Kohinoor out by Belvedere has a surprisingly vast delivery area and has their own website and drivers. Homeslyce recently switched over to Toast for their online ordering but does still have their own drivers.

Sherwood Gardens might be a good option for an outdoor thing. The tulips probably won't be out quite yet, but there will be other things blooming.

If it's rainy, you could also visit Rawlings Conservatory in Druid Hill Park. It's a beautiful building, with a 19th century glass palm house. There is a suggested donation of $5/person. I like to go there when it's overcast to get a little sunlight without getting dripped on.

Idk if the spa at the Four Seasons downtown is in scope, but there are great water views there and it comes highly recommended

Were you in eighth grade in BCPS circa 2005? Because I was and apparently the county had some kinda panic about their liability insurance that year, so all the good field trips that everyone had been promised (we were supposed to go to Hershey) got cancelled last minute and they hastily slapped together some kind of much worse consolation field trip (ours was to a weird pool, that we had to share with another middle school because they had already booked it, and, arguably, nearly as risky as an amusement park, liability wise)

And like you, subsequent years went back to Hershey

Yes! I'm still salty that my school changed our big year end trip from Hershey Park to some halfassed pool day that we had to share with another school, and that was 2005, so

You don't by any chance have a recommendation for a contractor that does repointing, do you? We are just starting to reach the crumbly stage with our mortar and want to find someone who will do it right

Exposed brick is cute in theory, but in practice, most of the internal brick walls are built with softer, shittier bricks than the facade of the house. They are difficult to seal adequately, so often brick dust starts crumbling off of them and getting everywhere. Cleaning them is next to impossible. Plus removing the plaster wall to expose the brick is also removing everything that insulates you from cold, from neighbor's sounds, from neighbor's smells, etc. If you look at threads in this sub in the past, there are a lot of people complaining about their neighbors smoking, or making stinky food, or just the normal everyday sounds that we all make, and their exposed brick wall just letting it all through. There's nothing you can do to stop your neighbor from doing any of that, and it goes both ways, so even if the house you're looking at doesn't have exposed brick, if one of the neighbors has exposed the shared wall in their house, you'll get all the drawbacks.

(i) Baltimore is very much a city of neighborhoods. Some neighborhoods are very friendly, others less so. I am a bi woman, and have lived in Charles Village/Harwood and Bolton Hill, and found both to be very friendly and comfortable for me to live in. Like when I walk around I feel at home and see a lot of fellow queers. You'll see plenty of pride flags and love is love type signage in both, if that is the kind of thing that makes you feel comfortable. I also have queer friends who live in Hampden and find it pretty chill. That said, there are plenty of neighborhoods that, while probably not unsafe, I wouldn't particularly go out of my way to live in (Fed Hill is basically a giant frat house, for example). So if you start looking for places, I would recommend doing whatever you can to make sure that you can come up here and actually walk around the neighborhood and see how it feels to you.

(ii) People are mostly fine, but I would say that Baltimore is a little less diverse and mixed than NoVA. I work in Alexandria, and being so close to DC I find that it really has that melting pot kinda feel, where there are people from all over all kinda mixing with each other. By contrast, Baltimore is still very segregated (obviously not legally, but so many of the measures that were put in place as official policies- red lining, restrictive real estate covenants and zoning laws, unequal access to the GI Bill in the fifties, and myriad others- in the past have left a legacy of de facto segregation) with the two primary racial groups being black and white. There just isn't a ton of mixing, the two groups seem to operate pretty separately (if you google "White L/Black Butterfly" there is a lot of much more thoughtful, scholarly writing out there about this). There are pockets of other groups here and there (Old Goucher has a small group of Korean residents and a couple of great Korean restaurants, for example, and Fells Point and Highlandtown have robust enclaves of Latin American immigrants) but in general, it's much more siloed than Northern Virginia.

(iii) again, this is pretty neighborhood dependent. My current neighborhood (Harwood/Charles Village) has a really great mix of younger people, families, and older residents who have lived here their whole lives. We have a really robust neighborhood organization that does things like organizing clean ups/dumpster days and neighborhood block parties. And those older residents know everything that goes on and are the best for getting the gossip. And generally speaking, people are friendly in passing. So again, when you start looking at places, check to see if they have any kind of neighbor group and how active it is.

(iv) there's a lot here, though still a bit less than NoVA. In general there's at least one of almost every type of cuisine you could want. I would say our weak areas are Chinese food (even our americanized Chinese takeout style places are mostly kinda meh) and Tex Mex. We have a solid Little Italy, good Korean options, a variety of different strains of Mediterranean ranging from casual kebab type situations to more formal, some solid Middle Eastern options, bunch of pho options, ton of Indian options, etc. Pizza snobs like to complain about the pizza but there are a whole bunch of different types available and unless you're some kinda hardcore New York style absolutist you will be fine. Also if you're willing to travel outside the city a bit, the Ellicott City area (half hour from most parts of the city) has a large Asian population, so that's the place to go for Lotte/H Mart/Korean Bakeries/Hot Pot/restaurants etc

(v) internet is fine? I mostly don't have to think about it, which I think is most people's bar. There is basically a provider monopoly though, so if that will bother you it's something to think about

> traditional gayborhood is Mount Vernon

I want to add a bit to this because I feel like people tend to just go, "Oh, gay? Mount Vernon." And it ends up being a bit misleading. MV was absolutely the center of gay nightlife 15+ years ago, but even then it mainly catered to affluent, more established cisgender men. In the last decade or so, almost all of the gay clubs have shut down, and MV is no longer much gayer than any of the other moderately artsy neighborhoods in the city. These last few years the queer scene is much more spread out, and, at least in my opinion as a bi woman, a lot more broad and welcoming to different parts of the LGBTQ spectrum. There's a bit of a nexus around the area of Old Goucher/Charles Village where Pride is held, with places like the Crown, which aren't specifically gay bars, but have a very queer clientele and a variety of theme nights and events that skew pretty art school.

Sistahs Sweets on 25th Street does singing telegrams and cupcakes

I'm still big mad because one POS neighbor saw me pull out of the spot I had shoveled, and came out and backed his car into the space I had just vacated, causing the two feet of uncleared snow from the top of his car to fall forward and fill up the spot where his car had been. And then just went back inside his house. The other neighbors and I had spent hours shoveling out spaces and trying to make the street and sidewalks passable so this behavior felt particularly shitty.

Every time I look at the old street car map and think about what we could have had I want to scream. Of course, I also get the same feeling when I see those goofy, “I made a subway stop everywhere there is a Subway restaurant location” maps too. I won’t say anything would be better than what we have now, but, uh. It’s close.

Anywhere along the wall overlooking 83 is really nice for those quiet moments

Hi, ceramicist here. No. To any of it. Just. No. The glaze on your dishes is durable because it is a thin layer of glass, fired to a temperature in excess of 2000°F. Nothing less than that is going to be food safe (let alone microwave safe) long term or even briefly. Just lean into the eclectic charm of having two sets of dishes, or get rid of the old ones.

This has been my theory too. Up until the last election he didn't have even an email listed that you could reach him by. I actually think that if Franca Muller-Paz had been running in a normal year (as opposed to the height of pandemic with ever shifting lockdowns and restrictions and safety concerns) she could have unseated him.

He does seem very responsive on issues relating to the CSX tracks in his district. Unfortunately it's to advocate for CSX.