It was decided that we would attend the Preakness Stakes. Our friends were visiting from out of town, and I had failed to participate in this Maryland tradition after living in the state for six years. As one who doesn’t go for much tradition and finds most sporting events absurd at best and cultish at worst, I put on the floppy summer hat of the amateur social anthropologist and further braced myself with a backup plan: beer.

We drove into the Park Heights neighborhood of Baltimore and took the first decent parking spot we could find. A few men in their late 20s stood in an open lot holding cardboard signs that advertised, “$20, all day parking, you keep your keys.” They weren’t handing out parking passes or promising any form of security, but it was only 1p.m., and the neighbors and a cop car or two looked on without concern, so we paid the men and walked the remaining three blocks to Pimlico thinking ourselves very lucky to get out of traffic so easily.

As we walked, it became increasingly obvious that a culture clash was afoot. While Baltimore’s population is 63.7% black according to the 2010 census, the population of people entrusting their cars to men with cardboard signs was about 95% white and at least 75% richer than me according to my own observations. Meanwhile, of the residents who had come out to observe, socialize and make a few bucks on race day 99% were black and 100% were less wealthy than me.

Of the houses we passed, about a third sported boarded windows and caution taped doors while their adjoining neighbors had little old ladies sitting on the front porch or clusters of young men on the stoop. Three young women stood outside the beauty shop, one with a belly as big and round as a beach ball, watching our albino alien parade. If we seemed absurd to me, then we must have been obscene to them. But I don’t know because I didn’t ask. I walked on by, carried along by the current of what I can only call white privilege, gaze fixed forward like this was all perfectly natural.

Before I knew it, we were crossing busy Belvedere Ave. and entering Pimlico Race Course. The transition from poor urban neighborhood to anachronistic race track was stark. The parking lot around the track was completely full and probably had been since well before the gates opened at 10 a.m. Predictably, many of the cars parked here were of the type that I imagine country club legacy members should drive.

Not to deride the tradition, but I couldn’t decide whether I was less at ease among my supposed peers inside the gates or in the neighborhood outside. Lots of time passed between the races, giving patrons time to buy drinks and place bets, but it seemed the real pastime of choice was walking among the seats like teenagers through a mall, with the primary goal being to be seen.The women paid little attention to one another, or at least to my friend and me. Leathery men wearing jaunty hats and smoking cigars looked pleased with themselves and eyed the many well-bred rear ends around them. Young men in seersucker suits and bow ties noticed with more than the usual disdain that my hair was pink and my legs were unshaven.

Drunk people dressed like they’d just left church patrolled the grandstand. Women in high heels clung haphazardly to the handrails, drifting around turns like sloppy stiletto dragsters. Meanwhile, my own chances of getting drunk wilted at the cost of the beverages: $9 for something called a Black Eyed Susan, which purported to consist of whiskey, triple sec, and vodka but tasted like watered down iced tea.

The races were fascinating to me in as much as I had never seen a horse race before. Wearing my big floppy hat, cheap as it was, was fun. And though I don’t like betting in general, putting $10 on a couple of horses added some excitement to the main event. Based on the odds listed in the day’s program, my husband picked Bodemeister to win and I’ll Have Another to place.

The Preakness itself was magnificent yet short like sex with my high school boyfriend. I hoped to hear the thunder of the horses’ hooves, but instead all I heard was the crowd cheering and the drunk guy behind me shouting, “Go, you sonofabitch!” For a moment, it looked like my husband’s picks were dead on, but I’ll Have Another pulled through at the last second.  I was grinning, clapping and “wow”ing with the rest of the crowd as the horses crossed the finish line.

Still, all the charm of Charm City, even decked out with horses and hats, doesn’t change the fact that I don’t like crowds. Standing in line to cash out our three-dollar winnings was the last of what I could take. Walking back to the car, we passed a small cluster of young men dressed in baggy white pants, loose T-shirts and all wearing their hair in cornrows. A block further was a trio of furious frat boys who had parked two slots away from us and had their car stolen. There was no sign of the cops who had been directing traffic earlier in the day. The neighbors had dispersed, and none were looking our way. All that remained was a mess of glass on the pavement, shimmering with the sea green of a new, untinted window in the late afternoon sun.

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