Baltimore City Paper, Vol. 32, No. 21 (Part 1 of 3)

BALTIMORE’S FREE ALTERNATIVE WEEKLY ★ VOL. 32 NO. 21, MAY 21-28, 2008 ★ WWW.CITYPAPER.COM

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May 21, 2008

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CREW ROMANCE/12 MICHAEL BYRNE on rowing.

OCEAN CITY VS. REHOBOTH/18 HEATHER JOSLYN and MICHELLE GIENOW on, uh, O.C. vs. Rehoboth.

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MAKING YOU FEEL

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EDWARD ERICSON JR. on City Paper’s summer drink contest.

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THE COWBOY WAY/30 CHRIS LANDERS on the Single Action Shooting Society.

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A WENCH IN THE WORKS/34 ERIN SULLIVAN on a summer job at a RenFest.

BEE CAUSE/38 SHELLY BLAKE-PLOCK on apiarist Jerry Fischer.

CAMPED OUT/44 CHARLES COHEN on choosing a summer camp.

7 REASONS WHY SUMMER IN BALTIMORE RULES/49

• Dental Care • Mental Health Counseling

BEN CLAASSEN III on why summer in Baltimore rules.

• Substance Abuse Services • Free, Walk-in Anonymous HIV Testing

TAKE ONE FOR THE OTHER TEAM/52

• Case Management and Outreach

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JEFFREY ANDERSON on the Washington Nationals.

• Pharmacy • Pediatric Medicine

SIZZLIN’ SUMMER/57 MOUNT VERNON CENTER 1001 Cathedral Street 410.837.2050

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FILM CLIPS/148 MOVIE THING/152

COMICS 49

THIS MODERN WORLD/7

BY TOM TOMORROW

DIRT FARM/155

BY BEN CLAASSEN III

THE PAIN—WHEN WILL IT END?/155

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MAAKIES/155

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SUPER AMAZING ADVENTURES/200

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ON THE COVER: Illustration by PAIGE SHUTTLEWORTH.

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CITYPAPER BALTIMORE’S FREE ALTERNATIVE WEEKLY

EDITOR: Lee Gardner ART DIRECTOR: Joe MacLeod MANAGING EDITOR: Erin Sullivan ARTS EDITOR: Bret McCabe MUSIC EDITOR: Michael Byrne ONLINE EDITOR: Tim Hill SPECIAL PROJECTS EDITOR: Anna Ditkoff SENIOR STAFF WRITER: Van Smith STAFF WRITERS: Jeffrey Anderson, Edward Ericson Jr., Chris Landers CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Raven Baker, John Barry, Tom Chalkley, Charles Cohen, Raymond Cummings, Violet Glaze, Michelle Gienow, Richard Gorelick, Cole Haddon, Eric Allen Hatch, Geoffrey Himes, Henry Hong, Laura Laing, Deborah McLeod, Brian Morton, Al Shipley, Vincent Williams CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS AND ILLUSTRATORS: Okan Arabacioglu, Emily C-D, Tom Chalkley, Ben Cricchi, Jennifer Daniel, John Ellsberry, Alex Fine, Emily Flake, Michelle Gienow, Mel Guapo, Sam Holden, Frank Klein, Daniel Krall, Hawk Krall, Uli Loskot, Christopher Myers, Michael Northrup, Carly Ptak, RaRah, Paige Shuttleworth, Deanna Staffo, Smell of Steve Inc., Jefferson Jackson Steele, M. Wartella, Autumn Whitehurst BALTIMORE WEEKLY EDITOR: Wendy Ward COPY EDITOR: Christopher Skokna WEB DEVELOPER: Christian Coulon ASSISTANT TO THE ART DIRECTOR: Wynter Towns RESEARCH ASSISTANTS: Christina Bumba, Katherine Hill INTERNS: Sean Alloca, Zachary Fey, Christina Lee, Amanda Magnus, Sierra McCleary-Harris, Claire Zachik PRODUCTION DIRECTOR: Athena Towery (x211) CLASSIFIED PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR: Donald Ely GRAPHIC DESIGNERS: Frank Hamilton, Matt Walter, Jenna Wasakoski PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: Daria Johnson ADVERTISING DIRECTOR: Jennifer Marsh (x221) SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE: Andy Grimshaw (x222), Chris Ziolkowski (x219) ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES: Ali Finelli (x214), Nina Land (x220), Dylan Smith (x226), Lindsay Thompson (x253), RETAIL TELEMARKETER: Betsy Wilson (x215) CLASSIFIED MANAGER: Leslie Grim (x246) REAL ESTATE ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE: Ashira Jensen (x248) AUTOMOTIVE ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE: Bettina Wachter (x244) SENIOR CLASSIFIED ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE: Brian Siatkowski (x249) CLASSIFIED DISPLAY REPRESENTATIVES: Joy Carter (x245), Joy Sushinsky (x247) CLASSIFIED LINE SUPERVISOR: Nicole Urbain (x212) CLASSIFIED LINE REPRESENTATIVE: Amy Snipes (x209) ADVERTISING ASSISTANT: Linda Bernstein (x216) CLASSIFIED SALES ASSISTANT: Rob Farley (x208) PROMOTIONS COORDINATOR: John Morrow (x252) SYSTEM SUPPORT: Daniel Merrill CIRCULATION DIRECTOR: Christine Grabowski CIRCULATION MAINTENANCE: Mike Grabowski DISTRIBUTION: Keith Bondurant, Kelly Carr, Evan Ebb, Lloyd Farrow, Harold Goldman, Mike Grabowski, Jean LeBlanc, Abe Mamot, Bonnie Mullens, Miroslav Muzyka, Michael Nelson, Marek Obrebski, Hector Rivera, Mark Scudder, Marek Seder, George Svezzese, James Tighe BUSINESS MANAGER: Nicole Seabrease RECEPTIONIST: Michelle Bollino NATIONAL ADVERTISING: Alternative Weekly Network 800-727-7988 GROUP PUBLISHER: Don Farley (x229) GENERAL SALES MANAGER: Jennifer Marsh (x221) PUBLISHER’S ASSISTANT: Susan Slike (x224) AUDIT BUREAU OF CIRCULATIONS MEMBER

Volume 32, Number 21 May 21, 2008 City Paper is published every week by times-shamrock communications.

Letters and calendar submissions are welcomed; please see these sections for details. Unsolicited editorial submissions will not be returned. Subscriptions available for $150 per year, 1st class. No refunds. ©2008 by C.E.G.W./TimesShamrock. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written permission of the editor.

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May 21, 2008

THE MAIL THANK YOU FOR WRITING ABOUT LEFTIES WITHOUT LEFTINESS Kudos and orchids to Joe Tropea for his exposition of the Catonsville Nine and Baltimore Four anti-Vietnam War actions along with ample background material on the people involved and on similar actions elsewhere in the country (“Hit and Stay,” Feature, May 14).

Contrary to what I expected when I saw the article highlighted, Mr. Tropea did not glorify the activists but stuck to the facts and without adding unneeded left-wing rhetoric to his reporting. It’s as objective a reporting job as I’ve ever seen in City Paper.

I commend him for writing it and City Paper for publishing it.

An added note to Mr. Tropea’s report of the opening of the Catonsville Nine’s 1968 trial in Baltimore federal court: Having recently returned from Vietnam, I was in Baltimore for the Martin Luther King Jr. riots and then in Chicago covering the police riot there during the Democratic National Convention. Given how Chicago Mayor Richard Daley met the demonstrators with armed (and thuggish) police and National Guardsmen, I asked Baltimore Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro on the flight home how he planned to handle the demonstrators expected for the trial in our city.

“I’ll have them greeted at the city line and give them a police escort all the way,” he told me.

The mayor was as good as his word, and no violence ensued. The only untoward incident was when a number of Baltimore police officers removed their name tags (in emulation of their Chicago counterparts)

THIS MODERN WORLD

apparently in anticipation of some freeswinging enforcement.

When I asked superior officers about this, they immediately ordered the police officers to restore their nameplates and the demonstration went off peacefully.

It was a marked contrast from Chicago, and in my opinion Mayor D’Alesandro never got enough credit for ensuring that peace reigned during the trial.

While I disagreed with the actions of the Catonsville Nine, I had opportunity to interview most of them in advance of their 25th anniversary commemoration of the event. I found them to be ordinary people who believed sincerely in what they had done in an extraordinary time.

ROBERT A. ERLANDSON TOWSON

WHITE PEOPLE AREN’T THAT BAD I am a recovering black militant. My new favorite saying is: I was a black militant, but black people cured me of it (“A Eurocentric Masculinist Responds,” The Mail, May 14).

I honestly believe that, in today’s climate, I have more reason to fear potential harm from my supposed black brother than from a white person. As a former militant, I like to believe that I can see both sides of the white/black schism.

There is a pathology that exists in the black community. This pathology is partly caused by the existence of the system of white supremacy. Although whites have greater access to the largess in this country, which was partially created by white supremacy, each individual white person should not and cannot be blamed.

BY TOM TOMORROW

We might not have our fair share of the wealth in this country, but we also benefit from the American way of life, even though it was created from the legacies of slavery, the near-annihilation of the Native Americans, and the theft of their land. We are tacit supporters of American imperialism, despite our feverish protestations to the contrary. A cursory glance at the history of human civilizations would show that the people who control a society will, of course, enjoy more benefits from the status quo than those without control.

