101.2

One of the ideas behind going to college is that you learn. But it’s not just the gut, freshman-year stuff like how to write a topic sentence or Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that you learn, but also how to get around the area surrounding campus, where to grab a cheap bite, and what there is to do around here over a long weekend when you’re not heading home. And you’re probably also looking to your time in college for more intangible stuff—good times, new experiences, the works. You’re probably paying a lot of money to learn the textbook stuff, but we’re here to help you out with the rest of it for free with City Paper’s second annual guide to Baltimore just for you.

Yes, most local students figure out Baltimore fine on their own, at least to some degree, but it isn’t the easiest place to crack. The streets mostly avoid tidy grids, and the city is home to both tony affluence and grinding poverty, sometimes within a few blocks of each other. You’ll hear locals sometimes repeat the corny truism that Baltimore is a city of neighborhoods, and while that gives the place part of its fabled charm, it also sometimes makes it tough to sort out where you want to explore. And that’s where 101 comes in.

With the help of our crack team of, yes, college interns, we provide useful information on how to get around and cheap stuff to do, arts and culture-wise, once you make it off campus. If you're the sporting type, we have a guide to the area sports. We’ve also created a series of guides to day-tripping food, drink, and fun in various destination neighborhoods around Baltimore, including Mount Vernon/Station North, downtown, Fells Point, Hampden, and Federal Hill, plus a thumbnail sketch of places to eat cheap around various campuses and guide to where to buy food you actually cook yourself. And because the interns insisted that no, really, college students do like to drink, we provided a guide to campus-convenient liquor stores. Like we said, we’re leaving the erudition to the professionals.

And finally, get a good feel for the city by reading local knowledge from some of your classmates.

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