Hell's bells, Mencken was known as the 'Sage of Baltimore' ferfuksake, a thoroughly rough and tumble, irascible in nature, segregated and bigoted city even into the 1970s, in my personal experience. The bars at Fell's Point were a classic example of the raucous, knock down & drag out and toss your ass into the street port town. Much like I imagine Port Royal, Jamaica was centuries ago before the earthquake and tsunami swallowed that pirate hellhole up.
That is until it was cleaned up and all gentrified by all those yuppified hipsters from the 'burbs in the '80s & '90s.
I've heard that the denizens of Balamer threw rotten cabbages and bricks at the Union troop trains as they rolled through the city on their way to the Capitol and points south during the Civil War. Most people think of B-more as some heroic and patriotic footnote of the Revolutionary war because some lawyer with a penchant for florid prose set a poem to paper while watching the British bombard and burn the city and Fort McHenry while sitting on his ass on a British prison ship.
They ought to take a stroll down the Block downtown with all of it's hookers, pimps, muggers, sneak thieves and dealers one summer night. It's been more than 30 years since I've been there so, that's probably been cleaned up too.
Hitting the Civic Center for more than a few concerts and getting hammered while barhopping at Fell's Point were fun as hell for me but what can I say? I used to enjoy low places when I was young and dumb as the proverbial fencepost.
Sorry for rambling and reminiscing as I hope there was a point somewhere in the previous. Maybe it's just that I view Mencken as a wicked satirist and a Baltimoron. Funny reading but not someone I would view as a great mind. Am I making any sense? Don't really give a crap...where's the bourbon?