Often, white behavior vis-à-vis blacks is misconstrued as racist, when whites are actually reacting to our aberrant behavior.

To paraphrase Tony Brown, when a black woman walks down the street by herself late at night and sees young black men approaching her, she is thought of as streetwise if she crosses to the other side, while a white woman who does the same thing is considered racist.

A major flaw of the ’60s civil-rights movement is that it created the fallacy that the responsibility for racial harmony lies solely with the white community. Many of us carry around the attitude that it is every white person’s duty to adapt to us, and that, in turn, we are not obligated to alter our behavior one iota in order to get along with them. This is an unrealistic assumption; we are only 13 percent of the total population, and people who are white control the military hardware, the legal system, and the supplies of food and money. There is a limit to the impact that we can have on this society. White obsession with us is more of a reflection of their fear than it is of our power or influence. I have another favorite saying: Go to any nation in black Africa and ask the tribe that’s 13 percent of the population how they feel they are being treated by the other 87 percent.

I will close this letter with the only thing Eldridge Cleaver ever said that was worth listening to: “Watch out for some white people, and also for some black people.”

GREGORY LOGAN BALTIMORE

THERE ARE MORE HOMELESS THAN YOU THINK In “Councilmania” on May 7, it is noted that Baltimore City is proposing to spend “$30 million in ‘services for homeless persons.’ . . . The city has estimated that some 3,000 of its 720,000 citizens are homeless, so the expenditure amounts to about $10,000 each.”

Not really—the city estimates that AT LEAST 3,000 people were sleeping outside or in emergency shelters on ONE night in January, but perhaps 30,000 different Baltimoreans experience homelessness each year. The expenditure actually amounts to about $1,000 per person, an amount equal to less than two months’ rent. With more than 40,000 poor households competing for 20,000 subsidized housing units, these funds are important—and inadequate.

By the way, the last time Baltimore had May 21, 2008

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Continuing into June!

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a population of 720,000, the Orioles won a World Series.

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Edward Ericson Jr. responds: Regarding Baltimore’s overall population: good catch.

That should have been 620,000. Regarding Baltimore’s homeless population: nice try.

The city counted 3,000 on a given January day. It makes sense to compute the cost on a homeless per-diem basis, and the $30 million would cover the rent all year on at least 3,000 one-bedroom apartments, twice that many SROs.

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I wrote this message to Bret McCabe to comment on his review of The Re-Up by TEOP (No Cover, May 7).

You write very well, but WOW, you sure did get personal about this artist rather than focus on just the music. You stated, “not quite soul-sucked by the streets just yet.” How do you tell that from a song if you haven’t met TEOP or lived his life? As a professional writer for a major newspaper, don’t you have the responsibility to state truths and facts? Isn’t it unprofessional to assume? How can you as a writer make bold assumptions about someone whom you never met or ever interviewed?

Comparisons to other rappers and comparing his music to other artists is something that I have seen writers do because it is an easy way for indolent writers to grasp the audience’s attention rather than focus on the artist himself and critique and analyze the music for what it is. Criticisms are great and allow an artist to assess and improve his or her music, but you seem to focus on slamming the artist’s character by continuously stating untrue and incorrect information. The opinion you stated, “It’s not that Teop can’t snarl and growl; it merely sounds ill-fitting on him, like Michael Dukakis in that tank,” is a valid opinion based on you listening to the music. When you state, “The hypnotic ‘How Down tha Hill Fell’ is a pulsating bit of neighborhood nostalgia, as narrated by a young man who didn’t witness back in the day with his own eyes but heard stories from a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who was there,” it is a prime example of how you distorted the truth and stated this as a fact when it is absolutely not. I can fully understand a writer stating that the music sounds like the artist is using another man’s experience to write this song, but your statement is stated as a fact. What research was done on TEOP to base your statements?

I would suggest to you that you go to www.musicconnection.com, where TEOP was critiqued, to learn how to write unbiased, musically based opinions rather than taking a hating stance on an individual. I can see why hip-hop doesn’t succeed in Baltimore. There is absolutely no support for music because people like you, in your position, tend to distort and exaggerate to make a story more enthralling to readers to P A P E R

capture their attention and to allow rumors to spread from unsubstantiated thoughts you conjured up. I hope next time you review TEOP’s music you will focus on the music and not belittle an artist’s reputation.

Please do research on an artist so that your article can be credible.

CAROLINE PANDIAN BALTIMORE

ALVIN BRUNSON STREET What a loss! That was my feeling when I read “Hot Property: Why Did Baltimore City Give Rubble to a Dead Man?” (Mobtown Beat, April 23).

I am deeply saddened by the death of another black man. From 1998 until 2006, I lived in Baltimore, but I never had the pleasure of meeting the local historian Alvin Brunson of the Pennsylvania Avenue community. A lost opportunity that I deeply regret.

I hope Wilson Street will be renamed “Alvin Brunson Street” and I hope the Brunson family will build an “Alvin Brunson Museum” on the site of the collapsed building where Mr. Brunson died.

If Mr. Alvin Brunson was given the right to work in the building for his dream museum, how often did the building inspector look in on the work progress being done on the building? Are there records available for citizens to see if a building inspector made periodic visits to the work site?

We must not allow Alvin Brunson’s dream of a museum to die. The city of Baltimore owes Mr. Brunson a museum because blood is on somebody’s hands in the matter. God will fix this situation, and the wrong will not be hidden. I’ll leave it to God to take care of the revenge that I want to see done.

LARNELL CUSTIS BUTLER WOODLAWN

Editor’s note:We are proud to announce that City Paper has been nominated for several 2008 Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Awards. Staff writer Edward Ericson Jr. is nominated in the Public Service category for “Watching the Inspectors” (Feature, Nov. 7, 2007) and his ongoing coverage of the city’s housing department. Staff writer Jeffrey Anderson is nominated in the News Story: Long Form category for “Juvenile Disservices” (Mobtown Beat, Nov. 28. 2007) and “The Colonel” (Mobtown Beat, Dec. 12, 2007), both about (now former) head of the Victor Cullen Academy Christopher Perkins. (Jeff is also nominated in the Investigative Reporting for his “The Town the Law Forgot” series for LA Weekly.)

And CP contributing photographer Rarah is nominated in the Photography category. The winners will be announced at the national AAN convention in Philadelphia June 7.

Address letters to The Mail, City Paper, 812 Park Ave., Baltimore, MD 21201; fax: (410) 523-0138; e-mail: letters@citypaper.com.

Only letters that address material published in or policies of CP, are no more than 500 words long, and include the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number will be considered for publication. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

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May 21, 2008

★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★ PA IG E

SH UT TL EW

OR TH

HERE COMES THE SUNBURN CITY PAPER ’s 2008 SIZZLIN’ SUMMER GUIDE

THERE

IT IS, RIGHT OUT THERE ON THE HORIZON, PEEKING OUT AT YOU with a peeling sunburn and sweat stains under its arms. It’s summer and it’s almost here. The beautiful days of spring we are now enjoying will soon give way to the sticky, broiling mess of code-red air and fallen snocones melting on sizzling sidewalks. If only a nearly snow-free winter meant a humidity-less summer. Instead, we will gird ourselves against the swelter with dirty flip-flop-clad feet and unflattering shorts showing off our damn-I-forgot-thesunscreen-again carcinogenic tans.

Of course, summer in Baltimore isn’t all bad, even if it is all bad hair days. It’s a time of barbecues, outdoor festivals—and you know we never turn down an opportunity to drink outdoors—and reacquainting ourselves with our neighbors as we all emerge from our dim rowhouses, blinking in the light, for a season of sitting on stoops and porches and watching Charm City go by. It’s a time to get back in touch with nature and, in some cases, to remind ourselves why nature just isn’t our thing.

It’s a season of trips to the beach with friends that remind of us of being teenagers, and then, after seeing the teenagers puking by the boardwalk, why not being a teenager anymore rocks. It’s summer, and it may be hot and dirty and asthma-inducing, but it’s still an inexplicably magical time of year.

May 21, 2008

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★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★ STANDING ON A BATHROOM SCALE ON TOP OF A PICNIC TABLE IN A WATERSIDE PARK IN COLUMBUS, OHIO. IT’S EARLY MAY, 1996, but feels like late November: It’s somewhere around half past 7 in the morning, the air feels like it wants to freeze, and it’s raining so hard the park has become a muddy soup, making it hard to walk among the orderly rows of narrow white rowing shells propped up on stands—most with other living-dead rowers sheltered underneath them—without slipping. The reservoir behind me has turned from docile pond to torrent.

And all of this is OK, really. It was close, but I fell under the 145-pound weight limit to compete as a lightweight. And so did the three other rowers in my boat—if any one of us had been over, the entire boat would be disqualified. The race, the Midwest Scholastic Championship Regatta, would have been thrown, and, with it, the starvation, the four-odd hours a day of training, and the almost-creepy connection gained between teammates via time spent together—probably more than with parents and friends combined—and shared misery.

(In the end, the reservoir flooded even more and the entire competition was canceled, resulting in a great many adolescent white kid hissy fits.)

In the 12 years since, the regatta scene hasn’t changed much. On the south shore of the Middle Branch in early May, at the Baltimore High School Championships Regatta, it was still lines and lines of waiting rowing shells, water- and food-stocked tents, absurdly fit teenagers hanging around in unisuits, and doting parents with cameras. Every 20 minutes an announcer would come over the PA reading the results of the latest race and from some team encampment spread over the grass waterfront there’d be a chorus of cheers.

