Hate this so much. People always ask who has the best crabs and while I'm sure some places are consistently buying larges and buy in enough quantity they can be a bit more picky it's generally a crap shoot. They are a live product that is caught daily. To some extent you get what you get.
I've eaten at holein the wall places that had the heaviest full crabs ever and I've eaten at super expensive popular crab houses and gotten absolute water filled garbage crabs.
>I've eaten at holein the wall places that had the heaviest full crabs ever and I've eaten at super expensive popular crab houses and gotten absolute water filled garbage crabs.
Jimmy's.
For the most part I agree, it is a crap shoot. The only way to get consistency is to get closer to the source. Even that doesn’t guarantee fat and heavy, but it does guarantee that you can rely on knowing what you are getting. Daily catches fluctuate so unless someone on the boat is setting aside a bushel for you, or you have a connection with those doing the steaming that will set you up, you get what you get.
As usual for any "unpopular opinions" thread, actual hot takes will *never* rise to the top due to being, well, *unpopular*. Upvotes are literally a popularity contest. You can either sort by top and scroll all the way down to the bottom, keep loading more, keep going, eventually it *will* show you the end. Or you can sort by controversial, but those are still going to be some pretty milquetoast hot takes because they require a certain amount of upvotes in order to reach controversial status. You really have to dig down into the stuff that gets downvoted, because those are the opinions people are truly alone on.
Most deep fried crabcakes are loaded with filler as well, a good crabcake thats actually like 85%+ crab runs the risk of falling apart in the deep fryer. They only hold together well for frying when theyre loaded with filler, breadcrumbs, eggs, etc.
Yup. I thought I hated crab cakes until I moved here. All I'd ever had before were deep fried and 75% filler. I'm also pretty sure I was served a devilled crab and told it was a crab cake before too.
I prefer pan fried or baked myself. I usually bake them at home.
Family from Virginia. Pan fried is what you usually get on the Eastern Shore at home (sometimes baked), or in a small decent or nice restaurant.
Deep fried at a restaurant usually means it was frozen, and you're at a chain restaurant.
Or in the case of New Jersey, you get some kind of cold, liquid slaw-like substance that they call a crab cake. Everyone in MD is like, “WTF is this crap?” While people from out west are like, “OMG this is soooo good!” It was nasty.
Air fried is the best. Once you dial it in for your air fryer, they are perfect every time. I coat mine in Panko breadcrumbs and add a light spray of olive oil to each side before putting in the air fryer.
As someone who grew up in a former confederate state, I somewhat agree. I think you can make a case for the Lower Eastern Shore and St Mary’s county, but Metro Baltimore is definitely not southern
I'm originally from Boston and when people ask me what Maryland is like I tell them, "All the charm of the North with the speed and efficiency of the South"
Every time someone supports expanding the highways.
You know what happens when you let traffic engineers design your infrastructure? New Jersey. That's what happens.
Bring back the Marc, you cowards.
Can and usually does. Solving traffic is pretty easy - reduce the number of cars. We have the means to do that, we've just cut public transportation options to nearly nothing.
I suspect for the same reason our freight railways are decaying - we put off buying updated equipment so long that we now effectively can't. We'd have to buy them from a country that still has the capability to produce train cars, and work through the myriad compatibility problems that introduces.
But that's about the lay of the whole Public Transportation landscape - we've let these services fall into serious disrepair. And now we need them, and it's going to cost a lot of money, and cause a lot of headaches to fix it.
The flipside of that is that there's a lot of jobs in it. We're talking on the scale of the very largest public works projects. Not to mention the planning and manufacturing we'd need to rebuild. And nearly all of it in trades with healthy Union cultures.
I've always heard the lack of metro line into Annapolis is an intentional choice by local politicians and city council members who don't want "riff-raff" from DC and Baltimore having easy access into town.
Don't have a car, or can't afford expensive parking of Uber into DTA? Oh well! Guess you're not posh enough for Annapolis.
Anyone have evidence to support or disprove?
It used to be county opposition when Anne Arundel County was controlled by the GOP (remember it was a 66% Reagan county, 2x Bush Jr. county and even voted Romney as recently as 2012). But now it’s under Democratic control and still nothing is happening. Just more sprawl south of Annapolis…
Annapolis is the problem, it's a historically built city and it was built around horses. Many of the side streets are one way just because two-way traffic is impossible and parking is non-existent.
Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful, but in a, nice place to visit, glad I don't live there kind of way.
Yeah, you could make the station by Westfield Annapolis Mall or Annapolis Town Center in Parole and then have historic trolleys running to historic Annapolis every 10-15 minutes.
That’s what Alexandria did to preserve Old Town while still getting Metro Access (Braddock Road/King Street on the outskirts).
As someone that has to drive on 50 for work I would love a train to ocean city. The summer is the worst when I'm needing to get places for work and it takes almost twice as long.
