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march 2 0 1 2 no. 9 3
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2012 McDonogh SuMMer PrograMS Day caMPS red Feather for children turning 4 prior to June 18, 2012 Session 1: June 18 to July 6; Session 2: July 9 to July 27 A full-day program designed to give our youngest campers a full day of fun and new experiences red eagle for boys and girls 5 to 8 entering first grade and up in fall 2012 Session 1: June 18 to July 6; Session 2: July 9 to July 27 Arts and crafts, swimming, horsemanship, and much more McDonogh Senior camp for boys and girls 9 to 12 Session 1: June 18 to July 6; Session 2: July 9 to July 27 All the fun of Red Eagle plus weekly field trips outdoor adventure camp for boys and girls 10 to 14 Session 1: June 18 to July 6; Session 2: July 9 to July 27 Rock-climbing, high and low ropes course, orienteering, plus weekly watersports and environmental studies The all Sports camp for boys and girls 8 to 13 Session 1: June 18 to July 6; Session 2: July 9 to July 27 Swimming, basketball, baseball, lacrosse, soccer, and more Teen camp for boys and girls 13 to 15 SoLD ouT! Session 1: June 18 to July 6; Session 2: July 9 to July 27 Designed by teens for teens, activities include hiking, scavenger hunts, tubing, sailing and an overnight adventure counselor-in-Training Program for boys and girls 14 to 16 Session 1: June 18 to July 6; Session 2: July 9 to July 27 An introduction to the responsibilities of a counselor’s job Fun on the run camp for boys and girls 11 to 14 July 9 to July 13 Water activities, bowling, a day at Hershey Park, and more
waTer caMPS ultimate watersports for boys and girls 9 to 15 Weekly: June 18 to July 27 Wind surfing, sea kayaking, and sailing chesapeake expeditions for boys and girls 10 to 14 Weekly: June 18 to July 27 Exploration of the various Chesapeake Bay eco-systems by kayak Baltimore Sailing camp for boys and girls 11 to 14 July 16 to July 27 Wind surfing, sea kayaking, and sailing
arTS PrograMS young actors Theatre for boys and girls 10 to 16 June 18 to July 17 Training in all aspects of musical theatre. Call 410-998-3526 for auditions young Filmmakers camp for boys and girls 10 to 14 Session 1: June 18 to July 6; Session 2: July 9 to July 27 Scriptwriting, filming, and computer editing for the beginning filmmaker Visual arts camp for boys and girls 9 to 13 June 18 to July 6 Drawing, painting, sculpting advanced art Techniques: Drawing for boys and girls 9 to 14 July 16 to July 20 Sketching, drawing, and image manipulation advanced art Techniques: Painting for boys and girls 9 to 14 July 23 to July 27 Painting techniques and color theory circus camp Stars! for boys and girls 7 to 15 Session 1: June 25 to June 29; Session 2: July 2 to July 6; Session 3: July 9 to July 13 Juggling, spinning plates, tight-wire walking, and clowning McDonogh rock Shop for boys and girls 9 to 15 Session 1: July 2 to July 13; Session 2: July 16 to July 27 Instrument instruction and performance to composition and studio recording for the aspiring musician
acaDeMic PrograMS american immersion at McDonogh for boys and girls 10 to 17 Session 1: June 17 to June 30; Session 2: July 1 to July 14; Session 3: July 15 to July 28 A blend of academics, cultural interactions, language instruction, travel experiences, summer activities, and total American culture and English language immersion. This is an overnight program.
icamp™ for boys and girls 7 to 13 Weekly: June 18 to July 27 Theme-based adventures chosen by the camper McDonogh chess camp for boys and girls 5 to 12 Session 1: June 18 to June 22; Session 2: June 25 to June 29; Session 3: July 2 to July 6 Strategies and tactics taught by a national chess master college application workshop for rising seniors July 30 to August 2 Students will create a resume, complete the Common Application, and craft an essay.
SPorTS cLinicS coeD SPorTS cLinicS The McDonogh Tennis Program for boys and girls 7 to 14 Weekly: June 18 to July 27 Instructional tennis program for boys and girls Basics & Beyond golf camp for boys and girls 8 to 15 Weekly: June 18 to July 27 Instructional golf program for boys and girls McDonogh competitive Swim camp for boys and girls 9 to 15 Session 1: June 18 to June 22; Session 2: June 25 to June 29 Designed for team swimmers McDonogh international Soccer School: Kinderkick camp for boys and girls 4 to 6 June 18 to June 22 Half-day soccer camp for beginners McDonogh Junior eagles Basketball camp for boys and girls 5 to 8 June 18 to June 22 Half-day basketball camp for beginners McDonogh international Soccer School: Pipeline Soccer club individual and Team camp for boys and girls 8 to 15 June 25 to June 29 Designed to train all club- and travel-level players for the 2012-2013 season McDonogh Squash and Badminton camp for boys and girls 9 to 15 Session 1: June 18 to June 22; Session 2: July 25 to July 29 General skills camp for players of all levels
BoyS SPorTS cLinicS
McDonogh elite Baseball camp for boys 9 to 12 July 9 to July 13 Baseball camp for experienced players rising Star Boys Basketball camp for boys 8 to 15 Session 1: July 9 to July 13; Session 2: July 16 to July 20; Session 3: July 23 to July 27 Designed for the novice or advanced player McDonogh international Soccer School: goalkeeper camp for boys 10 to 16 July 16 to July 20 Focused instruction for goalkeepers McDonogh international Soccer School: Striker camp for boys 10 to 16 July 16 to July 20 Focused instruction for goal-scorers McDonogh international Soccer School: Defender camp for boys 10 to 16 July 16 to July 20 Focused instruction for defenders McDonogh international Soccer School: advanced Skills Program for boys 9 to 14 July 23 to July 27 Tactical training and conditioning for both field players and goalies
girLS SPorTS cLinicS McDonogh international Soccer School: general Skills camp for girls 6 to 14 June 18 to June 22 Introduction to the world of international soccer McDonogh international Soccer School: advanced Program for girls 9 to 16 June 18 to June 22 Tactical training and conditioning for both field players and goalies McDonogh girls Basketball camp for girls 8 to 15 June 18 to June 22 Basketball instruction for beginner to advanced players McDonogh girls Lacrosse camp for girls 6 to 14 June 25 to June 29 Program for beginner to intermediate players eagle Volleyball camp for girls 10 to 17 July 2 to July 6 Volleyball camp for beginner to intermediate players
McDonogh Baseball School for boys 7 to 14 June 18 to July 6 Baseball camp for all ability levels
McDonogh Field hockey camp for girls 8 to 15 July 9 to July 13 Program for beginner to intermediate players
Kids Day Lacrosse camp for boys 6 to 10 June 18 to June 22 Half-day lacrosse camp for beginners
oVernighT SPorTS caMPS
McDonogh Lacrosse academy for boys 7 to 14 June 18 to June 22 Boys lacrosse program, beginner to advanced
Between the Pipes Lacrosse growing goalies camp for girls entering grades 4 to 9 June 17 to June 19 Instruction for the beginner and intermediate level goalkeeper
Matt Stover Kicking camp for boys 8 to 18 June 24 One-day placekicking camp taught by Matt Stover of the NFL
rising elite girls Lacrosse camp for girls entering grades 2 to 6 June 18 to June 20 Designed for the advanced athlete who seeks to take her game to the next level
McDonogh Baseball School: Pitching camp for boys 7 to 14 June 25 to June 29 Designed to cover various pitching drills and techniques in depth
Between the Pipes Lacrosse Super Savers camp for girls entering grades 9 to 12 June 19 to June 21 Ideal for the elite goalkeeper preparing for the college game
McDonogh Baseball School: Batting camp for boys 7 to 14 July 2 to July 6 Hitting clinic featuring live and machine pitching and the hitting tee Mighty Mites novice wrestling camp for boys 5 to 8 June 25 to June 29 Half-day wrestling camp for beginners Maryland Future champs wrestling camp for boys 7 to 17 June 25 to June 29 Designed to teach beginning and advanced techniques McDonogh Football camp for boys 6 to 14 Session 1: July 2 to July 6; Session 2: July 23 to July 27 Non-contact football camp for all kinds of players McDonogh evening Lacrosse camp for boys 5 to 13 July 9 to July 12 Emphasis on fundamentals for beginner and intermediate players
McDonogh international Soccer School: Pre-Season Prep for boys and girls 10 to 18 July 29 to August 1 Preparing the serious soccer player for the upcoming season McDonogh international Soccer School: Striker camp for boys and girls 10 to 18 July 29 to August 1 Preparing the serious goal scorer for the upcoming season McDonogh international Soccer School: Defender camp for boys and girls 10 to 18 July 29 to August 1 Preparing the serious defender for the upcoming season McDonogh international Soccer School: goalkeeper camp for boys and girls 10 to 18 July 29 to August 1 Preparing the serious goalkeeper for the upcoming season
McDonogh international Soccer School: general Skills camp for boys 6 to 14 July 9 to July 13 Introduction to the world of international soccer
TranSPorTaTion & Lunch provided for select programs at McDonogh. BeFore & aFTercare available to campers who attend Red Feather, Red Eagle, Senior Camp, All Sports Camp, Teen Camp, and Outdoor Adventure Camp. MuLTiPLe SiBLing DiScounT offered to campers’ families participating in any of the following camps: Red Feather, Red Eagle, Senior Camp, All Sports Camp, Outdoor Adventure Camp, Teen Camp, Counselor-in-Training Program, Young Actors Theatre, Visual Arts Camp, Young Filmmakers Camp, McDonogh Tennis Camp, McDonogh International Soccer Schools, and McDonogh Baseball Schools. For More inForMaTion caLL 410-998-3519.
McDonogh School, owings Mills, Maryland 21117-0380 | www.mcdonogh.org | summer@mcdonogh.org | 410-998-3519 Urbanite 1-31.indd 1
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6  march 2012  www.urbanitebaltimore.com
this month
#93 March 2012
features 30
about the cover: Photos by J.M. Giordano Shot at the Baltimore Node hackerspace collective in Station North’s Load of Fun building, the pictures on this month’s cover—Urbanite’s annual Change Makers issue—were taken as Node’s MakerBot Industries' “Thing-O-Matic” literally created the word “CHANGE” in block fashion from white plastic coil. Staff photographer Joe Giordano took between 60 and 75 photos as the kit-assembled 3D printer whirled away, and Bradley Hamblin, Urbanite’s art director, assembled the pics and designed the layout. “We wanted to play with the idea of innovation and technology, but also very much in a D.I.Y. way,” Hamblin says. “I think there’s a lot of people working in that space in Baltimore, and in that way it ties in with our Change Makers.”
departments 33
9
keynote The Biographer
11
interview by Ron Cassie
17
13
In a new book, Goucher College professor Jean H. Baker profiles Margaret Sanger, who coined the phrase "birth control" while fighting for the legalization of contraception.
19 ——
baltimore observed
23
Slow Out of the Gate
by Brennen Jensen Alley Gating offered hope for the city's blighted backstreets. But the effort faces bureaucratic challenges.
33
25 Update 27 Flowering of Station North 29 Urbanite Project
feature Retooling the City
——
by Ron Cassie, Lionel Foster, Rebecca Messner, Martha Thomas, and Andrew Zaleski
Seven people who are creating change in Baltimore.
Editor’s Note What You’re Saying What You’re Writing Don’t Miss The Goods
poetry
47 51
Window on Early March
by Gregg Mosson
—— space
51
Into the Wild
by Andrew Zaleski A real-estate mogul gives a county cottage a modern facelift with an organic touch.
real estate
41
——
The City that Rents?
food + drink 55
by Brennen Jensen
Buy, Sell, Prawn
by Baynard Woods At the Prawn Shop, a group of enterprising environmentalists hope to harness warehouse aquaponics to change the future of urban farming.
More folks in Baltimore have landlords than mortgages. A passing byproduct of the housing bubble, or the new "un-ownership society" driven by Gen Y?
59 Dining Reviews 61 Wine & Spirits
—— 55
web extras
more online at www.urbanitebaltimore.com
on the air
Urbanite on The Marc Steiner Show, WEAA 88.9 FM March 1: Urbanite Project 2012: Healthy Food Challenge March 14: Change Makers Gardnel Carter and Lester Spence March 22: Shrimp farming at Hampden's Prawn Shop March 28: Margaret Sanger biographer Jean Baker
arts + culture 63
Sister Cities
by John Barry Through festivals and cultural exchanges, Baltimore's independent theater scene is finding inspiration and collaboration in post-Soviet Bulgaria.
65 Music 67 Theater 67 Literature
—— 69 The Scene —— 74 Eye to Eye Urbanite #93 march 2012 7
issue 93: march 2012 publisher Tracy Ward Tracy@urbanitebaltimore.com general manager Jean Meconi Jean@urbanitebaltimore.com editor-in-chief Ron Cassie Ron@urbanitebaltimore.com assistant editor Rebecca Messner Rebecca@urbanitebaltimore.com digital media editor Andrew Zaleski Andrew@urbanitebaltimore.com editor-at-large David Dudley David@urbanitebaltimore.com online editors food/drink: Tracey Middlekauff Tracey@urbanitebaltimore.com arts/culture: Cara Ober Cara@urbanitebaltimore.com, Baynard Woods Baynard@urbanitebaltimore.com proofreader Marianne Amoss contributing writers Michael Anft, Scott Carlson, Charles Cohen, Michael Corbin, Heather Dewar, Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson, Mat Edelson, Lionel Foster, Brennen Jensen, Michelle Gienow, Clinton Macsherry, Richard O’Mara, Robin T. Reid, Andrew Reiner, Martha Thomas, Baynard Woods, Michael Yockel, Mary K. Zajac editorial interns Krishana Davis, Anissa Elmerraji, Michael Nakan art director Bradley Hamblin Bradley@urbanitebaltimore.com production manager Belle Gossett Belle@urbanitebaltimore.com graphic designer Kristian Bjørnard
real
staff photographer J.M. Giordano Joe@urbanitebaltimore.com production interns Sarah Thrower, Wen Xiong video intern Lindsay Bottos-Sewell senior account executives Catherine Bowen Catherine@urbanitebaltimore.com Freda Ferguson Freda@urbanitebaltimore.com Susan R. Levy Susan@urbanitebaltimore.com
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account executive Natalie Richardson Natalie@urbanitebaltimore.com sales marketing associate Erin Albright Erin@urbanitebaltimore.com bookkeeper/distribution coordinator Michelle Miller Michelle@urbanitebaltimore.com creative director emeritus Alex Castro founder Laurel Harris Durenberger — Advertising/Editorial/Business Offices 2002 Clipper Park Road, Fourth Floor, Baltimore, md 21211 Phone: 410-243-2050; Fax: 410-243-2115 www.urbanitebaltimore.com Editorial inquiries: Send queries to editor@urbanitebaltimore.com (no phone calls, please). The magazine is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork. Urbanite does not necessarily share the opinions of its authors. To subscribe or obtain assistance with a current subscription, call 410-243-2050. Subscription price: $18 per year. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission by Urbanite is prohibited. Copyright 2012, Urbanite llc. All rights reserved. Urbanite (issn 1556-8105) is a free publication distributed widely in the Baltimore metropolitan area. To suggest a drop location for the magazine, please contact us at 410-243-2050. Postmaster: Send address changes to Urbanite Subscriptions, 2002 Clipper Park Road, Fourth Floor, Baltimore, md 21211. Urbanite is a certified Minority Business Enterprise.
bottom Photo by Patricia Bennett; middle AND Ron Cassie PHOTOS by Sarah Thrower; Top photo by Yianni Mathioudakis
contributors
editor’s note
Marianne Amoss wrote this month's Arts/Culture story about the Lit Show, a combo literary reading and variety show taking place this month at the Creative Alliance. "The Lit Show brings the best of several worlds together: writing, music, and comedy," she says. "And because it's live, anything could happen. It sounds like a lot of fun." Formerly Urbanite's managing editor, Amoss now works as a content strategist for local Web design company Fastspot; she maintains her Urbanite connection through proofreading every issue. In her spare time she serves on the board of D Center Baltimore, a group dedicated to encouraging and improving design in Baltimore.
Ron Cassie
Lindsay Bottos-Sewell got her start taking photos with Barbie disposable cameras in her hometown of Cape Canaveral, Florida. But her foray into videography didn’t begin in earnest until last year, when she began taking classes in both photography and video at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Bottos-Sewell has been doing video work for Urbanite since September; this month she filmed interviews with all seven Change Makers. “It was cool learning about all these different people doing stuff I didn’t even know existed,” she says. “Baltimore’s such a diverse place.”
Gregg Mosson is the author of two books of poetry, Season of Flowers and Dust (Goose River, 2007) and Questions of Fire (Plain View, 2009).His poetry has appeared in Smartish Pace, The Potomac Review, and Unsplendid. He earned an MA from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars and serves as staff poetry editor at The Baltimore Review. "I often get my inspiration from looking, prolonged looking,” Mosson says. “The window poem comes from the view out my window when I lived on 27th and St. Paul, in Charles Village, and watched winter become spring."
in a conversation leading up to our annual Change Makers issue this month, publisher Tracy Ward brought up the metaphor of a trim tab—the ability of a seemingly minor change to create much broader results. Literally speaking, a trim tab is a small part on the edge of the rudder of a ship or plane that, when slightly adjusted, begins a much broader shift in direction. The metaphor isn’t new, exactly. Engineer/geodesic dome inventor/practical philosopher Buckminster Fuller gets credit for bringing the trim tab metaphor into general use in the mid-1970s. In fact, it’s on his headstone, which reads, “CALL ME TRIMTAB, Bucky.” In an old Playboy interview (I read the articles!), Fuller said he believed an individual could be “a miniature rudder,” a trim tab, and that it was possible for an individual watching a society that “thinks it’s going right by you” to put their foot out and turn the “whole ship of state.” Well, I doubt any of our Change Makers believe that they are about to turn the “whole ship of state,” but they are all have put their foot in the ground to make a certain course correction. Whether in education, violence prevention, the arts, business, or environmental activism, our Change Makers—not giving away any identities here—are already making a difference. We’ll have to wait and see about any long-range paradigm shifts from their work—but it’s not hard to imagine the larger ripples emanating from better-trained city teachers, the start of a grassroots environmental organization in a steel town community, or a street-level program aimed at saving youth from prison or death. Our Change Makers profiles begin on page 33, accompanied by terrific portraits conceived and shot by our staff photographer, Joe Giordano. Also this month, we launch our annual Urbanite Project. Last year, we sought ideas about how best to mitigate construction of the proposed Red Line and turn the project into opportunity to bring communities on the line together. We offered $10,000 in prize money and received proposals from all over the world. This year, we’re also offering $10,000 in prize money, courtesy of our partners, the Baltimore City Health Department, the Maryland Department of Agriculture, and United Way of Central Maryland, as we put out a call for creative and innovative ideas to eliminate barriers to affordable, healthy eating in Baltimore’s food deserts. Assistant Editor Rebecca Messner explains this year’s Urbanite Project 2012: Healthy Food Challenge on page 29, with entry details online at www.urbaniteproject.com. Elsewhere, in “Baltimore Observed,” Brennen Jensen explores the city’s slowmoving alley-gating initiative (p. 23), and Rafael Alvarez profiles the owner for the past thirty years of Pearson’s Florist in Station North (p. 27). Vander Pearson, whose iconic store received some notoriety in The Wire, recounts his story and recent changes at the corner of North Charles Street and North Avenue. In “Food and Drink,” regular contributor Baynard Woods takes a look at urban shrimp farming in Hampden, at, wait for it … the Prawn Shop (p. 55). In “Arts and Culture,” John Barry chronicles his trip to Baltimore’s sister city in the theater arts, Sofia, Bulgaria, with local playwright Lola Pierson, a founder of UnSaddest Factory Theatre, and Nathan Cooper, currently artistic director of Baltimore’s Single Carrot Theatre (p. 65). Also in Arts and Culture, former Urbanite editor Marianne Amoss previews the Lit Show, an upcoming late-night style talk show at the Creative Alliance sans celebrity rear-end smooching (p. 67). It’s part literary reading, part comedy, part live music, bundled together with giveaways, a Mystery Guest appearance, and yes, Stupid Human Tricks. Lots to look forward this month in Urbanite, and lots of inspiration, too, from our Change Makers. Don’t forget, March 20 is the first day of spring—the season when life begins anew. It’s a good time to start a meaningful project. Plant a seed. Or a foot in the ground, as Buckminster Fuller would say.
