Baltimore

Highlights: the waterfront/Fells Point, the diners, the accent, The Brothers' strange and terrifying junk shop... ah, I should really wait until Pam gets home to do it justice.

Lowlight: the Keith Jarrett CD I bought for $2 from The Sound Garden which turned out to a 1979 Cars album when I cracked it open. Unfortunately picked it up from the 'no returns, no bitching, no whining' section.

JUST KIDDING!

Baltimore rules. When I lived there, I loved the Mt. Royal Tavern, the Rondez-Vous Lounge, the Ottobar, duh byoo-tee-full myoo-zic uf duh die-leck, Bolton Hill, the SoWeBohemian festival, Fells Point, Thairish on Charles Street, Federal Hill, the American Visionary Art Museum, Little Italy (pronounced Lil Itlee), duh Abnoo (spelled Avenue) in Hampden -- oh, many, many things.

Highlight: the waitress calling me "Hon" and making me so befuddled I asked for a cheese chomelette.

I don't know if Edith's shopping bag is there any more as Edith Massey died in 1984. Maybe they kept it open to preserve her memory, bless her.

gareth you have no taste

gareth you have no taste

-- Mary (maj23...), July 16th, 2003 7:59 AM.

Seriously. Nothing.

this would make a great t-shirt.

Detroit is Manchester.

xp

the city paper now has a weekly murder blotter, there's at least five a week. almost always drug stuff, almost always shots to the dome, almost always in the same hoods. bodymore, murderland!

(p.s. muderblot is my new jungle name.)

anyway I don't know what to post. as far as places to live, Hampden and Charles Village seem to be the popular areas for college age people to afford cheaply without being in the hood. I never lived there though, I spent my college years up in Baltimore County, and my family lives in Fells Point, where property values have skyrocketed in the past 10-15 years. but I just found a surprisingly affordable apartment in Fells that I'm moving into in a few weeks, so I guess anything is possible.

baltimore is great. it's got its problems, but just don't be an idiot and you'll be fine. really good restaurants, FANFUCKINGTASTIC record shopping, nice people, lots of folksisms still floating around, and awesome from a financial standpoint. over the last four years or so my feelings for the dc-bmore corridor have flowered from "eh, i live here, whatever" to "this area is really fucking awesome and if you don't like it you're lame" and i'm very happy about that. so yeah, yay baltimore. yay washington, too. hurrah for the mid-atlantic!

CHIEF IKE'S MAMBO ROOM

the scenester version of comparing genitals

there's faint traces of what philly was, but nothing compared to what it used to be. you could live downtown in a huge apartment for 500$ [like i did]. there were two amazing rock clubs and art galleries on 2nd street, not shitty yuppie dance clubs and designer boutiques. i currently live in west philly and back in '97 when my ex lived out here, i used to be genuinely scared about visiting him. these days, spruce hill is a prime spot to live.

haha, i couldn't think of anything in dc comparable to the power plant, but every time i've gone past ike's i've cringed...

Baltimore: DC
Providence: Boston

white people be lovin gentrification, biyotch

i thought it was dj technics from b-more at artscape sunday but it looks like it's some other dj technics from england? bullllshit. morris day + time were tight. boys 2 men did some silly stage intro fashioned after the A-Team theme then into 'motown philly'. only 3 guys, i thought there were 4. did one die? one of them got really really fat.

from an email from the Bank, re: Stressape show in Baltimore:

YOU MUST SHOW UP TO THIS SHOW WASTEDD FOR MAXIMUM RESULTSS
SOBER PATRONS WILL BE FROWNED UPON
WEDNESDAYY RAGERSSS
FUCK WORK THE NEXT MORNING OR WHATEVER YOU SHITBAGS HAVE TO DO IN THE MORNING
I GOT WORK TO AND I DONT GIVE A FUCK,,LIVE IT FOREVERRR

I doubt this will get seen in time, but I'm leaving for B-more in a couple hours and would also like to know if Edith's Shopping Bag is still there (I heard it turned into a John Waters memorabilia store...)