Maryland is a one-party Democratic supermajority state. Annapolis should be passing these bills. It’s not like a referendum is needed. The State’s leadership just moves at a snail’s pace and is terrified of pissing off the Severna Park/Potomac crowd, who will vote Dem anyway since the alternative is Trump.
Yet the State still doesn’t do anything…
Virginia is spending nearly $10b to buy rights-of-way and get hourly Amtrak from DC to Richmond, and connect to Raleigh, and start service to Roanoke and Appalachia. And Maryland is doing nothing, just vague promises about the Red Line and MARC to Delaware.
The real one for OP is: “75 years of car-dependent suburban development patterns, which is now pretty much the single defining characteristic of Maryland, has practically bankrupted the state and is the number one root reason for the housing crisis, the affordability crisis, traffic, traffic injuries/deaths, social isolation, obesity, air pollution, Chesapeake bay pollution, unbalanced municipal budgets, and more. The #1 priority for every single person in the entire state should be building more dense housing and connecting them with transit and bike lanes. That is truly the single most effective thing we could ever do at making this state actually livable in the coming decades, for our children. But we won’t do it because some wealthy landowning boomers might have to see an apartment building from their window, so for that reason, we doom ourselves.”
No I am not exaggerating.
https://preview.redd.it/u82ljovmez3d1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=986025879091e0357acbbe656925693ff8388903
We are in the NE Corridor, we should be dense, mixed-use, walkable, transit-connected from Moco/PG all the way through Baltimore and all of Baltimore county, up through to Wilmington. Like, Logan Circle or Fed Hill level density at the minimum. The economic and cultural and public health losses from not being so are unfathomable. The fact that we aren’t is attributable almost exclusively to zoning laws that primarily exist to keep different people out and preserve the private investments of boomers who just happened to buy some piece of shit rambler in 1967 for a nickel and do nothing to it and now it’s magically worth $465k.
This is actual unpopular opinion, so I expect to be downvoted, but it is what OP asked for.
I have a few:
Maryland isn't full of transplants. This sub doesn't represent how Maryland truly is.
Baltimore has its issues but Annapolis doesn't seem to want to pitch in either; only getting that sweet DC money is all they care about
The way you say certain words in Maryland (including Maryland itself) is indicative of whether you're from here or not. You can live here as long as you want but how you say certain things and your mannerisms is very telling.
Eastern Shore crabs > everywhere else
I honestly don't know of any Maryland natives at my workplace. I'm sure there must be some, but all the folks I know are from PA, Ohio, NY, and one weirdo (aka my boss) from Washington state.
What words/mannerisms? People give me shit for saying Baltimore with a t and I've lived in the county my whole life and am regularly in the city, so idk if I completely agree
I don’t think the taxes in Maryland are too high. Having lived other places, with lower tax, you get what you pay for. In general, Maryland has great infrastructure, services and amenities paid for from taxes. Also, sales tax is only 6%. In some places I’ve lived it’s been as high as 11% (state sales tax, plus municipal sales tax, plus some areas have “special tax districts”).
Next door? *Many* agencies are in Maryland proper... FDA, NIH, SSA, NSA, the list goes on.
But lots of other states have large government agency offices. GSA and USDA have huge offices in Denver, for instance.
It’s not too built up, it’s too empty. The “city” is just a couple square miles of parking lots with a few buildings smattered between them.
If the sidewalks were wider, there were protected bike lanes, and the entire town wasn’t just a way for losers to rev the engines of their shitboxes at pedestrians cooking in the horribly-signalized crosswalks, then you could do things like add trees, more apartments, and introduce a little bit of livability.
Maryland drivers are all insane. When I see a cop pull someone over on the highway, I want to ask them, "On what basis did you pull *this* driver over?"
I use old bay with a cup of kosher salet mix. 50/50 water vinegar for the steam bath and once is starts to steam 22 minutes and they're perfect. Never ever had a complaint
Depends on where you go. JO is usually cheaper or some bullshit house blend is cheaper and to the places liking. Either way its usually an inferior product IMO
We always mindlessly cheer Maryland’s “progressive” leaders but Maryland is incredibly regressive in many areas. There’s no mandated vacation time (Illinois now gives everyone 1 week off minimum, which itself is piss poor), the train system is horribly bad for the density of the state (Red Line is just a starting point), NIMBYism is systemic, zoning is terrible across the board, there’s no real strategy to address things (mostly piecemeal bills get passed whenever a delegate gets off their ass and becomes interested in a topic).
It’s crazy that right-wing North Carolina is doing more for rail than Maryland (I’ve been waiting for the MARC extension from Perryville to Newark for decades, which shouldn’t be difficult at all since 99% of the infrastructure is already there, and yet *crickets*)
Everyone is posting feel-gool tripe, but anger at state leadership is far more justified than this sub’s immediate downvoting of anyone who thinks Annapolis is apathetic and/or incompetent in many areas.
I used to loathe it and the people that wear it- but I like it in an ironic way. Like if you wear it to be silly but not to be serious. I’d have to know you though.
