Relax, Buddy. No one is pissed. “Your boy” is a common part of Internet joking around when you’re discussing some poster who is being a dick, looping him in with others half-heartedly defending him. I’m not under the impression you actually wish to own ED’s behavior.
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Tone is tough on the Internet sometimes, understood
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Season two takes a hard left turn but stick with it. By the end of the series you will truly come to love it (and also know that seasons 3-5 are more like Season 1 in terms of the characters you’re expecting to see, etc.)
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@Eric_Denver where do you live and what courses there would be good for strapped?
We know you don’t actually live in Denver…
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You’ve used this post so often i think any likes you get should be amortized down to fractional likes
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I used it yesterday and today only
not even the same decade ha ha
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Everyone with “Nandy making a decade joke on Jan 1” ticket please cash in with the cashier now.
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Well ackshully it is, our current dating system started at year 1, not year 0. We are now in the last year of the current decade.
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You must be fun at parties. 
Wow, I’m honored. Although it is tempting to defend my take – Whiplash is at least Strapped-adjacent, as @KVV and @MerchCzar did the whole “not quite my tempo” bit in the third episode, and this is, after all, The Refuge, where focused conversations go to die – I will refrain.
I know that the horse is very dead here but fck it…
I grew up in Baltimore. Yes, the actual city, not, as locals refer to the suburbs, “The County.” And no, it wasn’t Roland Park (Wire reference). I learned to play golf with my dad and granddad at the courses featured in this Strapped season, mostly Forest Park, and so I was super pumped when, back in the summer, @djpie posted the teaser picture of Neil and @Randy eating crabs. The season did not disappoint. I’ve watched the first episode probably 10 times.
My parents moved to Baltimore in the mid 1980s when they decided to have kids. (The 1980s! The height of the crack epidemic! Yikes!) In the 19 years that I lived there, my family and I had a handful of negative experiences that we could have had living in any other city but certainly would not have had in the county.
Otherwise, Baltimore was an awesome place to grow up, and gave me so much that the suburbs never could have given me. It’s still an awesome place to visit. Yeah, I’m probably somewhat biased, but I don’t think that I would ride for Charm City if I had been mugged or carjacked on a semi-annual basis as a teenager.
The articles posted above are all factual. Baltimore has a serious crime problem right now. It’s tragic. (As an aside, I wonder if we would be having this conversation had Strapped: Baltimore been filmed in 2014, before the death of Freddie Gray, when the city was enjoying a bit of a renaissance.) Nobody is disputing that, not even KVV. If you don’t believe me go back and watch 4:00 - 4:30 of the third episode.
But Baltimore is a cool place to visit and a great place to live. That’s my view having grown up there, having seen the best and worst of the city. Take it or leave it. I wouldn’t make any conclusions about a place, from the prevalence of needles on the ground (lol) to its overall “vibe,” that I have not been to myself.
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Eric Denver makes us all feel a little bit of what it must be like to have Patrick Reed in the locker room.
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Hey, that’s me!
I really thought we were getting back on a good thread about BMore golf, and we went full 180 again. Let’s see if we can get back to the golf.
@KVV’s list is pretty spot on, but a few others to check out.
Clifton Park (EBCC): similar to Forest Park, you’ll get some slack for not playing the back tees at 6,000 and a 68 rating. However, you’ve got some fun holes here. #1 and #18 are long par 5’s with a good amount of slope. The tee shot on 18 gives you an awesome view of downtown Baltimore. You can also get around this track in 2-3 hours solo if no one is out there. Typically not a lot of traffic here. #10 is a great downhill par 3. Not a ton of memorable holes, but you’ll have a good time and score well. It is also a 10 minute drive from downtown Baltimore, but you’ll see the sides of Baltimore KVV has alluded to in other posts.
Mt. Pleasant: Another that I know KVV isn’t high on, but I really like this course. Your standard muni that is a small step above Clifton and Forest. Can stretch to 6800 from the tips, so makes for a handful of challenging par 4’s with a long iron in hand.
Compass Pointe Golf Course: Spot in Pasadena with 36 holes. I used to hate this place, but they have put some work into making it a better course over the last few years. You’ll lose some balls here as there is pretty much no room for error on most holes. A bit of a hike from downtown Baltimore, but another option to check out.
Timbers at Troy: Can be a big hit or miss type of course. I’m not sure what to think about this place. On paper it should be a great course, but something is just missing. Typically it is always wet, which isn’t ideal. However, there are a few good holes here and the rates are usually pretty cheap. The par 5’s are challenging and fun, most of the par 4’s lack any excitement, and the par 3’s are just long (3/4 +200 on the back tees).
If anyone in Baltimore is looking to play, always looking for some fellow golf fanatics to peg it up with. Typically shooting in the 75-80 range.
