BALTIMORE - Pete Peterson walks to work. When he has too much to carry, he pushes along the tools of his trade -- a shovel, a sledgehammer -- in a large metal shopping cart.

In blue pants and a matching jacket, faded in the rectangular spots where patches used to be, he seems to know everyone in Highlandtown, where he lives in a sparsely furnished rowhouse. Word of mouth is how he gets his work.

BALTIMORE - Two girls are first onto the playground. They stand underneath a slide, gossiping and taking pictures of each other on a pink cell phone.

Next appear three boys, two of whom wrestle each other over and under and around the equipment while the third acts as a referee, shouting, "One! Two! Three!"

BALTIMORE - Charles Village is a Baltimore neighborhood of contrasts. Artists share blocks with white-collar professionals. Johns Hopkins University students live down the street from the working poor.

And in the midst of a recession, a new restaurant, Terra Cafe on East 25th Street, is thriving. Just two doors away, Graphic Imaging, a small family-owned printing company, may not survive.

BALTIMORE - Baltimore's art institutions have had to cut their budgets, but they're hoping their audiences won't notice.

"You don't want to jeopardize the visitor experience," said Nancy Hinds, vice president of public affairs at the Baltimore Convention and Visitors Association, "because the ramifications of that will be felt for years."

BALTIMORE - As Baltimore's unemployment rate rose, many people headed to the library.

Since the onset of the recession, attendance at the Enoch Pratt Free Library's career center classes has jumped 92 percent.

BALTIMORE - Four hundred perennials aren't cheap and they're not likely to come from any city budget, but Latrobe Park in Locust Point is filled with them.

In a time of recession, to pay for its "dream of year-round color" in the park's landscape, members of the community's beautification committee didn't solicit their city councilman. Instead, they looked to their neighbors, who in turn donated money, manpower and time to organize, write grant requests and perform feats of manual labor.

BALTIMORE - The recession that has weakened nonprofits around the country has actually been a help to Vehicles for Change.

Headquartered in Halethorpe, Vehicles for Change takes unwanted vehicles, repairs them and sells them cheap to low-income families around Maryland, the District and Virginia.

BALTIMORE - It's 10 o'clock on a warm Friday morning in April as nearly 100 hungry people form a long, winding line at the dining room entrance of Our Daily Bread.

Some have been there since 9. In the shadow of the large brick building, they chat or just stand in line and wait.

BALTIMORE - Beneath the overhang of a three-bedroom house on Baltimore's East Belvedere Avenue, Vinnie Quayle is keeping out of a ruthless rainstorm. He turns a key into the hefty metal lock hanging from the doorknob and enters the home.

It's empty inside, but for the kitchen cabinets and some off-white carpets. In the 40 years Quayle has been executive director of St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center, he has fixed up many homes like this one. Motioning toward empty floor space in the kitchen, he says this is where the refrigerator will go.

BALTIMORE - For many residents, Belair-Edison is less like a city neighborhood and more like a small town.

Just a couple of blocks from the blue-light police cameras on Belair Road in Northeast Baltimore are houses with porches and front lawns, and trees that line the streets.

BALTIMORE - Harborplace's owners are bankrupt. The opera company is closed. Foreclosure filings are up, as is unemployment. Unsold cargo is stacked at the ports. The Orioles have had to roll out their own stimulus plan. Trash will be collected less often, swimming pools will close, and in the city's parks, the grass will grow a quarter-inch longer.

This is Baltimore in recession.