Baltimore City Riots

I got caught in the Freddie Grey Baltimore City riots unawares.

It was April 25, 2015, a Saturday night. I was going to my favorite nightclub. I don't watch local news. I had no idea that on April 12, two weeks earlier, Freddie Grey had been arrested at 1700 block of Presbury Street in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood in West Baltimore. According to Google Maps, this location is a thirteen minute drive from my house, but it might as well be another planet.

My club is on the east edge of Little Italy, a goth club. I take the bus straight south from my house to downtown. I went out early that night. It was a nice warm April night, and I went out at about six pm. It was still light out. The bus dropped me one street north of the infamous "Block". Baltimore's The Block is a notorious stretch on the 400 block of East Baltimore Street containing several strip clubs, sex shops, and other adult entertainment merchants, as well a Chinese carryout. It happens to be where I catch the bus back north to my house. On the way downtown, the bus drops me off a block north of The Block, but going back home uptown the bus stop is smack dab right in the middle of The Block, a point salient to the later story.

About three blocks south of where I was dropped off is the Inner Harbor and all the tourist facilities, including a large two-story Barnes & Noble with a Starbucks. My typical MO is those days was to wait in the Barnes & Noble until about nine or ten o'clock, when I would walk about seven blocks east to the goth club. Once I had a couple of drinks at the goth club, I would wander back west to Power Plant Live just to see what was happening there. There are a lot of clubs in Power Plant.

So there I am on the second floor of the large Barnes & Noble, sipping a coffee, reading a magazine. People are muttering that something is going on at Oriole Park Camden Yards, the big baseball stadium five blocks west of the Inner Harbor. There are huge windows in the Barnes and Nobles so I stand up and look out, but of course the stadium is too far away and blocked by buildings, so I don't see anything. I figure it's just more weird Baltimore rumors. I ignore it.

At 1:15 into the video, you can see the confrontation between Orioles fans at the stadium and rioters. Orioles fans are wearing orange and black Orioles gear.

Shortly after that, around eight o'clock, a startled woman comes walking fast, almost running through the Barnes & Noble, saying that the store is closed and everyone must leave. The store is supposed to close at ten, and I would otherwise have stayed to that time. I go downstairs and there's a gaggle of tourists from Pennsylvania standing inside the entrance to the store looking worried and alarmed. They are wondering if and when their bus is going to pick them up to take them back to wherever.

I go outside, and for a Saturday night the Inner Harbor is eerily deserted. In those days I carried a long thick intimidating authentic hardwood Japanese bokken, which I used as a walking stick. They would let me carry it into the Power Plant, because I would limp and lean on it and say I needed it to walk, and that it wasn't a weapon. The ubiquitous security at the Power Plant was skeptical of the bokken but they always let me through. Swinging the heavy bokken gave me a sense of security on most nights, as I walked alone. They never gave the bokken a second look at the goth club.

I'm walking to the goth club and the streets are deserted, unusual for a Saturday night. The evening by this point has an apocalyptic feel, like walking through a zombie movie. No one around except for cops walking in small groups of twos and threes. I get to the goth club and there are four people in it looking alarmed and frightened. The club is closing for the night. Something is going on at the stadium. There is now a feeling that hell is going to break loose any minute.

At this point I realize the night's entertainment is over. I'll walk back to The Block and take the bus back home. Looking back now I wonder why I didn't take Uber or a cab. Probably I was just being cheap. Maybe there were no cabs, and it was before I started using Uber. Anyway, on the way to the block, I pass City Hall. Now it's obvious Something Big is up, as surrounding City Hall there is a massive display of cop force. A wall of cops three deep surrounds City Hall. They are there to protect the seat of government. The tension is palpable. The interesting thing about The Block is that it is right next to City Hall. Perhaps there is a historical reason why the downtown sex business is right next to the seat of government.