Any recommendations for weird hotels/hostels/B&Bs/etc? can be on the outskirts. I always wait until the last minute to find a place to stay for Deathfest, and I usually end up just crashing with my friend Jane. I think this year I really want to have a door I can close, tho. And maybe not sleep with weird cats.

Also, does the sideshow/freak museum still exist?

Also, other very Baltimore things to do?

I think the sideshow/Visionary Art Museum still exists.

http://www.nileguide.com/destination/baltimore/best/things-to-do-type/offbeat-activities-299

Not that offbeat, but still good.

http://www.tripatini.com/profiles/blogs/baltimore-travel-museum

Some Dude and Amon to thread

I might be staying at a haunted hotel.

blood spilloff haunted or ghost wooshing past the end of the hallway haunted?

http://baltimore.org/arts-and-culture/john-waters-baltimore/

http://www.yelp.com/biz/holiday-house-baltimore

I have never been there. It's an old biker bar

sry for out of context post but oh man i just saw the BEST band from baltimore the other night, called needle gun. have any of you guys seen em? so great

no but i have seen hundreds of piles of horse shit throughout the downtown area. wtf?

both posts intriguing

i reviewed a needle gun record years ago but have never seen them live. didn't even realize they were still going!

don't really know offhand of good cheap places to crash in town, could throw up a bat signal for suggestions in my circles if you want

plz do im still looking for the perfect spot. i have managed to find some hotels that aren't completely booked solid but none of them take my breath away or anything

i think mt. vernon hotel is popular w/ fest goers so im guessing its booked. radisson or hilton might have better deals than others downtown. i don't really know about surrounding area but its prob limited to hojos or days inns.

https://twitter.com/samfbiddle/status/339444064980189184

I'm in DC, but it shook a friends house 20miles away in Pasadena.

i didn't hear the explosion or wasn't paying attention when i did but i saw the smoke when i went running. i'm gonna crosspost this to horry shit, piiiiiiiiiiiisssss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWUP3bIqKSc

eerily similar to the fertilizer plant explosion video in that the guy should have turned his phone sideways

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFIYk9eeNfU&feature=youtu.be

lol

i had so much fun in baltimore this weekend, seeing tons of great bands and hanging out with my buddies from all over. deathfest stuff aside, i walked to the harbor and went to the civil war museum which is apparently run by a blind dog. i met that dog and then went to the maritime museum and looked at boats, which is one of the great pleasures in life imo. walked around orioles park and went to babe ruth's birthplace. walked around with my BF looking for remnants of toynbee tiles at all the places they've been spotted which was some fun sleuthing. i also ate some really great crab cakes and chicken parm hoagies and drank a lot.

nice! last week was 'museum week' so i shoulda checked out the deals and actually gone to some of those places myself, still a lot of them around town i need to see at some point.

why are so many things closed on mondays in baltimore? not just memorial day, a lot of things were closed every monday. i found it a lil weird.

it is true that any place that is not open 7 days a week in town, mondays is prob the day they're closed. my old barbershop was like that, i know some restaurants like that. it's not a 24/7 kind of city.

i was bummed that i didnt get to eat at trinacria which apparently has the best chicken parm in b-more

will you be mad if i go eat it now?

just liveblog so i can live vicariously until next year

ok keep an eye out for the parmblog thread

open faced parmblog sandwich mmmmmmm

And here's the actual accident.

http://wtvr.com/2013/05/30/train-hits-truck-video/

http://www.wtop.com/41/3340403/Column-Maryland-Deathfest-celebrates-11-years-vows-to-find-new-venue

well i should hope so

Until a couple years ago, I had presumed death fest would have been out at some farm somewhere.

