Before I go tomorrow (Sunday) at 3 for the first subscription concert of the season, I'm going to make a plea to people in Baltimore: go to the Symphony. You'll inevitably want to go more than once. Don't do it because I need company, do it because you will never have more fun at a social event of any type than you will at the BSO, and because your city desperately needs you to go. It's completely a win/win.
You will love them, and your $25 ticket will keep one of the most important institutions in the city afloat. The Symphony is the only chance the city gets to bring in the most affluent suburban dollars. So many small businesses depend on the symphony from restaurants to antique stores to book stores to gas stations. But the people who come from the suburbs for the symphony are dying out, and as crime goes up again, curious younger generations don't want to take what they wrongly think would be a risk. The BSO's plight is a demonstration of how people are, once again, bailing on the city of Baltimore. We are already, no matter what the assurances, in danger of losing the Orioles, we can't lose both the Orioles and the BSO. The city will literally never recover.
You are literally being asked to do your civic duty by having fun. Nothing in the world is an experience like hearing a great live orchestra, and the Baltimore Symphony is one of the greatest in the country. It is literally the exact opposite of the experience you think it is - there is no reason to hear orchestral music except that it's a miracle of invention - designed to do nothing but give listeners pleasure and morale. If we lose it, we lose something just as crucial to our city as any team that plays in Camden Yards.
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