Coming next month
Maryland in 20 years The next New Jersey?
Urbanite #93 march 2012 9
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what you’re saying
WIT H RAFAEL ALVARE Z PS · ON THE STR EET OF LIFE · COL LEG E HOO DUS TIN WON G: CIR CLE S no. 9 2 febru ary 2 0 1 2
Street. And as a note referencing other credit unions, 1st Alliance Federal Credit Union was merged IN G into Atlantic Financial FCU on NoN I K WAL ONE vember 1, 2011. … We are the only specific employer/organization SOMES SHOES believing we provide more direct, ELSE’ personalized service to employees of affiliated companies and organizations rather than being open to the general public. And while that might indicate we only service small employer groups or organizations, I would mention that included in the 140 or so that we do serve, [are] Verizon, MedStar Health, DLA Piper, Transamerica, the Maryland Chamber of Commerce, and LOC AVO RE BAN KING ey The Move-Your-Mon the Better Business Bureau. movement comes to Baltimore. One of our newer groups is also SmartCEO magazine. … In addition to the two branches mentioned, we offer over 4,400 branches and 30,000 free ATM (including 7 Eleven and WAWA stores) coast to coast, Internet access, telephone transactions Easy Money (including cell and remote deposit) and Call Re: “Small Enough to Care,” Feb. ’12, Centers. about people moving their money into community banks and credit unions: —Richard T. Webb, President & CEO of Atlantic Finan-
(1974). So stop telling the story of Coppin by one game. —Tank Barnes
Heaven, In a Biscuit Re: “The Biscuit Effect,” Feb. ’12, about Blacksauce Kitchen’s growing popularity in Baltimore: i love that those in-the-know in Charm City have their eyes on Blacksauce Kitchen. Mose is a thoughtful dude making amazing food for people who like to eat. I can’t think of a better combination. I’m thrilled that Blacksauce is taking off and look forward to my next biscuit sandwich! —Shaunielle A. McDonald
the entire time I read this article the song “Ball and Biscuit” from White Stripes played in my head. Now, I am fairly certain it will be on repeat until I get down to Waverly to try Mose’s grub. And I can’t hardly wait. —Grubarazzi
i’ve driven three hours for those biscuits ... —@annemcbride
cial Federal Credit Union
we left the local bank that was built for you and decided to go with a local credit union. Less fees, more appealing programs and … stability. I really like the founder of the bank we left, as he represents the best of what hard work and vision can do for someone. The real estate market changed all that ... and we felt the need to change. —John Wynn
i love using my credit union. They provide all of the great online banking I need, and they offer great APRs and benefits to members. They even make sure that my checks don’t bounce! I’ve noticed that they’ll wait to clear a big payment until my auto-deposit comes in, which means no big fees. —Tammy Mayer
enjoyed your article and thought it provided a fair reference to credit unions, except in your listing of Baltimore-area credit unions, which didn’t include us? We’re headquartered in Hunt Valley, but have an Inner Harbor branch at 1 East Pratt
The “All-Star” Game? Re: “Jumping Through Hoops,” Feb. ’12, about how smaller colleges’ success in basketball enhances a university’s public profile: coppin state’s national moment wasn’t against South Carolina, nor was Morgan State’s making the NCAA playoffs. The nation was aware of these schools a long time ago (Marvin Webster and Joe Pace). The difference is now a small black college is a paid victory for large universities, so occasionally when they win it’s a big deal. When Coppin and Morgan had 7-footers and Division I transfers at all skilled positions, Maryland and all the rest would not play them. Coppin, along with Kentucky State and Tennessee State, are HBUs that are NAIA national champs, not early exits from the NCAAs. Most of the school’s records are held by pre-Fang [Mitchell] players who were great high school players from all over the country. The school was CHOPPIN before John Bates arrived, and it’s been COPPIN ever since
Try This On Re: “Walking in Someone Else’s Shoes,” Feb. ’12, about developing empathy among people can make the city a more cooperative and understanding place: your cover story on empathy & the reasons we may be struggling to flex our empathetic muscles as a society was AWESOME -thank u! —@annamariefinley
Local Lyricism Re: “Oracle of East Baltimore,” Feb. ’12, a profile of East Baltimore poet Afaa Michael Weaver: a must read: Rafael Alvarez on Afaa Michael Weaver, the ‘black Walt Whitman of our age’, in @UrbaniteMD —@tim_singleton
Join the conversation. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter (@UrbaniteMD). E-mail us at mail@urbanitebaltimore.com or send your letter to Mail, Urbanite, 2002 Clipper Park Road, Fourth Floor, Baltimore, MD 21211. Please include your name, address, and daytime phone number. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Urbanite #93 march 2012 11
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what you’re writing living without
photo by J.M. Giordano
it seems to get more difficult as the years go by—living without my daughter. She passed away almost eight years ago. Time might heal some things, but never the pain of losing a child. Days pass into years. You (mentally) acknowledge the birthday, the holidays, and the dreaded Mother’s Day. But she is not here. I am without. And I feel out of it. Example: going shopping for cards—you can’t but see the daughter cards, to and from. I will never receive or buy cards like that again. Seeing her friends over the years with their mothers (my peers), or even hearing conversations that begin with “My mom and I” or “My daughter and I,” really is an empty reality check. It hasn’t gotten easier. It’s harder. Maybe because I am older now and realize my mother lived to be 90 and she had her daughter. I am without mine. This is out of order. My daughter should be the one to experience living without.
She won’t be here to take care of me and for me to see her be the mother to my grandchildren. Living without has been a heartbreaker. But I have learned to be strong and survive by being with the friends and family I have and appreciating what I live with—not what I live without. —Name withheld
june 7. it’s a fine day. Still early, cool, sun low in the sky. A gentle breeze blowing in off the harbor. For me, though, it’s the day I become homeless. No more car, no paychecks, no keys. No bills. No cable. No money for food or shelter. It’s all gone. I’m waiting, with what’s left over, on a corner in lower Fells. My mother is coming down. Brother and sister too. Bringing a few things I need. God bless them.
I had known for a month that I was to be evicted on the 7th. I am prepared. I know where to go for lunch. Dinner will be a hike, about a mile for some Salvation Army chow. Hot dogs, maybe some chicken. I’ve checked out the missions, found a decent one. In by 3 p.m., out by 6 a.m. What do I do all day? I wonder. I can’t stay with family. My mother lives in a retirement community, and it has restrictions. My brother is way south, my sister has no room. They have already done all they can. It’s OK. Has to be. I’ve decided to stay in the city. I lost my life in Fells Point. If I can get it back, it will be here. Reconnect to what works, before the long, slow self-destruction. My friends know of my situation. I thought some might step up. Offer support or assistance. No one did. I wonder why. I am a good friend. Have been all my life. Going on six decades. I went to weddings, celebrated births, christenings, First Commu-
Urbanite #93 march 2012 13
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what you’re writing nions. I am a godfather several times over. Held parties, went to parties, poker, fireworks. What happened? These are my thoughts as I stand alone on Broadway at Bank. I’ll head to the mission in eight hours or so. My first night after my first day homeless. I guess I’ll just drift about, staying near the food. I know tomorrow will look like today. One foot in front of the other, walking around as I wait for the mission to open. I can see my mother’s car coming. My brother driving, my sister in the back. Mom’s wiping her eyes … It begins. —Name withheld
it’s hard to believe Dad’s been gone almost twenty years. For forty-six years the McSweeneys were a unit, and then one was gone. A kind, gentle man, he guided his family, not with an iron fist, but with love and humor. We missed him enormously and slowly learned to live without. A few years later, Mom received the dreaded diagnosis. Like Daddy, she put up a courageous fight—a fight that left me in awe of her strength and courage. When she passed away in 2000 my brother and I realized we must handle our world as adults, because, when no one was looking, that’s what we had become. We understood, or so we thought, the true meaning of living without. It took a year of weekends and days off to sort through our family home. We donated, gave away, or meshed our growing-up home into our adult homes. As a final tribute, we held a barbeque with family and friends to celebrate that home. My brother, late as usual, blamed it on an upset stomach. Additional discomfort took him to our family physician, Dr. Aranaga, the next morning. Two days later my brother was in surgery for stage four colon cancer. Like our parents, he put up a valiant fight, but the insidious disease was too progressive, and Frannie passed away in February of 2002 just shy of his forty-eighth birthday.
A single woman, I have no immediate family to share stories of the silly chapters of growing up. Tales of the ’60s, a time we were coming of age, stay alive only in my head. For the first time in my 65 years I understand loneliness. My brother left me an incredibly strong, caring woman I call sister and a niece who inherited his gentle, humanitarian personality. Her brother, my nephew, inherited his father’s quirky sense of humor. Sometimes I bore them with repeated stories. I don’t mean to repeat them; I simply have a need not to leave anything out. It’s important for me to share their father’s history with them. The autoimmune disease I have is controllable and will not deter a long life, but the reality is one day they will live without the keeper of the stories. I do not understand why I am the last one standing. I do understand living without. —Melody McSweeney is 65 years old and about to graduate with a degree in fine arts. She has been previously published in I Love Cats magazine and also wrote Open Year ’Round: An Insider’s Guide to Ocean City, MD.
some days, the only way that I can go to sleep without you is by curling up on the far side of the bed and pretending that you will be there in an hour or two. I pull the covers up and lie down carefully under the pretense of leaving room. The little lie—a pathetic pretense, really—usually works, and I settle myself, content. We are nearly halfway through a four-year run of long distance. In the beginning, you made the rule that we would not talk about it in terms of years. Instead, we talk about the separation in terms of how long it will be until we see each other next—one month, two weeks, eight weeks. I use those terms out loud, and it helps, but I can’t fool my brain as easily with this as I can about you coming to bed soon when I’m already tired. I know exactly how much time is left until we’ll live in the same place for longer than a week or two.
Learning to live without you is a treacherous, tenuous thing, where success is at once a victory and a failure. When I become inured to missing you, I have lost you. At the same time, I cannot live constantly with the full weight of your absence. And so I live two half-lives: I am the single-girl, living alone in my Baltimore rowhouse, walking up the hill to campus every day propelled by an updraft of independence and determination. And I am your-girl, my heart half in New England, where you ride your bike around town in your untucked flannel shirts, your left pant leg rolled up and forgotten; I am listening for the sound of the kickstand in the driveway that means that you’ve come home. —Meg Adams has conducted long distance relationships from boats, small Mexican villages, helicopter refueling stations, South Pole Station, and now Baltimore. She is a writer and nursing student at Johns Hopkins University.
“What You’re Writing” is the place for creative nonfiction from our readers. Each month we pick a topic. Use the topic as a springboard into your own life and send us a true story inspired by that month’s theme. Only previously unpublished, nonfiction submissions that include contact information can be considered. We reserve the right to edit heavily for space and clarity, but we will give you the opportunity to review the edits. You may submit under “name withheld” to keep your essay anonymous, but you do need to let us know how to contact you. If you’ve already changed the names of the people involved, please let us know. Only one submission per topic, please. Send your essay to Urbanite, 2002 Clipper Park Road, Fourth Floor, Baltimore, MD 21211, or e-mail it to What YoureWriting@urbanitebaltimore.com. Submissions should be shorter than 400 words. Because of the number of essays we receive, we cannot respond individually to each writer. Please do not send originals; submissions cannot be returned. Topic Deadline Publication Bloom March 12, 2012 May 2012 Riot April 9, 2012 June 2012 Up at Dawn May 14, 2012 July 2012
Urbanite #93 march 2012 15
CHRIS MATTHEWS talks about his new book
Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero
Thursday, March 8, 7:30 p.m. central library • 400 cathedral street baltimore, md 21201 • prattlibrary.org PrattMarchAd2012a.indd 1
16 march 2012 www.urbanitebaltimore.com
1/31/12 1:03 PM
don’t miss images (clockwise from top left): photo by Charles William Bush; photo by Doug Retzler; no photo credit; Courtesy of the BSO; Courtesy of St. Vincent de Paul of Baltimore; no photo credit
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3 March 16, 7–11 P.M.
5 March 24
community/music
GREEN/SUSTAINABLE
community/food/drink
The first of its kind in the United States, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Women of the World (WOW) Festival features sessions like “speed mentoring,” Stoop Storytelling workshops, and talks by local inspiring women. The genre-spanning festival will include a keynote address from NPR’s Peabody Award-winning The Kitchen Sisters (pictured) and a performance by Grammy-award winning folk singer Mary Chapin Carpenter. (Urbanite is a sponsor of this event.)
Don some environmentally friendly attire for a night of dancing, eating, and chatting at the Baltimore Green Works 4th Annual Eco Ball at the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park and Museum. Enjoy cuisine prepared by Stratford University culinary students as they compete against one another with locally grown ingredients. Proceeds will support BGW’s Sustainable Speaker Series, which presents Justin Martin, author of Genius of Place: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted, this April.
Lend a hand to St. Vincent de Paul of Baltimore—one of the oldest charitable organizations in the state—as it raises money for the homeless during its annual fundraiser, Empty Bowls, featuring a soup tasting with more than twenty local concoctions, including butternut squash soup from Pazo and roasted jalapeno and corn chowder from Nacho Mama’s. (Urbanite is a sponsor of this event.)
Day pass $10, students $5; weekend pass $20, students $15 1212 Cathedral St. 410-783-8000 www.bsomusic.org
2 March 3–31 visual Art
Known for the astrological animation she set up in the Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower and her video projections on condemned buildings, Baltimore artist Kelley Bell’s artwork has been—literally—spread throughout the city. Check out her latest exhibition at the Creative Alliance, Eureka! Heavy Light Machinery, which includes “With Immersive Ideal,” a collaboration with D.C. band Beauty Pill. Free 3134 Eastern Ave. 410-276-1651 www.creativealliance.org
$75, $40 students 1417 Thames St. www.baltimoregreenworks.com
4 March 23, 8 P.M. comedy
Made famous by her no-holds-barred redcarpet interviews with celebrities at the Academy Awards (she’s done more than 1,000), Joan Rivers comes to the Hippodrome with a comedy routine about her Hollywood lifestyle, including her winning stint on Donald Trump’s The Celebrity Apprentice. $42–$62 12 N. Eutaw St. 410-837-7400 www.france-merrickpac.com For more events, see the Scene on page 69.
$20 2200 York Rd., Timonium 410-662-0500 www.vincentbaltimore.org
6 March 25–April 30 Film
The Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore presents its 23rd annual William and Irene Weinberg Family Baltimore Jewish Film Festival—a month-long celebration of Jewish culture through eight carefully chosen films. This year, the festival kicks off with Matej Minác’s Nicky’s Family, a documentary that honors Sir Nicholas Winton, who, before World War II, surreptitiously saved the lives of more than six hundred Czech and Slovak refugees. $10 3506 Gwynnbrook Ave., Owings Mills 410-559-2377 www.jcc.org Urbanite #93 march 2012 17
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the goods
what ’s new in style, shopping & beyond
Go Ahead, Judge It
Photos (clockwise from top left): Photo by Pete Albert Photography; photo by j.m. giordano; photo by John Fabrizio
anissa elmerraji Make your e-reader feel more like its paper peers with an M-Edge Accessories (www.medgestore.com) cover featuring vintage cover art from literary gems like The Great Gatsby and Lord of the Flies. Born out of founder Patrick Mish’s love of the Kindle, M-Edge has been crafting sleeves and jackets for e-reader and tablet families like the Nook, Kindle, and iPad since 2006. The Odenton, Maryland-based company sells styles spanning the professional to the practical, including the atomic green, foam SuperShell—an iPad 2 case that can withstand a beating from a 5-year-old. Or, if none of the cases catch your eye, try designing your own with online tool myEdge.
Loud and Clear
krishana davis Where can you buy that green drink you see everyone with at the festival? Where’s that street closure? What’s the best salon in the city? Send a digital shout-out through Bullhorn (www.bullhornmobile.com), a smartphone app that allows you to ask a question and, using GPS, invite people within a 1,500-meter radius of where you’re standing to respond. Founder Aaron Altscher launched the app at the Baltimore Grand Prix, and updates this month to Bullhorn will add social media integration and a voting system so app users can rate the responses they receive.
Cycling in Style
anissa elmerraji “A bike is like a custom-made suit,” says Chris Bishop, owner of Bishop Bikes (www.bishopbikes.com), the Baltimore-based shop where he makes road bikes, cyclocross bikes, track bikes, and randonneuring bikes (to name a few) from scratch. Every element of the bike is picked to suit the rider, says Bishop, who, before building bikes, was a bike messenger for more than sixteen years. Although his bicycles are aesthetically simple, a single bike can command anywhere from 50 to 120 hours of work. But the work pays off: Last year, one of Bishop’s creations won “Best Steel Frame” at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show.
Urbanite #93 march 2012 19
Visit a local greenhouse or nursery today &
enjoy flowers all summer long
you’re invited to
C A S E Y
CARES F O U N DAT I O N
All That Jazz A gAlA to benefit the CAsey CAres foundAtion Saturday, March 24, 2012 6:00pm to 11:30pm B&O Railroad Museum Baltimore, MD
To find one near you, go to
www.marylandsbest.net The 2012
Proud sponsor of Urbanite www.urbaniteproject.com P r o j e c T 20 march 2012 www.urbanitebaltimore.com
Call 443-568-0064 or visit www.CaseyCares.org for tickets
the goods
Golden Oldies
krishana davis
Photos (clockwise from top left): photo by sarah Thrower; courtesy of Sameeha Bricklemyer/BeerGivr; photo by Scott Lintz
Misha Gilkis’s affinity for jewelry is hereditary—his father repaired watches in Russia. After twenty years of manufacturing jewelry for various stores, Gilkis started Misha & Co. (10751 Falls Rd., Suite #119, Lutherville; 443-275-1321; www.mishaandco.com), a custom design and jewelry manufacturing company in Greenspring Station. Crafting both traditional and contemporary pieces, Misha & Co. melts down customers’ old jewelry into new pieces, replacing the stones as necessary. Gilkis’s group fashions rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and even gold and silver baby spoons.
Beer me
andrew zaleski How many times have you offered to buy a friend a beer, only to “forget” months later? The jig is up thanks to BeerGivr (www.beergivr.com), a startup that leverages smartphone technology to deliver beer to friends. In three steps, BeerGivr sends drinking buddies a QR code via text message that, upon being scanned by a smartphone-toting bartender, unlocks a predetermined dollar amount to spend on the frothy stuff. “Beer’s kind of its own currency,” quips Ryan Bricklemyer, director of “cold ones.” Since BeerGivr’s launch in October, he and co-founder Sean Kennedy have signed up fifteen bars, including Bad Decisions, Alewife, and Bond Street Social.