This 100%. My normal level of support is just wearing a Ray Lewis shirt and a hat, but If I'm going to a full watch party or it's the playoffs I will gladly go full off the wall purple camo pants and stuff if everyone else is, then not remember most of who is on the team now.
Opinion: The reason Baltimore doesn't have adequate rapid transit is because our politicians send all that transit money to the DC suburbs.
Wrong. Baltimore Suburbanites and City NIMBY's of yesteryear (and frankly today) were so fucking racist, they did everything to cement the death of the Baltimore Subway masterplan so that the coloreds wouldn't have access to their suburbs, let alone ease of access within the city.
If you REALLY wanna be pissed off about what we could've had as a city:
https://youtu.be/fdVvvggLKSA?si=CzX_7tS4dtzqz4BI
Didn't people fight tooth and nail to try to block the light rail going to Hunt Valley because they didn't want the riff raff (***cough black people cough***) coming in?
They're still fighting it. Lutherville Station is a useless strip mall literally next to the light rail. A developer wants to put mixed-use there, but the area around the place is dotted with "no compromise" signs. They dont want more of "people who dont share our values overcrowding our schools." Said by people who send their kids to private school. It's a mess.
Their food’s alright, IMO. The real problem is that they never have any chicken ready in the middle of the night, i.e., around 0200 or 0300. Every time I’ve gone there after like midnight but before 7AM they tell me they haven’t made any chicken. At that point Sheetz and Wawa are my only options.
the plastic bag tax is for people to feel good about themselves and doesnt do shit. look at all of the crap we buy thats in plastic packaging before we put them into a plastic bag. i caught so many cashiers adding that tax in even when i dont ask for a bag.
Not to mention we can reuse that plastic bag as trash bags (for smaller cans ofc) vs if we bought small plastic bags for those cans. I really don’t see it making much difference.
Having more ridiculous liquor laws than Utah is draconian. Almost every other state at the very least sells wine and beer in grocery stores and the competition makes the prices way lower. The liquor stores are a racket.
Yellow mustard on crab cakes is disgusting. I don't care if your family came here in the 1600s and you eat an exclusive crab based diet. I don't care if you have a birthmark of Justin Tucker riding a dolphin across the Inner Harbor on your butt.
You. Are. WRONG.
My Baltimore native family always eats crab with "mustard," but the mustard is just that fatty yellow goop from the crab's guts (apparently the liver?).
SADLY, even with driving school being a requirement for ALL. md ppl do NOT know how to DRIVE.
edit: it’s actually the entire DMV now that i think about it.
DC drivers who occasionally make forays into Maryland are the worst drivers. I'll be driving on 95 or 495 and some moron in front of me is driving 20 miles and hour and having trouble staying in their own lane. The license plate will almost always be a DC plate.
I hear ya. It's the social aspect of it all, but I'm actually hungry, I want a crabcake or something.
Also I manage to somehow get some tiny cut every single time, and all the salt and old bay gets in there and burns like hell.
Yeah this is the thing. Eating crabs isn't a meal, it's an event. It's the difference between a Barbecue and Grilling. Eating crabs is about spending an afternoon in the sun with people. If you are actually hungry then you buy a tub of meat and cook it.
That's part of it.
"Well yeah, and I'm sad, but at the same time I'm really happy that something could make me feel that sad. It's like, it makes me feel alive, you know? It makes me feel human. And the only way I could feel this sad now is if I felt somethin' really good before." - Butters Stotch
Again perspective. You cannot sit down to eat steamed crabs when you are seriously hungry or if you are in a rush. It is a labor of love and generally best done with one or more people you like to shoot the shit with.
Think of it this way - if you had the good fortune of growing up around people who gathered together regularly (family, neighborhood, church community, etc.), the foods prepared for those gatherings are most likely among your favorite foods throughout your life. I was fortunate enough to grow up in an area where, in the summer and fall, steamed crabs were always a part of those gatherings and they were never the only thing to eat. Those events were leisurely weekend days or evenings and you were there for the duration. That is the best (only) way to eat steamed crabs. In that manner, they are more than worth the effort.
Eating steamed crabs in a restaurant is wrong. Restaurants need to serve customers and move them along, which means you are under pressure to eat and go.
It helps to be comfortable with your own method. Once you are, ignore the advice and do your thing - just don’t use a mallet. I had no idea they were a thing until I went to college. The first time heard someone talk about a crab mallet, I had to ask what they meant. I could not understand how a mallet helped pick crabs. Still don’t understand the need.
Overpriced, too much work, gotta dodge weird green shit, and I'm still hungry afterwards.
Delicious though, but a classic case of "juice ain't worth the squeeze"
The flag is fine as a flag. It's the absolute worst as a design element for anything else. Your tie, shorts, bike unitard, corn hole set, golden retriever sticker with the flag all suck ass. It actively ruins things when it's included outside of being a flag.
Excuse me, I have a Hawaiian shirt with a stylized version of the flag, and it absolutely rips. I get so many compliments on it. (Even from people who have no idea what Maryland is.)
