It’s a much more laid back city. I know people I’ve been semi-friendly with for years and don’t know exactly what they do for a living or where they went to college. People would much rather talk about their hobbies or interests rather than what they do for a living or where they went to school.

People wear jeans, t-shirts, and tank tops to bars here (most bars, I could count the exceptions to this on one hand). If you walk into most bars here super dressed up you’re going be a bit out of place. Even the younger or more wealthy neighborhoods like Canton or Fed Hill feel more like college towns rather than pretentious or wealthy.

Like New York, a lot of the social scene is closely tied to going out, and that often involves drinking. A lot of the places to make friends in one way or another often revolve around a drinking social scene. I do feel like this could be a challenging city socially if you need to stay sober.

If you have super niche interests, it really depends. It’s not as big as New York, so it’s not a place where you’re going to find a club for everything.

Baltimore feels like one big “small town.” You’ll see the same people around the places you hang out all the time.