Handy man
krishana davis “A dying art.” That’s what owner and operator Bill Hergenroeder calls the custom inlay furniture he builds at Hergenroeder Woodworking of Springwood Construction, Inc. (10768 York Rd., Cockeysville; 410-666-5805; www.hergenroederwoodworking.com). With more than thirty years of experience and a passion for marquetry, veneer, and inlay, Hergenroeder, a Baltimore native, designs and constructs a variety of custom furniture, including cabinets, libraries, entertainment systems, beds, and tables.
Urbanite #93 march 2012 21
c r MSTaEINER
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Photo by Michael Cantor
22 march 2012 www.urbanitebaltimore.com
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baltimore observed
neighborhoods / update / people / urbanite project
Slow out of the Gate "Alley gating" offered hope for the City’s blighted back streets, but the effort faces bureaucratic challenges.
Photo by j.m. Giordano
by Brennen Jensen
Build it: Patterson Park's Joe DiMattina wants to help others clean up and gate typically trash-strewn alleys.
joe dim attina’s row house on t he 2600 block of East Baltimore Street overlooks rambling Patterson Park. And yet, he says, “a huge selling point” for acquiring the house two years ago was not the leafy view out front, but the cement alley in back. In 2003, the t-shaped system of alleyways here served as pilot site for a concept called “alley gating.” To bolster security and sanitation, 6-foot-tall gates were installed at the alley’s entrances, which can be unlocked only by residents, police and fire departments, and requisite utility companies. Neighbors ponied up some $14,000 to pay for the gates (from private grants and their own pockets) and now lease the alley from the city, converting a largely uncared-for public byway into a private realm where potted plants and benches replace piles of trash. There’s not much to see on a wintertime stroll along this communal space, however, as the sundry planters are barren and no one else is out and about. But a quick look down tells the tale: In his haste to show a reporter around, DiMattina didn’t bother to put on shoes. “I saw photos—this alley was disgusting before,” DiMattina says. “I just walked through it in my socks. There’s no way I would do that in an alley that wasn’t gated.” But despite legislation passed in 2007 that legally green-lighted alley gating across the
city, most alleys in these parts are still wide open, presenting pedestrians (and they better have shoes) with broken glass, blowing garbage, rat droppings, or worse. Citizens on nearly two dozen blocks here have sought gates for their alleys, but only one other block has been even partially gated. (The alley between the unit blocks of North Decker and North Ellwood avenues has two of its three entrances gated.) Citywide, there have been some successes. Of the around 100 blocks that have applied for alley gating, thirteen have been approved by the city, with ten of these having gotten together the money to install gates. “I’ve been working to gate my alley since 2008, and here it’s 2012,” says Robbyn Lewis, of North Potomac Street and chair of the Patterson Park Neighborhood Association’s greening committee who testified in support of the alley gating legislation. “There are a lot barriers to residents who want gates even if you are super-organized and motivated. Here in the Southeast, our Cartesian grid of very urban streets and narrow alleys could benefit immensely from a more easily achievable gating process.” Engineer Dave Willemain heads the city’s alley gating office at the Department of Public Works. More accurately, he is the city’s alley gating office, at least for the ten hours or so a week he can spare the effort away from his principle
duties coordinating utilities and writing developer agreements. He is the first to acknowledge that the alley-gating legislation hasn’t been as fruitful has many might have hoped. For one, following its passage, it took the city some two years to develop a lock-box system agreeable to all the squabbling players seeking access to gated alleys—beyond just police and firefighters to include Baltimore Gas and Electric, Verizon, Comcast, and others. “It wasn’t easy, but we worked out a system that basically made everybody happy using three different lock boxes that must be on each gate,” Willemain says. The greatest impediment to seeing greater gating numbers, he concedes, is the city codemandated requirement that all gating projects get the written consents of the owners of 80 percent of the abutting lots. And it’s the local residents who are charged with collecting these consents, which can be a challenge in some neighborhoods amid foreclosures, disinterested absentee landlords, and the perennial bane of neighborhood activists and city officials: unreachable owners of vacant properties. “It’s particularly unfortunate that [the gating process] has been working best in some of the stable, gentrified, or semi-gentrified neighborhoods, and it’s working the worst in those areas that actually need the gating the most,” Urbanite #93 march 2012 23
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neighborhoods / update baltimore observed
Update by Anissa Elmerraji
photos by J.M. Giordano
Transformation: Neighborhoods have tough requirements to overcome in gating alleys, but the payoff is an attractive shared space.
Willemain says. “The police department has been very supportive of the program. It would be great if we could easily gate some of the alleys which the police know to be loci of crime.” Grant Corley has been “plugging away” at collecting consents to gate the alley behind his house on the 100 block of North Ellwood Avenue since 2008. “You can’t do it full-time, but you almost need to,” he says. Stopping the “off the hook” dumping behind his house is one motivation, he says, while adding he also knows “enough people that have had their back doors kicked down” to also make security an issue for the sixty-seven houses sharing the alley. “The only people that haven’t responded are absentee landlords,” Corley says of outreach efforts that included neighborhood fliers and letters sent by certified mail to ownership addresses listed on online state records. “We’ve actually driven to landlords’ houses in northeast Baltimore and Owings Mills. We even went all the way out to Eldersburg to knock on a guy’s door.” Last fall he submitted to the city what he thought was 80 percent approvals, only to be told a number of the properties had changed hands since they’d begun the process. It was back to the drawing board. “I think we’ll get there eventually, but raising the $10,000 to $15,000 for the actual gates might be the easier part,” he says. About the only things preventing Lewis’s block from reaching the 80 percent threshold are a few foreclosed properties where the ownership is tangled up with unresponsive banks. “There are yuppie professionals here, old-timer white people, latino families, old-timer black people—a mix—and we are all very positive about getting gated,” Lewis says. “We need more help from the city and perhaps a more flexible process that takes into account the overwhelming difficulty in reaching the consent targets.” It doesn't help that gate-seeking citizens lost an ally last fall when Community Greens, an urban environmental charity in Arlington, Virginia, that had long championed Baltimore’s alley gating efforts, stopped working on the cause. They had helped launch the pilot alley, provided a part-time intern to help the city process applications, and provided citizens with support materials and help finding grants to pay for gates. Community Greens director Kate Herrod, who logged many hours in Baltimore alleys,
would only say that the charity “was critical in establishing the program but has passed the baton to the city for management." Neighborhoods such as Bolton Hill and Upper Fells Point have had some success getting gates. One of the first gatings using the new legislation is behind the 1300 block of North Calvert Street in Mount Vernon, where homeowner Sherrill Gardner led the eighteen month-long effort. “I give the city a great credit for even opening up this process,” Gardner says. Her block contains only about two dozen properties and the alleys are narrow and pedestrian-only, making gating conditions a little easier than on some of the larger East Baltimore blocks. Still, she says, she had her share of absentee landlords to track down. “I wanted the gates so bad and am pretty persistent and understand bureaucracy,” she says. A grant from the Healthy Neighborhood Initiative with assistance from the Midtown Development Corporation helped fund the gates and benches her alley now sports. “It’s clean out there,” she says. “There’s no drug activity, there’s no prostitution activity, there’s no human feces. I look out my back window and just say ‘Ahhh.’” With a Little Alley alley-gating project approved for 2012, Willemain hopes the process is gaining momentum. Unreachable owners, he says, are not the only reason some gating attempts have been stymied. “Some see this process as part of the gentrification of a neighborhood, and they resent that,” he says. “The more examples of [gated alleys] we have, the easier it will be for people to be more comfortable with them.” Meanwhile, with the Community Greens interns gone, Willemain says he could use some help, while adding that he “doesn’t set budget priorities.” For those who can’t say “ahhh” when looking out their back windows into the alley, bolstering this program seems a no-brainer—especially when the mayor who wants to attract 10,000 families to Baltimore. “With some help we could really move forward with gating and maintain the gains that were created during the housing boom and make sure the slumlords don’t come back,” Patterson Park's Lewis says. “We have to hold on until the market recovers and city has some power to do something about that.”
milling about More than a year ago, real estate development company Terra Nova Ventures announced plans to break ground on a $43 million project to transform the vacant Mount Vernon Mill No. 1 at 3000 Falls Road into a mixed-use complex replete with office space, apartments, and restaurants (see “Keeping Up with the Jones,” Feb. ’11 Urbanite). Last month, Terra Nova’s founder David Tufaro was awarded $2.4 million in tax credit for the project, which will revamp a total of four buildings and 250,000 square feet, according to the Baltimore Sun. The Sun also reports that Terra Nova anticipates that 42,000 square feet will be converted into office space in about thirteen months.
beer unbound Thanks to a myriad of local microbreweries, the business of beer has been on the rise in Maryland, with craft brew sales rising by twelve percent in 2010; Hugh Sisson, founder of Maryland’s second largest brewery, Heavy Seas Beer, made it a goal to churn out at least 35,000 barrels of his frothy ales and lagers this year (see “Hip Hops,” May ’11 Urbanite). Local brewers are on the move again: Under current state restrictions, growlers— refillable brown jugs people can use to carry away beer straight from the tap—can only be sold by brewpubs that brew beer on the premises and sell food. In Maryland, that includes fifteen different brewpub locations licensed to sell and refill growlers. According to the Baltimore Sun, Sisson has been working with Maryland legislators to “refine the growler law in Baltimore” so that restaurants, too, can sell beer by the growler.
miscommunication As the number of Latino immigrants moving into Maryland continues to soar, organizations like Casa de Maryland have been working hard to make the new population feel like part of the community (see “El Nuevo Baltimore,” Dec. ’11 Urbanite). However, tension remains. Last month, Anne Arundel County Councilman Jerry Walker introduced a bill that would declare English the county’s official language, according to the Baltimore Sun. If passed, the bill, which applies only to county-funded services, will require all official county documents to be written in English alone, thus sparing taxpayer money spent on translation. Opponents of the bill, like Casa de Maryland’s Kim Propeack, believe it will hardly have an impact.
Urbanite #93 march 2012 25
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People baltimore observed
Flowering of Station North
Pearson's Florist opened thirty years before the MICA students arrived.
Photo by sarah thrower
By Rafael Alvarez
V
ander Pearson has arranged and sold flowers at the corner of Charles Street and North Avenue for more than thirty years. From the intersection of two grand and beleaguered boulevards—Charles, once Baltimore’s corridor of sophistication, and North Avenue, the city’s top end boundary through the mid19th century—Pearson sees it all through big plate-glass windows. His verdict: Things are a whole lot better than they used to be. Before the state of Maryland designated the area the Station North Arts and Entertainment District, Pearson endured long years of booze hounds, beggars, and people robbing each other on the street. “I don’t have patience for people who want something for nothing,” he says, noting that some of the trouble calmed down simply because the bad guys from the past are too old, tired, or dead to raise hell. And then art students started showing up looking for flowers to paint. (When in France, go to Arles. When in Crabtown, see Vander Pearson.) Pearson believes that North Avenue changed most profoundly when Maryland Institute College of Art bought the old Jos. A. Bank suit factory—113 West North Avenue between Charles and Maryland—in 2000 and turned it into post-graduate and studio space. Prostitution
and drug dealing have not gone away, but those working the trades keep a lower profile today. “The college kids don’t have much money, so they come in asking to buy an old flower,” laughs Pearson, who gives them a discount on something with a little life left in it. “How you going to paint something nice with drooping petals?” he says. “I hate dead flowers. I won’t keep a dead flower in the store.” Pearson also gives away scores of unsold flowers to senior centers in the neighborhood, pulling up in his van unannounced and ornamenting the lobby. What he never considered, even during years when the best the area could manage were nightclubs with metal detectors, was leaving. “I never thought of moving because I worked my ass off to get this place,” says Pearson, whose shyness does not crowd his competitive spirit. “It takes a lot to push me over the edge. And a scared man can’t win.” Now 53, Pearson served an adolescent apprenticeship with the legendary Westside flower man Clarence Crip down where North Avenue comes to an end on Poplar Grove. At Crip’s, he carried 5-gallon buckets of water to thirsty plants, building upper-body strength that served him well as a 107-pound wrestling star at Walbrook High School in 1977.
Pearson’s training in the rose is a rose is a rose game (buy for sixty cents a stem in volume and sell for $2 a stem by the dozen) continued at Claymore C. Sieck, a whole flower warehouse visible from the JFX near the Maryland Penitentiary. One spring, not long after Pearson left Morgan State University, a quirk of the calendar had Easter and Mother’s Day falling especially close to one another. Pearson saw it as providence, using his minimum wage salary at Sieck’s to buy as many roses as he could. He then stood on the street and sold them at intersections at the east end of North Avenue, near Harford Road and the Baltimore Cemetery. With the profits, Vander rented the southeast corner of North and Charles, “dumped every penny” into Pearson’s Florist, and has been there ever since. “When I started, I’d say you had maybe 20 percent white people,” he says. “Now it’s about 45 percent white, and a lot of them are students and young people.” The mix, he says, makes everybody feel more comfortable. I chatted with Pearson twice, once at his shop with the big fish tank and the talking parrot, a few friends and relatives around as he talked about the role of flowers in weddings and funerals and ups and downs of love affairs. “I’m the only designer in the shop,” he says. “My customers don’t want anyone touching their arrangements but me.” A week later, we sat in a booth at the Bohemian Coffee House just a few doors south of his shop. An open mike was going on and in that one moment—sipping a cup of coffee, telling his life story—Pearson caught a glimpse of the past, present, and future of Charles Street and North Avenue. At his back, a woman wailed confessional poetry while someone played blues on the piano. In front of him, a reporter asked about changing tides in an area that once connoted trouble. And just beyond—across the 1800 block of North Charles Street—a dozen cops and their cobalt light show chased someone down an alley as a helicopter circled above. “Used to always be police lights out there,” he says, nodding toward the trouble. Pearson is like switch grass, a perennial, deep-rooted in the loam of Baltimore. Now, he says, that soil is much richer, at least around the corner of Charles and North. Every Friday he places a fresh flower on each table at Joe Squared. When the Single Carrot Theatre or the Everyman Theatre has an opening, he puts flowers in the lobby. He gets free passes to all the shows but so far hasn’t been able to attend. “Too busy working,” he says. “I’ve got to get those orders out the door.” Urbanite #93 march 2012 27
The 2012 urbanIte
P r o j e c T:
HealtHy
Fc ho o d allenge
Compete for $12,000 in prize money and the chance to implement your innovative, creative solution to a pressing city issue: healthy food. How can we make Baltimore HealtHier? Roughly two-thirds of the city’s adults and nearly 40 percent of high school students are overweight or obese. Urbanite Project 2012: Healthy Food Challenge aims to improve residents’ access to healthy food, citywide. We think that if we can level the playing field, foodwise, we have the potential to unite an otherwise divided city on other levels. What do you think?
For more information, visit www.urbaniteproject.com Come to the Urbanite Project Q&A on March 6, 5–6 p.m., at the Lyric Opera House. Can’t make it to the event? E-mail your questions to editor@urbanitebaltimore.com, leave a comment on our Facebook wall, or send them to us on Twitter (@UrbaniteMD) using #UrbaniteProject.
InStItutIonal partnerS
SponSorS
American Communties Trust | Enoch Pratt Library The Marc Steiner Show | Richardson Farms | Zia’s
urbanite project baltimore observed
Recipe for Change Introducing Urbanite Project 2012: Healthy Food Challenge By Rebecca Messner
Secret garden: Urbanite Project 2012: Healthy Food Challenge asks the question, How can we make Baltimore healthier?
PHOTO BY J.M. Giordano
H
ere at Urbanite, we are all about solutions. It’s not enough just to call attention to the problems that affect our city—we want to know how to fix them. This mission permeates the pages of our magazine, and from our feature stories to our events listings, we try to shed light on the ways people are working to make Baltimore better. There came a point, though, when writing about these solutions didn’t seem to be enough. Last year, we introduced Urbanite Project 2011: Open City Challenge, where we asked the public what they would do to solve a problem affecting our city. The issue was the Red Line: the proposed 14.5-mile, light rail transit line that will run west to east from Woodlawn through downtown Baltimore, Fells Point, and Canton to the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center Campus. We asked for solutions to the problems that will inevitably arise during construction of the Red Line, which could last up to five years, tear up entire sections of town, and drastically affect the quality of life for the people who live nearby. For the best ideas, we (along with our partners: the Maryland Institute College of Art, D Center Baltimore, the Maryland Transit Administration, and the Baltimore City Department of Transportation) offered $10,000 in prize money and the chance for those ideas to actually be implemented. Solutions came from all over the world and were submitted by professional architects and architecture firms, community artists, and regular, creative-thinking people. Michael Jack, an architect from London, won first prize for his proposal. Titled “20 Stations, 20 Questions,” the proposal paired off the twenty stations along the Red Line and had each station trade user-submitted photos, which would then be blown up and displayed on the sister station’s construction scaffolding (see Urbanite, Oct. '11).
What did we love about this idea? It is simple and easy to implement, but most of all, it encourages communication between the people of two neighborhoods who might otherwise never interact. This year, we’re broadening our focus and calling attention to an issue that every one of us can understand: food. Introducing Urbanite Project 2012 : Healthy Food Challenge. We’re inviting teams or individuals to compete for $12,000 in prize money (provided by our partners, the Baltimore City Health Department, the Maryland Department of Agriculture, Stratford University and United Way of Central Maryland) to answer the question, How can we make Baltimore healthier? Roughly two-thirds of the city’s adults and nearly 40 percent of high school students are overweight or obese. It’s an issue where major disparities exist between the obesity rates of whites and blacks, people with and without college degrees, and households making more and less than $25,000 a year. A recent Baltimore City report found that 43 percent of residents in the city’s predominantly black neighborhoods have very limited access to healthy food, compared with 4 percent of predominantly white neighborhoods. This year, Urbanite, in association with our partners, aims to improve residents’ access to healthy food, citywide. Urbanite Project 2012: Healthy Food Challenge calls for creative, innovative, non-traditional ideas that address one or more of the barriers to affordable, healthy food for Baltimore City residents living in neighborhood food deserts. Food deserts, as defined by the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future and the Baltimore Office of Sustainability, are residential block groups more than ¼ mile from a major supermarket, where the median household income is at or below 185% of the federal poverty level and over 40 percent of households
have no access to a vehicle. The definition also takes into account the kind of food available at existing supermarkets and corner stores. The barriers are varied and numerous—transportation, a lack of healthy food at nearby stores, education, food preparation, and time, among other factors, all contribute to the problem. Solutions, we know, exist. Baltimore, luckily, already has a host of people who are working to solve this very issue. Take Joyce Smith, an Open Society Institute-Baltimore fellow. She’s working with her community of southwest Baltimore to advocate for policies that bring healthier, more affordable foods into her neighborhood. Baltimore City’s Office of Sustainability is leasing parcels of city-owned land to entrepreneurial, local farms at a low cost, to spread the seeds of healthy food further in the city. The Virtual Supermarket program, a product of the Baltimore City Health Department, Santoni’s Supermarket, MICA, and the Enoch Pratt Free Library, offers an easy way for residents of food deserts to order their groceries online and pick them up at their closest library branch. Whether it’s a vegetable garden in a vacant lot, an after-school cooking class for high school students, or a supermarket delivery service, the solutions are out there. We think that if we can level the playing field, foodwise, we have the potential to unite an otherwise divided city on other levels. What do you think? For more information, visit www.urbanite project.com. There, you’ll find the official request for proposals and links to resources that can help you learn more about this problem. Have a question? Come find us, along with representatives of the Baltimore City Health Department, the Maryland Department of Agriculture, Stratford University and United Way of Central Maryland, at an information session on March 6 at the Lyric Opera House, at 5 P.M. Urbanite #93 march 2012 29
the
Biographer In a new book, Goucher College professor Jean H. Baker profiles Margaret Sanger, who coined the phrase “birth control” while fighting for the legalization of contraception. Interview by Ron Cassie photo by J.M. Giordano
30 march 2012 www.urbanitebaltimore.com
In Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion, Goucher College history professor Jean H. Baker profiles the woman, mother, and often controversial leader whose work enabled women to plan their pregnancies—and gain a measure of control over their lives. Baker discusses how Sanger, whose own mother was pregnant twenty-two times and gave birth to eleven children, became the single-minded leader of the early turn-of-the-century birth control movement after witnessing the death of a poor, young mother following a botched, self-administered abortion. Sanger opened the first women’s health clinics almost a hundred years ago, initially offering birth control in working-class New York City neighborhoods. With current debates around the new federal health care law and birth control, access to the morning-after pill, proposed “personhood” legislation in several states, and the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation’s support of Planned Parenthood, Baker notes that Sanger’s work remains relevant today.
keynote Urb:
Why did you decide to write this book? Why now?
