Baltimore Living
Best Song
"Luxury Condos for the Poor," by Double Dagger
Chances are good that you live a stone's throw from a luxury high-rise, or one currently in development. Like little pockets of malignant cells in an epidemic of gentrification, $300K condos are sprouting at an irreversible rate. Postpunk trio Double Dagger's mordant lament for the health of Baltimore's landscape, "Luxury Condos for the Poor," howls with the feedback-drenched ennui of classic Unwound as singer Nolen Strals (an occasional City Paper contributor) fingers these high-priced blights that seem to mock the city's institutional poverty as another sign that "if you've lived here your whole life, it's time to get out." But it's simplistic to think you could move anywhere on the East Coast now and not run into these ugly tombs of drywall and hardwood. "Urban renewal": It's a motherfucker.
