Blog 6: Why didn't I take more pictures?

Before I begin my actual blog, I'll start with some random (but I guess important) thoughts: I was excited to write my blog this week about our adventure to Lexington Market and to post lots of pictures with my thoughts until I looked back at my phone and realized I only took two pictures our entire walking tour.  At first I was sad...I didn't have anything to Instagram or show my friends how cool it is to still get to take field trips in college.  But then, I got kind of mad at myself.  I think I too often associate taking photos with being a tourist and with that I guess this idea of the places and things I would take pictures of just for entertainment purposes.  Taking the picture would memorialize the space in my mind as an attraction that I once was at and I would remember the space as it was in that photo and that moment, rather than as what it really is...someone's home.  It just seems kind of weird suddenly that I wanted to take pictures of someone's neighborhood, even though any other time this would be a normal thing to do.  I think maybe during the walking tour, or just arriving at Lexington Market I felt way more like a guest than I do in other parts of the city that I visit so often.  Taking pictures would have made me felt like I was taking pictures at the zoo.

But anyway, the real blog assignment about the walking tour:

I LOVED getting to meet at Lexington Market for class last week and going on the walking tour.  Arriving at Lexington Market, we were really thrown into the hustle and bustle of the market and it helped me to begin to really capture and understand the potential for stories to hear with our project.  The walking tour itself was really interesting to me.  At first I was worried that it would be as crowded throughout as it was at Lexington Market, but as we got further from the city and main transportation lines, the crowd died down almost completely.  While the lack of crowd on the rest of the tour could be due to the cold weather that day, I think it also speaks to how Lexington Market is such a centralized and important place in the community that regardless of the time or weather, there's a lot going on and people around.

Racially, the market was very diverse and I definitely felt out of place as a white visitor while everyone carried on so naturally in the space.  While I wasn't outwardly singled out, as we continued to walk around on our tour I felt more comfortable as we entered areas like Mount Vernon.  During our entire walking tour, we only actually passed a handful of people walking on the streets.  It was almost eerie how quiet it was, and I almost felt like I was intruding which may have added to my picture feelings I talked of at the beginning of this blog post.  I also really loved walking around and hearing my classmates give the history of spaces that they had researched.  I would be curious to return again on a day when it is warmer, and on a weekend, to see if more people are out around where we did our walking tour.  Maybe then I wouldn't feel so out of place.

I was also bummed that I couldn't join the rest of class for dinner, but I hope to head over to the other market some time soon to check it out.  It definitely had a completely different vibe all together than Lexington.  It is so crazy to me that all of the places we walked to are so close to one another, because I feel like the business of Lexington is so removed from the quiet neighborhoods we walked though and other shops we saw like Antique Row.  Going back, I also would want to take more pictures.  The faces of the buildings and homes made it so apparent that the streets had a history to be learned.

But here are the two actual pictures I took during our walking tour, one is of the vacant and destroyed building next to a coffee shop we passed.  The other was of the Bun Shop.  My roommate actually goes there to study a lot (we live in Catonsville so it's interesting to know she goes to the city to study), so it was kind of funny to walk by there.