She lived in one of these eras. I have never seen any studies that really validate a great change in women’s sexual behavior in the 1960s, but I have seen studies in New York City among women born at the turn of the 1900s … I’m not saying this was happening everywhere. Not in Kansas or Muncie, Indiana.
— jb: Two things. I’d finished the book on the suffragists (Sisters: The Lives of America’s Suffragists, Hill and Wang, 2005) and realized that reform for women just stalled in 1920—except for birth control. So if you look at the history of the women’s movement, birth control would be the next place you would go, and then the other thing is the effort to vilify and attack her legacy on the right because it is linked to Planned Parenthood.
Jacket design by Marina drukman
Why a profile of Margaret Sanger and not the birth control movement itself?
— Birth rates, fertility rates were dropping in the 19th century, so that’s a good question. If it was an inevitable movement, why not just study the movement? She really created the social movement, however, that birth control became. She stamped her image on it. It’s Margaret Sanger who set up birth control clinics; it’s Margaret Sanger who wrote and lectured about birth control; it’s Margaret Sanger who went to jail … it’s Margaret Sanger who worked internationally on birth control issues. And it’s Margaret Sanger who directed funding to Dr. Gregory Pincus, whose research into hormones and progesterone led to the development of the pill. As a historian, do you view lasting social or political movements as inevitably driven by a single leader or small group?
— I believe the birth control movement was an instance where a leader put her signature on a movement. With the suffragists, it was several leaders, Susan B. Anthony and Alice Paul, for example, who I think doesn’t always get her due. And with civil rights, certainly we think of Martin Luther King Jr. But it is not always the case. Look at the gay rights movement. There isn’t a single person we associate with that movement. It grew organically. How do you define the early birth control movement? Was it a feminist movement? A political movement? Social movement? Progressive public health movement?
— I believe it’s a feminist movement. I believe the first stages of the birth control movement were directed at poor women mostly, who were interested in getting some means to liberate themselves from endless pregnancies. As it went on, it became more fungible, and other reasons came into it. She got involved with some Eugenicists and later with those worried about a population explosion post-World War II. But the population argument was really a non-feminist argument that she used along with everything thing else. She said, “No
So what did happen in the 1960s and 1970s?
woman is free who doesn’t control her own body.” At its core, I’d argue it was undeniably a feminist movement.
— The big thing that happened was Griswold v. Connecticut. The right to privacy makes legal contraception—for married couples. Then in 1972, Eisenstadt v. Baird gives the right to unmarried couples. That’s staggering, isn’t it? How is Margaret Sanger relevant today?
But the Eugenics association diminishes her status today.
— She was a Eugenicist, but that labeling shows our inability to deconstruct what Eugenics was at that time to progressives in America. It was naïve, and it was about good genes and biology and making better babies. It was supported by Supreme Court justices and American presidents, but she is the one whose reputation gets sullied, not theirs. Did becoming a movement leader fulfill a psychological need, or was she called to it?
— She was called to it after the death of Sadie Sachs [from a] botched abortion. But she also stood out from the very beginning. She was this little girl from the poor Higgins family who refused to go back to Catholic school, who did and said what she wanted. I think it is a combination, that she was called, but also that it fulfilled a psychological need. The reason that I put “passion” in the title is that sacrifice was needed. And I think when a purpose fulfills a psychological need, it also creates its own opportunity for sacrifice. She also had numerous affairs while married twice. How does that fit into the context of her lifelong work?
— She liked sex. Sex was her game, her business. She was dealing with birth control and sexual matters. I think, actually, it fits quite neatly with her public life. She said being strongly “sexed” is something to be proud of. Was this a precursor to what we think of as the sexual liberation movement of the 1960s and early 1970s?
— We forget that she came to birth control in a place like Greenwich Village … There have always been these outbursts of sexual liberation.
— You read your morning paper, right? It’s relevant today because there is still a movement to not just get rid of abortion, but to restrict the availability of birth control. There are still people on the right who want to control female sexuality. The Catholic Church was vehemently opposed to the Obama decision that birth control must be included as part of the health care plan ... There’s also the decision to restrict those under 17 from receiving the morningafter pill even though those have FDA approval. I t’s interesting that she dreamt of attending Cornell and studying medicine, and then both of her sons went to school there and became doctors. Clearly she spent a lot of time away from her children, but she apparently loved them very much and had good relationships with her children and grandchildren.
— Her parenting is really ambivalent. She did hold certain political ideas that were different than what we celebrate today around intensive family relationships … On the other hand, they adored her. She begged and borrowed tuition money from friends to send them to boarding school and get them the best education. Why was she successful? What character or personal qualities that stood out?
— She was energetic. She was always able to encourage others and persuade them to do the grunt work. A real enthusiast and real practical. And she was a fighter. I’ll give a story. She goes off to jail one time in New York and while she’s in there, her partner closes up the storefront clinic she’d just started and runs off with all the records. When she comes out, she immediately starts setting out to find another storefront and open up another clinic. She was optimistic by nature.
Urbanite #93 march 2012 31
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Retooling the City SEVEN PEOPLE Who Are creating Change in Baltimore photography by j.m. giordano
F o r t w e n t y-t h r e e y e a r s , Jan Houbolt, executive director of the Leadership, an annual, year-long Greater Baltimore Committee program, has worked with business heads, government officials, and nonprofit chiefs, helping them grow as individuals and advance their mission. So before introducing our seven “Change Makers” this month, we thought it would it be worthwhile to discuss how leaders become, well, leaders with an expert in the area. We were curious to discuss with Houbolt the central qualities that successful leaders have in common. Dealing with exceptional people from a variety of backgrounds, ages, and experience, many at a crossroads, over the past two decades, Houbolt recognizes two defining characteristics that effective leaders share. “The thing I’ve seen is that is they all have a vision and a sense of purpose than is bigger than themselves,” he says. These leaders, he adds, have generally come to that vision and sense of purpose through either an “ecstatic” experience—which births an epiphany—or, conversely, a “catastrophic” experience that demands redress. “They didn’t think, ‘I want to be a leader,’ and then decide to do something,” Houbolt says. Something happened to them first. “And they are able to describe that ‘aha’ moment.” The other defining characteristic, Houbolt says, is an unusual “persistence and tenacity. “A lot of people espouse a lot of interesting ideas, but what separates successful leaders is their ability to withstand the slings and arrows and outrageous fortune of life,” Houbolt says. Genuine leaders inevitably, he says, run up against opposition, ridicule, petty jealousy—not
to mention the demands of their own personal and family life—and often face tedium and futility in the process of pursuing their goal. “Most people, and I don’t mean this is a negative way, settle for a comfortable job, a nice home, a nice car, and a good family life,” he adds. “Often, leaders have their personal lives thrown out of a balance—at least for a while.” Inevitably readers ask how we select our Change Makers, and it’s a bit of a process in itself. We reach out to our staff, contributing writers, former editors, previous Change Makers, and people we’ve written about in the past year, as well as various friends and institutional partners of Urbanite. We also re-examine the previous year’s list of candidates. Our aim is to highlight individuals doing innovative, collaborative, and impactful work— while also searching for those individuals who might still be flying under the radar in Baltimore. But we interviewed Houbolt after making our selections, and what became intriguing was finding the characteristics he describes in our Change Makers. For example, Johns Hopkins University assistant political science professor Lester Spence came to his epiphany about the power of hip hop to mobilize young voters after watching former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick singing over a DJ’s track at a post-campaign rally. He’s since written a book about hip hop and more recently launched the Baltimore Mixtape Project. On the other hand, John Long, a management analyst at Bayview Hospital, had his “catastrophic” moment
shortly after moving into his grandfather’s former home in Dundalk and seeing first-hand the waste dump that his beloved childhood stream, Bread and Cheese Creek, had become over three decades. Gardnel Carter, the site director at Safe Streets East, spent nearly two decades in prison—surely a catastrophic experience on a personal level, but one that ultimately led to a religious conversion and his work in violence prevention today. As you’ll see, Jennifer Green and Christina Hall, former Baltimore City Public Schools administrators and co-founders of the Urban Teacher Center, composer Ruby Fulton, founder of Rhymes with Opera, and Mike Brenner, who founded Sunrise Design and helped launch technology meetup events like Refresh Baltimore and Beehive Baltimore, also had their individual “aha” moments. And whether it’s Spence’s concern about his work outside the ivory towers compromising his status inside academia or Long’s frustration with Baltimore County’s environmental efforts or Safe Streets’ temporary suspension due to issues outside Carter’s control, every one of our Change Makers has demonstrated the second of Houbolt’s defining leadership characteristics: persistence. If the ability to make a difference in our lives and in the life of our city is possible, it’s going to be leaders like these men and women, working at diverse projects in innovative ways and bringing others into the fold, who will get us moving in new directions.
To watch interviews with each one of this year's seven Change Makers, go to www.urbanitebaltimore.com.
—Ron Cassie, editor
Not five minutes have passed since Mike Brenner walked into the Teavolve Café & Lounge in Harbor East, and already he spots someone he knows. Sitting behind him is Josh Hepworth, a Web developer and one of the current organizers of Refresh Baltimore, a monthly meeting and mind meld of local techies and designers hosted, originally, by Brenner. Given Brenner’s knack for making entrepreneurial connections, his focus since moving to Baltimore in 2007, bumping into a networking buddy is hardly a surprise. While slowly building up Sunrise Design, the Web design company he launched in college, Brenner established Refresh Baltimore as a way to meet his developer compatriots. “I got tired of working out of my house and coffee shops and not really knowing anybody here in town,” he says. “I started throwing some events and … very quickly I saw the disconnect in the tech and Web design community.” Over time, Brenner moved on to larger endeavors. In 2008, he was a founding member of Beehive Baltimore, a coworking space in Canton co-founded by startup evangelist Dave Troy. In 2010, he scheduled a series of startup breakfasts that got him in the room with influencers in the city’s tech scene. A number of similar projects followed: BaltimoreTech.net, a Facebook of sorts for programmers and entrepreneurs; Startup Baltimore, an online hub for all things entrepreneurial or tech-related. Last April, Brenner successfully put together Baltimore’s first Startup Weekend, which gave participants fifty-four hours to formulate, design, and tinker with their own ideas, not to mention $2,000 in “seed” money to the team voted to have the best concept. Barely 30, Brenner has the energy—and the time— to place networking ahead of personal undertakings. Although, to hear him talk about it, one would think the two are synonymous. Over a pot of yerba maté Brenner sermonizes about other cities whose tech communities are cohesive, having coalesced around a central issue. (San Francisco, for instance, has become a leader in social networking technology.) Not so in Baltimore. “Baltimore has a history of being very siloed, very competitive with itself,” says Brenner. “Something that interests me about 2012 is actually organizing our efforts a bit better. I think we need to get behind something.” Troy, integral in repealing the stateimposed surcharge on computer services and a major player in the startup sphere, characterizes Baltimore as the slightly awkward pre-teen of tech towns. Just a few years ago, with the explosion of social media, everyone in the community began meeting each other and kicking around ideas. Now, it seems, people are unsure exactly of the direction forward. What first must happen, says Brenner, is “activation of the numbers we have in this area.” According to a survey
conducted in November by Forbes magazine, Baltimore ranks as the number two city in the country for technology jobs, with much of the new job growth in cybersecurity. Through events like Startup Weekend, Brenner wants to tap into that well of programming talent and convert tech folks into budding entrepreneurs by offering them the chance to “cheat on their boss, cheat on their day job” and potentially found new startup companies in Baltimore. As to what those startup companies should do, Brenner thinks an answer lies in education technology. “We live in a state that’s repeatedly ranked number one for public education. We live in a city that has one of the worst rankings,” he says. “There’s a lot of opportunity to innovate a failing product here.” In November, he organized Baltimore’s first Education Hack Day, which put teachers and techies together to develop education-based apps: a program for scheduling parent-teacher conferences, a Web browser that allows students to see only the sites a teacher has approved. He just signed a lease for a coworking space in Federal Hill that will bring together a variety of people— programmers, educators, investors—on a “campus for all things entrepreneurial and technology”; some startups there will piece together tech fixes for city classrooms. It’ll probably be the last of his “nest-building” activities, Brenner says. “If we can show that there’s a reason to be building education, then we can shift people’s mindsets,” he says. “And we can attract the best minds from around the world that are building education apps into Baltimore—let’s be a Silicon Valley for education.”
—Andrew Zaleski
Mike Brenner
34 march 2012 www.urbanitebaltimore.com
Technology Company: Sunrise Design Age: 27 Home: Canton
Lester Spence Johns Hopkins University assistant professor Lester Spence is not your average bespectacled, dimpled-chadcounting political scientist. One story he tells shows why. In 2002, a charismatic, 31-year-old state representative named Kwame Kilpatrick became mayor of Detroit. A Motor City native, Spence attended one of Kilpatrick’s inauguration events—a party DJ’d by legendary beatboxer Biz Markie filled with the young voters who helped seal Kilpatrick’s victory. But instead of asking Markie to turn down the music so that he could address his supporters, Spence recalls, “Kilpatrick took the microphone and started singing over the tracks … in sync with the rest of the crowd.” It’s an experience Spence has referred to as “one of the most powerful political moments I’ve ever been part of” and one he describes in his book, Stare in the Darkness: The Limits of Hip-Hop and Black Politics. A young black man had used hip hop to galvanize his peers and win political control of one of the largest cities in the country. Over the subsequent six years, however, Detroit became a metaphor for what even some of hip hop’s biggest fans see as the genre’s shortcomings. As Spence notes in Stare, while young people came out in large numbers to support their candidate, city spending during the Kilpatrick years did not reflect their priorities. And in 2008, when Kilpatrick was sent to jail on obstruction of justice charges, some saw it as proof that America’s “Hip-Hop Mayor,” like the music with which he became so closely associated, was more style than substance. But Spence had seen hip hop’s potential. And he’s betting that, if he can use it to build political capacity and empower people from the bottom up, not just elect or fill the pockets of a select few, the results will be explosive. That’s the premise behind Baltimore Mixtape Project, a contest Spence founded last year. In response to a plan to build a new juvenile pre-trial detention center in East Baltimore, he and his collaborators are inviting young people to submit original rhymes about the “schools-to-prison pipeline,” the link between poor educational resources and time spent behind bars. Finalists receive cash prizes, a chance to perform at a live hip hop battle in April, and distribution of their work throughout the city. From the beginning, Spence wanted the project to be scalable and replicable—easy enough to copy that people far from Baltimore can pick it up and run with it. “I don’t know if this will be the one that hits,” he says, aware that he’s not the first person to try to use hip hop to empower young people. But as the project gains
traction and Spence speaks informally with New York music industry insiders, he’s surprised by the possibilities. Last December, The Atlantic endorsed the BMP as one of “12 Awesome Kickstarter Projects You Should Give to for the Holidays.” Support like this helped the project blow past its initial $2,000 Kickstarter fundraising goal almost two weeks before a January deadline. Using hip hop as a research topic an d or g anizin g tool is an unusual,
perhaps risky, choice for someone trying to make tenure at a top university, but Spence sees his work within and outside of academia as part of a multi-pronged, multimedia effort to tip the balance of power in favor of everyday people. For several years, he’s used photography to capture candid moments in the lives of working class residents. He’s also a regular guest on The Marc Steiner Show as well as a regular contributor to NPR’s nationally syndicated program Tell Me More, and has worked with Occupy Baltimore demonstrators on strategy postMcKeldin Square. It’s a fight for the disenfranchised on multiple fronts. “I’m trying to expand our black political imagination,” and the tools that people can use to get what they need, he says. Ultimately, “I’m really just interested in helping people get their shit back.” “What I like about Lester,” writes Michel Martin, host of Tell Me More, in a statement provided by NPR, “is that while the scholarship is always there and always evident, he expresses himself in a way anyone can understand … He really seems to believe that knowledge is for everybody.” A few years ago, Spence was concerned that his extracurricular activities made him appear less than serious among his colleagues, but he’s less worried now. “Obviously one can imagine people doing things out in the public sphere that really undermine their professional standing, but I haven’t seen anything like that in Lester’s case,” says Richard Katz, chair of Johns Hopkins University’s political science department. On the contrary, Spence’s work outside of the university helps professionally, Katz says. “But he’s doing this because he wants to, not because it’s directly in his career interest.”
—Lionel Foster
Scholar/Activist Organization: Baltimore Mixtape Project Age: 42 Home: Pikesville
Urbanite #93 march 2012 35
MUSIC COMPANY: Rhymes with Opera Age: 30 Home: Station North
36 march 2012 www.urbanitebaltimore.com
Ruby Fulton The composition “Being for the Breakdown,” according to composer Ruby Fulton’s website, is “about the breakdown of a car, grief, loss, also the Beatles song ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite.’” At first it’s unclear how one piece of music could be about all of these things, but Fulton explains that it’s personal. Her mother passed away when she was young, and after her mother’s death, she continued to drive her mother’s old car, until one day it broke down while the Beatles song “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” played on the radio. The car’s death was significant, the last piece of her mother that Fulton had to say goodbye to and let go of. The song, arranged for string quartet, begins tensely, with a steady, foreboding pizzicato that seems to mimic the tinkering parts of a car’s engine plinking their last plinks. Over and interspersed with that are melodic harmonies that evoke a strong sense of wistfulness, nostalgia, and sadness that’s not quite all sad. It’s sadness that feels beautiful. Fulton, who grew up in northwest Iowa, has heard her music played all over the world—including by the Holland Symfonia, the American Composers Orchestra in New York, the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and at the A*Devantgarde Festival in Munich. And yet, she’s happy to remain in Baltimore, where she came to get her doctorate in composition at Peabody. “I love the sense of community here,” she says. “There are creative people everywhere.” Fulton categorizes her music as “postminimalism,” a genre that features a steady pulse, consonance, uneven dynamics, and an
avoidance of straightforward, linear form. In other words, it’s a complicated listening experience, but perhaps not so much as with some new music. This is something Fulton understands. “Sometimes I wish I had never gone to music school and I could sit and listen to it,” she says. “But I can’t.” Instead, she uses her father, who has no formal music background, as a guide. “He used to tell me, 'I need to go back and listen to that again'” she says. “Lately, he’s said ‘Ruby, you’re edgy,’ which means he’s starting to enjoy it.” Her most notable project of late has been Rhymes With Opera—a company she co-founded with George Lam, a Brooklyn-based musician and composer who also studied at Peabody. The opera group aims to change popular perception of experimental vocal music by collaborating with artists of various disciplines and performing in non-traditional venues, like art galleries, restuarants, community spaces—even bars. For Ketamyth, Rhymes With Opera’s last major performance, Fulton worked with a libretto written by Urbanite contributing writer Baynard Woods, who combined English excerpts from authors like Rainer Maria Rilke, T.S. Eliot, and James Joyce with ancient Greek and Latin texts. Woods recorded himself reading the Greek and Latin parts as a pronunciation guide, but instead of passing the recording along to her singers, Fulton chopped it up and played it back live. The result was electrifying. At December’s performance of the opera at Liam Flynn’s Ale House on North Avenue, the company majestically inhabited the dark, candlelit space, the recordings of Woods’s deep voice reverberated, and the sheer unconventionality of it—Opera? In a pub?—kept the audience rapt. Fulton says, in all her works, she’s looking to translate ideas into sound. “It’s easier to communicate with opera,” she says, “because there are words.” The ideas can come from anywhere. “I’ll hear something on the radio,” she says, “Or I’ll read a book.” She is influenced by pop culture—the Beatles, Mad Men, videos she finds on YouTube. One video, which Fulton saw posted to a friend’s Facebook page, shows a teenage boy with a fatal heart condition telling his life story written, one line at a time, on notecards that he holds up to the camera. The video went viral when, just weeks after he posted it, the boy died. “That would make an amazing libretto,” Fulton says. Although she says she would never want to exploit this boy’s story, she’s drawn to the strange beauty of it, as she was to the strange and beautiful experience of losing her mother’s car. “That kid—he’s so sad and so beautiful. He just died, and he was 18. But when I watch that thing,” she says, “it’s beautiful. How can that be beautiful? I guess that’s the question I’m trying to answer.”
