I live in Baltimore, have lived in Portland OR, Oakland CA, and grew up in Minneapolis. I have to say it is unfortunate that Bogdana is the one writing most of the comments to your questions, and that you could possibly be swayed by it them. True, Baltimore has crime. Everywhere does. If you watch ‘The Wire’, you got a sense of what Baltimore CAN be like. It doesn’t mean that you would choose to live in those areas depicted, just like you wouldn’t choose to live in or frequent most of the areas with the high crime. Just like you said about MPLS, you have to know where to go and where not to go (East Lake Street + West Baltimore).

I rented a house in Hampden for 7 months when I first moved here and loved it so much I bought a house 4 blocks away. If you want to live in a city, and Baltimore is that city, I am biased towards Hampden. It is a small town in a big city- neighborhood feeling, I know all my neighbors whether they are the old-schoolers or the new residents that are buying up all the houses (like myself).

Coming from MPLS, I found Portland (Seattle might be similar) to be about as white-bread as you can get. Baltimore has a STRONG personality and is very diverse. My problem with it is the minority cultures (black excluded) are buried and hard to root out. All the neighborhoods have different flavors.

There is a great site called http://livebaltimore.com which has been very successful in courting DC professionals to live in B-more and commute. They also have plenty of resources for the newbie. Another good place to look is http://essentials.baltimoresun.com/micro_sun/homicides/ so you can see where the bad stuff really is going on (look at 21211 for Hampden). I also know a GREAT local real estate agent if you are looking at buying.

I commute to DC and I live 5 minutes from the commuter train station. I would not live in DC, I would find it too stuffy and boring. There may be a lot of great restaurants (that I couldn’t afford to frequent), but B-more has just as many up-and-coming along with the hole-in-the-walls and local flavors that DC lacks. B-more has a lot of local music and arts as well.

The only other thing I would mention is that I commute with two people who live in B-more and work in museums. They both worked at the biggest game in B-more (The Walters) and took jobs in DC because of the pay increase and the status as well. The Walters is VERY nice museum, but (working for them) it is a big fish in a small pond as museums go from what I have heard.

I hope my perspective helps. I don’t want to give you the idea that I love everything about Baltimore because there are things I don’t like. I do feel that those don’t outweigh the benefits or the affordability of living here though. Good luck in your research and feel free to post more specific questions/comparisons you may have for me.