TGI – A. You’re making lashon hara on a community, and during the Three Weeks, no less. B. I resent your remarks personally, since I live in Baltimore now (after surviving too many years in Brooklyn). The frum neighborhoods in Baltimore are safe, friendly and welcoming to newcomers. The crime rate in NW Baltimore, where the frum community is located, is low, and we have have two neighborhood patrols who work to keep it that way. Granted, there are other neighborhoods in Baltimore which have trouble with violent crime, but those are in the inner city, West and East Baltimore, not here.
And no, the Baltimore community is not being captured by the right-wing. The MO, centrist and yeshivish are continuing as usual, and the Chassidishe kollel is just adding on to the right wing without shlepping the rest of us anywhere. As far as I know, part of the reasoning behind the new kollel was to give Chassidim here a choice broader than Satmar or Lubavitch, who were the only groups here before. And Ner Israel provides a great anchor for the general frum community, so don’t look for the rest of us to be overwhelmed any time soon.
Especially since the greatest feature of Baltimore is achdus. The different groups all work together and we feel that we are one community, not a salad bowl of the different groups who originated in Europe. We have a great array of volunteer groups to support the community, too.
If you are a friendly, non-snarky community-minded person and want a place where you can live in harmony with your neighbors, Baltimore is for you. I couldn’t move back to the Middle West, but Baltimore is very much like it. If you like to make snide remarks and ridicule other people and communities, please stay where you are. You won’t feel at home in B’more.