—Rebecca Messner
Two and a half years ago, not long after John Long and his wife moved into his grandfather’s former home in Dundalk, a tornado blew off part of the house and roof, dumping debris into the creek beside the property. The next day, a Maryland Department of the Environment official arrived on the scene and informed Long that he was responsible for removing the debris from his home that had reached the creek. That didn’t bother Long. It was his responsibility, he recalls thinking. What upset him, however, was the condition of the stream, known as Bread and Cheese Creek, which he hadn’t taken a close look at recently—not since he used to catch minnows and crayfish in that creek with his granddad. Bread and Cheese received its unusual name, or so the myth goes, as a popular resting spot for soldiers to eat their daily ration in the days surrounding the Battle of North Point and the War of 1812. Now, not just a few of Long’s shingles and the usual assortment of empty bottles and plastic bags sullied the creek and his boyhood memories—but tires, shopping carts, car
John Long Environment Organization: Clean Bread and Cheese Creek Age: 43 Home: Dundalk
batteries, industrial cable, and scrap metal. Constant run-off from nearby oily parking lots didn’t help water quality, either. “You name it,” Long says, it was in the creek, considered one of the most polluted tributaries in Maryland, according to a 2009 study. Finding the county’s plans to restore the 4.7-mile creek, which f lo w s in t o t h e Chesapeake Bay via Back River, wanting at best,
Long formed Clean Bread and Cheese Creek in 2009. The group’s first cleanup effort that fall drew forty people. The most recent in November drew more than 150 volunteers. (The next cleanup is scheduled for April 14.) Skeptics who told Long that a blue-collar community like Dundalk wouldn’t be interested in volunteering around environmental issues have been proven wrong, he says. “In Dundalk, there are a lot of people who work hard for a living and have no problem climbing into the creek and getting dirty and putting their back into it,” says Long, a senior management analyst at Bayview Hospital. “People here don’t get enough credit for caring about their community.” To date, five cleanups of the creek have attracted 608 volunteers, netted 143 shopping carts, 112 tires, 26 bicycles, 18.5 tons of metal, and 25.5 tons of trash, as well as 80 yards of wood and natural debris, removed to avoid blockage in the creek. In the process of building Clean Bread and Cheese Creek, Long, who did not consider himself Web-savvy previously, became adept at using digital and social media tools. He regularly jumps into the creek with a video camera as thunderstorms flood the creek, documenting antiquated stormwater management problems and posting the results on YouTube. “It was out of frustration and a sense of urgency,” Long says of his initial foray into rising creek waters, adding that he quickly grew to appreciate the benefits of digital documentation and social media in grassroots organizing. He also photographs and promotes Clean Bread and Cheese efforts on the group’s website and through Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Flickr, proving these are effective tools for organizing—and not just on college campuses or among the urban hipster crowd. And now Clean Bread and Cheese Creek is supporting other cleanup efforts in the Dundalk-Essex area, and Long is speaking to groups about grassroots organizing and environmental legislation. Long and Clean Bread and Cheese Creek have assisted Dundalk’s Eastfield-Stansbrook Civic Association’s efforts to clean up Stansberry pond and park and the Lynch Cove Run stream. They’ve also assisted the Friends of the Hard Yacht Café in a sweep of a section of highway near Bear Creek and partnered with the Back River Restoration Committee to remove trash from the Back River. Long recently was asked to speak at the Anacostia Watershed symposium and the Marshy Point Nature Center about environmental issues. Last fall, Long and Clean Bread and Cheese Creek were selected by comedian, activist, radio personality, and filmmaker Harry Shearer to co-host a Charles Theatre screening of Shearer's acclaimed documentary, The Big Uneasy, about the flooding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. “In each city, the producers of the film picked a grassroots environmental organization to highlight,” Long says. “Harry Shearer was really great. Afterwards he pulled me aside and says, ‘Clean Bread and Cheese Creek is just the best name ever.’”
—R.C.
Urbanite #93 march 2012 37
“Staggering.” That’s the word Jennifer Green uses. And she repeats it: “It’s staggering to realize you have students who have made it to the eleventh grade without being able to decode words on a page.” As a first-year high school English teacher in greater New Orleans in 1991, Green found that many of her students couldn’t read at grade level. And when she was awarded “Best New Teacher” in the parish that year she was, in another carefully chosen word, “flummoxed.” The honor, says Green, seemed like evidence of what the school system lacked rather than what she provided. “I didn’t feel that I was equipped to serve those children,” she recalls. Christina Hall came to a similar conclusion, albeit following a different path. She started her career as an attorney, working at the Suffolk County Juvenile Court System in Boston, Massachusetts, but left to become an educator. “I wanted to advocate for the same people—disadvantaged kids— but wanted to get to them sooner,” she says. Public education “was supposed to be this great equalizer.” Facing a ninth-grade English class with the average student at a fifth-grade reading level, Hall, taught to teach high school students, says she “realized my education was completely inadequate to meet the needs of the kids in front of me.” H a ll a n d G r e e n , whose paths crossed throughout their careers, finally merged when they both worked for the Baltimore City Public School System (Green as director of secondary curriculum and professional development, Hall as special assistant to the chief academic officer). Today, they are cofounders and co-directors of the Urban Teacher Center. Launched in September 2009, the nonprofit not only trains
teachers to work in urban public and charter schools—it guarantees the results. The problem that UTC seeks to solve, says Julie Mikuta, a partner at the San Francisco-based NewSchools Venture Fund, which provided $1.9 million in startup money, is that first year teachers “are coming in feeling unprepared”—as Green and Hall did—and drop out within five years. At the same time, students in the classes of rookie teachers don’t advance a full year. Successive school years with new or inadequate teachers can set a child back irremediably. “The UTC is the first program in the country to guarantee that a first-year teacher will see one year of growth in their kids,” says Mikuta. Like other teacher preparation programs, UTC recruits both recent college graduates and those looking for a career change, offering classroom experience and the opportunity to earn teaching certification. UTC participants earn a dual Masters in Education and Special Education, conferred
by Lesley University—based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but offering classes in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., through a special partnership with UTC. About 30 percent of the student teacher’s time is spent on coursework, says Hall, and 70 percent at the school site. The first year is spent with a host teacher in the classroom, and by year two, the newly minted teacher matriculates in a full-time job with the school system. The program requires a four-year commitment. “If we have UTC teachers who aren’t effective, we will ramp up support,” Green says. And if that teacher continues to falter, “we remove them from the program. Every child deserves an effective teacher. Period.” In the same way, she adds, “every dentist should be an effective dentist. Every pilot should be an effective pilot.” Funded additionally by grants from Dell and the NewSchools Venture Fund as well as the Baltimore-based Abell Foundation and Weinberg Foundation, the program is currently training its second-year cohort—twentyfour teachers in Baltimore and fifty-one in Washington, D.C., and next year that number is expected to nearly double. In addition, Hall and Green hope to add one new city each year beginning in the 2013–2014 school year. Ashley Smith is a member of UTC’s first cohort (of the thirtynine teachers who began the program in Baltimore, thirty are currently first-year teachers, including seventeen in Baltimore). Smith, who teaches fourth grade at South Baltimore’s Lakeland Elementary/Middle School, says that by the time she landed in a classroom of her own, she felt prepared: “It’s not like you just show up and are expected to teach right off the bat.” When she began attending new teacher orientations at the Baltimore City School System, she says, “I felt like the smartest kid in the class. I was completely ready for it.” And more than midway through her first year as a teacher, she says, “I remain totally confident in my teaching.”
—Martha Thomas
Christina Hall
Jennifer Green EDUCATION
EDUCATION Organization: Urban Teacher Center Age: 41 Home: Canton
38 march 2012 www.urbanitebaltimore.com
Organization: Urban Teacher Center Age: 42 Home: Annapolis
Gardnel Carter “came home” to East Baltimore in 2006, to his sister’s rowhouse near Ashland Avenue and North Glover Street, not far from where he grew up selling drugs. In and out of trouble with the law since he was 13, Carter had been convicted of attempted murder and robbery with a deadly weapon when he was 24 years old. He served almost two decades in prison. A physically imposing figure, Carter returned to his old neighborhood a different man, however—a licensed plumber, a Muslim convert, a mediator of prison conflicts—and when offered the chance to interrupt the destiny of young men headed toward incarceration or worse, he signed on. The work has been as much about his own redemption as the teenagers and 20-year-olds he wants to keep alive and out of jail. “It’s become part of my own therapy,” he says. Carter joined the City Health Department’s Safe Streets East initiative at the program’s start in May 2007. Modeled after Chicago’s successful CeaseFire project, Safe Streets hires ex-offenders who are turning their lives around and trains them as mediators, outreach workers and mentors in the ver y streets they once terrorized. For the past two years, he’s served as site director at Safe Streets East site, which is overseen by the nonprofit Living Classrooms. Along with mediating potentially violent conflicts, Safe Streets outreach workers also mentor teenagers and young men and women looking for direction and a career path, helping them connect with city and nonprofit resources, as well as educational opportunities. As Safe Streets envisions, the outreach workers’ caseloads consist of high-risk clients. According to a Hopkins evaluation, nearly half of the program participants report they have been shot at, at least once. Praised for significantly reducing the number of shootings and homicides in the McElderry Park area, the Safe Streets East site did not experience a homicide during the first twenty-three months of program implementation— when Carter served as the program’s outreach coordinator. However, Safe Streets found itself at a crossroads when highly regarded founding director (and ex-offender) Leon Faruq died from kidney disease in June 2009. A series of shootings, including one in which twelve people were shot, immediately followed Faruq’s death, and months later, members of a different, former Safe Streets site in West Baltimore were indicted and accused of being active members in the Black Guerilla Family gang. Although no one in the Safe Streets East program where Faruq
and Carter worked stood accused, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake temporarily suspended funding for Safe Streets East and another successful site in Cherry Hill in the aftermath of indictments in West Baltimore. Eventually the program’s temporary suspension was lifted by the city. And with Carter assuming Faruq’s leadership of the program, whose outreach workers walk a fine edge leveraging their street cred and contacts among gangs and drug dealers to mediate disputes, Safe Streets East regained its footing—as well as its reputation for reducing violence. A post encompassing a roughly twelve-square-block area bounded by Patterson Park Avenue and Monument, Fayette, and Linwood streets, the Safe Streets East site went from June 20, 2010 to August, 10, 2011 without one non-fatal shooting and didn’t report a deadly shooting last year until the second week in October. Johns Hopkins researchers estimated that Safe Streets East was responsible for a 26 percent reduction in homicides in McElderry Park over the first three and a half years the program was in place. Rawlings-Blake announced earlier this year that a $2.2 million grant from
the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention will be used to expand the Safe Streets violence intervention program into two additional communities that are disproportionately impacted by violence. On one recent morning, several young men were using the computers at the Safe Streets East office, which has become something of a community center on East Monument Street, learning how to get a federal tax I.D. number for a contracting business they hoped to launch. Similar efforts are now up and running in a number of cities, including Philadelphia, Oakland, and New Orleans, among other cities. Carter notes the potential of the concept reverberates even wider—teams from Iraq, Egypt, Ireland, and Kenya have visited the Safe Streets offices. “Violence is something that is learned,” Carter says. “Everybody has the capacity to change, regardless of what they’ve done in life, if they have the right opportunity and chance placed in front of them.”
—R.C.
Violence Prevention Organization: Safe Streets East Age: 50 Home: McElderry Park
Urbanite #93 march 2012 39
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real estate
The City That Rents?
More folks in Baltimore have landlords than mortgages. A passing byproduct of the housing bubble, or the new “un-ownership society” driven by Gen Y?
By Brennen Jensen ILLUSTRATIONs by ROBBI BEHR
Urbanite #93 march 2012 41
consider this a tale of two city lots. Exhibit A is in Pigtown, where the Camden Crossing housing development débuted with fanfare in 2006—a phalanx of suburbanesque, neo-colonial, garage townhomes blooming in a brownfield in the shadow of the old B&O Railroad roundhouse. Sales were brisk, and home prices passed the half-million mark. But then the bubble burst, and Baltimore’s median home price plunged more than 30 percent. Camden Crossing was caught uncompleted, and a December foreclosure auction of the remaining thirty-four home sites was only prevented at the eleventh hour when local developer Metroventures Properties got a financial lifeline from a new lender. On a recent afternoon visit nothing was stirring on the weedy lots save two men idly airing their dogs. Exhibit B is but a couple of miles east, at the corner of Thames and Wolfe streets in Fells Point. Here nothing is idle, as a half-dozen pieces of heavy equipment noisily tear at the ground where the Bozzoto Group, a Greenbeltbased development and management firm, is putting up the $72 million Union Wharf project—281 apartments scheduled to take on tenants in 2013. And chances are if you hear construction noise or see hardhat-clad folks with blueprints under their arms elsewhere in town, look around for a sign reading "New Apartments Leasing Soon." The crash-and-burn housing market and worst-since-the-'30s economic downturn left marks large and small on Baltimore. Among them, this: Baltimore is now a city that rents. A census data analysis by USA Today last June placed Baltimore among only some two dozen U.S. cities since 2000 to have slipped from majority homeowners to majority renters (52.3 percent of Baltimoreans rented in 2010, up from 49.7 percent a decade earlier, the analysis shows). Just how dented is the American Dream of a white picket fence (or a shiny stoop) and a roofof-one’s-own in Charm City? Since the dollarhouse days of the 1970s, Baltimore’s boosters have looked to homeownership as a means to stabilize neighborhoods and bring in new blood, but now factors both economic and demographic, good and bad, come into play. College enrollment is at record highs, but so is tuition debt and unemployment among recent grads. How long the headwinds against a return to homebuying will last is the crystal-ball question. Presently, it’s safe to say landlords are in the catbird seat. While home prices dipped another 4 percent in the region last year, rents were up at least that much, and depending on a unit’s amenities and location, they spiked as much as 9 percent. Indeed, for the first quarter of last year, Baltimore was among the top ten cities for rent increases in the nation, according to 42 march 2012 www.urbanitebaltimore.com
industry analysis firm MPF Research. With few better credit scores. Given this, it’s no wonder new rental units added during the years of frenrents are increasing. zied house sales, the rule of supply and demand “I think during the last decade the percentage is working overtime. Southern Management, of homeowners moved to a level that had never which owns and managers some 24,000 rental been reached in our country and that probably units in the mid-Atlantic—from 1960s-era garwasn’t justified,” Bozzuto says. “Six years ago, a den apartments to swanky downtown office-to28-year-old would have felt under pressure to go out and buy a condo as a way to make some apartment conversions, such as the Standard and 39 West Lexington—started the new year money. I think today they understand that rentwith a corporate-record 98.2 occupancy rate. ing can be a very intelligent thing to do to main“The rental market is strong in these last few tain flexibility and not run the risk of housing years because you have people who lost their prices staying flat or declining.” home and have to live somewhere so they rent Deborah Ford, professor of finance and direcinstead of own and a lot of young people with tor of the real estate and economic development huge amounts of debt who don’t know where program at the University of Baltimore’s Merthey are going to end up landing—a job here or rick School of Business, doesn’t want to say the job on the West Coast? ” says Darlene HarenAmerican dream of owning home is dying but does feel a more realistic view of homeownerberg, president of Charles Village’s Star Property Management, which oversees some 500 rental ships is entering people's minds. “It’s a place to units across town. “No one wants to be tied to a house right now,” Baltimore is among only two dozen In such turbulent times, other, would-be homebuyers have de- U.S. cities since 2000 to have slipped cided to sit on the sidelines, opting from majority homeowners to to ink new rental leases while they wait for house prices to hit bottom majority renters. and our economic storm clouds to clear. live, not an investment,” she says. “It’s not stocks ” The Live Baltimore Home Center, the 15-yearand bonds, and I think in many cases unless old nonprofit organization that markets the city you intend to stay there for a very long period of and its neighborhoods to would-be residents— time you are probably better off renting.” renters or owners—is on the front line of this Amy Weldon, a 26-year-old assistant trainer rental shift. “We’ve noticed the apartment and at the National Aquarium, loves city life from her home in Butchers Hill: free concerts in rental based links on our website are seeing significantly more activity,” says the group’s execunearby Patterson Park, sunset on her roof deck, tive director, Steve Gondol. “We’re seeing people the easy commute. But she loves this all this as who could easily buy that are just choosing to a renter, one of three roommates in a $1,525-arent.” month apartment. Tom Bozzuto sees this, too. In fact, the Boz“I really don’t see me ever buying unless they zuto Group’s chief executive officer is banking start giving houses away,” Weldon says with a chuckle. “I make so little that getting a morton it with Union Wharf, which follows his firm's leased-to-the-hilt mid-town apartment complex, gage is not realistic. This speaks maybe more to the Fitzgerald, which opened in 2010. Union my field than my generation, but I think a lot Wharf joins a portfolio of Baltimore apartment of people are in the same boat. We’re paying off complexes, either leased or owned, that include student loans and don’t have any extra cash.” a pair of Harbor East high-rises and downtown’s There is, of course, a large boat brimming with financially strapped young people. It’s historic Munsey Building conversion. (Rents called Generation Y. And many of them might range from $1,200 to $2,300, and the Baltimore properties are 94 percent occupied.) look enviously at the $10,000 or so Weldon still “I’m not one of these people who thinks homeowes Towson University, given that the average ownership has gone completely out of fashion— college debt for an undergraduate degree now that’s ridiculous,” Bozzuto says. “I think what tops $25,000, according to the Institute for Colhappened is that people now understand that lege Access and Success. (There’s been no burstowning a home is a lifestyle choice and not a ing of the tuition bubble: College costs at public economic investment. There are people renting four-year institutions increased some 72 percent from us now who might a few years back had over the last decade, while private college price been inclined to buy. Some are waiting out the tags [usually much more to begin with] rose market, but I also think there are people that some 35 percent.) are waiting until their lifestyle justifies making There’ s no hard-and-fast definition of Gen Y (a.k.a. the Millennials or Generation Next) a home purchase.” and depending on where you place the bornIn an off-the-cuff analysis of how his tenants have changed these past few years, Bozzuto bebetween bookends, it’s either the largest generalieves they are now older (mid-'30s for the Baltition in American history or second only to the Baby Boomers. (Hence its other nickname: the more properties) and have higher incomes and
real estate Echo Boom.) It roughly refers to people born in the 1980s and early ’90s, and there’s more than 80 million of them. (Generation X—the Baby Bust—is around half as large.) “Gen Y [over the next 10 years] is going to prefer renting for a myriad reasons, and if only half of them rent, that’s still 40 to 43 million new renters,” say Tim Smith, who spent years researching Gen Y for the banking industry and now runs the Echo Boom Bomb blog dedicated to the Boomers 2.0. “There are a lot of business opportunities for folks who want to be landlords.” Even without all the economic turbulence, when young adults form households they generally rent that first roof over their heads (not counting the some 25 percent that, according to Smith’s surveys, are presently bunking down with mom and dad or other relatives). Add a dented view of homeownership as sound investment and studies showing Gen Y couples will be marrying both less and later in life, and you have a recipe for a longer-term renting trend. “I think we are starting to see the American Dream return to entrepreneurship, like it was back in early 1900s,” Smith says. “The American Dream wasn’t to own your own home but to start your own business.” (And so opening a gluten-free cupcake shop or launching a nichemarket dot com businesses might be taking precedence over a welcome mat and a thirty-year mortgage.) But as industry and academic folks poke and prod this generation’s aspirations and mindset, mixed messages can appear. While a 2010 survey from Pew Research indicated that only 20 percent of adults aged 18 to 34 considered homeownership “important” in their lives, a survey released last fall from the real estate website Trulia reported that home ownership is still part of the “personal American dream” for 65 percent of adults in that group. Either way, overall economic conditions and financial realities are likely to remain the key factor in dictating home buying decisionmaking. To keep the housing markets from overheating in the future, new federal regulations of the home loan industry are being considered that could require more homebuyers to put more money down up front, perhaps as much as 20 percent. Smith’s research says the average Millennial has all of $1,500 at his or her disposal. All this also means that if more people are renting—be it by choice or necessity—is it time to revisit the stigma renters sometimes get saddled with, especially in mixed owner-renter neighborhoods? If folks aren’t even invested in a house, the reasoning goes, how or why would they be invested in the greater community? “I get offended when I hear politicians or realtors talk about renters as if they are criminals,” counters Bozutto. “Renters are good citizens too.”