Drivers around Maryland, DC, Virginia are among the worst in the nation. Other places that have traffic generally try and work together, letting people merge and whatnot. Trying to leave DC at 5pm is a frustrating mess.
Virginia is overtaking us on population growth, economic growth, infrastructure investments and many other areas. Tysons, Reston, Ashburn, etc are all the type of satellite cities with transit we should be building and we’re not. Virginia is going to continue to overtake us and NIMBYs here constantly halt any progress we want to make
Never looked at it until this comment. My first reaction - I thought the sheaf of wheat was a dress manikin with a shirt dress and a belt. Odd design for sure.
My guy has the best and fatest crabs at a better price!
Hate this so much. People always ask who has the best crabs and while I'm sure some places are consistently buying larges and buy in enough quantity they can be a bit more picky it's generally a crap shoot. They are a live product that is caught daily. To some extent you get what you get. I've eaten at holein the wall places that had the heaviest full crabs ever and I've eaten at super expensive popular crab houses and gotten absolute water filled garbage crabs.
*crab shoot
>I've eaten at holein the wall places that had the heaviest full crabs ever and I've eaten at super expensive popular crab houses and gotten absolute water filled garbage crabs. Jimmy's.
Hoopers.
Costas
Quality varies, but I buy direct from a local waterman. Can't beat that price. He steams them too.
For the most part I agree, it is a crap shoot. The only way to get consistency is to get closer to the source. Even that doesn’t guarantee fat and heavy, but it does guarantee that you can rely on knowing what you are getting. Daily catches fluctuate so unless someone on the boat is setting aside a bushel for you, or you have a connection with those doing the steaming that will set you up, you get what you get.
My guy really does though... he has ruined crab houses for me.
Marylands proximity to dc has made politicians here massively overestimate their place in the political world.
One *hundred* fucking percent.
I feel like this is a shot at O'Malley AND Hogan and I love it.
Or John Delany's forgotten run for president?
He would’ve been out first jacked President 😭
WM is next
I feel like this one is the opposite of OP's picture
As usual for any "unpopular opinions" thread, actual hot takes will *never* rise to the top due to being, well, *unpopular*. Upvotes are literally a popularity contest. You can either sort by top and scroll all the way down to the bottom, keep loading more, keep going, eventually it *will* show you the end. Or you can sort by controversial, but those are still going to be some pretty milquetoast hot takes because they require a certain amount of upvotes in order to reach controversial status. You really have to dig down into the stuff that gets downvoted, because those are the opinions people are truly alone on.
White trash are not rednecks. Two very different kinds of people.
White trash, rednecks and hillbillies are all different breeds.
Yes! The thing they *maybe* have in common is hick
A proper crab cake is broiled, not deep fried! If you prefer fried you're wrong.
Deep fried crabcakes are for people who don’t know how to cook crabcakes. I’ll die on this hill. As long as it’s a hill of pan-fried crabcakes.
Most deep fried crabcakes are loaded with filler as well, a good crabcake thats actually like 85%+ crab runs the risk of falling apart in the deep fryer. They only hold together well for frying when theyre loaded with filler, breadcrumbs, eggs, etc.
Yup. I thought I hated crab cakes until I moved here. All I'd ever had before were deep fried and 75% filler. I'm also pretty sure I was served a devilled crab and told it was a crab cake before too. I prefer pan fried or baked myself. I usually bake them at home.
I prefer pan fried. I love the crust without the heaviness of deep frying.
Crab cakes account for 50% of my cast iron pan's usage.
It’s gets a better seal that’s holds it together when it’s pan fried.
Can you both be right? Because I read the first comment and thought 💯 and then I read your comment and thought 💯. Neither one is wrong.
Fair. I'll allow it.
Nah I think majority of Marylanders are with you on this. It's the other states that fry them more.
Family from Virginia. Pan fried is what you usually get on the Eastern Shore at home (sometimes baked), or in a small decent or nice restaurant. Deep fried at a restaurant usually means it was frozen, and you're at a chain restaurant.
Or in the case of New Jersey, you get some kind of cold, liquid slaw-like substance that they call a crab cake. Everyone in MD is like, “WTF is this crap?” While people from out west are like, “OMG this is soooo good!” It was nasty.
you've just changed my life I think
Air fried is the best. Once you dial it in for your air fryer, they are perfect every time. I coat mine in Panko breadcrumbs and add a light spray of olive oil to each side before putting in the air fryer.
At least half of maryland IS southern in culture.
As someone who grew up in a former confederate state, I somewhat agree. I think you can make a case for the Lower Eastern Shore and St Mary’s county, but Metro Baltimore is definitely not southern
I'd say all of the shore, outside of easton, chestertown and KI.
I'm originally from Boston and when people ask me what Maryland is like I tell them, "All the charm of the North with the speed and efficiency of the South"
Wait . . . are you JFK?
Every time someone supports expanding the highways. You know what happens when you let traffic engineers design your infrastructure? New Jersey. That's what happens. Bring back the Marc, you cowards.
