I think Baltimore's pretty great now. I often find myself desperately wishing the University of Maryland could somehow be relocated to Baltimore so that I could live in an actual city.
I've seen all those things in Baltimore 
Hmm. Interesting. Wasn't necessarily assuming that, but my experience has been so different that your earlier comment surprised me. Where in D.C. did you live? I've lived in Columbia Heights/Park View for about 4 years now, and none of those things describe the people I hang out with. We have some chill neighborhood bars where I routinely run into people I know, and I live with some artists (one of whom is a UMD grad student), a public health worker, and a military guy, and I can't even count the number of art openings, performances, and backyard gatherings I've been to. I've spontaneously participated in performance art involving the communal eating of vegan hotdogs that had been laid out in the shape of a heart, and I officiated an interracial same-sex wedding for dear friends in a park here that the general public crashed (there were about 500 onlookers to what was supposed to have been a 10-person wedding, and the applause at the end was so thunderous the couple couldn't even hear my cue to kiss). In fact, most of the time here I feel like I live in a small town - I can't even go for a run in my neighborhood without getting stopped by people I know wanting to chat. I'm sorry your D.C. experience wasn't as fulfilling. But it's a pretty diverse city. Overpriced lobbyist/Hill hangouts aren't representative of the ways most people here live, I really don't think.