Eli Lopatin, 29, encountered some renter prejudice when he had an apartment in Bolton Hill, where the homeowners rarely even spoke to him. It’s been different since he moved to Reservoir Hill four years ago. One thing renters rarely have access to is land, but the neighborhood’s Lennox Street Community Garden gave Lopatin a chance to get his hands dirty while putting food on the table. Now he’s one of the garden’s managers and engaged in the greater community as well, sitting on the board of Bolton Park Neighbors, a nonprofit neighborhood group. Perhaps the increasing interest in urban gardening and growing public spaces to pursue it can help more renters end their up-the-stairs isolation. “If you have people who want to be engaged in a community it kind of doesn’t matter if they are owners or renters,” says Lopatin, a debtsaddled graduate student who won’t be buying a house anytime soon. “There are still negative
stereotypes about the renters, but if people meet you and see you want to be involved that can change. The overall feeling is that we need good residents, and whether those are renters or homeowner doesn’t really matter as much.” Sometimes the problem is the landlord and not the tenant. The housing bust lead to a spike in foreclosures in neighborhoods such as Highlandtown and Patterson Place where speculator rehabbers—working off the popularity of Canton—had been flipping vacant or rundown rental houses for middle-class homeownership. Many of these foreclosures—including a large pool once owned by the bankrupt and defunct Patterson Park CDC—ended up as rentals. Anthony Cataldo, who bought his Port Street home in Patterson Place six years ago, sees them right out his window. “Some of the rentals are in terrible condition, and the landlords couldn’t care less about them,” Cataldo says. “They are getting almost $1,000 a Urbanite #93 march 2012 43
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real estate month for houses that are in shambles but they won’t sell because it’s a cash cow. After a small rise in new homeowners the dream we had of absentee landlords selling their houses to a developer has been killed.” Or has it? Despite the numbers, projections, trends, and all the rest, its not hard not to find folks who remain bullish on Baltimore home buying. And if both the number of rental units and rents continue to rise, the market might tilt anew. “I don’t know If I’d call it a ‘rental bubble,’ but I think there is going to be a problem if we end up with too much rental on the market and not enough people,” says Harenberg. “And the way they’re building all these new high-rise rentals I think they might wind up like the condo market, where in one year there were some 5,000 permits for condos.” Rents for smaller rowhouses in southeast have actually edged downward, say realtors in Coldwell Banker’s Inner Harbor office, while
to $17,000 in closing cost assistance for houses bought near a Hopkins campus. Still, going forward, Sissman see the student debt issue as something that will need to be addressed. “There are so many young people coming out of school well educated, and they should be good borrowers, but the ratios don’t work because of the student debt is just too big,” he says. “Eventually the lending industry will have to accommodate that in some responsible way.” In the end, it’s hard to imagine the emerging crop of 20 and 30somethings forever shying away from inking a mortgage. The city’s diverse housing stock helps, as some “starter” rowhouses are really no larger than one-bedroom apartments. On the other end of the brick-and-mortar spectrum, some of the massive grand dame houses have been chopped into apartments. Perhaps the rush to return these to single-family living will slow, and buyers might choose to live awhile in one unit and rent out the others. And then down the road in D.C., the housing market
“... we’ve got neighborhoods where prices dropped by 40 percent and interest rates hover around 4 percent...” overall rents are going up. Supply and demand might be at work here, too, in spots. “We’re definitely starting to see more buyers in the business renovate and resell—they’re not keeping the properties to rent,” says Paige Cosgrove, a Coldwell Banker Branch Vice President. “We recently had a buyer who was 22, so very young homeowners are purchasing.” “There's no question that our work in the homeownership area has slowed,” says Mark Sissman, president of Healthy Neighborhoods, a Baltimore group that connects house hunters with incentives and its own pool of below-market loans to encourage house purchases in more than a dozen targeted Baltimore neighborhood. “But we’ve got neighborhoods where prices dropped by 40 percent and interest rates hover around 4 percent—it’s an awfully good time to buy. People are now making more thoughtful decisions. It’s not about flipping a property these days but choosing a neighborhood where you want to stay. That’s the right way for people to be involved with real estate.” A growing plethora of city and state homepurchase incentive programs now greet wouldbe home buyers, and there are private ones as well, such as Johns Hopkins’ Live Near Your Work program, providing employees with up
is much healthier, and prices are actually creeping up. It just seems natural that more and more folks from that other beltway will be bringing their Washington paychecks northward in pursuit of Baltimore mortgages. Renting can offer convenience, flexibility and—ostensibly—freedom from maintenance hassles and costs. But the truth remains that when you rent your roof it’s not your own, and the “lord” part of “landlord” spells out your place in the pecking order. After a decade of renting, 29-year-old David Llewellyn is ready to take the purchase plunge, driven by frustration as much as finances. Banks have seemed willing to work around his tuition debt, so now it’s just a matter of finding where to settle. Someplace where he won’t be forced to move open up his living space to strangers considering buying the building. “We are just really tired of the renting situation,” says Llewellyn, who does IT work for Social Security Administration and is getting married in May. “The past few places where we rented the owners ended up selling out from underneath us, so it’s been hard to stay in one place. Rents are going sky high, and it’s just frustrating. We just want a stable place to live.”
a Sampling of Local Residential Management Companies
Compiled by Brennen Jensen
A & G Management www.aandgmanagement.com Some 3,000 apartments with rents from $591 to $1,793; noted properties: Islands of Fox Chase, Olde Stage Avalon Bay Communities, Inc. www.avalonbay.com Noted properties: Avalon Centerpoint at 8 North Howard Street, with rents from $995 a month for one-bedroom apartments to $1,370 for twobedroom apartments Berkshire Property Advisors www.berkshireapartments.com Berkshire Property Advisors rent some 4,884 units in the Baltimore area, ranging from $675 to $2,400; noted properties: Berkshire at Town Center in Towson; one, two, and three bedroom apartments available. The Bozzuto Group www.bozzuto.com Some 3,847 apartments in the area with rents from $1,100 to $2,300; noted properties: The Fitzgerald, McHenry Row, The Munsey Continental Realty Corporation www.crcrealty.com Around 7,000 apartments in the metro area with rents from $634 to $1,394; noted properties: Donnybrook, Courthouse Square Hirschfield Properties www.hirschfeldhomes.com Apartments with rents from $790 to $1,805; noted properties: Ridge View in White Marsh Home Properties www.homeproperties.com Nearly 10,000 apartments in the area with rents from $849 to $1,387; noted properties: Bonnie Ridge, Owings Run Morgan Properties www.morgan-properties.com Some 3,800 apartments in the area with rents from $780 to $2,274; noted properties: The Marylander, The Carlyle Multi-Properties www.multipropertiesinc.com Numerous properties in the Baltimore area, including Falls Village of Mount Washington, Forest Glen Townhouses, Fox Crossing Apartments, Hillsdale Manor, and Ridge Gardens Southern Management www.southernmanagement.com Southern Management rents some 6,380 units in the area with rents from $820 to $3,300; noted properties: Atrium at Market Center, The Standard, Oella Mill, Charles Towers, The Palisades of Towson Time Group www.timegroupapts.prospectportal.com Time rents some 16,000 units in the area with rents from $500 to $1,800; noted properties: Hopkins House, The Severn
Urbanite #93 march 2012 45
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space into the Wild A real-estate mogul gives a country cottage a modern facelift with an organic touch.
By andrew zaleski photography by J.M. Giordano
Urbanite #93  march 2012  51
It almost seems unusual that Patrick Turner— the real estate developer behind Turner Development Group, the man whose renovations of forlorn buildings like the old Southway Bowling Center are deliberate attempts to attract people into Baltimore—would make his home on 5 1/2 acres of wooded, county land, bounded by a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay.
“I’ve always liked the city,” says Turner. But his wife, Jeanine, who moved here from Los Angeles, wasn’t fond of the idea of living downtown. It was 2004, right when Turner was developing what would become the Silo Point residences. So he left the task of finding a home to Jeanine, along with a list of specific requirements: proximity to I-83; a pond and a stream; an existing, beat-up house on site that could be torn down or rehabbed. In three days she found a property—an old cottage along Greenspring Avenue, once the home of the chief botanist for the state department of agriculture—that fit the bill. But they arrived late to a packed auction and couldn’t
park in the driveway. After dropping Jeanine off, Turner turned to find a parking spot just before “some car comes flying over the hill and rams the back of my truck.” “It was such a loud collision they stopped the auction, and everybody walked up to the road to see what happened,” he says. “Which allowed me to get the check in,” chimes Jeanine. Fate’s apparent intervention proved fortuitous. Turner’s real estate projects in the city tend to be modern in design, with nods to Baltimore’s architectural past; the Silo Point condominium complex is a rehab of the old grain elevator in Locust Point. His Pikesville residence became a similar endeavor.
Design elements are subtle: The house is made up exclusively of horizontal and vertical lines. 52 march 2012 www.urbanitebaltimore.com
space A natural touch (right): An earthy, neutral paint scheme, found throughout the house, is yet another way the Turners sought to mimic their wooded surroundings.
Design by nature: Jeanine Turner, who took the lead on decorating the house's interior, placed potted tropical plant life throughout in an attempt to bring the outside inside. Floorto-ceiling windowpanes offer the Turners unobstructed views of their backyard.
The couple tore down the existing cottage, step one in the rehab. They then built up from the existing foundation and expanded the square footage of the house from the original 3,000 to 8,000 over three floors. Architect Christopher Pfaeffle, who designed the Silo Point lofts, was brought in to design the Turners’ home. “He knows exactly what we like and what we like to see,” says Turner. Pfaeffle preserved the stone chimneys and used stone from the same Falls Road quarry to construct the house’s rear wall and two columns that help prop up a living room deck. These same columns are two sides of a rain curtain that drops into an infinity pool in the backyard. Inside, the granite-countered kitchen runs along the front of the house, bookended by a tucked-away dining room and a foyer that leads directly into an expansive living room. There, large windowpanes reach from floor to ceiling, and butt-glazed glass ensures unobstructed views of the wooded scenery. “All the animals out here—raccoons, foxes, deer. It’s amazing to just sit here and to watch all the nature around here,” says Turner. Design elements are subtle: The house is made up exclusively of horizontal and vertical lines; each floor of the house, built on a hill, is at grade level; baseboard moldings are built into the wall. “Design’s all in the detail,” Turner says. Jeanine, an artist and interior designer, took ownership of the home’s aesthetics. Her inspiration, she says, comes from Frank Lloyd Wright, the storied architect who made it a point to harmoniously marry a structure’s location with the structure itself. “It’s bringing the outside inside,” and vice versa, she says. Fur rugs, stonework, and an earthy, neutral paint
scheme combine with a more modern design in a style she dubs “organic contemporary.” Potted tropical plants are scattered throughout the house. Custom stainless steel railings were crafted by local metalworker Matt Ludwig. In the Turners’ garage, two, hollowed out tree sections 40 inches across are curing; eventually, they’ll be the table legs for a new dining room table. “If you’re in the woods, you really can’t just ignore it,” Jeanine says. “You have to build for that. And I think we pulled it off.” To see more photos of the Turners' home, go to bit.ly/turnershome.
Urbanite #93 march 2012 53
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Urbanite #93 march 2012 55
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O
n a cold January night, Peter May, an estuarine ecologist; Chris Streb, an ecological engineer; Bryon Salladin, an arborist; and Adam Ganz, a landscape architect, all with the environmental restoration firm Biohabitats, gather after work in the cold dark warehouse space that is the home of their extracurricular dream: the Prawn Shop. Surrounded by eleven tanks, many of which hold 500 gallons, and boxes full of pumps, lights, and other equipment, their conversation ranges freely between such highly practical concerns as the space’s halfinstalled insulation and overtly philosophical questions like how ten billion people will be able to survive in a world w ith increasingly scarce resou rces. These vexing, big questions hang on their breaths, visible in the frigid air. Despite the name, it’s not really a shop at all. Located at the Free Farm in Hampden, the Prawn Shop is more like a laboratory where the team experiments with the best ways to bring the closed-system aquaponic production of freshwater prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii) to otherwise unused urban spaces. When it gets warm enough, they plan to fill a series of smaller tanks suspended on a plank near the ceiling. As the prawns mature, they will be moved to the larger tanks on the ground, where they will grow to full size. When the team begins operations this spring, the Prawn Shop hopes to produce about 300 pounds of shrimp every three to four months. They plan to sell the shrimp to restaurants and directly to consumers through a community supported agriculture (CSA) model that allows members to pay upfront and receive a portion of each harvest. Although the tanks aren’t yet brimming with shrimp, the team has grand ideas about how their operation could change urban farming, aquaculture, and—if all goes according to plan—the future of sustainable food. Streb is enthusiastic about the popularity of urban farming, but he thinks it needs to go further. If urban agriculture is going to reach beyond the foodies and have a real impact, it can no longer be limited to growing kale in the backyard. “Isolating [urban farming] to growing vegetables is not going to supply the nutrients that we need. Protein is the future,” Streb says.
P
eter May first started to think about sustainable shrimp farming in graduate school, when he studied mangroves for PhD work at the University of Maryland. Mangroves
are essential to many ecosystems, but in Asian shrimp farms, the amphibious trees are destoryed in order to create ponds for shrimp production. The effect is devastating, and the process quickly “kills” the water, making it necessary to dig new ponds, while also contaminating nearby water sources with runoff of waste, antibiotics, and hormones. “It [is] a complete loss of environment and way of life,” May says. He and another Prawn Shop partner, Tom Juhasz, began to experiment with raising prawn in a tank in May’s backyard in Greenbelt (he splits his time between Baltimore and Greenbelt), searching for a solution to the severe “limitation of getting shrimp where we get it from,” May says. Nearly 90 percent of the shrimp consumed in the United States is produced on farms in twentyfour countries—and wild-caught shrimp isn’t much better for t he env i ronment. The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch (a website monitoring effects of seafood consumption) reports that for every pound of shrimp caught, 3 to 15 pounds of other aquatic life is destroyed. Even in years of record-setting shrimp catches, the supply of wild shrimp can’t come close to meeting our demand. The Prawn Shop decided to partner with the nonprofit collective the Free Farm, which began in 2010 with the Ash Street Garden in Hampden and has since broadened its focus to embrace a variety of sustainability issues, in part because they want to spread the word. “They are really enthusiastic about this and they want to learn, so we said, ‘Let’s do it,’” Streb says. “We need as many people growing protein as possible.” Outside the city, there has been a slow revolution growing around the idea of closed-system shrimp farms that are not connected to a natural body of water. Marvesta, one of the first and most successful of these, was founded by Baltimore natives on the Eastern Shore in 2002. Marvesta produces between 30,000 and 120,000 pounds of shrimp each year and supplies local restaurants like Woodberry Kitchen and Gertrude’s. Their indoor tanks recirculate seawater they haul a few miles inland from the coast. The problem with closed system shrimp farms is purification of the water (Marvesta doesn’t share its purification processes), which can be expensive. Most indoor shrimp farms like Marvesta use saltwater to raise their shrimp, so they must use mechanical filtering systems to purify and recirculate the water. The Prawn
Shop thinks that by using freshwater prawns (or some species of saltwater shrimp that can live in freshwater) they can turn the problem of waste into an asset. The Prawn Shop team figured out that if they could raise prawns in freshwater, all of the waste could be used as nutrients for an aquaponics operation (aquaponics is the combination of aquaculture with hydroponics). A system of pipes will use the dirty water to fertilize vegetables and algae—a process that will purify the water, which is then re-circulated back to the tanks. In addition to the vegetables, which can be eaten, the algae will produce oxygen, which is good for the shrimp and can be harvested as feed for animals (“Chickens fed on algae produce great green eggs,” says Ganz) or to produce biofuel. Their day jobs at Biohabitats have given the team a wealth of experience with algal turf scrubbing—the process of using algae to purify water. May worked with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection to create an algal scrubber wastewater treatment system, which both took nutrients—waste—out of the water and turned the algae into biofuel. He and Streb are working together with Biohabitats in conjunction with Living Classrooms and the University of Maryland on a similar project for the Inner Harbor. The project hinges on the idea that the same nutrients that cause the algae blooms responsible for the harbor’s dead zone could be harvested and turned into fuel (Ganz, May, Salladin, and Streb were central in creating a floating wetlands to help purify the Inner Harbor). This approach—using algal scrubbing and aquaponics in the indoor production of shrimp—is unique to the Prawn Shop, but there are a growing number of aquaponic tilapia farms (including Farmer Tom’s Turkey Farm in Reisterstown, which will expand to tilapia aquaculture this year). But tilapia requires a lot more room than shrimp to grow. Currently, the Prawn Shop uses tilapia-style tanks loaned by the University of Maryland, but once they get things running they hope to transition to smaller tanks that can be stacked to create more volume. “It turns out that the ideal condition for shrimp is only about a foot of water,” Salladin says. “That means you can stack it a lot easier.” “It’s important to take advantage of vertical space in a city,” Streb adds. The members of the Prawn Shop hope that their experiments here can create a wave of food production in some of Baltimore’s 16,000 vacant buildings. “Put all of this empty space to use producing food,” May says. “We could literally deliver live shrimp to restaurants by bicycle,” Salladin adds. His colleagues laugh, but they’re serious. As ecologists, they’re trained to look at the ways things are connected. “It’s all about closing the loop,” Streb says. Urbanite #93 march 2012 57
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dining reviews food + Drink Comfort food, revisited: Ten Ten is rooted in the familiar but finds elevation in the details.