Sad to hear that Wilmer's Park fell on hard times.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/21/AR2007062102031.html

http://www.upthetombstones.net/1992_wilmers_park.html

Can't front, I didn't go there for any death metal shows. I went for a ska-punk scooter rally and Allgood or some other hippie festival.

i was surprised Deathfest was back at Sonar THIS year, since the club technically closed last summer and there'd only been a handful of DJ events there over the past year as 'Club Paparazzi' (which is why the MDF site listed the venue as 'Former Sonar Compound'). the whole place had been troubled and mismanaged for years: http://blogs.citypaper.com/index.php/2012/05/feds-name-drop-baltimores-%20sonar-nightclub-in-new-pot-conspiracy-indictment/

yeah, it was a surprise. there were no shows inside the building, just bars, merch and bathrooms. all music was in the parking lot, essentially. it was really ludicrous to have it there again. i just hope baltimore keeps it and it doesn't relocate to DC or something

Maybe next year they'll move it to Power Plant Live

i think they were discussing it! is it surrounded by like, arcades?

I can't imagine it will ever leave Bmore. There's loads of venues in town that could take it on, probably more than in D.C.

Also Maryland is just way more metal than DC.

I wasn't gonna say but yeah

yeah thats why i would hate for it to move basically, not that it's likely

maybe they could further splinter the hardcore stuff off (it was at a seperate venue this year lol) and just move that shit to DC

*separate

Anne Arundel County Fairgrounds. That would be so beautiful.

where should i stay if i come for a weekend and want to do stuff besides an Orioles game? also what good gay bars are there while the Eagle is being renovated?

since the Eagle shut Bmore kinda blows for gay bars, honestly

There's Leon's and the Drinkery, I'd say go there (they're really close to each other, so you can do both easily).

The Brewer's Art has a fair number of bears and good beer, but it's not actually a gay bar.

Avoid Grand Central and the Hippo (basic bitches)

Club Charles is opposite the Charles Theater and has some queers stirred in with the hipsters and randoms

Morbz holler at me if you come to Bmore (tho we're in Toronto from June 7th to June 18th)

Pride is the 14th/15th/16th, and the only thing of note there is that Marquis Revlon from House of Revlon is hosting a free vogue ball that should be pretty rad if you like to see thugged out queens voguing to Baltimore club

thx hon. might manage it in July.

ive never been to a vogue ball. why couldnt that have happened the same week as deathfest

maybe i shd sneak in for this Matmos benefit tomw night from Dc, if i have the nrg

is the ~15 min google predicts it takes to get from the aiport to the convention center accurate? would this hold true early saturday morning?

That seems like a reasonable estimate for any time period where you aren't expecting traffic.

BALTIMORE (AP) — Teenagers awaiting trial on adult charges in Baltimore are being kept in solitary confinement for far too long — up to 143 days in one case, according to a highly critical review by the U.S. Justice Department's Division of Civil Rights.

...Many jails routinely isolate teenagers — the American Civil Liberties Union estimates that of the roughly 100,000 juveniles incarcerated, 17,000 have been in solitary confinement. This often happens so that adult jails can comply with the "sight and sound separation" required by the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act since 2012.

But in Baltimore's jail, which already keeps juveniles separate from adults, isolation is used primarily to punish alleged rule-breakers, they found.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/8e4d7ff1c53a44fc8b0c7d1ce23b017e/feds-baltimore-jail-illegally-keeping-juveniles-solitary

Was just briefly in Baltimore for work and I can't put my finger on exactly why, but the city just has a great vibe. A good spirit pervades the people.

:^)

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-chino-scoota-death-20160628-story.html

Rapper's murder leaves peers with bleak outlook on Baltimore

http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/baltimore-insider-blog/bal-video-shows-people-swimming-in-baltimore-inner-harbor-waters-20160718-story.html

"They're from Chicago," said one onlooker. "They don't know no better."

loool

oh dear.

Sooo MD Film Fest?