In the latter part of the morning, those cheers were mostly coming from Baltimore Rowing Club’s yellow and black tent occupied by the club’s juniors program, a mix of inner-city students and wealthier, whiter rowing standard-bearers, all bonded by an intense camaraderie, an absolute necessity in rowing. Of all sports, this is perhaps the one that involves the most synchronicity and teamwork.

“When you become part of a team, you can’t screw up,” assistant coach Alyson Covino explains. “Hours, every week, every month, in the same boat with the same people—you get to a point where if you’re not there, you’re not just hurting yourself.”

Rowing is also understood to be one of the most intense, heavy-impact workouts yet devised—like running, but with absolutely every muscle in your body. According to governing body USRowing, a 2,000-meter race,

I’M

THE STROKES: (LEFT) THE BALTIMORE ROWING CLUB WORKS TOGETHER: (RIGHT) MEDALS AND GLORY.

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May 21, 2008

★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★ roughly eight minutes of rowing, is equivalent to back-to-back basketball games So, theoretically, it’s good for you. (Though any sport aerobic enough to make vomiting, at least at races, commonplace might go a bit past “good.”)

For the sport’s surprising prevalence— the invite-only Baltimore High School Championships involved 13 teams, all from Maryland—it remains somewhat underground. It’s an Olympic sport, yes, and a major one at that, but for plenty of folks it’s an Olympic sport like archery is an Olympic sport, a quirky vestige of days gone by—the first rowing club in the U.S., the Detroit Boat Club (whom I raced for as a teen), was established in 1839.

So, many people just don’t get what it even is, or that it exists outside of Ivy League schools. A quick rundown: In the sport, a boat isn’t called a boat, but a shell. Why?

Maybe because it doesn’t work quite like a boat; sure, it floats, but only with someone or someones in it balancing the shell, which is only a little wider than your hips— as little as 10 inches across—on the surface of the water with oars roughly 12 feet in length. If you let go of the oars, the boat flips. In the Detroit River or the Baltimore Harbor, there’s absolutely nothing cool about going into the water.

In the shell, you’re strapped into shoes (“foot stretchers” in rowing parlance) that are attached to the boat, while you pull the oar through a combination of arms and legs—your ass is on a sliding seat that allows the latter. Everyone in the shell— they come in one-, two-, four-, and eightperson varieties—has to move in exactly the same way at the same time using the same effort or else the whole thing just goes to hell. Getting an oar handle in

CREW

ROMANCE EXPLAINING THE ALLURE OF THE PUNISHING SPORT OF ROWING

BY MICHAEL BYRNE PHOTOGRAPHS BY JEFFERSON JACKSON STEELE

May 21, 2008

C I T Y

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C I T Y

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May 21, 2008

★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★ CREW ROMANCE

(CONT.)

the back is on par with getting a wooden baseball bat straight to the spine. Trying to keep everything together is the crew’s coxswain, generally a really small person, who sits in the back of the boat shouting commands to the team and operating a little cable-controlled fin—not quite a rudder—at the back of the boat with nominal steering power. And, no, they’re not shouting “stroke, stroke, stroke”—more

$650 a season, $260 for the juniors program. (At the competitive level, add in the costs of travel and entry fees.) Fees for the novice program go down to a more manageable $200 for six weeks of training/instruction.

The reason the prices are so high is that the equipment itself is pricey—a brandnew eight-man rowing shell (known simply as an “eight”) costs in the neighborhood of $35,000. Baltimore Rowing Club owns 27 shells of all different varieties,

WORKOUT-WISE, EIGHT MINUTES OF ROWING IS EQUIVALENT TO BACK-TO-BACK BASKETBALL GAMES.

OAR WHAT?: MEMBERS OF THE "MEN'S NOVICE" CLASSIFICATION FOURMAN CREW ROW TO THIRD PLACE IN A PRELIMINARY HEAT. like all of the different ways you can condense “you’re not working hard enough” into one word. It often comes out less an order than a plea.

AND THIS IS ALL VERY FUN, OR AT LEAST addictive. Unfortunately, rowing has a well-earned reputation as very rich and very white sport. The costs associated with rowing even just on a recreational level are prohibitive. At Baltimore Rowing Club, for example, a basic annual membership runs $250 and doesn’t include training or instruction; for that it goes up to $250May 21, 2008

and club Vice President Mike Chin says that almost all of them are in use from the predawn hours until dark. Add in the costs of coaches, maintenance, waterfront property, and liability, and rowing’s upper-crust reputation begins to make more sense.

However, it’s by no means stagnant, in size or culture. “It’s a growing sport,” Chin says. “Our novice class is typically sold out.” On Sunday, the club christened three new shells, donations from the Honeywell Corp. and Pat Turner, the Richard Bransonesque developer who’s redeveloping C I T Y

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410-553-6840 C I T Y

P A P E R

May 21, 2008

★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★ CREW ROMANCE

(CONT.)

Westport, the stretch of abandoned industry lining the west side of the Middle Branch and adjacent to the Cherry Hill environs of the Baltimore Rowing Club.

The christening itself had a sort of corporate ick to it; people were walking around with Waterfront “brand” water bottles with an artist’s rendering of the new development, and as Turner introduced the boats he pointed at his name stenciled onto the bow and exclaimed, “We want to see this name across the finish line every time.”

And, save for the kids, it was hard to get over the country-club vibe of the organization’s royalty. I’m pretty sure we drank real Champagne.

As a kid, I’m not sure how my single-parent family pulled off the finances of the sport. Not very easily and with the help of credit cards, I suspect, but plenty of kids in Baltimore don’t even have that option.

In the immediate Baltimore area, rowing programs simply don’t exist in public schools— private schools Roland Park Country, Bryn Mar, and Notre Dame Prep all have programs, but parents also have money to afford them. Obviously, in inner-city Baltimore, parents generally don’t.

Yet a good chunk of Baltimore Rowing Club’s juniors program is made up of black, inner-city students, giving Baltimore the run on multiculturalism in Maryland rowing—at least, that’s how it felt at the reHARDER, FASTER, ALL TOGETHER NOW: (TOP) MEMBERS OF THE BALTIMORE ROWING CLUB'S WOMEN'S JUNIOR VARSITY EIGHT PERSON CREW WON THEIR FINAL RACE, CLINCHING THE ROWING CLUB'S VICTORY OF THE 2008 HONEYWELL CUP; (BOTTOM) MEMBERS OF THE CLUB CELEBRATE.

May 21, 2008

C I T Y

P A P E R

gatta—if not the East Coast. The program was introduced to member James Freeman as something that will “‘take us to a new world and see different things’” he explains.

“That’s how it came to be.”

The rowing club has Turner and Honeywell to thank for this, too. They kick in 25 scholarships a year to the club’s juniors program.

“It’s been really amazing,” Covino says of watching kids take to rowing. “[They] have just grown by leaps and bounds, as people and rowers, and as students. I love each of them tremendously.”

A big part of rowing’s appeal is that it opens up college doors. While more popular sports like football and basketball are so often targeted for scholarships, the competitiveness means the chances of getting needed money is slim. In contrast, a considerable amount of money is available in rowing scholarships, but there isn’t nearly the competition for them. At Baltimore Rowing Club, James Freeman is being courted by both Cornell and Stanford, while Akeen Smith was nominated for entrance to the Naval Academy.

After the boats are out of the water, the awards are handed out, and the coxswains have all been tossed into the harbor (a tradition for winning teams), I’m surrounded by a small crowd of giddy, distracted Baltimore Rowing Club rowers. I want to know what the appeal is, for them, of rowing. “It’s getting to know your teammates like they’re family,” Smith pipes up. “[We] never got into a fight, never got into a disagreement about nothin’. We agree as a team, we row as a team. We stay focused as a team.” ★ PAGE 17

COMES UP AT EVERY SUMMER BARBECUE, THAT AGE-OLD ARGUMENT about which is the better vacation spot: Ocean City or Rehoboth Beach, Del.?

Is Ocean City a bastion of kitschy summer fun or a cesspool of puking teenagers? Is Rehoboth a place for grown-up relaxation or a gentrified bore? Two City Paper writers duke it out below, each singing the hosannas to her beach of choice and talking smack about her competitor’s. May the best pile of sand win.

IT

GREETINGS FROM REHOBOTH BY HEATHER JOSLYN THE KEY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CHARM CITY’S two favorite seaside destinations: According to the most recent U.S. Census, the median age of Ocean City residents is 47. The median age in Rehoboth Beach? A mature 57.

Both the average City Paper reader and I are younger than either of those stats. But the point spread is telling and it underscores my prime argument in favor of Rehoboth: It’s more relaxing than O.C. It’s the place to go when you crave a little peace and quiet with your sand and surf.

(We pause here to allow my worthy opponent to respond with a little sarcastic snoring. . . . ) Ocean City is younger, friskier, more frantic—and that’s the problem. It’s not the 47-year-olds who turn Ocean City into a migraine-by-the-sea every summer.