Ten Ten By rebecca Messner
photos by Sarah Thrower
T
his city is no stranger to restaurants in post-industrial settings, especially in warehouse-heavy Harbor East. But Ten Ten, the latest addition to the Bagby Restaurant Group, manages to feel intimate and comfortable. The restaurant is rooted in the familiar— exposed brick, reclaimed wood floors, and a menu of comfort food classics—but ultimately finds elevation in the details. Ten Ten, named straightforwardly for its address, 1010 Fleet Street, is nestled back in the courtyard of the Bagby Furniture building,
a dozen or so paces off the busy street. The restaurant’s space is cozy—the ceilings, accented with metal beams, corrugated tin, and exposed air shafts, are low enough to keep the dining din from echoing, and warm lighting softens the jagged edges. The marble bar glows—literally, it is lit from within—and the bartenders' impressive array of bitters and cocktail accompaniments makes it tempting to linger. There’s nothing on the menu that’s not recognizable, but that doesn’t mean anything is simple. Even the bread basket delights, with small bites of sun-dried tomato cheddar cornbread and sweet-potato biscuits. A salad of local greens comes garnished with spiced pistachios and firm butternut squash. Soft Cherry Glenn goat cheese and tender Martins Farms duck confit top a French- and Indian-inspired grilled naan flatbread, along with Asiago cheese and arugula. Fig-orange preserves tie the dish together—and although it slightly overpowers the needed spice of the arugula, it adds dimension to the smoky duck. A simple entrée of herb-roasted cod comes in a horseradish beurre
Silo.5% Wine Bar By Martha Thomas
T
he wine bar 13.5%—named for an alcohol content common in wine—opened in Hampden to a collective sigh of recognition. It’s sophisticated, without too much pretension, and provides a lauded alternative to neighboring bars. Its fraternal twin, Silo.5%—the name a riff on both its location and its antecedent— may give the impression that the Hampden locale was merely a warm-up. Silo Point, the modern-industrial condo built within the carcass of a grain elevator, is the perfect backdrop for the wine bar’s modern décor of exposed duct work, stacked slate brick walls, and black pleather couches and cubeshaped ottomans. Glass exterior walls reveal views of the harbor and of a cement courtyard, its soaring support beams and oversized rattan furniture promising convivial gatherings in warmer weather. There’s also the wall of wine, from which any of 200 bottles can be chosen and uncorked, as well as a reasonably priced list of about thirty wines by the bottle or the glass. And while the wine is meant to be the focal point of the place, the food is decidedly worth a visit. The chef, Robert Blake, has put together a pleasing mix of tapas, pizzas, and a handful of
The favored twin: Silo.5% outshines its antecedent, 13.5% Wine Bar.
entrees. The choices, dominated by starters and small plates, are nicely calibrated to a range of cravings—be it a minimalist nibbling of cheese (with a flight of Pinot Noir) or a multi-course meal featuring New York strip (with a brisk Argentinian Malbec or a hearty California Cab). Blake’s sleight of hand is evident in a risotto special scattered with tender chunks of lobster
blanc bath, alongside warm dill potatoes and wilted spinach and leeks, which add color and a faint, pleasing bitterness. There’s a nice amount of cohesion in the menu, which gives the illusion of attending a dinner party where the hosts aim to get the most out of their groceries: The duck confit flatbread echoes a crispy duck confit entrée, with sweet, Port-infused dried cherries and pumpkin risotto. The pumpkin risotto is also an entrée unto itself, accompanied by nutty shavings of Grana Padano, spiced pumpkin seeds, and sweet, dried figs. The succulent flavors of the South appear throughout, and nowhere more winningly than in an elegantly presented spin on classic shrimp and grits, with maple braised collard greens, texturally dynamic three-cheese poblano grits, and a fatty chunk of crispy pork belly. Dessert, after all those sweet, southern flavors, may feel superfluous—until you discover they make the ice cream in-house, in flavors like salted caramel, brown butter, and date. And of course, there’s always the option of an East Coast hot toddy, which the bartender calls “the most underrated drink in America,” made with apple brandy, rye, buckwheat honey, and lemon—a most appropriate ending to an intriguing and understated dining experience. (Dinner daily; lunch Mon–Fri; brunch Sun. 1010 Fleet St.; 410244-6867; www.bagbys1010.com)
and infused with lemon oil, with dabs of sweet soy (easily mistaken for molasses) on each corner of the small square plate. The forest mushroom fondue is heartier and made for sharing, with creamy manchego cheese, meaty mushrooms, and a heap of crostini. The chef occasionally rummages in the wine cellar or bar to embellish a dish, but this is done without fanfare—the seared sea scallops, for example, are draped with succulent strips of fennel braised in Chardonnay and sweetened with tarragon-tinged beurre blanc. And the brisket, a small hunk of Kobe beef, is served with a reduction of merlot. It’s a jewel of a dish, nestled in creamy polenta with slivers of cippolini onion, meat that doesn’t even need a fork for cutting, so tender you can practically slice it with your eyes. Desserts are minimal, but the crème brulée is not to be missed—a creamy custard beneath a solid sheet of torched sugar with just the right hint of char. At the Hampden wine bar, accent colors are orange; at Silo, the bar stools and signage are lime green, reminiscent of Marimekko prints and frog decals from the 1960s. If the two are indeed siblings, Silo may be the favored twin, sent to an elite boarding school with well-heeled patrons, while the north Baltimore brother remains in its low-ceilinged but familial home. (Dinner Tues–Sat. 200 Steuart St.; 410-539-7456; www.silo.5winebar.com) Urbanite #93 march 2012 59
Darker Than Blue Café Where Blues and Jazz Meets Great Food www.darkerthanbluecafe.com
Join us every Sunday from 11a.m. – 3 p.m. at our Buffet Brunch.
3034 Greenmount Avenue Baltimore, Maryland 443-872-4468
60 march 2012 www.urbanitebaltimore.com
wine + spirits food + Drink
La Dolce Vino
Baltimore club celebrates Italian wine, wisdom, and song. By Clinton Macsherry
T
he plinking of a mandolin begins shortly before 7 on a mid-winter evening at Osteria da Amedeo, a Little Italy wine bar. A guitarist adds lower-toned strums and plunks, accompanied moments later by an accordionist. The performers create a distinctly Italian harmony, with a jangle, bounce, and timbre to make you smile and salivate. At least that’s my Pavlovian response to the start of a monthly meeting of the Italian Wine Club of Baltimore. Olives, bread, and cheese soon get passed. Corks pop, and bottles are poured. Forty-some people comfortably crowd the candlelit bar and tables in two adjoining rooms. They’ve come for a mix of entertainment and education, eating and drinking, and a shared enjoyment of things Italian. “We explore different wines together, have conversations, listen to music,” says founder Joan De Simone, a management consultant and faculty member of Johns Hopkins University. “And we usually discover some things.” With no formal membership, all are welcome, within space limitations. Tonight’s $25 admission includes a tasting of five Italian wines paired with cheeses and allows attendees hefty discounts on the featured bottles. Inspired partly by the French Wine Society, a prominent educational and promotional organization in Washington, D.C., De Simone established the Italian Wine Club of Baltimore in 2010. Meetings remain delightfully down-to-earth and—beyond the focus on Italian wine—thematically open-ended. But De Simone describes the club’s mission in broader terms. “I see wine as a lens for viewing history, geography, geology, art, music,” she says. “Wine is a kaleidoscope of all these subjects. When you experience them in the richness they should be experienced, hopefully you’ll begin to immerse yourself in Italian culture, and that will prompt you to learn more.” When she launched the club, a longtime friend of her husband’s had recently re-opened the former Pepino’s Tavern as Osteria da Amedeo, a photo by j.m. giordano
Saluti: Marc De Simone celebrates all things Italian at Osteria da Amedeo’s wine club.
moderately priced all-Italian wine bar serving light fare. “We thought it would be a great location,” says De Simone. Fifteen meetings later, a convivial mix of regulars and newcomers seem to heartily agree. Conversations flow in English and Italian. Jon Grant, a 43-year-old Hampdenite, sits at the bar with companion Terri Thomas. “We’ve always visited Little Italy,” Grant says. “We’d stopped by here in past years to buy bottles for the outdoor movie night, and we just recently noticed it had changed. Since then we’ve fallen in love with it. There aren’t many bars off the beaten path like this in Little Italy. We were here last night, and they convinced us to come back for the wine tasting.” The club exudes a familial atmosphere for good reason. Joan De Simone oversees the evening. Husband Marc De Simone plays mandolin and gregariously emcees, while son Marc Jr. handles guitar. Daughter-in-law Heather, an opera singer, contributes occasional vocal interludes— tonight a lovely Puccini aria. Daughter M.C., a wine educator, offers engaging, pretension-free presentations on each wine and encourages audience participation. Accordionist Vince Piscopo, a friend of Marc Sr.’s, rounds out the troupe. My favorite wine of the night—the Castello Monaci “Kreos” 2009 ($15 after club discount), a rosé composed primarily of Negroamaro grapes—hails from Italy’s Apulia region. Notes distributed at the meeting describe it as “pinkish cherry red with garnet. The nose is full of cherry and strawberry, dried flowers and a background of metallic ore. The taste is more generous, with good structure, freshness, and richness of fruit that grows easily, leaving a pleasant taste.” Couldn’t have said it better myself. A communal vibe—even among strangers— distinguishes this as a club, not just a tasting series. Friendliness is everyone’s default setting, at least for an evening. Maybe that’s the wine talking, but I don’t think so. “You can’t drink wine and be unhappy,” says De Simone. “Not in our club.” Urbanite #93 march 2012 61
arts + culture
feature / music / theater / literature / the scene
Sister Cities
Through festivals and cultural exchanges, Baltimore’s independent theater scene is finding inspiration and collaboration in post-Soviet Bulgaria.
By John Barry
photography by J.m. Giordano
after a fourteen-hour journey from Baltimore to the Balkans, the five-minute cab ride from Sheremetovo Airport to downtown Sofia, Bulgaria is a quick lesson in 20th century Eastern European history. On the outskirts of the city, crumbling prefab apartment buildings from the Soviet era mix with massive amounts of politically tinged, right-wing graffiti evoking the stormy world of politics after the Communist era. In the center of the city, the looming former Hall of Soviets stands as a reminder that for decades after World War II, Bulgaria was one of Moscow’s strongest links in the Iron Curtain. For five chilly days in November, two representatives of 21st century Baltimore’s theater community were part of that mix. Lola Pierson, 28, founder of Baltimore’s UnSaddest Factory Theatre Company, and Nathan Cooper, 26, artistic director of Single Carrot Theatre on North Avenue,
Exchange students: Nathan Cooper, of Single Carrot Theatre, and Lola Pierson, of the UnSaddest Factory Theatre Company
arrived in Sofia rolling suitcases loaded with Old Bay Seafood Seasoning and Single Carrot T-shirts. Invited by the Buglarian independent theater association ACT, they were there for the ACT Independent Theatre Festival: five days of cutting-edge theater, dance, performance art, discussion, and schmoozing. Their travel—and this reporter's—was funded by a grant from the New York-based Trust For Mutual Understanding, an organization dedicated to promoting cultural exchanges among the U.S., Russia, and Eastern Europe. The tins of Old Bay were offered courtesy of Philip Arnoult, director of the Center for International Theatre Development (CITD), which organized the exchange. And if there’s a market for Old Bay in Eastern Europe, it can probably be traced to CITD, which has been sending members of Baltimore’s theater community abroad for years.
mo za rt ’s
The Marriage of Figaro featuring
Baltimore Symphony orcheStra Underwritten in part by Sandra and Malcolm Berman
MARCH 9-11 Sung in Italian with English surtitles.
g o unod ’s
Faust featuring
the concert artiStS oF Baltimore orcheStra Underwritten in part by Claire and Allan Jensen
APRIL 20 & 22 Sung in French with English surtitles.
TREASURED STORIES By Eric Carle A BROwn BEAR, A MOOn AnD A CATERPILLAR
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Dear Mom and Dad Please Don’t Sell the Piano by ellen cherry (Wrong Size Shoes, 2011) By Cara Ober
2:31 3:17 4:0 8 5:26 2:49
no
1:17
ellen cherry
us about 15,000 leva [about $9,000],” says Dimov. “But that’s about one-tenth of the money we needed for the festival.” That’s where Americans like Pierson and Cooper had some advice to offer. Groups like Baltimore’s Single Carrot have managed to establish themselves in a market-driven scene while their members manage administrative duties, public relations, and fundraising in addition to their artistic duties—plus, of course, day jobs. The artists in Sofia had one lesson to offer to any risk-averse Americans, Cooper says: Challenging accepted artistic boundaries can actually increase audience size, especially among younger theatergoers. “These are people who had a tremendous sense of dedication in the face of adversity—unwavering dedication and passion,” he says. “Even though a lot of the people had to work other jobs, they always identified themselves as artists.” Pierson was impressed by the fact that in Sofia, a small number of venues and organizations have managed to consolidate a diverse and cuttingedge community of artists. The Red House Centre for Culture and Debate, which hosted several of the ACT Festival productions, offers artists space for experimentation and public debate on socio-political issues. Pierson also spent a day with operators of the Sfumato Theatre, which for two decades has been offering a venue for young and emerging theater and dance talent. “There are these spaces [in Sofia] that 20- to 30somethings can use,” says Pierson. “I really thought that was amazing.” That approach—creating a venue where people don’t just go to productions, but also engage with each other through dialogue—may represent Baltimore’s next big step. In the fall of 2012, Baltimore’s Open Theatre will be inaugurating its first season. The theater itself, led by Buck Jabaily (founding member and ex-Artistic Director of Single Carrot Theatre), and the brainchild of Arnoult, will feature a combination of local and international acts, including several Bulgarian productions. For as many as twenty weeks a year, the theater will host young artists from the Baltimore/D.C./Philadelphia region. Meanwhile, Baltimore and Bulgaria will continue to collaborate on an artistic level. Radeva will be coming to Baltimore in spring 2012 to introduce training techniques to the Single Carrot company. Other collaborations are being discussed as well. But as Pierson and Cooper both say, there’s one lesson that these growing international links may really drive home to up-and-coming artists in Baltimore: In the 21st century, there is an emerging theater audience that’s looking for new challenges. “In Bulgaria and Baltimore, there’s a growing belief that art doesn’t have to happen according to traditional models,” Cooper says. “We need to fight to make the art we want to. To me, that was what struck the biggest chord.”
sell the pia
The arts communities from the two cities have a lot in common. Baltimore’s currently expanding independent theater scene has been turning heads, and Sofia—where a strong state theater is a holdover from the Communist era—is also home to a growing, experimental independent theater scene. Both communities share some of the same triumphs, but they also have some of the same problems: As upstarts, they need new strategies to stay financially sustainable. The ACT Festival featured a wild smorgasbord of cutting-edge Bulgarian theater and dance. But it also offered Baltimoreans and Bulgarians—along with theater communities from other countries, including Serbia, Romania, Turkey, and Lebanon—to share strategies and exchange ideas. The first to greet us was the young Vasilena Radeva, a cheerfully enthusiastic poster child of Bulgaria’s independent theater scene. Riding around the city’s cobbled streets on a beat-up bike, she organized the festival, acted as a tour guide for the Americans, and directed a premiere of her own play. She is a founder of 36 Monkeys, a loosely defined, non-governmental organization that produced P.O. Box Unabomber, one of the festival’s many memorable productions. Culled in part from Ted Kaczynski’s manuscripts, the play features a bizarre dialogue between the terrorist/philosopher and an egglaying mammal from New Guinea. One particular line from the captivatingly weird production had a peculiar resonance: “We must search for new ways, new spaces, in order to survive.” Kaczynski wasn’t talking about independent theater in Sofia when he wrote that, but he could have been. It was a theme that carried through the entire week. Of course, P.O. Box Unabomber was just the tip of the iceberg. There is Such a Play (Martin Vangelov) was a pastiche extracted from sixty hours of recorded dialogue, most of it about sex. In Spider (Dimitar Dimitrov and Yordan Slaveykov), a brother and sister—Siamese twins—celebrate their birthday in a bathtub before their surgical separation. Museum of Hygiene (Iva Sveshtarova and Willy Prager) featured an Andy Kaufmanesque male-female wrestling match and a film of two performance artists getting drunk while reading Foucault. Like their Baltimore counterparts, artists in Sofia face challenges. In an era of budget slashing and bean counting, achieving financial sustainability isn’t easy. The institution of state-supported theaters is a holdover from the Communist era. But outside that umbrella, in a struggling economy, survival isn’t easy. According to actor, director, and ACT Festival organizer Vesselin Dimov, the state and city offered some support for the festival, but they’re hesitant to fund productions. And Bulgarian theater artists lack the resources that many of their American peers count on: a strong base of private organizations that donate and fund grants. “The state and city governments gave
’t please don
Album Cover art by Katherine Fahey
Feature / music arts + culture
m ellencherry.co 013 Shoes WSS i Wrong Size in Putchinsk cherry + Krist
©2012 ellen
I
n 2007, Baltimore singersongwriter ellen cherry was ill with a throat infection and couldn’t sing. Instead of playing her trusty guitar, cherry sat down at the piano instead. The more she played the piano, the more she fell in love with the instrument and the way it affected her songwriting. “Just spending time with the piano sparked new melodies and new ways to accompany what I was hearing in my head,” says cherry. “It slowed those melodies down—as if the piano itself was requiring me to observe the power of silence, space and rest, within the songs.” After three years of writing, editing, and collaborating with album producer Caleb Stine, the result is more sophisticated, pared down, and emotionally exposed than previous releases. The new EP, titled Please Don’t Sell the Piano, is intended as an actual plea to cherry’s parents, who recently considered getting rid of her childhood piano, and features six original songs composed exclusively for the instrument. The tracks range from melancholy and wistful to upbeat and quirky, with cherry’s clear, ringing vocals at their center. According to Stine, “ellen’s voice paired with gentle piano playing has created a sound that I’d never heard from her before—instantly natural and timeless. This batch of songs is rooted in the subconscious and comes from a very personal place.” cherry concurs. “Caleb pushed me to take lyrics that were fairly raw and sometimes painful and shape them into meaning for the listener.” The final product is an honest, rich, and elegant selection of tunes that expands the singer’s depth and range and will endear cherry to a new and growing fan base. Catch ellen cherry in action at the local EP release at An Die Musik on Saturday, March 31, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, April 1, at 3 p.m. Both performances will include local artist Katherine Fahey performing a crankie puppet piece specifically designed for cherry’s song "Pickett's Charge," which appears on the album. Listen to cherry's tracks at bit.ly/ellencherry. Urbanite #93 march 2012 65
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra presents
MARCH 2-4, 2012 at the Meyerhoff
A new festival for and about women is coming to the Meyerhoff. Hear and share inspiring stories; mentor and be mentored; and explore all facets of personal and professional life with women and girls who are breaking the mold. Discover dramatic works of art from 40 cultures like the Olmec, Maya and Inka.
Visit
FEBRUA Y 12–MAY 20, 2012
EXPLORING A T OF THE ANCIENT AMERICAS: THE JOHN BOURNE COLLECTION GIF
WHAT WILL YOU DISCOVER?