Looking forward to Rat Film. The Theo Anthony video stuff I caught at the BMA a few months ago was pretty great and put him on my radar. Any other recs?

The Alloy Orchestra with Roger Miller from Mission of Burma performs its live score for "Variety" on May 7 at 11 a.m. in Parkway 1.

Saw LEMON last night - awful, just horrible. Would've been dated in 2007. Deadpan miserable failure balding white guy is an asshole for 90 minutes. So trope-y and po-faced - emblematic of the worst kind of shit that gets shown in film festivals. Acting was stiff, script was shit, only bright spot was Michael Cera, who's in it for about 25 minutes. Avoid at all costs.

Looking forward to ROAR, GOLDEN EXITS, SYLVIO, and VAGABOND.

wish I could see THE HUMAN SURGE, PERSON TO PERSON, and RAT FILM, but i'll be working. definitely check out THE HUMAN SURGE if you can - hyped in the film guide (and by Eric Hatch) as the most challenging & radical movie at the fest this year. Set in South America, no budget, very explicit & transgressive sex, compared to Korine and Malick.

http://www.citypaper.com/blogs/the-news-hole/bcpnews-baltimore-sun-plans-to-close-city-paper-20170707-story.html

Noooooooo. Not good.

only a matter of time since the Sun bought them 3 years ago. the paper is total garbage right now, the writers are just awful, and the EIC is a moron, but obviously I'd like to see it stick around under new editors.

first issue, May 1977:

http://www.trbimg.com/img-58c25c02/turbine/bcpnews-40th-anniversary-images-20170309-002

Final issue available now. Although it’s moot at this point, Flappy Bird , why is the EIC a moron? Former/currrent (?) old contributor Some Dude used to write for them.

Old ilx contributor to Baltimore City Paper

that was overly harsh, they’re all good people, I just don’t dig that person’s writing style at all. Wasn’t the appropriate time to bring that up in any case. Picked up the paper today and stared at the cover for a while, didn’t really hit me til this morning, and won’t until weeks and months from now when it’s just a distant memory...

on sunday i opened a book and i found a whose responible i had ripped out and used as a bookmark maybe 7 years ago. i haven't looked at city paper much since sun bought it but it will sometimes be missed, i guess.

it was this one lol http://photos.citypaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/192.jpg

Creative Alliance has been doing some special music events at other locations in Baltimore. I saw Innov Gnawa, a Moroccan group based in NY do a special Moroccan Jewish music program at Bnai Israel synagogue.

On Nov. 11th they are doing a special soul program at the Arch Social Club with the great Winfield Parker and others

http://www.creativealliance.org/events/2017/creative-alliance-arch-social-club-ru-jac-records-legacy-baltimore-soul

https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/11/02/baltimore-beat-new-alt-weekly/

Washington Blade owner is starting new Baltimore Beat newspaper and website with a few Baltimore City Paper staffers. 1st issue November 15th

how about our mayor

lol

amazing that she barely squeaked out a win against SHEILA DIXON in 2016

friend of mine said Pugh might be worse than SRB. hard to say - SRB presided over a major crisis, didn't do a good job, made a lot of mistakes, & was generally incompetent. and though my first instinct re: Pugh's book scam is garden variety corruption, it is pretty despicable, and a lot worse than the gift cards or whatever Dixon did.

i decided a long time ago she was worse than SRB

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Brq3aUqQcDk

good morning baltimore

Flappy are you a resident?

yes

happy holidays, baltimore!

Right wing Sinclair TV local news network chief David Smith bought the Baltimore Sun and will likely kill it in a Republican way.

NPR's David Folkenflik tweet-

The Baltimore Sun's new owner, David D. Smith, met with staffers today for more than two hours. Many left on edge.

He claimed he had read the paper just four times. He grew up here; his family's local TV empire - Sinclair - is based in Baltimore Co.

!!!

