Crime is only crime, apparently, when it happens in a big city.

Last week a guy got murdered at the McDonald's on the corner of Calvert and Lombard in downtown Baltimore.

Crime in Baltimore is nothing new. Actually, I think the city is probably safer now than it was in 1907, but the milieu is different. If one lived on Charles or St. Paul in 1907, the likelihood of ever encountering something dangerous was almost nonexistent; whereas living near the waterfront in the rough-and-tumble sections brought you up against something nasty almost every day. These days, crime isn't as respectful of social boundaries; it is entirely possible to get mugged even in the hallowed lanes of Guilford.

I was not surprised at all by the murder at a downtown McDonald's. I would have been--but, as it turned out, the murderer knew the murderee. They had, in fact, walked in together; a fight broke out between them, and one knifed the other. End of story--at least for the one.

The paper interviewed a few "people on the street," as is its wont. One woman stated that she was "going to go back to the County to work" because "the city is just ridiculous."

In the same week, though, a clerk at a Columbia, Maryland 7-11 was murdered. The perps didn't know her; she just happened to be the clerk on duty when they decided to rob the place. A couple of years ago an English teacher at St. Paul's School (one of Baltimore's snootiest) was gunned down at the stylish mall in Towson because he "disrespected" one of the sacks of shit who was trying to rob him at the time. These were both suburban locations, the ostensibly "safe" world.

And yet, "the city is just ridiculous."

I feel much safer in the city, really. I am more likely to know the people whom I see on the streets in my neighborhood. Most of my suburb-dwelling friends do not know the people who live near them; I know almost all of my neighbors. I know who does and does not belong on this block; my suburban friends don't even know their next-door neighbors by sight. In the city, there are always people milling around; in the 'burbs, there's a deathly quiet on the streets while everyone sticks glued to their TV in the air-conditioned dead zone. If I were to get into a fight outside, seventeen people would open their windows to see what's going on. In Cockeysville, I could have my throat slashed and nobody would notice.

What is it about the suburban areas that makes people so sure of their safety? Is it simply the idea of rowhouses? When, years ago, I visited Cleveland, my hosts reminded me that the area was pretty rough. I couldn't believe it, because it was a neighborhood full of big freestanding Victorian houses with gigantic porches and big lawns. On my planet, rough neighborhoods involve treeless streets of ancient rowhouses. (For that matter, a lot of NICE neighborhoods do, too.) But, I simply couldn't compute the idea of a neighborhood like that being a "bad" area.

I think, really, that there's now an overwhelming belief that any "city" neighborhood must be automatically dangerous. If it's inside a big city, it must be evil; and that includes Baltimore's Guilford, Richmond's Monument Avenue, Norfolk's Ghent, Washington's Connecticut Avenue.

Crime is no longer confined, though, to officially "bad" areas. I feel much safer in a neighborhood in which I'm well known than I would in a place where nameless, faceless people ply the six-lane highways between their homes and the video store one-half-mile distant. And, if I must get my throat slashed, I'd rather die in front of the Byrd Theatre than in the Pampers aisle of a 7-11.