600 N. Charles St. Baltimore, MD 410-547-9000 thewalters.org
Mexico, Face with Nose Ornament and Tlaloc Headdress, Teotihuacan, 450–650 �� / This exhibition has been organized by the Walters Art Museum. The exhibition has been made possible through the generous contributions of John Bourne, the Women’s Committee of the Walters Art Museum, the Selz Foundation, and the Ziff Family, through its endowed exhibition fund for the arts of the ancient Americas.
66 march 2012 www.urbanitebaltimore.com
Presented by Artistic Directors Marin Alsop (BSO) and Jude Kelly (Southbank Centre)
WOWBaltimore.org
for festival news and a detailed line-up of events. Event Sponsors: Macy’s, Notre Dame of Maryland University, Miles & Stockbridge, McGuireWoods, Wells Fargo, SECU, Towson University, Valley Motors and Johns Hopkins Medicine Media Sponsors: Urbanite and The Baltimore Sun Media Group
Theater / literature arts + culture
Old Tales Made New
Into the Woods at Center Stage, March 7–April 15 Blood-Bound and Tongue Tied at the Strand Theater, March 23–April 7 BY martha thomas
Blood-Bound and Tongue Tied photo by Nick Simko; The Lit Show photo by Phuong Huynh
Getting Oedipal: The Strand Theater Company explores the mother-son relationship in Blood-Bound and Tongue Tied.
T
he fractured fairy tales that comprise Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods are initially a frothy frolic, becoming dark in the second act. As children, we were satisfied when the wolf was vanquished, the princess was united with her prince, and the tenacious boy outwitted—or outran—the giant. But happily ever after, Sondheim reminds us, is not part of the human condition. In act one, the stories of Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and others are intertwined as a newly imagined couple—the Baker and his wife—seek a cure for their infertility. Quests are fulfilled by the end of the act, and all seem destined to live happily ever after. This is where parents with young children should leave the theater (in fact, says Gavin Witt, dramaturg for the production, a handful of discounted performances are planned to present act one only for this very reason). In act two, the musical accentuates the “grim” in Grimm by plunging into “careful what you wish for” scenarios that, says director Mark Lamos, “get very dark and painful.” Sondheim and librettist James Lapine, he says, “attempt to integrate fairy tales, which are in themselves quite violent, with the real-life problems of real people.” The writers’ choice of fairy tales—and the archetypes that populate them—is strategic, says Witt: The source material is “something so reliably held in common, a melody everyone
Writers in the Hot Seat The Lit Show at the Creative Alliance, March 22 By Marianne Amoss
H
ave you ever wanted to ask a writer about the story behind the story—why she killed off your favorite character, how he comes up with new story ideas? And have you dreamed about doing it in front of a live audience? Local writer Jen Michalski did, so she conjured up an event where she could do just that. Called the Lit Show, it combines a literary reading with a late night variety program like The Late Show with David Letterman or The Tonight Show. The guests will be local and national writers or folks with literary bents; they’ll give a reading or performance, then get interviewed live onstage by event Michalski and fellow event organizer and local writer Betsy Boyd. The March 22 show is the first in what will become a semi-annual series. Guests will include nonfiction author Cathy Alter, comedian Jim Meyer, and Aaron Henkin, host of The Signal on 88.1 WYPR. House band
Between the lines: Jen Michalski (left) and Betsy Boyd, hosts of the Lit Show
Howard Markman and Palookaville will trade off the stage with the evening’s musical guest, rap group Height With Friends, who will be premiering some new material from their forthcoming album. Height, a.k.a. Dan Keech, said in an email that he’s looking forward to the show. “The specifics of songwriting can easily get lost in a normal show where there are four or five bands playing long sets. I think of Height With Friends as being a writing-based project, and I think we will go over well in an environ-
can hum,” he points out. “Then they riff on it and go astray.” Playwright Jacqueline Lawton likewise delves into old tales and archetypes in her reimagining of the tale of Oedipus. In her play Blood-Bound and Tongue Tied, Jocasta is an African American woman who passes for white in 1940s Texas. She marries a successful white politician and keeps her secret even after the birth of a son, Oedipus. The story follows the rough outline of Sophocles’ original, with the child cast out, only to return one day to be reunited with his mother—in a new context that is in all ways taboo. Lawton came up with the play in response to a writing assignment at the Kennedy Center’s Playwright's Intensive. Tasked with adapting a myth, Lawton was drawn to Jocasta’s story. The mother of Oedipus, she felt, suffered the worst fate of the lot: “not only does she lose her husband, she has to give up her child—and then she ends up marrying her son.” As an African American from a small town in Texas, Lawton says she grew up “hearing the N-word on a regular basis,” a situation that “can make you hate being black.” Jocasta’s desire to disown her own heritage, says Lawton, provided the playwright with a way to “address self-hatred head-on.” Into the Woods at Center Stage, www.centerstage.org Blood-Bound and Tongue Tied at The Strand, www.strand-theater.org
ment where people are being encouraged to pay attention to words.” Also promised are a Mystery Guest, audience giveaways to local hotspots like Dangerously Delicious Pies and Matthew’s Pizza, and, in the Late Show tradition, Stupid Human Tricks. We’re not naming any names, but someone is planning to sing an old Appalachian death ballad while accompanying him/herself on resonating wine glasses. It’s a safe bet you won’t see that at any other readings this year—which is the point. Michalski, who co-helms the fiction-only 510 Readings series (Boyd works with the nonfiction New Mercury Readings), says she and Boyd hope the non-traditional format will draw a wide-ranging group of attendees. “I thought it would be a different take on the reading that would bring in a different audience.” In addition, Michalski says they hope to inject some literary energy in a part of town that doesn’t see as much action as Hampden and Hamilton, the usual haunts for the lit set. “We want to bring more of a presence to the east side for literature.” For more information, visit http://thelitshow.blogspot. com.
Urbanite #93 march 2012 67
Jon Schmidt ‘11 • National Russian Honor Society • Member, Nike Baltimore Elite AAU Team • 2011 “Athlete of the Year,” Baltimore Messenger • Friends’ Concert Chorale Brown University Class of 2015
Balanced. Morally centered. Responsive. Coeducational.
Bealela Donnelly ‘11 • Volleyball, Basketball, I.A.A.M. All-Star • Fellowship of Christians in Universities and Schools • Friends’ Black Awareness, Middle Eastern Dance Clubs Davidson College Class of 2015
Join us for “Lunch and Learn” with the Head of School Observe classes, speak with students, meet faculty and administrators.
Wednesday, April 4 Visit friendsbalt.org or call 410.649.3211 to register.
Sondheim’S Fairy Tale muSical
INTO TH E
h DS WOO Only 5 Weeks: through Apr 15 Tickets: $10–$65
Directed by Mark Lamos
A co-production with Westport Country Playhouse
»»Save 50% with a Family Pack! 2 Adults, 2 Children | HALF-PRICE Premium (AP) SEATS.
»» INto the Woods act 1 For kidS All Seats: $15 for Adults, $10 for Children (ages 6–18).
»»Save in GrouPS oF 10+ For details on all these deals, visit www.centerstage.org/woods
Artistic Director Kwame Kwei-Armah directs
the
WHIPPI NG man
By Matthew Lopez
Culture doesn’t always fit inside a glass case.
Goucher’s cultural sustainability master’s degree program empowers today’s activists with real-world tactics for preserving and enriching the identity and environments of communities at risk. And Goucher’s unique format allows you to study right where you are—so you don’t have to turn your life upside-down while you’re out saving the world.
Apr 4–May 13
At the close of the Civil War, three Richmond Jews—one a former Confederate soldier and two his former slaves—spend the eve of Passover struggling with new roles and age-old questions of justice and mercy. The William l. and Victorine Q. adams Foundation & The rodgers Family Fund
For more information, visit www.goucher.edu/culture. Apply by April 20, 2012 for August 2012 admission. Apply by October 12, 2012 for January 2013 admission.
Master of Arts in Cultural Sustainability 68 march 2012 www.urbanitebaltimore.com
www.centerstage.org | 410.332.0033 centerstagemd centerstage_md
the scene
this month’s happenings Compiled by Anissa Elmerraji
ARTS/CULTURE comedy
Known as “Fluffly,” funny-man Gabriel Iglesias comes to the Lyric on March 18 with his blend of high-energy comedy drawn from personal experience. The stand-up comedian has appeared on shows like All That, Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and Conan. (140 W. Mount Royal Ave.; 410-685-5086; www.lyric operahouse.com)
dance
courtesy of cynthia Jawitz Brower
Baltimore band the Polkats reunite after seventeen years apart on March 3 for a reunion dance party at the Creative Alliance. With a musical style described as a mixture of Tejano, polka, zydeco, and country music, the six-man band is sure to stir up your inner dancer. (3134 Eastern Ave.; 410-276-1651; www. creativealliance.org) On March 10, six dancers from around the country pay tribute to Baltimore tap legends “Baby” Laurence, “Buster” Brown, and Louis “Hawk” Hawkins during Buster, Baby, and Hawk: Masters of Maryland Tap at Coppin State University. Haakari Wilder, Chloe Arnold, Maude Arnold, Toes Tiranoff, Megan Haungs, and Luke Nielsen Spring reprise the moves of the local legends and add some new work of their own. (2500 W. North Ave.; 410-276-1651; www. creativealliance.org) Atencion! On March 30, the third annual Baltimore Salsa Fest returns for three days of dancing, workshops, music, and performances. Performers from around the globe—including Baltimore’s own SalsaNow—will show off their moves. Plus, beginners can put a little fire into their step with the Survival Challenge workshop. (2004 Greenspring Dr., Timonium; 443-579-5292; www.baltimore salsafest.com)
Opening on March 15, Cynthia Jawitz Brower: In the Field presents the paintings of local artist Cynthia Jawitz Brower. A South African native, Brower’s work includes watercolor landscapes of her surroundings. In an artist’s statement, Brower says that she’s “inspired by the contradiction of order/disorder, form, and poetry that I find in natural and man-made landscapes.” (3134 Eastern Ave.; 410-276-1651; www.creative alliance.org)
film
Spend a night in the Marquee Lounge with Michael Shamberg, producer of films like Garden State, Pulp Fiction, and Contagion. On March 8, he and “LOVE” muralist Michael Owen will host a selection of Shamberg’s most famous music videos from the ’80s and ’90s, including New Order’s “The Perfect Kiss” and “Bizarre Love Triangle.” (3134 Eastern Ave.; 410-276-1651; www.creativealliance.org) March 24–25, learn about African culture through nine films by directors from around the continent at the African Film Festival Traveling Series. The series starts off with Kinshasa Symphony, a film about the musical traditions of Kinshasa—the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo—and concludes with Kongo: 50 Years of Independence, a three-piece documentary about colonization in Central Africa. (10 Art Museum Dr.; 443-573-1700; www. artbma.org)
Hopkins University School of Medicine, will answer that question during Pleasure. Author of such books as The Compass of Pleasure, Linden discusses why the brain enjoys certain activities. (600 N. Charles St.; 410-547-9000; www. thewalters.org)
music
Enjoy the sweet strains of R&B superstars Boyz II Men when they come to Rams Head Live on March 2. Together for more than two decades, the soulful trio is famous for hits like “End of the Road,” “One Sweet Day,” and “I’ll Make Love to You.” (20 Market Pl.; 410-2441131; www.ramsheadlive.com)
the Meyerhoff. Enjoy the melodies of Eastern Europe with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 and Carnival Overture by Czech composer Antonín Dvorák. (1212 Cathedral St.; 410-783-8000; www. bsomusic.org) On March 18, breakout jazz vocalist Whitney James comes to Baltimore for the first time to perform selections from her debut album, The Nature of Love. The show promises new material along with James’ interpretations of classics like Irving Berlin’s “How Deep Is the Ocean” and the ever-popular “Singin’ In the Rain.” (300 S. High St.; 410-752-4515; www. germanostrattoria.com)
Six-piece indie band Secret Mountains comes to the Ottobar on March 8 with Arbouretum and Sri Aurobindo. The local band’s sound—a mix of folk, psychedelic, and Americana—was described in a Pitchfork review as “heavily steeped in jangle-pop and an anthemic, twee-like sprightliness.” (2549 N. Howard St.; 410662-0069; www.theottobar.com)
Experience a modern take on traditional Taiko drumming during TAO: The Art of the Drum on March 22. Trained in the mountains of Japan, the TAO performers have been praised for their “incomparable muscular zeal” by the Chicago Tribune. (1212 Cathedral St.; 410-7838000; www.bsomusic.org)
On March 3, nine Maryland highschoolers armed with smooth rhymes and varied verse compete at the Poetry Out Loud Finals at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Presented by the Maryland State Arts Council, this year’s competition is hosted by Aaron Henkin of WYPR’s The Signal. (10 Art Museum Dr.; 443-573-1700; www.artbma.org)
Best known for performances with “Baltimore’s Original Gay Cabaret,” the Charm City Kitty Club, Erin Markey puts on a theatric show full of music and humor on March 9. Local queer art rock power trio the Degenerettes follow up with a rockin’ set. (3134 Eastern Ave.; 410-276-1651; www.creativealliance.org)
Food, art, and yoga—what do they have in common? On March 4, Dr. David Linden, professor of Neuroscience at Johns
BBC Symphony Chief Conductor Jirí Belohlávek leads a night of Beethoven and Dvorák on March 16 and 18 at
Starting March 2, the Baltimore Improv Group brings back Unscripted, a fulllength, two-act play that’s improvised from beginning to end. After the play’s style is chosen by the audience, a troupe of uninhibited performers are left up to their own imaginations. Catch a show (or two) at the Mobtown Theatre through March 17. (3600 Clipper Mill Rd.; 888745-8393; www.bigimprov.org)
literature
theater
On March 6, everyone’s favorite freaky family comes to the Hippodrome in a new musical comedy. In The Addams Family, Wednesday is all grown up and—in a Munsters-esque twist—has fallen in love with an absolutely normal young man. For the deliriously dark Gomez and Morticia Addams, things couldn’t be worse. The show runs through March 18. (12 N. Eutaw St.; 410-837-7400; www.france-merrickpac. com) The Brothers Size comes to Everyman Theatre for its Baltimore premiere on March 14. Written by American playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, the play scores the lives of brother Ogun and Oshoosi to contemporary soul, hip-hop, and R&B music. Catch it until April 15. (1727 N. Charles St.; 410-752-2208; www.everymantheatre.org)
Urbanite #93 march 2012 69
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the scene Single Carrot Theatre presents Hotel Cassiopeia, Charles Mee’s play about the eccentric mind of American artist and filmmaker Joseph Cornell. Running March 28–April 29, the play explores Cornell’s obsession with filling boxes with found objects. (120 W. North Ave.; 443-844-9253; www.singlecarrot.com) Starting March 21, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus comes to town. Their new show, dubbed “Fully Charged,” features Tabayara, an animal trainer who can communicate with his furry friends; the athletic feats of the Fearless Fernandez Brothers; and Brian Miser, the Human Fuse. (201 W. Baltimore St.; 410-347-2020; www. baltimorearena.com)
visual arts
Senior objects conservator and art conservation expert Julie Lauffenburger discusses how museum art is authenticated during John Bourne Collection: From Private to Public Domain on March 17. The talk is set in the context of Exploring Art of the Ancient Americas, an exhibition of three hundred artifacts that were donated in part by art collector John G. Bourne. (600 N. Charles St.; 410547-9000; www.thewalters.org)
On March 29, catch the opening reception of Commandz: Artists Working with Phenomena and Code at University of Maryland Baltimore County, featuring art that incorporates elements like kinetics, computers, and audio equipment. The opening includes a special discussion on the blending of color, music, and language in the piece Leçon de Piano, followed by a performance of Nina Katchadourian’s Talking Popcorn, where the sound of popcorn popping is recorded, translated into Morse code, and then read aloud. (1000 Hilltop Cir.; 410-455-3188; www.umbc.edu/cadvc)
community Earn your celebratory St. Patrick’s Day beers by running them off in advance at the Shamrock 5K on March 11. Then take your sweaty self to the post-race party for a chance to win prizes. Proceeds from the race go toward Baltimore’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade, which winds around the city on the same day. (Charles and Franklin sts.; 410-308-1870; www.irishparade.net)
GREEN/SUSTAINABLE
The Residences at Oella Mill—Unique Apartment Homes on the Patapsco River.
Curious about what’s on your plate? Then take a seat at the Baltimore
Sustainable Agricultural Discussion on March 15, where the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future presents Out to Pasture: The Future of Farming? and BFED: Baltimore Food Ecology Documentary, two documentaries that explore the origins of our food and the transformation of farming practices. A panel of experts, including filmmaker Leo Horrigan, farmer Steve Belkoff, and Baltimore City’s food policy director, Holly Freishtat, will chat post-screenings. (3134 Eastern Ave.; 410-276-1651; www. creativealliance.org)
STYLE/SHOPPING Nothing says spring has arrived like the annual Maryland Home and Garden Show. This year’s theme is “books in bloom,” where landscapers must represent a book through garden design. Featuring a seminar with Joey Green— made famous by his unconventional solutions to everyday problems using household items (like watering your plants with diapers!)—the show runs the weekends of March 3 and March 9. (2200 York Rd., Timonium; 410-863-1180; www.mdhomeandgarden.com) Jordan Faye Contemporary and Block Events presents Be Adorned, a jewelry
show and exhibition curated by Elisa J. Wells that showcases the work and creative approaches of seven jewelry designers, including locals Susannah Naree Fitz, Cory Glasgow, and Hannah L. Ragan. The show kicks off with a preview cocktail soiree on March 25. (1401 Light St.; 443-955-1547; www. jordanfayecontemporary.com)
FOOD/DRINK Head over to the State Fairgrounds’ Cow Palace for two days of binging during the Beer, Bourbon, and BBQ Festival, March 23–24. Sampling glass in hand, sip away while enjoying live music and a special “BBQ Sauce Challenge” on Friday night. (2200 York Rd., Timonium; www. beerandbourbon.com) On March 31, Chef John Shields of Gertrude’s shares sustainable and organic gardening wisdom during Edible Evergeen, a five-part kitchen garden series that includes gardening workshops and cooking demonstrations and culminates in a fall harvest luncheon at Shields’s Chesapeake-cuisine-centered restaurant. Just in time for spring, the first installment covers garden planning and design. (4545 N. Charles St.; 410-516-0341; http://museums.jhu.edu)
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eye to eye
if one could apply the decorative principles of the Baroque era to contemporary abstract painting, Steven Pearson’s Amalgamation could be the result. The painting is a riot of undulating color, with exponential layers of lacy pattern forming an array of transparency and depth. Although the designs may initially appear random, closer inspection reveals an underlying geometric structure where segments are mirrored, repeated, and overlapped. Most abstract painters employ an intuitive process to express emotional states, but Pearson plies color and pattern more like a scientist. Despite an array of doodles and painterly drips, the composition of Amalgamacara ober tion was carefully traced from three earlier paintings and cara ober is urbanite’s online combined over a grid. The color palette, which comes off as arts/culture editor. to receive her weekly e-zine, go to bit.ly/ chaotic and bold, is actually the result of mathematical comezinesignup. binations of saturation, value contrast, and color harmonies. Pearson derives his color schemes directly from superhero comics, transforming the colors that signify heros and villians into a methodical system. “I enjoy the process of drawing out these compositions and trying to make each painting more complex than the previous one,” says the painter and professor at McDaniel College. Pearson equates his densely laden paintings with Jean Piaget’s adaptation process of assimilation and accommodation. “As we take in new information, we incorporate it into our existing ideas,” the artist explains. “And then, our memories are forever changed.”
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Steven Pearson Amalgamation (2010) Acrylic on paper mounted on panel 42” x 73.5”
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