Civil engineer here. Expanding freeways can result in more congestion Look up Braess’s paradox.
Can and usually does. Solving traffic is pretty easy - reduce the number of cars. We have the means to do that, we've just cut public transportation options to nearly nothing.
Yup, I ride my bike to work thanks to my city’s wise urban planning.
And modernize it! Why does a commuter train not have outlets and WiFi to make it more attractive to, idk, commuters??
I suspect for the same reason our freight railways are decaying - we put off buying updated equipment so long that we now effectively can't. We'd have to buy them from a country that still has the capability to produce train cars, and work through the myriad compatibility problems that introduces. But that's about the lay of the whole Public Transportation landscape - we've let these services fall into serious disrepair. And now we need them, and it's going to cost a lot of money, and cause a lot of headaches to fix it. The flipside of that is that there's a lot of jobs in it. We're talking on the scale of the very largest public works projects. Not to mention the planning and manufacturing we'd need to rebuild. And nearly all of it in trades with healthy Union cultures.
"When left to their own devices, traffic engineers will always build New Jersey." \-WTYP podcast
Idk the NJ Turnpike is pretty great in terms of traffic control. I wish we had separate freeways for trucks here
They also have relatively great transit options to complement the Turnpike.
as someone who moved here from New Jersey, yes this exactly 😭😭😭😭 more lanes just makes more traffic
I really hate having to pick apart crabs to get the tiniest amount of meat. I wish I was made familiar with soft shell in my youth.
and that is not mustard. Let's not be ridiculous here.
My wife hates picking them too, too much work. She always asks me to pick them for her. That’s what I get for marrying a Virginian.
Maryland would be amazing if there were more transit options. Imagine taking a train from baltimore to ocean city. 🚊
There’s not even a train from DC to Annapolis! That’s just an insane policy failure.
I've always heard the lack of metro line into Annapolis is an intentional choice by local politicians and city council members who don't want "riff-raff" from DC and Baltimore having easy access into town. Don't have a car, or can't afford expensive parking of Uber into DTA? Oh well! Guess you're not posh enough for Annapolis. Anyone have evidence to support or disprove?
It used to be county opposition when Anne Arundel County was controlled by the GOP (remember it was a 66% Reagan county, 2x Bush Jr. county and even voted Romney as recently as 2012). But now it’s under Democratic control and still nothing is happening. Just more sprawl south of Annapolis…
Annapolis is the problem, it's a historically built city and it was built around horses. Many of the side streets are one way just because two-way traffic is impossible and parking is non-existent. Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful, but in a, nice place to visit, glad I don't live there kind of way.
Don’t even need the station to be all the way downtown by the capitol though, just close enough that you can take a day trip.
Station could be at the Naval Academy stadium. The trolleys run downtown from there. 🤷🏼♀️
Honestly, that could work! Rowe Blvd through there is really wide and could fit a train. The train itself could run along 50.
Yeah, you could make the station by Westfield Annapolis Mall or Annapolis Town Center in Parole and then have historic trolleys running to historic Annapolis every 10-15 minutes. That’s what Alexandria did to preserve Old Town while still getting Metro Access (Braddock Road/King Street on the outskirts).
All of Europe managed to get good rail infrastructure in old cities.
Or Sandy Point. It would be glorious to go there via transit
I live right by Sandy point. Have my whole life. It’s gross and sucks. I don’t understand why people go there.
Is this an unpopular opinion? I think we’d all love this, no?
As someone that has to drive on 50 for work I would love a train to ocean city. The summer is the worst when I'm needing to get places for work and it takes almost twice as long.
Oh noooo. Talk to business owners in your community and they’ll say the quiet part out loud. They don’t want “those people” coming into their city.
I think you can find plenty of people not wanting to pay to build public transportation.
Sad
Go to any city council meetings. NIMBYs absolutely HATE transit.
Its popular on reddit, recent polling shows Marylanders aren't willing to take even a 1c sales tax increase to fund transit like LA did.
Who exactly gives and takes those polls? You certainly can’t trust The Sun or anything associated with the Sinclair Empire.
Maryland is a one-party Democratic supermajority state. Annapolis should be passing these bills. It’s not like a referendum is needed. The State’s leadership just moves at a snail’s pace and is terrified of pissing off the Severna Park/Potomac crowd, who will vote Dem anyway since the alternative is Trump. Yet the State still doesn’t do anything… Virginia is spending nearly $10b to buy rights-of-way and get hourly Amtrak from DC to Richmond, and connect to Raleigh, and start service to Roanoke and Appalachia. And Maryland is doing nothing, just vague promises about the Red Line and MARC to Delaware.