It’s their kids, creating a cacophony with their honking and the relent-

HERE’S

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OCEAN

REHO A SHE SAID/SHE TO PARK YOUR BEACH I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y

less thumpa-thumpa pounding out of their subwoofers, as they keep O.C.’s streets snarled in traffic all day and night. And when they’re not shrieking at each other from behind the wheel, they’re hollering at each other on the boardwalk, parading by in oversized T-shirts that proclaim their enthusiasm for weaponry, drunkenness, NASCAR, and Hooters. (Here’s a lively game to help kill an evening on the O.C. boardwalk: One player takes Hooters Tshirts, the other takes Big Johnson shirts, and each sighting earns a point. Kind of like spotting out-of-state license plates, but dirty.)

I know, I know—I’m a snob. Look, when I was younger, I embraced Ocean City in all its tacky glory. But then I discovered the more tranquil charms of Rehoboth. Let’s start with: It just looks calmer. Sure, there’s traffic on the main drag, but take a short walk from the boardwalk and the bustling commercial strips and you’ll find shady trees and small lakes dotted with ducks. Rehoboth feels more like a little village, which it essentially is. Founded by Methodists as a camp meeting site in the early 1870s, there’s still a sense of coherent community to Rehoboth that other seaside tourist towns lack. For

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instance, I love the retro little bandstand next to the boardwalk—a true small-town touch—where you might lounge in the evenings among the senior citizens and exhausted parents and watch toddlers dance to Dixieland.

But of course one big reason why Rehoboth feels like a community is that it’s been so fervently adopted by one community in particular: my people, the gays. As a friend of mine puts it, “If beaches were states, Rehoboth would be a blue state, and O.C. red.” Rehoboth is a magnet for straights, too, but the gay presence is prominent, from the homo-friendly bars (Cloud 9, Purple Parrot, Frogg Pond) and lodging, to our exclusive territories on the sand (the fellas’ Poodle Beach, the ladiesonly chunk of Cape Henlopen).

Think it’s coincidence, then, that Rehoboth has a more varied and cosmopolitan mix of stores and restaurants than O.C.? Rehoboth understands that adults don’t live by Grotto Pizza and Thrasher’s Fries alone—there are plenty of places to have a civilized meal, be it Italian or Mexican or French or Russian or Japanese or American fusion or just some good native seafood, thank you very much.

All this, plus bacon ice cream, too.

Oh, and one more thought: Tax-free shopping. Unlike the Free State, Delaware has no sales tax—which just might help take some of the financial pain out of the trek downy ocean this summer, since we’ll all be paying a fortune for the gas to get there.

May 21, 2008

CITY

VS.

BO T H SAID ON WHERE TOWEL THIS SUMMER TOM CHALKLEY

WHY O.C. RULZ BY MICHELLE GIENOW SPEAK IN THE NAME OF THE LOUD AND PROUD HONKY-TONK OF OLD TOWN OCEAN CITY, HOME OF THE CRASSEST T-shirts, most vomitizing/seizure-inducing strobe-lit carnival rides, and highest concentration of fried-food stands, possibly in the entire world. I’m talking O.C. below about 50th Street here. Heading north it seems like so much of Ocean City is scrambling up the ladder of middle-class respectability as fast as it can—shit, Rehoboth, you can HAVE the Gold Coast—but Old Town is the heart of summer.

Yes, Ocean City can be abrasive, brash, even offensive. (I believe the word “tacky” has been mentioned). But, from the moment the sunrise spreads rosy fingers over the Jesus sand sculptures at Second Street un-

I

May 21, 2008

en heads at Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, and winning some 24 cent prize after investing $50 blowing up balloons by shooting water in a clown’s mouth. Plus, O.C. offers magnificent people-watching: Three years ago I am certain I spotted Charlie Manson enjoying a funnel cake on the boardwalk.

Finally, if Rehoboth is so darned blue state gay-hugging liberal, where the hell are the people of color? O.C. is a mélange of every shade from palest white (overlaid with scarlet sunburn) through peach, mocha, and all the way to deepest ebony. (I don’t see Rehoboth allowing day-tripping Latino field-worker families to sling hammocks under its municipal pier. If it has one. Which it probably doesn’t since Rehoboth’s pathetic boardwalk is,

what, three whole blocks long? But if it did have one, I’m sure there would be formal ordinances against slinging hammocks under it.) In Ocean City all the colors in the crayon box play together, often in the same biological family, and everyone is having a grand old time. ★

til the Led Zep cover band announces last call at the Purple Moose Saloon, it is never dull. And it is all-embracing: Call it the lowest common denominator if you will, but Ocean City never met a party it didn’t like.

This means you, whether your idea of a party is a days-long boardwalk bacchanal or a beach-lying, book-reading stay in the quiet zone of deliciously old-school motels around 30th Street.

Despite my esteemed colleague’s mistaken beliefs, it is totally possible to enjoy a relaxing, even staid, adult vacation in O.C.—it’s not all beer bongs and Big Pecker souvenir shirts here. You just can’t be offended by other people having a raucous good time in the same ZIP code is all. You want universally well-behaved WASP “fun,” well, you know where to go.

Don’t tell me about Rehoboth’s superior shopping and restaurants. At home I can dine on microgreens in nice restaurants anytime, ditto with browsing clever boutiques.

A visit to Ocean City is about selfindulgence on a primal level: letting the surf pound your body, soaking up that bad old sun, eating all the stuff you conscientiously avoid any other time (fried chicken for breakfast!), gawking at shrunk-

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May 21, 2008

★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★

ONE, TWO STEP: THE EDMONDSON VILLAGE STEPPERS PRACTICE UNTIL THEY GET IT RIGHT.

A STEP APART COMMUNITY DRUM LINE AND STEP GROUP MAKES ITSELF HEARD

BY JESS HARVELL PHOTOGRAPHS BY RARAH NEAR DUSK ON A WEDNESDAY NIGHT IN MAY, AND THE PARKVIEW RECREATION CENTER IN WEST BALTIMORE IS ALREADY AFLUTTER WITH POMPOMS, whipped ’round like sparkly blue and gold wigs snatched from the heads of a hundred disco divas. The gym is slowly filling up with members of the Edmondson Village Steppers, a community drum line and step-dancing troupe; a few dozen African-American women and girls and men and boys, ranging from just out of preschool on up to near middle age, cluster into groups of three, four, five, or more under green letters spelling out

IT’S May 21, 2008

C I T Y

Eleanor Roosevelt’s evergreen maxim—“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” In the back right corner, portraits of famous African-American strivers, from Mary McLeod Bethune to Jesse Owens, look on in impassively sketched pastels straight out of history textbooks.

The Edmondson Village Steppers begin running through their routines, shaking butts and stomping the gym floor, some a little more vigorously than others. Their excited shouts of “5-6-7-8!” bounce off the yellow and lime-green walls, blending with the endless rustle P A P E R

PAGE 21

★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★

FEEL ME: (THIS PAGE) THE DRUM CORPS KEEPS THE BEAT; (OPPOSITE PAGE) THE STEPPERS SHAKE THEIR POMPOMS.

A STEP APART

(CONT.)

of the poms, and before you know it the atmosphere approaches full-on cacophony.

Then a shrill whistle slices through the hubbub—someone’s got a mismatched set of poms. As this minor crisis is attended to, an older woman weaves a broom between the Steppers, vainly attempting to sweep away the sea of loose pom strands slowly covering the floor.

Tonight, the second of the troupe’s two weekly practice sessions, is getting into gear a little more slowly than usual; there’s been a delay with the drums, held up in transit on their way to the rec center. (One little boy has managed to find a teeny snare drum, however, and attempts to make up for the missing percussionists with all his muscles can muster.) Finally, the drummers arrive, with bass drums wide enough to drive a tricycle through and severe harnesses that look from a distance like they were hammered out of iron. As the drummers strap into their harnesses, slip into their protective padding, and assume the formation, mallets begin pounding, immediately cranking the room’s volume level up several notches. The steppers assemble ahead of the drummers, drum major Ernest Scott guiding them through a few practice rum-pa-pum-pums while making sure the bodies are evenly spaced, and they’re off.

If the Steppers looked like cliques of friends having a laugh at the start of practice, the arrival of the percussionists has snapped the dancers to full attention. The drums PAGE 22

have begun their thunderously loud calland-response—in full swing, the sound blots out all conversation in the small space— with a front-line cadre of snare drummers trading clockwork licks with the almost melodic multitenor drums in the middle and a back studded with those fearsome bass drums.

The dancers move not with the blandly drilled precision you get from a military marching band, or even your standard big university band out on the gridiron, but with a certain sass. Drum-line stepping is about getting loose while making sure to never break formation, about a tightly choreographed routine where dancers get to put their own funky stamp on things provided they keep in step. The Steppers’ routine is synthesized from sources as disparate as cheerleader chants tossed back and forth between dancers and drummers, gospel church hand-clapping and foot-stomping, the high kicks and thrown elbows of 1950s and ’60s rock and soul dance crazes, and even a little break dancing, at one point dropping to the floor all at once, in an unexpected twist on the worm.

The Edmondson Village Steppers are just one of a number of Baltimore community drum lines, and tonight, even in street clothes and still working out the routine’s kinks, their gleeful energy bubbles over as we sit on the cusp of the hot and steamy season of parades and outdoor festivals where the Steppers ply their trade—at least when not traveling cross-country to battle other teams for nationwide step supremacy.