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Looking through a list of attendees for an upcoming logistics conference, and I found this… There must be some mistake. Frank Sobotka wouldn’t miss a chance to represent the union.
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Sometimes when I’m bored, I like to fantasize about all the ways I’d redesign Mt. UnPleasant.
1 – Long Par 5 with almost no strategic choices, other than you have to check to make sure cars aren’t about to drive in front of you when you hit your tee shot. They have two greens here and rotate them for play, but it makes zero difference in how you play your second shot, IMO. Not even sure what I’d do to fix it. A centerline bunker maybe? At least something interesting.
2 – Mostly fine with this hole, although I might clear out some trees on the right and create a gap in them to tempt players to go for it. Can’t hit driver here unless you play a mega fade or hit up on it and launch it. But at least there are strategic choices off the tee.
3 – A very dumb hole. Maybe the worst in Baltimore City. (No. 17 at Clifton would be close.) Would love to move the tees up to the left and make it a driveable Par 4 so your second shot wasn’t an extreme uphill lie. Bunkers on the right are cool but mostly not in play.
4 – The fact that you can’t hold this fairway with anything other than a hard draw is dumb. Having the tee box this far back makes the hole one dimensional. You could make the right rough fairway which would leave you a worse angle into the green, but and give those who can hit a draw and get the ball left an advantage still, but not leave anyone who hits it straight or plays a fade hitting out of a gully.
5 – This hole is good, no changes. I like that you can cut off a big chunk by taking on the trees on the right.
6 – In theory this should be a great hole, a downhill par 3 to a big green. But it’s so severely slopped any putt that isn’t straight up hill is almost impossible to make. Would be better if they leveled this green, but gave it tiers.
7 – A good hole, no big changes. Might make the green more interesting.
8 – A good hole, no changes. I like that you can choose to cut the dogleg left or play it out right with a 3-wood or long iron and have a slightly longer shot in.
9 – Mediocre hole that requires a 250-yard carry up the right side to have any real chance of hitting the green in two. I do like that you could, in theory, run the ball into the green, even from a blind shot down in the gulley, but it’s usually too wet and soft to do it.
10 – Would play so much more fun as a Par 4 with the green at the bottom of the hill instead of an unreachable Par 5 with the green at the top. Would be my No. 1 choice to blow up a hole and start over if given a modest budget and Rob Collins at my disposal.
11 – Decent uphill Par 3. No major changes.
12 – Again, the gulley that forces most ams to hit from a severe uphill lie is one-note and dumb. Sure you can bang driver down the right side and mostly miss the slope, but then it just leaves a boring wedge to a totally uninteresting green.
13 – Terrible tee shot with no landing area. Would be fun if they’d mow the mounds on the right all down to fairway so you could hit shots that would bounce and run left, then settle on a flat lie or try to pipe driver and leave it up to fate if your ball was going to run too far into the causeway on the left. Whoever designed this hole was drunk.
14 – Decent hole other than we have yet another elevated tee shot that leaves you hitting to yet another elevated green. Would probably leave this one alone.
15 – One of the few great holes on the property, except that the conditioning around the creek is a disaster now. Broken bridge, trash, random flooding. Eric Denver would have an aneurysm if he saw this green and what surrounds it.
16 – Only thing interesting about this hole is the tee shot, which forces you to carry the creek and trees. But because you’re hitting, again, into an uphill landing area, the ball goes nowhere unless you can smash the shit out of it. I get the whole “MP forced you to hit all the clubs in your bag” reasoning, but a lot of these are still bad holes.
17 – A good hole. Long downhill Par 3. Miss the green and you can still hit a mega flop that’s fun.
18 – A horrendous hole. A good tee box but hitting into the most severe upslope on the property (other than No. 3, I suppose) if you’re an average player is no fun, and flying the hill and having pitching wedge into a toothless green if you’re a good player isn’t much fun either. Bad, bad, bad.
This course is five mins from my house and I’ve played it maybe 50 times and every time I tell myself “Yup, this is the last time I come here…” and then friends talk me back into coming. The people here are friendly, and it has history (Arnold Palmer won the 1956 Easter Open here) but man, to me, it needs a makeover it will never get.
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You might have some fun in this thread:
https://refuge.nolayingup.com/t/muni-redevelopment-and-renovation-general-discussion/4444
@KVV While you’re here, I just finished season 4 of The Wire. Should I finish the series, or is season 5 so bad I should just stop now?
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Here is a link to a page dedicated to the history of Mt Pleasant. Shout-out to Ned Hanlon
Definitely finish. There are a lot of really good moments in S5, they just don’t involve the newspaper storyline. One of the best scenes in the whole show (won’t spoil it, but it involves Bubbles) is still to come.
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