The problem is people see the issues a city like Baltimore has and they filter it through their own views/fears. Baltimore does have problems with crime, with violent crime, that other cities deal with or have dealt with. I lived in NYC when the murder rate was 2500 a year at the height of the crack epidemic, I lived in the Bronx and commuted to lower manhattan working second shift, so I was coming back on the 5 train through the South Bronx (then a really bad area, now actually starting to gentrify to my surprise) at like 1am, yet I lived to tell the tale. Crime tends to be centered in certain areas and even in those neighborhoods if you are a visitor you are not all that likely to have problems; doesn't mean I recommend hanging out in these kinds of places, and you have to be smart, but there are places I have seen in more rural areas I wouldn't recommend hanging out in, especially these days with the opiod crisis *shrug*. Go to other areas of Baltimore and you would see a very different picture, it is how cities operate (heck, in small town America, anyone ever hear the term "coming from the other side of the tracks", usually indicated an area not exactly a garden spot...so that charming genteel town with the cute town square also likely had its gritty side, too).
Sounds to me like the person complaining about the B and O museum is someone who went in thinking Baltimore was this crap hole , not surprising giving some of the tsimmis on social media about it between politicians, surprised he didn't say they should deploy special forces there *sigh*. I haven't gotten the chance to check out the B and O museum but I did drive in the area, and I didn't get the sense it was anything more than an area that needed some TLC, it was gritty. Sounds like the folks running the museum are doing a good job, and to be honest while I don't share the negative attitude about the government or national park service (a lot of wonderful treasures would not be around today, would have seen the wrecking ball, like Edison's lab in West Orange, NJ, if it wasn't for the NPS), it still is better that it be run by people dedicated to it (though my experience with NPS people is they often are quite passionate, the folks who run the Gettysburg battlefield are amazingly passionate and knowledgeable, to say the least).
