While I usually enjoy a shout-out, don’t use my blog as a reason why DC is better than Baltimore. I get a ton of DC submissions, I just don’t post them because even in heroin addiction DC is so bland it’s not even worth mention. 

To prove that point I’ll post some of my DC submissions this weekend and show the world that while Baltimore is as hardcore as Chuck Norris roundhouse kicking his way through a pack of rabid nazi-wolverines, DC is about as badass as walking into the “rough” Applebees from the parking lot.

Location: Chinatown, Washington, DC
Rating: Honorary Mention
Caption: I assume this is either a newbie to the junkie world, as his appearance didn’t seem to be mangy, or he was a severely mentally ill fellow.  He was so kind to keep me company on the other side of the window at Starbucks while I attempted to get some work done; however, his repeated in-depth conversations with my book bag made it rather difficult to concentrate.  I imagine he was discussing either the upcoming election, the laws of gravity, or the difference between mitosis and meiosis. 
Description: And in a nutshell, this is why I don’t post submissions from DC… While DC is crawling with heroin addicts to the point where they have the highest per capita rate of injection-based HIV infections, for some reason the people living there (or should I say resting there for a few years before they land that sweet government gig in Utah they were gunning for from the start) have no idea how to spot a good heroin addict!

Let me start by saying, this guy is NOT on heroin. At the very worst he is schizophrenic and off his meds, and at that not for long looking at the his state of dress and cleanliness. More realistically, he’s a lost African tourist so pissed off that Americans would be stupid enough to pay $5 for a cup of what is basically warm water filtered through a plant which is probably a weed back in Ethiopia that he is actually yelling in the general direction of the store in disgust.

Either way, while I’m grateful for the submission and always appreciate a good people-watching video, this is a little off topic for this site.

Location: H & 13th Streets NE, Washington DC
Rating: 2.6/5
Caption: This guy was captured around 3 PM on Sunday.  He had been at the same spot at 11 AM too, but with his jacket zipped up.  I think he decided he wanted to sunbathe?
Description: OK Washington apparently you’re not all that bad. This submission could have been from Baltimore if it weren’t for the unboarded windows on the storefront. Many people would say that is a knock on Baltimore, but the boards are a marked improvement over a shop selling what looks like zebra skinned furniture.

Honestly DC, do you have nothing better to spend your cushy government middle-class-welfare checks on? I swear if there is a stupid store idea DC has two of them. The problem is when they try to export the store off of M street and to a place in America where people actually work for money instead of “networking” they don’t pan out.

Remember Cake Love Baltimore? That was a DC export which lasted at least a month and I’m sure is missed by all. Wasn’t it great to pay $10 for a slice of obviously pre-made and heated in the microwave cake which vaguely tasted like the description on the menu? Only in a place where even the act of buying a piece of cake could be construed as a status symbol could such a bullshit store make it. And yes, the DC branch is still open…

Location: Upper Fells Point, Baltimore, MD
Rating: 3.3/5
Caption:CLEANING ZOMBIE!!!!
This guy might litter while sober but he cleans (and leans) while zombified. I wanted to do a five-day spread but not everyday needed cleaning (imagine that)…
Description: OK Baltimore, you know you suck at garbage pickup when even the junkies think it’s time to tidy up. I love you Baltimore, but for God’s sake can we please learn how to put our trash out in a trash can and not in a plastic bag riddled with rat holes?

Baltimore even tried to fix that way back when with a free trash can giveaway. Does anyone remember the “believe” trash cans that the city gave out all those years back? I believe someone stole mine…

Location: Baltimore, MD
Rating: 3.0/5
Caption: Take a breather…
Description: Damn that’s a fine lean. I’m impressed more by her flexibility than I am about her ability to handle the blast, she must be waiting for the bus outside of the Crazy Russian!

If I could bend like that I wouldn’t have needed a girlfriend in high school. This might explain why most dope-fiends are dudes who start in their teens. What a 16 year-old won’t do for that extra inches or two; Marilyn Manson removes a rib, dope-fiends get high… 

Just so the kids don’t go home and shoot up to try this out, I want to point out that the best possible case is you end up with your junk in your mouth. Think about it…

Location: Eastern Avenue and Eaton Street, Highlandtown, Baltimore, MD
Rating: 2.9/5
Description: There is something unique about this picture and it’s not the passed out dude with a 50’s greaser hairdo. I can’t get over what’s in this guy’s shopping bag - did he just buy a PHONE BOOK!?

Please tell me I’m seeing this wrong, because it looks like to me like this man took out his wallet and threw down cold hard cash for an item which routinely clogs the drainage in downtown Baltimore once a year. If that is in fact a phone book I wonder how much he paid?!

Only in Highlandtown, a neighborhood surrounded on all sides by yuppie affluence but is still fighting the Formstone ban on new construction. I mean where else would you find not only a person looking for a phone book, but a store which regularly stocks and sells them!

It’s unique neighborhoods like this that make Baltimore far from Anywhere, USA and truly the Greatest City in America (benches don’t lie).

