brick federal revival townhouses.
Having circled the neighborhood a few times looking for a place to parallel park a 15-foot U-Haul, I finally parked and unloaded the things I would need for the night. The dogs needed a walk, and I made the block while my wife and mother-in-law got settled in. Upon my return, I was greeted with a spectacle the likes of which I had not seen, nor am I likely to again. Through the curtain which for some reason set the entryway -- classic Baltimore, replete with crabs and assorted nautica -- apart from what is best described as a living room I strode, oblivious to the madness awaiting me. The interior of the apartment suffered from a form of architectural dissociative identity disorder, each room an homage to a different genre of eccentricity.
The living room featured a raised platform of white-painted two-by-fours fabricated into what appeared like a large pallet, on which sat a modernist clear plastic table and chairs. The hardwood floors, clearly ancient, were stained and gouged by years of living. One wall was exposed crumbly red brick, the other painted shiplap. The hallway-shaped room gave way to an open-concept kitchen apparently designed as an ode to the music of Mark Mothersbaugh at its best and most bizarre, as manifested in the Rugrats theme song. Brash pinks and deep purples combined with cabinet and kitchen appliance designs so astonishingly not useful to create a result that one is forced to believe to be a prank. The kitchen, such as it was, led to a bathroom-cum-laundry room with a gold jacuzzi tub which had a shower head and no curtain or door, and a separate shower closet which shared a wall with a closet in which the owner kept a washer-dryer combo. This room, of course, was aquamarine and tangerine in color, as though the interior designer got a little too into Miami Vice and, in a cocaine-fueled ardor, decided to remake Tony Montana's bathroom in brighter colors and less space.
The second floor, accessible only by the narrowest spiral staircase known to man, was for the most part less insane: there were two bedrooms, both somewhat normal on their own, a lounge/study, and a bathroom. The bathroom was the strangest part of the home, however. The toilet was built up on a pedestal in the corner, and if one were to sit on it, one would then be forced to stare at the creepiest sculpture in existence, one which could only be described as a cross between the Angel of Death and all of those terrible nuns in horror films.
The absurdities of our lodging aside, we spent an uneventful evening in Baltimore and got an early start toward NYC. Tearing up I-95 into Jersey, we hit the TURNPIKE and made stops for A/C units and coffee before spending a king's ransom on tolls (I think it came to somewhere around $100 per vehicle by the time it was over) and finally arriving in Flatbush, Brooklyn.
More on Flatbush and the move-in in the next post.
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