Streeter: Why can’t outsiders see the charm in Baltimore?

Baltimore, we have an image problem.

But you knew that.

This city is made up of a diverse group of people, of all different backgrounds and lives. But I guarantee you every single resident, at least once, has met a stranger who learns where we live, recoils melodramatically and yells, “Oh no! That’s so scary! I’ve seen ‘The Wire!’”

I have the Baltimorean urge to laugh and point at those folks and not pay their foolishness any mind, but we do want people to know we’re more than headlines about murder or being called a “hellhole” and “horrible deathbed” by the president. In fact, we ended 2025 with the fastest-plummeting homicide rate of any American city. But stats don’t always penetrate perception.

We could use some positive PR, like an official celebrity spokesperson, and could do worse than comedian Steve Hofstetter, who’s playing Baltimore Soundstage near the Inner Harbor next weekend and recently found the need to defend the city on social media ahead of his show.

“I think Baltimore gets one of the least fair shakes there is for a city,” said Hofstetter, who has performed here almost annually for the past two decades, in a phone interview this week.

He has receipts.

In a recent Facebook post that attracted a lot of attention, Hofstetter said whenever he does a show in Baltimore, some fans post the same thing: “‘Oh no! It’s got so much crime! You sure?’ And to them I say yes, I am sure,” he wrote. ”I am from Queens and I don’t get my crime statistics from some terrified old white guy on Fox News.”

His response delighted me, because I love when people who aren’t from here not only like Baltimore but defend it.

“I’m not going to pretend that there is no crime. It’s a city like any other city,” Hofstetter told me. “But I get these comments like, ‘Oh, you’re gonna die!’ About 600,000 people live there every day. I find it silly.”

Yes, sir! No matter what we do, we just can’t shake the idea that everyone who lives here has somehow been murdered. I’m actually writing this from Heaven, which, you’ll be thrilled to know, has a 24/7 crab cake buffet and unlimited half-and-half.

“It’s particularly ridiculous because my show’s in the Inner Harbor. I’m so scared to get robbed at the Brazilian steakhouse,” Hofstetter deadpanned.

If facts don’t sway people, though, is there any way to change that image?

Sometimes it’s better to tell people they’re being ridiculous. I once had a friend act aghast that I was moving back to “that cesspool,” and I said, “You’re from Newark, a place where no one has never been murdered.” That shut him up.

Besides letting people sit there and look stupid, I think we have to just keep touting our accomplishments and improvements loudly — and without irony. Those “Baltimore: Actually, I like it” bumper stickers may seem cute, but they’re actually just giving credence to the haters, and we shouldn’t do that.

Rodney E. Hill, an assistant law professor at Stevenson University and former assistant district attorney for Baltimore County, said it’s important to admit that our reputation, however outdated or incomplete, isn’t totally unearned.

Fine.

“We cannot minimize that ‘The Wire’ was extremely popular. It was the truth when ‘The Wire’ was on, and even now there’s still some truth to it. When you have a show as popular as that, it really did show the blight and everything differently,” he said.

Once that image gets in people’s heads, it’s going to take time to change it.

“One of the things that this shows is that the perceptions of crime and violence are durable,” said Thomas Abt, founder of the University of Maryland’s Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction. “The public is slow to understand how crime evolves. A few good years is not going to be able to erase the stigma. Some patience is warranted here.”

That makes sense, but I also believe patience is not going to work on detractors for whom racism, classism and general haterism are the kryptonite of facts. Even Hill, who is sometimes a commentator on Fox 45, admitted “it doesn’t always help to have segments like ‘City In Crisis.’”

He was recently forwarded a social media post of “bad schools” in the area, “but they weren’t all in Baltimore. Some were in the county, and you wouldn’t know the difference. All those things together don’t help” with the city’s image, he said.

No, they don’t! So what now? Hill suggested targeted beautification and improving the roads so that more people are talking about what’s right with the city to counteract the things that are wrong.

Hofstetter said Baltimore would do well with a new television show or movie to counterbalance the crime shows — “what ’The Drew Carey Show’ did for Cleveland.”

So what we have to do is keep it moving in a positive direction — to do what we can to keep those crime numbers down and insist on investing in what makes us better as a city, from fixing potholes to improving schools.

“You have to hang in there, and keep doing the good work,” Abt said.

And while that’s happening, it’s OK as a city to ignore the haters because most of them are dedicated to their craft, and we don’t need them. As Hofstetter said in his post, he invites the “Suburban Chicken Littles” among his fans to watch his shows online if they are “terrified of going to the big bad city.” In the meantime, he wrote, “I’ll be hanging with the adults who don’t think ‘The Wire’ was a documentary.”