C I T Y

Hollywood has spent the last decade transforming step dancing and drum lines into flashy pop fictions for audiences that have often had little contact with the world of African-American fraternities and sororities where stepping had incubated. But anyone who’s ever crowded into an arena for a full-scale stepping spectacular like the nationwide “Super Stomp” tour knows that these days the real thing can often be as glitzy as Nick Cannon and pals executing Matrix-style flips under zigzagging laser light shows. (A “Super Stomp” stop last year in Philadelphia featured Stormtrooper steppers in a full-on Star Wars homage and another routine capped by a replica helicopter that descended from the rafters.) The biggest (or most well-endowed) college step teams can come off like an athletic club under the direction of Industrial Light and Magic.

Steppers have even performed for at least one sitting president (the relatively funky William Jefferson Clinton).

Still, big-budget popcorn flicks and fraternities’ special-effects budgets aside, stepping began as a community-oriented activity, something that grew out of block parties and playgrounds, and there’s no spectacle except flying feet and hands with the Edmondson Village Steppers. It’s a homegrown group with a very specific mission: providing a safe, familial space for young Baltimoreans, direction for those who might lack guidance at school or at home, and a creative outlet that’s an alternative to corner mischief (or worse)—civic improvement set to body-rocking rhythms that might P A P E R

rumble you right off your bleacher.

The group formed in 1993 under the direction of several women from the Edmondson Village area who wanted an activity where their own children and grandchildren would be out of harm’s way, says Erika Brown, the Steppers’ president, and who found the city’s recreation department lacking such a program. Brown says they have between 60 and 70 members at the moment. The Steppers march year-round, a schedule focused on parades and step-dancing competitions, both in and outside Baltimore, coordinated through their web site. In January, they traveled to Florida; in June, they’ll be heading to North Carolina.

Despite a few early, routed attempts to secure funding from the city, the Steppers are entirely self-financed, paying for equipment, uniforms, and travel costs for five or six dozen Steppers with fundraising drives.

Everyone pitches in to keep the Steppers going, and the most repeated description of the group among members and organizers alike is perhaps unsurprisingly that it’s “like a family.” Some members have been dancing or drumming with the group for more than a decade, Brown says, and neighborhood divisions and rivalries quickly fall away once new members find themselves part of a hard-working, cooperative unit. “It helps me to relieve my stress,” says Tyesha Tucker, a sprightly 19-year-old Stepper with perma-smile capped by a prominent Monroe piercing. “When you’ve got stuff going on outside [the group] and then you come here, it just all goes away.”

May 21, 2008

â&#x2DC;&#x2026; SIZZLINâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; SUMMER â&#x2DC;&#x2026; â&#x20AC;&#x153;When [members] canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t find a family at home or on the streets because of all the obstacles theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re facing, they can be a family here,â&#x20AC;? says Scott, 29. â&#x20AC;&#x153;They can let go, relax, release, and have a bunch of fun.

Positive fun. But weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re still competitive.â&#x20AC;?

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Scott who speaks most passionately at the Wednesday night practice session about the constructive aspects of the Steppers. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re a democratic band,â&#x20AC;? he says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;This band has a voice, and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not just the one, two, three, or four people whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re in charge. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s everybody.â&#x20AC;? And

opportunity to travel to places outside of the Beltway is possibly the most exciting part of performing with the group. A 2007 trip to a competition in Minnesota is a frequently cited high point in recent Edmondson Village Steppers history; the drum line took first place despite the snare-drum section being whittled down to a lone percussionist. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m fortunate enough that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been able to travel and see a lot of places outside of the city,â&#x20AC;? Scott says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;These kids havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. Just a couple months ago we went to Floridaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a lot of them hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t been to

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while as a musician the drum major is invested himself in making sure his troupe is tightâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;during the run-through of the eveningâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s routine, he comes off as a takeno-mess kind of director, a firm hand making sure each balletic flip of a drumstick is executed in unisonâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;he claims the more crucial part of the Edmondson Village Steppers project is still sending its members away from practices and performances with a change in attitude, the organizers acting not only as bandleaders but also as life coaches. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s be honest, in this area, some of these kids are not being taught by big momma or whoever you had in the past whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d teach you. [Members] take this home, and sometimes weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re the only voices they hear, as far as being positive.â&#x20AC;?

While quick to stress the importance of performing for appreciative hometown crowds, members of the Steppers say the May 21, 2008

Florida. We try to set up sightseeing trips and things outside of just competing, things theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll remember. We might not be able to get them Disney World, but weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll try our best to get them as close as possible.â&#x20AC;?

Listening to Scottâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s earnest, surrogate guidance counselor intentions for his charges, it might be easy to think of the Edmondson Village Steppers as merely a valuable after-school program for at-risk kids that happens to make good use of music and dance.

But he also describes himself as an â&#x20AC;&#x153;entertainer,â&#x20AC;? and the groupâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s entertainment instincts are why youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d do well to hit up a local parade or outdoor festival as the Edmondson Village Steppers stomp through the summer. Find yourself swept up in their polyrhythmic wake and suddenly self-improvement starts to feel like an excellent bonus on top of a killer groove. â&#x2DC;&#x2026; C I T Y

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★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★

AHHHH! CITY PAPER’S SUMMER DRINK CONTEST

BY EDWARD ERICSON JR. ILLUSTRATION BY DEANNA STAFFO

ULTIMATE MARGARITA RECIPE CAME TO ME 20 SUMMERS AGO FROM A CO-WORKER at The Providence Journal-Bulletin, Steve Heffner, who had lived life right. After graduating from Yale, Heffner had retired to San Diego, spending the Carter and Reagan administrations living off the kindness of freelance editors and girlfriends. His odyssey had ended only recently, when he became a father and settled uneasily into life at the newspaper’s Newport bureau. Upon seeing my 23-year-old self enter the office, he bellowed, “Get out! You’ve got your whole life ahead of you! Retire now, while you’re young.”

Heffner had a bald head, Hemingway beard, and mouth like a shark. He was the best mentor a cub reporter could have. He showed me how to throw knives (he had a dart board with a photo of the paper’s star columnist, Mark Patinkin, taped to it), how to ride the office moped down the halls, and how to affect an attitude comprising the proper proportions of disdain for the editors, delight in the bizarre pageant that is news gathering, and general mania. But the greatest gift he bestowed was the ultimate margarita recipe.

“Be careful with this, it’s mostly hooch,” Heffner warned as he mixed up the first batch at his desk. He swore he’d received the formula from a shaman he’d encountered in the California desert. I have no reason to doubt him.

The mix goes as follows: five parts freshsqueezed lime juice (“It’s best to use limes that are a little overripe,” Heffner advised.

“I usually buy them on Monday and let them sit in a paper bag under my desk until Friday or so.”), eight parts triple sec, 10 parts tequila, and “more ice than you think you could ever need.”

If you have a blender, shock the mix for two or three seconds, then pour into a glass of ice (a coffee mug in our case). The result is a revelation—especially for those weaned on the syrupy green “mixers” in the margaritas served by most restaurants.

“Thank you, wise one,” I said. “This is the ultimate summer drink.”

THE

PAGE 26

“Nah,” Heffner scoffed. “The best summer drink is a gin and tonic. No! Strike that. The ultimate would be Gilbey’s gin and Schweppes bitter lemon.”

Heffner’s boast precipitated a contest, conducted on a July afternoon, among the three contenders. The drinks were mixed and sampled, one following another, by myself and my then housemate. To our surprise, we both agreed: gin and bitter lemon soda won hands-down. The margarita came in third.

These many years later, City Paper decided to reprise that long-ago contest. We noticed right off that certain parameters had changed. In younger days, the object was to create the most caustic concoction palatable. The margarita more than filled this bill, causing many a drinking professional to go blithering into the night. Ease of prep was hardly a concern. The drink merely had to be simple enough to remember; cleaning up the epic mess afterward was never a consideration.

Today, priorities differ. The object is still a refreshing, crisp, tasty beverage, but it also ought to be simple to make and pack less kilotonnage than an F-18.* Endeavoring to make the new contest scientific, we assembled an expert panel of judges and tested not three but six drinks, each presented with clinical precision by yours truly on the City Paper patio (if you can call a patch of parking lot fenced off with chain link a “patio”). Each drink was scored on a 1-to-5 scale on six criteria: ease of creation, cost, appearance, taste, potency, and overall summer-drink-perfection.

The results were surprising; we have a new champion, a sophisticated and plucky number hardly known or heard from in recent centuries. We hereby rechristen and relaunch it for your pleasure. You are very welcome.

THE OSWALD: Overall Score: 2.75. Mix cheap merlot with cranberry juice or cranberry juice cocktail.

Proportions don’t matter.

The namesake drink of local drummer and bon vivant Rob Oswald is the simplest to C I T Y

mix and the least likely to render you unconscious before your time. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea, though. It received low “overall scores,” garnering a sixth-place finish. Yet it did much better—third place (3.34)—based on its average scores for ease of creation, cost, appearance, taste and potency (potency was scored to taste, not on objective alcohol content). “Its cheapness and ease of creation offset its Boone’s Farm taste,” one tester enthused.

GIN AND “BITTER LEMON”: Overall Score: 2.90. Over ice, mix one part gin to two or three parts Schweppes bitter lemon. Garnish with lemon or lime slice.

This drink is simple and superb, and would have probably won, but for the lack of Schweppes bitter lemon—a lemon-quinine mixer that is more tart than tonic water yet still pleasingly sweet. In Newport, 1988, it was as easy as a walk to the grocery store.