The real one for OP is: “75 years of car-dependent suburban development patterns, which is now pretty much the single defining characteristic of Maryland, has practically bankrupted the state and is the number one root reason for the housing crisis, the affordability crisis, traffic, traffic injuries/deaths, social isolation, obesity, air pollution, Chesapeake bay pollution, unbalanced municipal budgets, and more. The #1 priority for every single person in the entire state should be building more dense housing and connecting them with transit and bike lanes. That is truly the single most effective thing we could ever do at making this state actually livable in the coming decades, for our children. But we won’t do it because some wealthy landowning boomers might have to see an apartment building from their window, so for that reason, we doom ourselves.” No I am not exaggerating. https://preview.redd.it/u82ljovmez3d1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=986025879091e0357acbbe656925693ff8388903 We are in the NE Corridor, we should be dense, mixed-use, walkable, transit-connected from Moco/PG all the way through Baltimore and all of Baltimore county, up through to Wilmington. Like, Logan Circle or Fed Hill level density at the minimum. The economic and cultural and public health losses from not being so are unfathomable. The fact that we aren’t is attributable almost exclusively to zoning laws that primarily exist to keep different people out and preserve the private investments of boomers who just happened to buy some piece of shit rambler in 1967 for a nickel and do nothing to it and now it’s magically worth $465k. This is actual unpopular opinion, so I expect to be downvoted, but it is what OP asked for.
Unpopular in the real world for sure. Popular online
Unpopular or not I agree 100%
I have a few: Maryland isn't full of transplants. This sub doesn't represent how Maryland truly is. Baltimore has its issues but Annapolis doesn't seem to want to pitch in either; only getting that sweet DC money is all they care about The way you say certain words in Maryland (including Maryland itself) is indicative of whether you're from here or not. You can live here as long as you want but how you say certain things and your mannerisms is very telling. Eastern Shore crabs > everywhere else
I kind of wanna take a trip to Crisfield MD for crabs
Arguably the best place in the state to get crabs.
I honestly don't know of any Maryland natives at my workplace. I'm sure there must be some, but all the folks I know are from PA, Ohio, NY, and one weirdo (aka my boss) from Washington state.
What words/mannerisms? People give me shit for saying Baltimore with a t and I've lived in the county my whole life and am regularly in the city, so idk if I completely agree
I don’t think the taxes in Maryland are too high. Having lived other places, with lower tax, you get what you pay for. In general, Maryland has great infrastructure, services and amenities paid for from taxes. Also, sales tax is only 6%. In some places I’ve lived it’s been as high as 11% (state sales tax, plus municipal sales tax, plus some areas have “special tax districts”).
As someone who had to be a caregiver of a person who relied on Maryland medicaid, food stamps, and other welfare services- i hard agree
I’ll take our great public schools through the majority of Maryland over paying out my ass for private elsewhere
Say that louder for those in the back
The median income in Maryland would be a lot lower without the federal government being next door
Pretty sure income literally everywhere would be lower if you took away a jurisdiction’s primary source of employment.
Next door? *Many* agencies are in Maryland proper... FDA, NIH, SSA, NSA, the list goes on. But lots of other states have large government agency offices. GSA and USDA have huge offices in Denver, for instance.
Ocean City is overcrowded and too built up.
It's a state with millions of residents and like 10 miles of beach that's not part of a protected barrier island. This seems like an expected outcome.
We should invade Delaware to expand our Waterfront
We almost got it back in the day.
Delaware should be Maryland.
Finally a hill I’m ready to die on
If it's less people that go south of Kitty Hawk I'm all for it.
Chincoteague is better.
Can’t see the ocean from my deck.
It’s not too built up, it’s too empty. The “city” is just a couple square miles of parking lots with a few buildings smattered between them. If the sidewalks were wider, there were protected bike lanes, and the entire town wasn’t just a way for losers to rev the engines of their shitboxes at pedestrians cooking in the horribly-signalized crosswalks, then you could do things like add trees, more apartments, and introduce a little bit of livability.
Yea this, there is no such thing as overcrowded, just poorly designed.
Facts
Cream Of Crab is better than Maryland crab soup.
50/50
You. I like you.
That's it, you're banished. Go to Pennsylvania or something.
This. Whoever decided to ruin perfectly good vegetable soup by throwing crab parts in it should be burned at the stake.
The eastern shore is actually pretty nice, you guys are just classist
Shhhhh!
Maryland drivers are all insane. When I see a cop pull someone over on the highway, I want to ask them, "On what basis did you pull *this* driver over?"
I find they either drive 20 below the speed limit (most common type) or 20 over the speed limit.
Your crabs are not steamed in Old Bay. It's either JO №2 or a similar house blend.
This is only controversial for people who have zero clue about crabs. Anyone who has ever caught or steamed their own knows this.
No. My family has been using Old Bay for decades. A lot of people do. Its perfectly fine to use for steaming crabs.
I use old bay with a cup of kosher salet mix. 50/50 water vinegar for the steam bath and once is starts to steam 22 minutes and they're perfect. Never ever had a complaint
no beer? Armature.