Location: Baltimore Convention Center, Baltimore, MD
Rating: 2.3/5
Caption: Spotted this guy from across the street on the steps of the convention during Otakon.  Full on slumped out with kids dressed up as caped crusaders stepping over him.
Description: For those of you who aren’t in the know, Otakon is an annual Baltimore convention where anime fans of all ages dress up like their favorite Japanese anime character, flood the inner-harbor for a weekend and really fuck with the buzz of all the harbor zombies. This guy apparently had enough, and after his hasty escape from UMMC decided to stage an impromptu sit-in out of protest.

Well, good job asshole, Otakon realized that they were outgunned and officially decided to move down to DC in 2017. OK, maybe it wasn’t this dude in particular, but they have grown exponentially since they started about 20 years ago, and like everything that is edgy and fun it eventually grows old, bloated and boring and then moves to DC.

You may ask yourself “Does this mean Baltimore is going to be left without an edgy, boarding on creepy convention chock full of people on the sex offender list?” 

I’m guessing you’ve never heard of Bronycon…

Location: Philadelphia, PA
Ratings: 2.1/5
Caption: This guy’s a regular Adam Morrison. If you factor in a 200 dollar daily junk habit and the fact that he’s rode a slew of benches for the majority of his adult life.   
Description: Alright, let me start with the positive. This caption is solid gold. Secondly, the park with a tree growing out of a hole of asphalt makes Baltimore’s piss-poor, underfunded parks look like a gilded garden of Eden.

On the downside this submission is like trying to pass off a trip the zoo as an African safari. The angle, the bars, where’s the danger of taking that cell phone pic inches away from a swaying drug addict who at any moment can fall on you.

Great caption, but I expect more excitement from the city of brotherly love. 

Location: Philadelphia, PA
Rating: 4.2/5
Description: I don’t know what is going on with the video in this one, it looks like the image is curving or something? My best guess is that the black hole this dude is trying to fill with heroin is bending the light.

Location: Orleans St and Colvin St, Baltimore, MD
Rating: 4.3/5
Description: This submission is amazing for a number of reasons, but the first one that jumps to mind is that this dude is literally showboating his leaning expertise. He is no more than six inches away from a perfectly good walker and instead of hanging on for dear life he’s hanging in the wind like one of the 12 o’clock boys on a hot dirt-bike. 

Rating: 2.1/5
Description: I swear, I wasn’t mad when I started writing this…

Michael Minton I have to say that this is one of the dumbest page created. Starting from the fact that 99% of the people here are not on Heroin,this is methadone and pills! But the fact that people will look down on and make fun of other peoples problem takes it to a whole other level. Wish your ass could live that life just for a week and your bitch ass would be sucking your thumb and crying for your mommy. Addiction is a motherfucker!!!!

That Guy’s on Heroin Solid hate mail from “Spike” Mike and the shaming is only intensified by the astute observation that a fair number of these submissions are on zombie juice and not vein cleaner. Where it all falls apart is the lame ending about wishing I could live a day in someone else’s shoes, yadda yadda yadda. People who use condescending phrases like that like to feel that they have lived, or are living, a “special” life full of hardship and pain while the rest of the world is floating on by on a cloud of euphoria full of sunshine and jellybeans. The thought process is something like this - “That guy has never been XY or Z therefore he has no idea how hard life is. I am SOOOO superior.” 

Here’s a reality check motherfucker. While many of the readers on this site are not addicts and have never been, every fucking one of us has a hard life. If it’s because we have to get up at 5AM every morning to work a shit-eating job which we hate with a passion but our families are depending on us to make the rent only to come home and find a junkie passed out on the playground we brought our kids to go play on that evening. Or if we are in school and have to stay at the library studying until 2AM only to come home and find our house has been ransacked by some dude looking for anything they can pawn to their next fix.

What I’m getting at, and what you appear too fucking self-obsessed to figure out, is that EVERY FUCKING PERSON on this earth has a hard life, and the people who make a conscious decision to stick a fucking needle in their arm are in no way superior than the general population because of the cross they carry, and in fact are so fucking self-obsessed that they don’t see, or care to see, the damage they are causing to the general population. 

So in closing, go fuck yourself Mike, because fucking anyone else would mean you’d have to recognize they exist.

Location: Grand Prix, Baltimore, MD
Rating: 3.9/5
Description: This is one of those rare submissions were the leaner isn’t even the best part. The incredibly awkward look from the poor girl caught in this picture trying to go to the Grand Prix expertly sums up the feeling of the vast majority of Baltimoreans who are not addicted to heroin and have to gingerly tiptoe around the junkie-land-mines littering our streets.

The Grand Prix is great and I’m sad to hear that it possibly won’t be coming back this year. I mean how else are we going to find a way to lose $40 million AND show the entire eastern seaboard that our city is crawling with drug addicts completely unbound by fear of law enforcement or social scorn. We haven’t had this kind of exposure since The Wire!