Alas, no more. Our team visited numerous grocery and liquor stores, and consulted online forums, but we were not able to score this magic potion. In despair, we purchased some lemon-lime seltzer from Safeway, which was nothing like the stuff we needed. The resulting concoction scored fifth. “Tastes like soap,” one disappointed tester commented.

MARGARITA: Overall Score: 3.60. In a blender filled with ice cubes mix 2.5 ounces of fresh squeezed lime juice, four ounces of triple sec and five ounces of tequila (I like Sauza Gold for this).

Blend for three seconds, pour into saltrimmed, ice-filled margarita glass.

Fourth in our judges’ opinion, this very powerful margarita met mixed reviews.

“Tastes like summer!” one judge gushed, while another stated, “I couldn’t drink this— it’s too strong for me.” The key is to sip it, and let it steep. As the ice melts, the cocktail mellows out, and so do you. In our test lab, where speed was of the essence, this natural mellowing process was cut short.

The drink also suffered from complexity; squeezing limes is a pain in the ass, and this requires a bunch of ’em.

P A P E R

ZOMBIE: (By Jeff Berry, as cited in The New York Times.)

Overall Score: 4.00. Mix in an ice-filled shaker 3/4 ounce lime juice, one ounce white grapefruit juice, 1/2 ounce cinnamon-infused sugar syrup, 1/2 ounce Bacardi 151, one ounce dark Jamaican rum. Strain into a highball glass with ice cubes, garnish with mint and sliced fruit.

This drink rated third overall, even though we made it with ruby red grapefruit juice (too sweet) and substituted Bacardi Gold for the 151 and Bacardi Razz for Jamaican rum (both ruinous). This thing is an ass-kicker, but it requires serious prep. The syrup requires boiling a cup each of water and sugar and crushing cinnamon sticks into the mix. “Sweet, tart, and very refreshing,” one judge commented. “This would make me say things I regret at a barbecue.”

GIN AND TONIC: Overall Score: 4.28. Over ice, mix one part gin to two or three parts tonic. Finish with a spritz of fresh lime juice and zest.

Although rated second (by a hair) overall to the winning entrant by our judges, the gin and tonic actually scored higher when rated on individual traits. The drink is so easy to make, so refreshing and simple, it’s just hard as hell to beat. “Crisp and refreshing,” one judge commented. Another said, “my personal favorite drink.”

PIMM’S CUP: Overall Score: 4.34 Over ice, pour one part Pimm’s No. 1, two parts lemonade. Infuse with mint leaves, lemon, orange, strawberry, apple and borage leaves. (Alternately, use ginger ale instead of lemonade, and garnish with cucumber, apple, and fresh mint.)

The Pimm’s Cup is an imperial tradition, Pimm’s No. 1 having been invented in London, 1840. According to a listing on the bottle, the 50-proof, gin-based tincture won awards in “Constantinople—1880,” Peking—1889,” “Rangoon— 1896,” “Rio de Janeiro—1913,” and “Cape Town—1951,” among others— but nothing in the past 57 years. Until now.

“Delish. A taste of the old empire,” one judge said. “Super refreshing. It’s delicious. I would drink a ton of these. It makes me feel sophisticated.” The version our judges liked best consisted of Pimm’s and lemonade, infused with mint, citrus, apple, and cucumber. We have no idea what borage leaves are and, considering we couldn’t score Schweppes bitter lemon, despaired of finding any in Baltimore on a Friday afternoon.

In overall scoring the Pimm’s Cup eked out a victory over the classic gin and tonic.

But again, if ease of creation means a lot to you, the G&T won out—4.04 to 3.49. *Some will ask: Where is the Long Island Iced Tea? Our response: Get back, drunkards! We decided to limit of types of alcohol allowed in one drink, for simplicity’s (and budget’s) sake.

The LIIT demands a five-shot mix; we think more than two is pushing things. But if we were still 23, we’d probably think differently.

May 21, 2008

★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★

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★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★

PEW PEW PEW: "CHILLIWACK BUCK," AKA BERNIE POLISCHUK, TAKES A TURN ON THE SHOOTING RANGE. TOBEN STARES OUT THE WINDOW AT HIS QUARRY, HIS RIFLE IDLE on the sill in front of him. “You coward!” he yells, breaking the silence. He picks up his Winchester and gets off 10 quick shots, emptying the rifle. He moves to the other window, where his trusty shotgun waits. Another four blasts. Now he’s in the doorway, pistols drawn. Ten more shots ring out.

They never stood a chance. After all, wasn’t it Toben who took on the Espinoza gang alone, and only considered the job finished when he came back to Fort Garland with the outlaws’ heads in a sack? Toben who became a scout for Kit Carson as a teenager?

Toben the cattle rancher and friend to the Ute Indians?

Well, sort of. That Tom Toben was laid to rest in 1904 out in Colorado. The Tom Toben who turns from his targets, guns empty, and heads for the unloading table has another name—Tom Ouellette—the name he uses during the week at his job with the

TOM

PAGE 30

National Cancer Institute. On the weekends, though, when the 43-year-old straps on his six-shooters with the rest of the Single Action Shooting Society, nobody calls him anything but his cowboy name.

According to legend (and the society’s web site), cowboy action shooting got started back in the 1980s by a group of friends and avid target shooters out in Coto de Caza, Calif. Shooters use period guns and clothes to re-create the Wild West for a day of competitive target practice. The Single Action Shooting Society boasts more than 75,000 members, broken into territories that span 19 countries and every state in the union. The society describes cowboy action shooting as “a combination of historical re-enactment and Saturday morning at the matinee.”

Out in front of the Izaak Walton League’s conservation center in Mount Airy, a group of Boy Scouts race up and down the gravel road. A stranger pulls up and asks the troop leader whether he’s seen any cowboys C I T Y

around. “I’m surprised we can’t hear them yet,” he responds, and points the way down a long stretch of gravel leading into the woods. About a mile down hill, the clang of bullet on steel becomes clearer. A sign at the end of the road admonishes whoever’s been shooting up the period horse-drawn cart, presumably while horseless. Past that, the gravel road opens up into a field. Around 50 people take turns shooting, watching, and dragging around their wooden cowboy carts carrying rifles, shotguns, and maybe a cooler. Some of them, like Toben, take the names of historical figures and research accordingly. Others just come up with any Western-sounding name and create their own characters. It isn’t role-playing, exactly, more like a grown-up version of playing cowboy. With real guns.

That’s a large part of the appeal for Ron Thomson, known around these parts as the Highland Ranger. It’s nostalgia not so much for the Wild West but for the movies of his youth. “I grew up with that generation,” he P A P E R

says. “Cowboy movies on Saturdays. That was part of what you did growing up. This is an extension of that.”

On this sunny April day, the Damascus Wildlife Rangers are playing host to the match, and territorial governor Chuckaroo (aka Chuck Crooks) is keeping the peace from the saddle of a decidedly noncowboy golf cart. Each stage is slightly different— the windows Toben shoots through are connected to a wall, but the wall itself isn’t connected to anything else—and it looks like a fake Western town, seen from the back. Most of the scenario takes place in the imagination. The shooters are sticklers for accuracy when it comes to guns, a little more lenient on clothes. Pretty much everyone has a cowboy hat, but the rules are a little vague on the rest—“all clothing must be typical of the late 19th century, a B-western movie, or Western television series,” according to the official Single Action Shooting Society rule book, but it outlaws T-shirts, designer jeans, athletic shoes, and ball caps.

May 21, 2008

â&#x2DC;&#x2026; SIZZLINâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; SUMMER â&#x2DC;&#x2026; Hired Gun is 60 years old. He went by Jack Kurtz before he joined up with some cowboy shooters about 10 years ago in New Cumberland, Pa. Now heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the territorial governor for the Westshore Posse there. Like a lot of the shooters, he makes the rounds of the area, getting in at least one match a weekend, whether itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in Thurmont, Damascus, New Cumberland, or wherever. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll do it every weekend until it gets hot,â&#x20AC;? he says, fingering his gun belt and peering down over a waxed moustache. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do well in the heat.â&#x20AC;?

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve always been a shooter,â&#x20AC;? Hired Gun says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I do a little hunting, but I just like shooting targets. You shoot a lot more rounds in this game. And thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a lot of camaraderie out here.â&#x20AC;?

Cowboy shoots are divided into stages; Chuckaroo put the finishing touches on them yesterday. Metal targets (and in one case a plastic skeet-shooting bird) need to be hit in a certain order, with a certain weaponâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;all the stages involve a combination of shotgun, rifle, and pistol. The shooters are timed electronically from their

THE COWBOY WAY LOCAL GUNSLINGERS TAKE A SHOT AT THE WILD WEST

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★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★ THE COWBOY WAY

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first shot, under the watchful eyes of a set of spotters, with time added for missed shots.

Posses of about a dozen cowpokes rotate through a series of stages. It’s a serious competition, but most folks are in it for the fun.

“It was a good excuse to buy a cowboy revolver,” Highland Ranger says. “I come out here to have a good time. And I do. I really enjoy the people here—they’re serious competitors, and I like to watch them shoot.” As Highland Ranger speaks, his words are almost drowned out by the sharp reports of the nearby gunfire and the almost instantaneous clang of shots finding their way to the metal targets.

