The refrigerator was mostly empty. That’s not uncommon.

“Let me keep it real: We’re in hard times,” said Janet Bailey, who operates and watches over a shiny silver refrigerator on Ashburton Street in West Baltimore’s Mosher neighborhood.

It’s part of the Bmore Community Fridge Network, a collection of refrigerators offering free food in communities around the region. On a good day, hungry people looking through them find sandwiches and premade meals.

Whatever’s inside one of the network’s 32 fridges is free, no questions asked. But here on the West Side, which always seems to have fewer resources, more and more often you‘ll just find a rush of cool air and disappointment.

“We want to get West Side fridges. … These are people in need, surrounded by people in need,” said Liz Miller, an art teacher in the Baltimore County Public Schools system and a co-founder of the network, which has expanded from four fridges in February 2025. So, if you’ve got only so many sandwiches to spare, maybe consider heading to a neighborhood where there are food deserts and putting them there?

Miller, who says “the American people are drowning,” told me she would not be surprised if there were people who donated to the fridges who now need to avail themselves of what’s inside. Bailey, whose fridge is an extension of the meals she used to serve outside for her struggling neighbors in the COVID era, said it’s hard to quantify how many people use them but that she thinks they’re emptied out now more than they were.

“I know someone who told me, ‘I’ll never eat out of your fridge!’” she told me. She sees him there a lot.

Jim Metz, who retired from the mortgage business, comes down from Harford County a couple of times a week to fill the West Side fridges with loads of ham-and-cheese and cold-cut sandwiches. “I do about 400 sandwiches every time I go,” he said. “I haven’t hit 500 yet, but I did do 497 once.”

Metz and his wife, Tami, prefer to replenish those particular fridges because they are almost always out of stock. “A lot of people are hungry, and their benefits are being cut. There’s a great need,” Metz said. “Sometimes I think people are looking out their windows for us, because they start flocking.”

The fridges operate on what I once heard referred to as the “front of your closet” philosophy for donation, meaning not to give any old thing. “We don’t want your freezer-burned chicken,” Bailey said. “Would you eat it?” If you would not, don’t donate it.

This, to me, is one of the most important aspects of community fridges: focusing on the dignity of the people who need the resources and not expecting them to take any old damaged thing just because their options are few.

Although Miller said there is no competition among fridges across the region and they “just want to feed people,” the issue is that, as many people who might want to help on the West Side, there are not enough willing to host because of expenses like the electric bill. There have been complaints about warm food, sometimes because fridge doors have been left open or because people have unplugged the units to charge their cellphones.

“We don’t mind that,” Miller said, “but put the plug back.”

In the frequently asked questions section on the Bmore Community Fridge Network’s Facebook page, it also says there’s no limit to the amount that one person can take, but Miller and Bailey both ask for courtesy.

“Don’t shop from it like it’s a grocery store,” said Bailey, whom I started calling Miss Janet the minute I met her, because I grew up around a lot of Miss Janets in Baltimore. I would not mess with her.

But there’s no judgment here, just neighbors caring for other neighbors and hoping they all come out better on the other side.

“When you’re hungry, are you in the best state of mind?” Miller asked. Of course not — there’s a reason the slang term “hangry” exists. “We love loving people past their pain,” she said.

The network has found partnerships, including people with connections to bakeries and other places with food that might be one day past its sell-by date but could become delicious sandwiches that Metz makes.

They need more, though. Food prices are high. Gas prices are higher. Baltimore’s reputation is one of neighborly kindness. Can we prove that’s true?

“These fridges,” Bailey said, “are a blessing.”

Pay it forward.

Please.

Hey, Baltimore! This is now almost exclusively a column about you! I want to know what you want to hear about. What issues are making you tear your hair out? What cool people and clubs are making your neighborhood better? What’s the thing about which you say, “Nobody ever writes about this?” Hit me up at leslie.streeter@thebanner.com, or leave a comment below.