Out of the Blocks

7200 Harford Road is about as far north and east as you can get and still be in Baltimore City. It’s tucked just inside the county line, and downtown feels far-off when you’re out here. On this block, MMA fighters train at American Muy Thai, customers get perms at Umberto’s Hair Salon, folks line up for Italian and German specialties at the counters of Mastellone’s Deli and Mueller’s Delicatessen, and the 112-year-old Fenwick Bakery sells homemade marshmallow donuts. Field producer Adam

We have our own community here. It's like no other neighborhood. We're R.I.C.H. Raised in Cherry Hill.

This place, people counted it out to drown. But Cherry Hill is literally that. We are a hill. I don’t care how much water you surround us by. We are a hill that will always stand and will always be bold.

The corner diner, Soul Source, is the hub of the 2100 block of Edmondson Avenue. The manager, Joyce, has been serving breakfast to the locals for 30 years. Her restaurant looks out onto a West Baltimore block scarred by gunshots and stabbings. But the block is more than its scars. It’s a block where a Pentecostal pastor keeps her faith in the face of suffering, where a reformed drug dealer works as a kitchen appliance repairman, and where a political reporter from Kashmir has found sanctuary

The 2016 season finale episode of Out of the Blocks takes a twist, as we travel to the 600 block of Deepdene Road in North Baltimore’s Tuxedo Park neighborhood. The sounds of city traffic give way to the natural harmony of cicadas, birds, and frogs on this tree-lined residential block, nestled up against the city’s Stony Run Trail. The stories here are a study of families in all their varieties: families with same-sex parents, interracial parents, single parents, and adoptive parents, as well as

The 2100 block of Monument Street is anchored by the Baltimore’s Northeast Market, a honeycomb of vendors selling fish, meat, fried chicken, barbeque, bulgogi, deli sandwiches, and baked goods. The commerce spills onto the surrounding sidewalks, where open-air peddlers hawk sunglasses and socks, CDs & DVDs, umbrellas and pepper spray. Unemployed entrepreneurs polish headlights, sell loose cigarettes, and do whatever else they can to make ends meet. It all happens in the shadow of the looming

The 200 block of West Saratoga Street is nestled in the frenetic bustle of downtown Baltimore. Church bells ring in a duet with the clanging Light Rail, city buses rattle and hiss, and loud sidewalk conversations compete with the din. These are the sounds that reverberate through a block peppered with Bengali body oil shops, barbershops and salons, a magic candle store, and the shoe-repair shop of a Russian cobbler. A vanguard of artists populates a five-story building on the block, a honeycomb

The 6300 block of Reisterstown Road is tucked just inside the Northwest Baltimore city limit. Orthodox Jews from Russia and Iran operate kosher eateries, and Nepali Hindus run carry-outs and gas stations. Add to the mix a public library branch, a used-car dealership, and a home-security expert who specializes in cracking safes, and you get an idiosyncratic cast of characters who all manage to share a stage in the theater of city life.

4700 Eastern Avenue is in Southeast Baltimore's Highlandtown neighborhood. Over the past fifty years, the story of the American Dream has been written and rewritten in this community, as two distinct waves of immigrants have taken their turns settling in and opening up shop. In the 1960's & 70's, Greek immigrants arrived in droves, and the neighborhood came to be known as Greektown . More recently, Latino immigrants have followed in those footsteps, establishing a strong local presence of

The 4700 block of Liberty Heights Avenue is a portrait of survival and adaptability. It's a self-governed, informal economy where the currency is respect. Space is shared by merchants, churches, longtime residents, and drug dealers. Immigrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, West Africa, and Korea have set up shops alongside a dwindling number of African American-owned businesses. Trust is earned here, not given lightly.

On the 400 block of E Patapsco Avenue, you'll meet octogenarian pigeon racers, evangelizing barbers, philosophical convenience-store clerks, reformed and not-so-reformed drug dealers, aspiring hip hop musicians, and more.

On the 3300 block of Greenmount Avenue, you'll meet store clerks and restaurateurs from all over the globe - Pakistan, Mali, Korea, China, Thailand, Eritrea, and the Ukraine. You'll also meet born & bred Baltimore entrepreneurs, bar-flies, and street corner preachers.