So I get to the bus stop on The Block. The thing about The Block (perhaps I knew this on a subconscious level), is that it was the safest place to be. Proximity to the cops was dangerous for obvious reasons. On the other side of The Block, you could encounter the demonstrators. There is some dispute as to whether they should be called demonstrators or rioters, but as I found out later a violent confrontation had occurred at the Orioles Baseball Stadium between baseball fans and the demonstrators. Anyway The Block was safe because it was a neutral zone, and also the strip clubs have their own security standing out in front, so looking back on it now The Block was the safest place downtown I could have been.

So I am hanging out there at the bus stop, wondering if the bus is even running north in all the commotion. I figure I'll take the risk of going to get some fried chicken wings from the Chinese carryout while I'm waiting, taking the risk that I might miss the bus while I'm getting food. I get the chicken wings and return back to the bus stop, when I notice a young white guy with a well-behaved dog sitting on the sidewalk right behind me. I offer him some wings and ask if he's seen the bus lately. He says he hasn't.

I soon realize that this guy is even more clueless than me. He has no idea that this is an unusual Saturday night in Baltimore because he has just hitched in from Oregon. I tell him that there's a big riot happening here downtown. By now it's dark and the riots in front of the baseball stadium have been put down or subsided, scattering the rioters in every direction away from the stadium. Feelings are running high. Groups of rioters in threes and fours are walking down The Block. I realize that my bokken might defend me against one or two people, but I have no chance against a group of three or more. Some of them are looking at my bokken, either thinking that it might be a fine thing to steal or that tonight it will not protect me.

I try to explain to the young hitchhiker that the best thing for both of us to do is to get out of downtown as soon as possible. He is planning to spend the night at a friend's in Hampden, which is a neighborhood north near mine. He has no idea how to get to Hampden. I tell him to take the bus with me and he can walk to Hampden. Once he's where I get off the bus, he can get off too. Even though it's not really that far north of downtown, it's far enough north to be out of the immediate vicinity of the current disturbance.

After what seems like decades, the bus does finally come. As per usual I am one of the few, and tonight the only, white guy on the bus, along with the hitchhiker. There are some elderly black guys cracking jokes about white guys downtown during the riot, but on the bus I feel safe for the first time in hours.

In a short while we get to my stop, and I get off with the hitchhiker. I point him in the direction of Hampden and that is the last I see of him.

A couple of days later, a curfew is announced in Baltimore City. No one is allowed to be out on the streets past 10pm. This has a devastating effect on The Block's business. The downtown tourist area business is killed for at least a year, and perhaps even now hasn't come back 100%. For months later clubs at Power Plant Live that had previously always had a cover charge are now free admission, because no one is coming.

I spend the next couple of weeks as a keyboard warrior, following the progression of the disturbances from behind the safety of my computer. I spend so much time following online news reports and manically contributing my two cents to social media that I get severely bloodshot eyes. I've never gotten back in the habit of going downtown to the goth club, and the few times I have it is a pale shadow of what it used to be. The City of Baltimore in league with the State government calls out every cop and soldier in the Mid-Atlantic area to deal with the disturbance: the National Guard, and cops from all the surrounding counties. Prince George's cops, Baltimore County cops, Howard Country cops, various DC cops, you name it. Pretty soon the cops outnumber the rioters ten to one. Inevitably Geraldo Rivera makes the scene, stirring things up. The National Media descends on Baltimore, making the riots seems like the advent of a domestic World War Three.

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's political career is over. She wisely doesn't attempt to run for mayor again the following year. The riots have an impact nationally, tainting the Obama administration. The Democrats lose big nationally nationwide in 2016, from Congress to the Presidency.

Unlike other incidents in which cop malfeasance results in the death of black men, charges are brought against three of the six cops who ferried Freddie Grey to the police station, resulting in his spinal cord being severed and his death. The three are found not guilty, and charges are dropped against the remaining three. In the aftermath, homicides and crime escalates to record levels in the West Baltimore neighborhood where Freddie Grey was arrested. The cops say that if they're not wanted there, they will stay away, giving free reign to street crime.