Location: 5th Ave, Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY
Rating: 2.8/5
Caption: This was taken right in front of Washington Park and a middle school. Too bad you can’t see the yuppies with strollers and toddlers in the background.
Description: In the wake of the Trayvon Martin trial and the recent polarizing random murders in America these last few weeks, I feel it’s about time people of all races and ethnicities get together and bond over the one thing greater than race which truly defines us as Americans - our insatiable thirst for illegal narcotics.

These two freedom riders in New York’s prestigious Park Slope neighborhood are demonstrating that regardless of ethnic background we can all share the passion our forefathers had in mind by cooking raw dope on a crushed soda can in the back alley and then sharing our rusty, blood-stained needle with a dude we just met on the bus three hours prior. This picture captures the American spirit in a way which bring tears to my eyes. God bless the USA.

Location: Baltimore, MD
Rating: 3.3/5
Description: This lady slept so well on the bench she’s taking it home. Only in the Greatest City in America will you find that kind of bus-stop-bench comfort. 

Location: Baltimore, MD
Rating: 4.6/5
Caption: Hut hut, HIKE!
Description: Joe Cool, meet Joe Drool. Talk about calm under pressure, this dude has resisted the pressure to clean up and get a job for over thirty years!

I can’t think of a better post right before the Raven’s season opener on Thursday. I know it’s away but I’m sure some of our junkies will still OD and turn purple for the event!

Location: Portland and Greene, Baltimore, MD
Rating: 2.2/5
Caption: This person must have needed a little nap after their long day shooting up.
Description: I just love this area of town, it has one of my favorite neighborhoods in Baltimore, Ridgley’s Delight. Not only are do they have both Camden yards and the birthplace of Babe Ruth (that’s right, suck it Yankees the Babe is Baltimore bred) but they have these amazing cobble stone streets with a nineteenth century feel complete with blasted smack-heads next to parking meters with the heads sawed off to steal the quarters. 

Only Baltimore could fuck up historic gold as royally as they have on the west side next to UMMC. While Ridgleys’s remains a hidden treasure (no sarcasm there, it’s really a cool neighborhood that deserves a look) nearby Seton Hill which has EDGAR ALLAN POE’S FUCKING GRAVE is completely under-served and underutilized to the point where even the Poe Toaster no longer feels comfortable dropping off her three roses and half finished bottle of cognac every January 19th for fear of having her undead ass kicked.

Honestly, the only thing that makes me sadder than the 19th coming and going without a drink for the greatest literary mind in American horror is knowing that redevelopment of that area is well within reach but this city falls for any out-of-town fast talker pitching a monorail (think Simpsons) instead of just giving the job to someone based on merit and financial capability (looking at you Superblock).

Location: Inner Harbor, Baltimore, MD
Rating: 4.1/5
Caption: Taken in the inner harbor area during otakon weekend
Description: Nice costumes, the heroin addict Manga’s must really be hot this year in Japan. 

The age of these women gives me serious doubt as to whether they are heroin addicts, of course if they’re really into the juice they could be in their late 20s and look like that anyway, so I decided to err on the side of smackhead. Otherwise, I suggest these women either start eating some damn yogurt or get a job ringing bells in the cathedral.

Location: W Biddle between Maryland and MLK, Baltimore, MD
Rating: 4.9/5
Description: You can always tell a good lean when the subject is trying their best to fall down… and fails. Repeatedly.

I think a kick-ass soundtrack is the only thing keeping this from a perfect 5, but the commentary, while brief, so perfectly describes the moment that I couldn’t bring myself to set this one to music. 

Location: Corner of Broadway and Eastern, Baltimore, MD
Rating: 2.3/5
Description: One of my earliest memories is in Fells Point having a guy who, looking back, was an obvious drug addict make me a balloon animal which I thought was the coolest thing in the world. This was longer ago than I care to admit, back when Fells Point was known for the haves and the have-nots rubbing shoulders in the bar and not just about small plate restaurants and new water-view condos. 

I guess I bring that up because amazingly enough, all these years and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment later you still can find a dude, who doesn’t look all that much different from this gentleman, making animal balloons for kids in Fells Point.

I think that’s why, even at a time when most gentrified places in Baltimore quickly gain a few chain shops and become “anywhere USA”, Fells Point still has a soft spot in my heart. Somehow, even with all the condos, yuppie eateries, and bro hangouts, Fells Point has been able to remain distinctly Baltimore and I can’t wait for the day when I walk my kids down by the water and pay some toothless junkie to make them a balloon sword which looks eerily like a syringe.

Location: Lviv, Ukraine
Rating: Honorable Mention
Caption: Nice to see they have joined us post iron curtain.
Description: I had to give an honorable mention because I’m not sure if this guy is on heroin, or simply said something offensive to Vladimir Putin and is suffering from radioactive poisoning. 

Regardless, I’m excited that this blog is getting international attention, and I can’t wait until all those crazy Europeans start trying to emulate Americans by completely fucking up their drug policy and then leaving the addicts to live in the streets and make life a living hell for everyone around them. I’m actually surprised this didn’t catch on sooner, I mean they already have the unemployment thing down pretty well.