Baltimore Bridge is 1.6 miles long,

this is the moment it collapsed after a cargo ship struck it in the early hours of this morning
pic.twitter.com/eA6womQlcI

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) March 26, 2024

Checks front page of the NYT.

Holy fuck.

fucking hell that's horrifying

Shit

It's vehicles we see in the middle section right

I'm thinking this is the biggest structure I see collapsing since WTC. Much more closer in time, the highway bridge in Genoa.
Hoping there were as few people as possible on the bridge. It's crazy if workers were allowed on the bridge after the cargo hit.

there's a longer video here and you can see the volume of traffic and how quickly it came down after the impact, don't think anyone had much of a chance to do anything

Here's a longer and higher quality video of the Baltimore bridge collapse. Crash and collapse happens at 2:34 #Baltimore https://t.co/qMDsAG01z6 pic.twitter.com/k5cVY5DqXI

— UnCover (@uncoovr) March 26, 2024

My bad, from the first video I didn't realize the bridge collapsed immediately

The video is horrifying to watch - it just crumples like it’s made out of popsicle sticks

Ahhhhhhhhh Jesus

😖

From the Washington Post: The fire chief said emergency personnel removed two people from the water; one was in very serious condition and the other was uninjured. He said rescuers were looking for upward of seven people, with search efforts expected to continue for hours.

Sonar showed cars in the water 😬

Holy shit, looked like the ship was on the blink and the massive exhaust plume might have been engine trouble?

Fucking horrifying, hoping friends & loved ones & bmore ILX are all safe & sound <3

No deaths yet, right? Fingers crossed. You should have seen my mom's face when I showed her the video this morning.

massive exhaust plume might have been engine trouble?

What I read is that this is indicative of the engines going full reverse in order to try to stop the ship. I read that the issue was probably with the steering of the ship, though everything is speculation at this point obviously.

xpost One dead and six missing according to Reuters. One saving grace is it happened when it did, hate to think if it happened a few hours earlier.

i want to hear the story of this one survivor who was reportedly uninjured and refused medical treatment. you just go about your day after that?

I can only imagine you go home, sit on the bed, and start shivering / weeping uncontrollably. Also, being useless to society for a few months.

possibly delayed shock

The person may not have been thinking clearly. I know I wouldn’t be rational in a situation like that. Rationally, I’d want to go to hospital—I’m not a doctor maybe there is something wrong that’s subtle that paramedics didn’t catch.

I wonder what the legal reasons are you can’t just take someone to the hospital if they refuse it.

The person may have also been undocumented and/or without insurance.

If I wasn't hurt I probably wouldn't want to go to the hospital either tbh

yeah, who knows what that bill could be, amber waves of grain an all that

i heard this happened because of OPEN BORDERS!

oh I know for a fact that someone's gonna blame this on DEI and Elon will massively amplify it

First part at least happened fast on Twitter/X.

people are mad the Infrastructure Bill didn't immediately fix all roads and bridges like Joe Biden promised

where was the funding to reinforce all bridges against container ship collisions?!?

I wonder what the legal reasons are you can’t just take someone to the hospital if they refuse it.

If this person was able to leave under their own power, the first responders probably had no grounds to detain them. But I do hope this person does get a proper checkup soon.

Also, WHY did the Trump Administration--during its four years--NOT reinforce the Key Bridge against container ships? Was Infrastructure Week for nothing? Hey, I'm just asking questions here!

Construction crew apparently didn’t get the Mayday announcement.

https://x.com/maximillian_alv/status/1772675933742260723?s=46&t=u2ZSlsY3trRV36IPP6jNDQ

Construction crew are/ were immigrants from Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador, and Honduras working 9pm to 5 am

Baltimore folks - if I wanted to take a bunch of Berger’s Cookies across the Atlantic, would they survive?

Come on folks I need answers

depends on if you’re swimming or flying, i reckon

They can melt, so temperature matters

My phone
Loves random
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