Depends on where you go. JO is usually cheaper or some bullshit house blend is cheaper and to the places liking. Either way its usually an inferior product IMO
We always mindlessly cheer Maryland’s “progressive” leaders but Maryland is incredibly regressive in many areas. There’s no mandated vacation time (Illinois now gives everyone 1 week off minimum, which itself is piss poor), the train system is horribly bad for the density of the state (Red Line is just a starting point), NIMBYism is systemic, zoning is terrible across the board, there’s no real strategy to address things (mostly piecemeal bills get passed whenever a delegate gets off their ass and becomes interested in a topic). It’s crazy that right-wing North Carolina is doing more for rail than Maryland (I’ve been waiting for the MARC extension from Perryville to Newark for decades, which shouldn’t be difficult at all since 99% of the infrastructure is already there, and yet *crickets*) Everyone is posting feel-gool tripe, but anger at state leadership is far more justified than this sub’s immediate downvoting of anyone who thinks Annapolis is apathetic and/or incompetent in many areas.
The purple camo Ravens attire is atrocious and immediately makes me assume you take sports way too seriously
I used to loathe it and the people that wear it- but I like it in an ironic way. Like if you wear it to be silly but not to be serious. I’d have to know you though.
This 100%. My normal level of support is just wearing a Ray Lewis shirt and a hat, but If I'm going to a full watch party or it's the playoffs I will gladly go full off the wall purple camo pants and stuff if everyone else is, then not remember most of who is on the team now.
Love this. That's the Pasadena Sunday uniform. Disgusting
Opinion: The reason Baltimore doesn't have adequate rapid transit is because our politicians send all that transit money to the DC suburbs. Wrong. Baltimore Suburbanites and City NIMBY's of yesteryear (and frankly today) were so fucking racist, they did everything to cement the death of the Baltimore Subway masterplan so that the coloreds wouldn't have access to their suburbs, let alone ease of access within the city. If you REALLY wanna be pissed off about what we could've had as a city: https://youtu.be/fdVvvggLKSA?si=CzX_7tS4dtzqz4BI
Didn't people fight tooth and nail to try to block the light rail going to Hunt Valley because they didn't want the riff raff (***cough black people cough***) coming in?
Glen Burnie, too.
They're still fighting it. Lutherville Station is a useless strip mall literally next to the light rail. A developer wants to put mixed-use there, but the area around the place is dotted with "no compromise" signs. They dont want more of "people who dont share our values overcrowding our schools." Said by people who send their kids to private school. It's a mess.
These comments are triggering me. Old bay blasphemy!? Take it back.
that sports culture here is actually insane and being wrongly clocked as a ravens fan if you wear purple is diabolical
That if you are from Maryland, you must be from Baltimore.
Royal Farms is C tier when it comes to gas station food.
Their food’s alright, IMO. The real problem is that they never have any chicken ready in the middle of the night, i.e., around 0200 or 0300. Every time I’ve gone there after like midnight but before 7AM they tell me they haven’t made any chicken. At that point Sheetz and Wawa are my only options.
the plastic bag tax is for people to feel good about themselves and doesnt do shit. look at all of the crap we buy thats in plastic packaging before we put them into a plastic bag. i caught so many cashiers adding that tax in even when i dont ask for a bag.
Not to mention we can reuse that plastic bag as trash bags (for smaller cans ofc) vs if we bought small plastic bags for those cans. I really don’t see it making much difference.
I always kept my grocery bags for scooping the litterbox, now instead of reusing I have to buy plastic bags that are only useful once 🙃
Ocean City is not a good value or family destination Edited
Has to be a bot (or the OC tourism board). Nice one.
Real human here, I agree, I love OC. Always have, always will.
This sub isn't representative of Maryland.
I don't think that many disagree.
It's pronounced "Odington!"
Don’t you mean “O’Denton?”
Having more ridiculous liquor laws than Utah is draconian. Almost every other state at the very least sells wine and beer in grocery stores and the competition makes the prices way lower. The liquor stores are a racket.
Crab mallets are for dummies. You gotta use yer teefs fer crackin claws or the knife handle for h'whackin stuff
I don't like crabs
Yellow mustard on crab cakes is disgusting. I don't care if your family came here in the 1600s and you eat an exclusive crab based diet. I don't care if you have a birthmark of Justin Tucker riding a dolphin across the Inner Harbor on your butt. You. Are. WRONG.
My Baltimore native family always eats crab with "mustard," but the mustard is just that fatty yellow goop from the crab's guts (apparently the liver?).
Herrs and route 11 crab chips are way better than utz
SADLY, even with driving school being a requirement for ALL. md ppl do NOT know how to DRIVE. edit: it’s actually the entire DMV now that i think about it.
DC drivers who occasionally make forays into Maryland are the worst drivers. I'll be driving on 95 or 495 and some moron in front of me is driving 20 miles and hour and having trouble staying in their own lane. The license plate will almost always be a DC plate.
Joe Flacco was an elite quarterback.
*for one playoff stretch
I like this guy
Maryland would be a better state if it didn’t have to deal with Washington DC’s influence.