“I find it very relaxing,” he says, comparing the cowboy shoots to more conventional bull’s-eye target shooting, “because you’re not worried about ‘did it hit the white line?’, you know, or ‘is that a 9 or an 8?’—that sort of thing. This is just ‘did you hit it or not?’”

Stealing some time in between shoots, Tom Toben shows off his guns—all pre-1900 design, as per Single Action Shooting Society rules. “That’s an 1873 Winchester,” he says, pointing to his rifle. “I’ve had this for about eight years.” He’s had the gun worked on by a gunsmith in Berkeley Springs, W.Va., who specializes in cowboy shooting. “What they do,” Toben explains, “is smooth out the action so it feeds reliably. They shoot very fast.”

“This,” he moves down the table, “is an 1897 shotgun. It’s a pump action, and it’s the only pump action that’s allowed in cowboy.

This is one of the more common ones—there

I SEE BY YOUR OUTFIT . . . :"CHUCK-A-ROO" LAYS DOWN THE LAWS OF THE COWBOY SHOOTING COMPETITION.

THE SOCIETY DESCRIBES COWBOY ACTION SHOOTING AS “A COMBINATION OF HISTORICAL RE-ENACTMENT AND SATURDAY MORNING AT THE MATINEE.”

BIG IRON ON HIS HIP: “SNAKE-EYE SKULKER,” AKA MARK TWAROWSKI, READIES HIS ARSENAL. are also some Winchester model ’92s. That’s a Ruger Blackhawk pistol. As you see, there’s also Uberti-type pistols that the fellows are shooting as well. Rugers seem to fit me quite well, so that’s what I use.”

It’s not a cheap hobby for the beginner, but Toben says most of the expense is up front. “Initially, you’re in for a couple grand,” PAGE 32

he says. “You could get by a little cheaper to start out with. But that’s typical of a lot of hobbies. There’s a certain amount of initial expense, but then once you have it, that’s all you need. . . . Everything after that is just ammunition . . . some shot shell and some clothing articles. Overall, it’s not too bad.”

Time for the next stage. Trooper Steve C I T Y

(Steve Shoemaker, from Springfield, Va.) lays out the rules of the course for the shooters and range officer (RO). “On the command of the RO,” he begins, “load two rounds in your shotgun.” Someone in the crowd interrupts: “Throw his ugly hat downrange and shoot it!” After each shooter is done, Devil’s Bliss, sitting behind them with a clipboard, takes down the official times. Bliss (nee Pam Goetz, from Catonsville) is wearing a corset with butterflies on the back over layered skirts and blouse. The wooden handle of a knife protrudes from a belt at the small of her back. As she loads her guns, she says she got involved in the sport three or P A P E R

four years ago, along with her partner, Chilliwack Buck, who’s stationed at the unloading table.

“I found a flier for [a cowboy action shoot]”, Bliss says. “I thought he’d be interested, and then he made me get into it, too.” She had never shot a gun before that, but now she says they go to matches once a week during the warmer months.

“I’m not as good as any of these people, but I just come to have a good time,” she says. “I just do this to release some tension.

Or cause some. I’m not sure which.” And with that, Devil’s Bliss is off to take a shot at the next stage. ★ May 21, 2008

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★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★

A WENCH IN THE WORKS WORKING AT THE RENAISSANCE FESTIVAL WAS AS MUCH BAWD AS BARD

BY ERIN SULLIVAN ILLUSTRATION BY HAWK KRALL HIGH SCHOOL, I HAD THIS THING FOR THIS GUY. He was a older than me—a senior, when I was a sophomore—and I remember what a relief it was when I first saw him and his friends walking down a hallway in between classes: a group of guys and girls who were neither stoners or jocks. They wore R.E.M. T-shirts instead of the requisite Megadeth ones that were de rigeur in my high school in the late ’80s/early ’90s. They read Kafka, even though it wasn’t required reading, even for the advanced-placement English classes. They had AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL stickers in their lockers. I wanted to be friends with them. In particular, I wanted to be friends with him.

Only problem was, he was about to graduate, and if I didn’t find a way to get to know him soon and let him know that I too liked poetry and interesting bands and that I too liked to read Jack Kerouac, I would miss my chance forever. One day, during study hall, he mentioned that every summer he worked at the local Renaissance festival in a gaming booth or beer tent. It was a fun job, he said, and it paid $5 per hour plus modest tips. I had never been to a Renaissance festival but told him I loved that kind of thing. I did like history, I reasoned, so it wasn’t that big a lie.

“You should apply there for the summer,” he said.

“Maybe I will,” I told him. And the next day, I drove a half-hour to a Ren-fest job fair and hoped I had what it took to get a job.

A month or so later, I showed up at a tiny, dusty hut in the middle of a make-believe medieval village for my first shift as a lemonade girl. The other girl who worked with me in the hut was a veteran, and she showed me the ropes: Always speak to guests in your best approximation of a Cockney ac-

IN

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cent; serving wenches always wear peasant blouses and raggedy, flowing skirts; if you want to make good tips, don’t wear a bra under your blouse; flirt with the men, sometimes even with the women, and never pass up an opportunity to make a raucous spectacle of yourself. It was good for business and made the festival’s owners happy. Plus, if you were lucky, maybe someday you’d catch the eye of someone important and get a better job assignment next year—beer wench, or possibly even a bit part as an actress wandering the grounds and entertaining the guests.

It was a fairly pleasant gig, much better than working at the supermarket where I worked the previous summer, and my crush stopped by a couple of times over the course of the weekend to say hello.

It all seemed fairly simple, innocent, and cute, but as the weeks wore on I started to notice a rather Dionysian flair to the festival, particularly behind the scenes and after-hours. The rose girls, for example, who wandered the grounds with baskets of longstemmed roses that could be bought for a few dollars, looked to be beautiful, mysterious, and ethereal, drifting around the grounds as if in a dream. I thought it was part of the act—pretend to be an otherworldly, Max Parrish-inspired beauty, I imagined the head rose girl telling the others— until I stumbled across one of them drinking mead and feeling up a guy behind the beer tent. They weren’t acting mysterious and dreamy; they were perpetually drunk.

In the vendor’s area, buxom women in lowcut flowing blouses and velvet corsets so tight they pushed their chests into unnaturally high positions sold flower garlands for little girls. Lusty wannabe pirates wearing tight pants and leather vests without shirts pedC I T Y

dled daggers. Women of all ages, not shy about baring a bit of flesh by hitching up their peasant rags to show some thigh, belly, or boobs, sold chain mail and cloaks, fairy wings and leather wineskins. The men, many of them likely mundane in real life, decked themselves out in über-masculine gear: leather body armor, Tartan-plaid kilts, codpieces, daggers stuck down their boots, swords sheathed on their belts. The women did their best to dress like slutty peasant girls, slutty princesses, or slutty ladies of the shire. They exchanged lighthearted and suggestive banter with one another, and with willing customers, some of whom seemed to develop crushes on festival employees and came back again and again to finger the merchandise, while dreaming of fingering the lusty medieval merchant. After-hours, the vendors, employees, and sometimes even regular customers met up in a nearby roadhouse-type bar or at the festival campground, where they could drink mead, sing Renaissance-inspired songs, and get lucky in festival garb behind a booth or tree.

Meanwhile, families and children wandered around the grounds, gnawing on smoked turkey legs, watching the jousting tournaments, taking their kids to see the Punch and Judy puppet show, blissfully ignorant of all the sexually charged banter.

The whole thing struck me as bizarre—I was not naive, but I was surprised by the overt sexuality of a place most guests seemed to think of as a family affair. They thought it was a nice place to watch Shakespeare on the Green and share romantic moments on the Kissing Bridge. I now thought of it as a place to learn what bagpipers wear (or don’t wear) under their skirts, what happens in carnival campgrounds after dark, and how to get laid if you’re a high-school loser in real life but a magician, warrior, or princess in the shire.

The ultimate example of the lasciviousness of the Ren fest was the pickle guy. I noticed him right away—for one thing, to my 17-year-old eyes, he was totally hot. He was loud and lean and sinewy, and he had long, straight blondish hair that fell below his shoulders. He looked kind of like Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers (Mother’s Milk era, if that helps your mental image).

His job was to walk around the joint dressed as a poor peasant, pushing a barrel on wheels full of pickles. He was always shirtless. And he was the king of double entendres and sexual innuendo—and everyone, from the stroller-pushing moms to the bawdiest of beer wenches, fell for his shtick.

He would come up to the girls like me, working the lemonade/iced tea booth, and say lewd things to us in front of large groups of people to drum up business.

“Good day, fine wenches, why don’t one of you come out from your hut and try a taste of my fine, thick dill?” he’d call out to the girls in the lemonade booth or ice cream tents. “It’s big and refreshing and delicious, you won’t be sorry!” He was usually hot and sweaty, and if you acted out a little scene with him, he’d trade you a pickle for a cup of cold lemonade.

And though it wasn’t in my job description when I signed up to work at the P A P E R

Renaissance fair, it was common knowledge that serving wenches (especially those who aspired to someday be Ren-fest actresses) could showcase their acting skills by getting randy with other peasants—particularly the pickle guy, who was always up for some role-playing.

