The city of Baltimore has endured much turmoil and stress over the last few weeks, and Saturday’s 140th annual Preakness stakes will draw even more attention to the west-side Baltimore neighborhood’s that we have come to learn so much about. The Preakness Stakes is the second installment of the Triple Crown held annually at Pimlico Race Track which is located in the Park Heights neighborhood of Baltimore, located just three miles from the epicenter of the riots that shook the foundation of the city on April 27th and 28th the subsequent days after the funeral of 25 year-old Freddie Gray, who suffered a fatal spinal cord injury while in police custody on April 12th. The subsequent riots destroyed or damaged nearly 200 businesses in Baltimore, and left many of it’s citizens in an extreme state of shock and fear.
Now this very same community is set to open their hospitable arms to host more than 100,000 people at the Pimlico race track for this years Preakness. Even in normal years, it is an interesting dynamic to see so many middle-class to affluent patrons take to the streets of Baltimore for their entertainment purposes, whe the native people live in a world filled with boarded up houses and despair, similarly to that of the fictional Baltimore depicted on HBO’s “The Wire.”
It’s not all negative for the locals, most people in the park heights neighborhood will turn into entrepreneurs in their own right, flooding the streets with ice cold water and food that will be most definitely turn a small profit for a community that desperately needs it. People will open up their homes to sell bathroom trips for $5 a pop, and their lawns will become valet parking for some. This type of one-day only market is perfect for increasing the GDP of Baltimore, but what about the other 364 days of the year?
There will be much attention drawn to the Kentucky Derby winner Anerican Pharaoh who will attempt to run for history by picking up the second leg of the triple crown and keep any fleeting triple crown hopes alive. American Pharaoh drew the unlucky one post mesningbhebeill have to work that much harder to gain position starting from all the way inside.
All eyes will be on the race inside the track, but the real narrative is the people outside the venue that make up the city of Baltimore, a city in need of a little positivity.