I have done a lot of dangerous things in my journalism career. Yet few have given me more pause than driving over the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bridge, also known as South Baltimore’s Hanover Street Bridge, where tires go to die.

You know. Because of the potholes.

“Just this week, two cars showed up in the parking lot with flat tires,” said Sean Powers, who works at Package Deals Plus, a meat market at the foot of the particularly potholed span near Cherry Hill. “There’s two or three weekly.”

They’re everywhere, and the city is filling them. But those little suckers seem to just pop right back up, like bad pennies. Or popped pimples. Or gremlins you feed after midnight. You get what I’m saying. Anyway, the frustration is that the solutions don’t seem to be working.

The city is working, but it feels like they’re literally patching the problem for a temporary fix when a permanent one is called for. They need to pave the roads. These little fixes are why Baltimore roads seem perpetually in bad shape. The city never fully addresses the problem.

Do I know paving roads means road closures and inconvenience? Sure. But I’ve had roadwork off and on near my house since July. I’m already inconvenienced. I need my tires.

“All that effort to patch them,” Powers said. “Just pave it!”

The pothole problem on our aging streets has persisted and has now worsened since the recent ice storm. The Baltimore Department of Transportation said it has filled more than 8,400 potholes to date this year, compared to more than 16,800 in the same period in 2025.

In a statement, the agency said the winter storms are largely responsible for the decline. The current rush to fill those holes is part of the so-called “Pothole Repair Blitz,” where crews go out to address calls that come in from 311, and fill holes they see on the road when they can.

The problem seems to be that once they’re filled, they don’t stay that way. A big one at the corner of Gough Street and Patterson Park Avenue was wide open on Wednesday. It apparently got patched, but was already falling in on Thursday morning.

“The snow dissolves whatever’s in what they fill it with,” said Alyssa Derr, who works with Powers at the meat shop near the bridge. “They patch it, and it just easily dissolves.”

Guided by a recent Reddit survey of the worst potholes in the city, I toured all over searching for them, between Highlandtown and Upper Fells Point, up President Street on Interstate 83 to Northern Parkway, up to Johns Hopkins and finally to the calamitous collision course of the Hanover Street Bridge.

In some places, I found reported holes that had been filled. In others, there was another one forming nearby. I also found people whose eyes lit up wearily every time I said the word “pothole.”

There’s one crevice on that Reddit list, near the corner of Fleet and Boston streets. It had been patched, but I could feel it under my tire. I ducked into Loading Dock Liquors, across the street, to ask if the employees or customers had any issues with it.

No, not that one, clerk Joan Bonnett said. A different one.

“It’s on North Point Road and Kane Street that I thought had taken my tire off, I hit it so hard,” she said.

Bonnett said she knew some of the worst holes in that area had been filled, “but they did it in the rain so I don’t know how long they last.”

They’ve become such a part of city driving, avoiding them has become part of the trip. “I just know where to swerve over, when to swerve back,” Bonnett said. “When to change lanes. When to stay away.”

Across the street at the Little Hungarian Bake Shoppe, owner David Korrie warned me that Eastern Avenue, heading toward Highlandtown near Patterson Park, “was loaded with them.” And it’s true — I drove by crews that seemed to be filling them and almost caught a nasty one not far from Bmore Licks ice cream shop.

I’d heard there were several at the mouth of 83 North that were thankfully gone — for the moment — so I drove up the highway and got off at Northern Parkway. I met Gail Geller, who was gassing up her car at the Falls Road Shell near Northern Parkway, who told me about a big one at 39th Street and University Parkway.

When I drove by, there was a telltale orange cone on a wide square of newly patched ground. I’m glad it’s gone. Hope it stays that way.

Look, I know it was impossible to fill even the existing holes sitting under all that ice, which caused even more of them, and the city said they’re going to be working at their current pace to make it right. But it could snow again, maybe this week. What then? What’s the permanent solution? Repaving the worst stretches, like Hanover Street? Bringing back horses and buggies?

As fast as the city is working, residents told me they’ve kind of resigned themselves to living with the potholes until a more permanent solution is found. Back at the meat store, Powers said he wouldn’t even mind if they had to close the street for a while to completely pave it over.

“That’s no problem,” he said. “I’ll just take another way to work.”

And hopefully his tires survive the detour.