Comments on: Grand Possibilities

By: Hasdai Westbrook

Hasdai Westbrook — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 22:08:15 +0000

Okay, new column/social media challenge: what’s your favorite metaphor for Baltimore’s decline! (Alright, alright, we can do renaissance too, which btw, is itself kind of a metaphor.)

By: thegoodplan

thegoodplan — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 20:22:27 +0000

Dean- Thank you for your insight. Greatly appreciated. Youv’e definitely got a perspective and involvement many of us don’t have.

Hasdai – I challenge your sentence: “trying to rebuild a city by desperately trying to bring in tourists for temporary injections of cash, rather than endeavoring to cultivate the assets we already have.” My hunch is that sometimes things are so undeniably broken, that the easiest thing to do is try something new, or direct attention elsewhere. It’s a distraction approach when the band-aid is already falling off.
Maybe the wrong approach, but you can’t accuse someone for not being visionary if they ignore everything that exists and try to create something new. Is the vision off? Well, possibly, sure. Misprioritized? Perhaps. Though if people see it in a triage frame, and all the assets are lying at the bottom of the lake, I’ll give people props for building a new boat. The next step, of course, is realizing that the boat is sinking.

By: Robyn Stegman

Robyn Stegman — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 15:53:08 +0000

I struggle with my opinions on the Grand Prix because I am part of the silent minority that loves being able to bike down from my house and watch an IndyCar series race. I was jumping for joy when I got to see Will Power and Matt Dixon race around the Inner Harbor. I would personally rather have a Grand Prix in my city than a football team. However, what the Ravens and the Orioles do is build a sense of pride within Baltimore, and to me this is the real failure of the Grand Prix. Going to the Indianapolis 500 is a sacred tradition in our family and that’s mainly because the 500 is a part of the ethos of Indianapolis. The event is a great example of the sense of place that’s lacking from the Baltimore Grand Prix. Every race starts with the Indiana state song, notable locals have place of honor in cars that parade around the track before the race, the day before the riders parade around the city. The Indianapolis 500 is part of the city, whereas the Baltimore Grand Prix is an insurgent. To Lindsey’s point there doesn’t seem to be any attempt to engage the general public of Baltimore to become fans or take part in any way. The entire event is confined for ticket holders with blue tarp preventing members of the public from even glancing to see what the race is like. The race itself contains no homage to the city that holds it except for a few shots of the inner harbor on televised coverage. It isn’t defined by Baltimore and it doesn’t even seem to care if we take part. I think any economic endeavor that looks outward for support without the least attempt of involving the residents of a city is a failure, no matter how much money it does or doesn’t bring in, no matter how much I love watching IndyCar drivers race around my beloved home.

By: Dean Sies

Dean Sies — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 19:56:29 +0000

I have a pool going on at the office: who can guess the closest to the contrived number of millions of dollars that SRB will claim to be “economic benefit” from this weekend on the news this week. It took two consecutive years of financial drubbing for the businesses (read: bars and restaurants) surrounding this folly to come up with a way of maybe not losing their ass over the weekend. Grand Prix Fixe menus. With a tip of the camo Oriole hat to Dave Barry, I am not making that up. The hotels aren’t full, Fells Point sees a school-night crowd at best, and like Lindsey learned, everyone else just leaves town. People are NOT streaming into the city from parts unknown to spectate this boondoggle. But as taxpayers, we should be concerned with the amount of public money given up to support it. And full disclosure, I work for one of the agencies forced to spend some extra taxpayer dollars to do just that, and that’s at the state level, so understand it’s not just city residents getting handed that bill.

By: Hasdai Westbrook

Hasdai Westbrook — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 14:43:49 +0000

Eloquent as always, Lindsey. I’m dubious, though, about an event that seems to be more of a source of community dread than pride. And I’m not convinced that engineering a convincing tourist trap is either an imaginative or sustainable route to urban progress, even if it does bring in the punters. If anything, the grand prix seems to be a glaring symbol of misplaced priorities and doltish institutional thinking that sees spectacle and fanfare as the way to bring about some kind of renaissance – bread and circuses, only the actual people of Baltimore generally gag and leave. There’s something intellectually impoverished to me about trying to rebuild a city by desperately trying to bring in tourists for temporary injections of cash (the benefits, profit-margin and distribution of which are highly questionable), rather than endeavoring to cultivate the assets we already have. To me, that’s a sign of a desperate post-industrial ruin sinking into the mire, not a strong, confident municipality with visionary leadership.