A few random observations...
-I've been trying to figure out how so many people I know/met are *IN LOVE* with Baltimore (and I'm not talking about the fresh-out-of-college set and their friends...) and it seems that it's a mix of 2 things:
A) living in a neighborhood that's both relatively affordable and full of awesome things to do (even Mount Vernon has luxury 1brs for $1200-1500 depending on quality, often INCLUDING amenities, and Hampden is still cheaper), which is often made even cheaper through someone lucking into a great deal (triple digits for a place better than mine is not unheard of)... and...
B) working IN THE CITY ITSELF (or *just* outside) which allows them to be constantly integrated into various aspects of local life during the daytime instead of just being restricted to happy hours and weekends! More importantly, it allows you to live in whatever neighborhood you want and still have a reasonable commute instead of choosing somewhere more expensive, more boring, or both just to get to work:
working in "AA county" (yes, that's the Marylandspeak for the place ;)) and living in Federal Hill (high price, low average age though awesome food and drink) to make the daily commute reasonable each way is pretty much the exact opposite of those two common threads!
-While driving back to my place on Monday and trying to get to a position where I could work out in time to be somewhere by 7? The Parkway was beginning to be backed up (according to a sign) but I was quickly able to find an alternate route (295 -> 195 -> 95 ->BLAST OFF! 95) because I pretty much had the grid of major highways, exit numbers, and their order memorized from when I was 16. (my parents actually quizzed me: "what are the major N/S highways going east? 29... then 95... then 1... then 295... then 97." ) I even have the exit numbers memorized from 32... and 32 didn't even HAVE exit numbers when I was learning how to drive!
Of course, this was actually an advantage of having grown up in Maryland and living nearby as an adult. I realized that if something were to happen en route to Virginia? I would most likely have to either stay on the same road through traffic or take a wild guess and end up further delayed through long turns because not having grown up as a Virginian, I don't have the minutiae of Virginia roads memorized!
-The more closely I look, the more likely I am to run into people I randomly know from various aspects of life... or people who are connected to me in other ways. (This is the whole "Smalltimore" phenomenom, and it's a mix of comforting and stifling... especially if you want to expand your identity, or try to establish yourself as being a DIFFERENT PERSON as an adult than what you were like as a kid!)
-At the same time, I'm realizing that it is REALLY easy to revert to your teenage self while living in Maryland if you're anywhere near where you grew up... it explains a lot of the culture there (for many people it can easily feel like a regular high school/college/adolescence reunion) which, again, can be a good or bad thing depending on who you are.
-For me, I find myself starting to instinctively use Maryland-specific location terms ("HoCo", "MoCo", "PG", "AA", "the County", and "the City", as much as I shudder at the last one) and remembering moments from childhood in vivid detail and feeling.
Quite often people then comment on my 'photogenic' memory or something similar...
-There's one fun flip side though: on the East Coast, regional identity is tied to where you were born or raised - while on the West Coast (not counting, say, certain suburban LA and OC neighborhoods, which can feel like Columbia transplanted on that coast) it's much more tied to where you moved to when you had the chance. So this essentially gives me dual 'citizenship' between Maryland and LA... but people who moved in the other direction have neither!
And if I DON'T want to fit in I can always pull the "I wasn't born here" card...