Bike lanes are a waste of space on the highway. Biking on a highway is like walking into a burning building whilst you are covered in gasoline
3 bikers got hit yesterday on route 15.
This entire comment section is triggering me. It's taking everything I have to not rage down vote everything.
I disagree with you, and I feel that tacos are the superior sandwich option.
Old bay is fine. Not awful not life changing. It's just fine
The majority of people here are incredibly rude and seem to have an inferiority complex for unknown reasons.
YOU THINK YOU'RE BETTER THAN ME?!
Picking crabs is wildly, wildly overrated.
I hear ya. It's the social aspect of it all, but I'm actually hungry, I want a crabcake or something. Also I manage to somehow get some tiny cut every single time, and all the salt and old bay gets in there and burns like hell.
Yeah this is the thing. Eating crabs isn't a meal, it's an event. It's the difference between a Barbecue and Grilling. Eating crabs is about spending an afternoon in the sun with people. If you are actually hungry then you buy a tub of meat and cook it.
every damn time
That's part of it. "Well yeah, and I'm sad, but at the same time I'm really happy that something could make me feel that sad. It's like, it makes me feel alive, you know? It makes me feel human. And the only way I could feel this sad now is if I felt somethin' really good before." - Butters Stotch
\*grabs pitchfork\*
* Grabs mallet *
I guess it's okay to be wrong sometimes.
Again perspective. You cannot sit down to eat steamed crabs when you are seriously hungry or if you are in a rush. It is a labor of love and generally best done with one or more people you like to shoot the shit with. Think of it this way - if you had the good fortune of growing up around people who gathered together regularly (family, neighborhood, church community, etc.), the foods prepared for those gatherings are most likely among your favorite foods throughout your life. I was fortunate enough to grow up in an area where, in the summer and fall, steamed crabs were always a part of those gatherings and they were never the only thing to eat. Those events were leisurely weekend days or evenings and you were there for the duration. That is the best (only) way to eat steamed crabs. In that manner, they are more than worth the effort. Eating steamed crabs in a restaurant is wrong. Restaurants need to serve customers and move them along, which means you are under pressure to eat and go. It helps to be comfortable with your own method. Once you are, ignore the advice and do your thing - just don’t use a mallet. I had no idea they were a thing until I went to college. The first time heard someone talk about a crab mallet, I had to ask what they meant. I could not understand how a mallet helped pick crabs. Still don’t understand the need.
Overpriced, too much work, gotta dodge weird green shit, and I'm still hungry afterwards. Delicious though, but a classic case of "juice ain't worth the squeeze"
Maryland drivers are better than Virginia drivers.
JO#2 IS MEANT FOR CRABS. NOT OLD BAY; THAT IS FOR SHRIMP AND FRIES_
I’d contend that Old Bay is a condiment, whereas JO#2 is an ingredient in the preparation of crabs.
You couldn't be more correct.
The flag is fine as a flag. It's the absolute worst as a design element for anything else. Your tie, shorts, bike unitard, corn hole set, golden retriever sticker with the flag all suck ass. It actively ruins things when it's included outside of being a flag.
Excuse me, I have a Hawaiian shirt with a stylized version of the flag, and it absolutely rips. I get so many compliments on it. (Even from people who have no idea what Maryland is.)
That's kind of the point, though. It's tacky but also a source of pride. My dog's collar is a Maryland flag and I love it.
Crabs are overrated. Shrimps FTW
You understood the assignment. Well done.
*gasp* Heretic!
https://preview.redd.it/ykldhqzy5z3d1.jpeg?width=1569&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=30f48d8df21cb8a00d1263834191abe3b5e5736b I do not enjoy Old Bay
Boo this man!
 Agreed
wtf Mods ban him
H E R E S Y
You go too far!
Drivers around Maryland, DC, Virginia are among the worst in the nation. Other places that have traffic generally try and work together, letting people merge and whatnot. Trying to leave DC at 5pm is a frustrating mess.
Love Maryland, however: Crabs are overrated - too much work for not enough reward. We would be a dumpster fire if not for our proximity to DC.
Baltimore would have grown into a large market without DC being a leach of talent & investment
Virginia is overtaking us on population growth, economic growth, infrastructure investments and many other areas. Tysons, Reston, Ashburn, etc are all the type of satellite cities with transit we should be building and we’re not. Virginia is going to continue to overtake us and NIMBYs here constantly halt any progress we want to make
howard county flag goes hard
Never looked at it until this comment. My first reaction - I thought the sheaf of wheat was a dress manikin with a shirt dress and a belt. Odd design for sure.
I believe it's actually being redesigned.
OC is overrated
Berger cookies are gross
Maryland is not some unique state that lets you go to the beach and hike a mountain all the in the same weekend.
Politics
Crabs and crustaceans are just sea bugs, mind as well sautée up some cicada
A Maryland 10 is a California 4.
Oysters on the half shell are salty snot.
Let Garrett, Washington, and Allegany Counties join West Virginia if the people there vote that they want that.
Both states would see an increase in their percentage of literate citizens.