Deserted: City’s Pigtown neighborhood mourns, mobilizes after losing its only supermarket

Raymond Carr stared at the refrigerated display inside a dollar store in Baltimore’s Pigtown neighborhood. The shelves behind the glass doors were nearly bare that afternoon in late December, save for a handful of offerings, including a lonely bag of frozen mixed vegetables, and a few blocks of cheese, cartons of eggs and containers of turkey breast lunch meat. Carr flagged down a Family Dollar employee. “Do you have milk?” the 67-year-old retired Army veteran asked. “If it’s not there, we don’t have it,” the employee answered. That day, Carr left the dollar store with a meager grocery haul: peanut butter crackers, orange juice and a box of cereal. No milk.