Since I was new, the first few times he came around the more experienced girl who worked in my booth did the pickle matingdance ritual while I watched. She’d hike up her billowing skirts high up on her thigh, swing her legs over the counter of our booth, and lean in close to the guy while he prepared a phallic-looking pickle for her.

“Oh, good sir, what a big dill you have,” she’d tell him, and he’d put the pickle in her mouth while a crowd gathered to watch the scene, which was not unlike the stilted acting at the beginning of a porn flick. It drew applause from the titillated crowd, but more importantly, it drew big tips.

Three quarters of the way through the summer, the guy I had a crush on stopped by the lemonade booth to chat. I looked forward to his regular visits, and I thought he looked particularly cute in his tall laceup suede boots and flowing poet’s shirt. But on this particular day, he had not come to chat but to say goodbye. This was his last day of work for the summer because he was having hernia surgery and wouldn’t be able to work for more than a month while he healed. It was a blow—his was the one familiar face I had at this odd festival, and he was leaving me behind to deal with the lecherous customers and profligate picklemonger on my own. I was crushed.

Later that day, when I heard that familiar call in the distance—“The finest, thickest dill in all the shire, come get some, ladies!”— I decided I would drown my disappointments in pickle juice. I had watched the other girls get randy with the pickle guy plenty of times, so I knew the drill. The pickle guy stopped his cart in front of our hut and called for a wench—I hiked my skirt up to my knees, hopped over the lemonade counter like a good bawdy wench, and told the pickle guy to bring it on. We got applause, we got laughter, we got tips.

After the pickle guy left, I finished my pickle—which was, I might add, just as big and delicious as he had promised—I wasn’t sure whether to feel excited that I’d mustered the courage to act out that scenario in public or disgusted for lowering myself to partake in the cretinous tradition.

I never worked at a Renaissance fair again after that summer—not that it wasn’t fun, but I just wasn’t cut out for that kind of thing—and I haven’t visited one in more than a decade. People tell me things have changed: Festivals now have ATMs and corporate sponsors, and organizers have to worry about liability and sexual harassment.

I’ve also heard that Trekkies have become regular attendees at festivals. They dress in character and pretend to be on the starship holodeck, experiencing a simulated Renaissance environment.

Ren-fest purists, I’m sure, are appalled at the very notion. But I get a kick out of the idea of watching the pickle guy trying to coax a female Klingon to suck his dill. ★ May 21, 2008

★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★

May 21, 2008

C I T Y

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★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★

C I T Y

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eybees. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I usually wear nothing more than what Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got on now,â&#x20AC;? Fischer says, leaning over a hive in a pair of khakis, a tan button-down shirt, and a Maryland Department of Agriculture baseball cap. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Bees are very gentle and docile,â&#x20AC;? he assures me.

Fischer burns a torn piece of burlap in an old tin canister fit with what looks like a single fold of an accordion pump, which he occasionally pushes in and out to release puffs. â&#x20AC;&#x153;When you go to a colony,

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Four wooden boxes sit atop one another, the lowest being twice the height of the others. This is the chamber where the brood grows. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The larger boxes are what we call high-bodies,â&#x20AC;? he says, â&#x20AC;&#x153;They are just for the bees. This is where they do everything necessary to keep a colony alive.â&#x20AC;?

A few yards away sit two white boxes;

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FISCHER HAS STICKY HANDS. But thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all part of the job for Marylandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s top apiarist. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I go through about a hundred colonies in a day as a bee inspector. Forty-thousand bees in a colony,â&#x20AC;? he says, lumbering out of his van and into the dogwood orchard near the Oregon Ridge Nature Center in northern Baltimore County.

Approaching the nature centerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hives, Fischer is quiet. His white New Balances crunch the dry unmowed grass under the weight of his sturdy frame. The orchard resounds with the hum of buzzing hon-

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these are new colonies. Fischer opens the top of one of boxes. Ten frames fit snug in the double-deep box. The first few frames are dark and covered in honey and worker bees, whereas the frames opposite are still fresh, only attracting a few slackers.

Fischer lifts a frame from the busy side as he explains that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll take a new colony two seasons to produce enough honey for consumption. The frame in his bare hand is alive with fidgeting bees. Thousands crawl about working furiously on either side

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★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★

BEE CAUSE

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of the wax combs. They crawl over Fischer’s hands as he shows me where the eggs are PAGE 40

laid and explains the stages of honeybee development. Without so much as a second thought, he scoops out a comb of fresh honey and tests its potency.

C I T Y

As state apiarist, Fischer is in charge of inspecting all of Maryland’s registered bee colonies and checking them for health issues. “You can pick up your dog or cat and P A P E R

A HIVE OF ACTIVITY: JERRY FISCHER LOOKS AFTER THE STATE’S BEES.

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walk into the vet and say, ‘I think my pet is sick,’” he says, motioning back to the colony just up the path. “There’s 40,000 bees in that colony. You can’t walk into the vet with that.”

Fischer has worked for nearly 30 years in an industry that has historically flown under the radar—that is until the media picked up on colony collapse disorder, or CCD, back in 2006. This bee-death phenomenon has gained national attention due to its economic and agricultural impact on major pollination operations in California and throughout the South. “You hear about it on the radio and on the TV and in the newspapers as if it’s something new,” Fischer says. “Fact is, it’s happened 10 times in the last hundred years.”

Theories as to the causes have ranged

all over the area.”

In pursuance of this goal, Oregon Ridge Nature Center—in conjunction with the Central Maryland Beekeepers Association— sponsors a training course for aspiring apiarists. “This year there was 68 people just here at Oregon Ridge alone,” Fischer says.

“There was 336 beekeepers that took short courses at 11 different locations in the state of Maryland this year.”

According to Fischer, there are more than 1,500 registered beekeepers in the state.

These keepers run over 10,000 colonies in about 1,700 locations. Most are hobbyists.

Despite popular conceptions of beekeepers working far from the maddening crowd, Fischer says hives populate vast swathes of even the most populous regions of the state. “I’ll show you the book right now,” he says, reaching into his van. Flipping a road atlas open to page showing yellow-

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“WITHOUT HONEYBEES YOU HAVE NOTHING. IN THREE OR FOUR YEARS IT’D BE ALMOST A DEAD WORLD.” from everything from unknown contagions to cell-phone frequencies. Fischer, who is helping to study the causes of the disorder, stresses that CCD is not a disease.

“What we are finding is that no one thing has caused CCD,” he says. “What it comes down to is three things: stress, nutrition, and pesticides.” While Maryland has never had losses associated with CCD, Fischer and his five inspectors keep an eye on what happens across the country.

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“I’VE BEEN WORKING BEES ALL MY LIFE, really,” Fischer says as he heads back to the van. Born and raised on a small farm in Baltimore County, Fischer says that he was brought up understanding what he calls the “central importance” of honeybees. “Without honeybees, we would not be here today,” he says. “One third of everything you eat must be pollinated by the honeybee.” After time spent in the Army, Fischer returned to civilian life in the early ’60s and took up beekeeping in earnest.

But more than just keeping hives, his role has become that of a supporter for apiary culture. “My job is to advocate and promote beekeeping,” he says. “I want bees P A P E R

highlighted dots covering northern Baltimore County, Fischer states proudly, “Look at the amount of beekeepers in that three and a half miles. You’ve got a beekeeper here every five or six blocks.”

“Look at Baltimore City,” he continues.

Sure enough, Fischer’s map is full of highlighted dots from Northern Parkway to the Inner Harbor. “I’ve got 32 beekeepers in Baltimore City,” he says. “Everywhere you go, I’ve got beekeepers covering the entire state.”

Standing amid the bees, Fischer becomes serious. “Without the honeybee, there would not be enough food on the planet Earth to support life as we know it,” he says. “You’re sitting in your yard and you hear the songbirds singing and the squirrels playing and the deer, well, without honeybees you have nothing. They’re pollinating the forests and the trees and the woods and the berries. Without bees?

In three or four years it’d be almost a dead world.”

Suddenly, the peace of the orchard is disrupted by the ring of Fischer’s cell phone.

It’s someone calling with a question about beekeeping. He’s back to work. ★ May 21, 2008

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★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★ NOTHING LIKE A KID TO MAKE you lose all your common sense and fall into the quagmire of obsession. You swear you won’t; you claim you don’t. You’re too hip for that. Well, if you really believe that, you just haven’t gotten a good look at yourself is all. I’ve seen myself in action too many times to play the denial game anymore. My most recent plunge into parental hysteria was when it came time to find a camp for my 5-year-old.

Ellie had been to a summer program last year, but that was an extension of her nursery school—basically a no-brainer for us.

This time, as a preschooler and bona fide member of the Baltimore City Public School System, there was more riding on the camp thing. After a year of sitting in a classroom at a desk listening to teachers and hours spent in a cafeteria during her after-school program, I had a grand vision of duffel bags, fields of flowers, sunshine, ghost stories around the campfire, ponies, arts and crafts. I owed this girl, whose front yard is a dog-shit-filled tree well that we foolishly insist is a flower bed, a rustic summercamp experience.

With my goal etched firmly in mind, we headed one chilly March day to a camp fair put on by Baltimore’s Child magazine. We became a family of conventioneers, burrowing through tables and tables of camps on display—summer folded in a brochure.

Representatives went all carny on us, hawking science camp for boys in Pennsylvania; tae kwon do camp in Glen Burnie; horseback riding at McDonogh School; videomaking at Park School; throwing pots at Baltimore Clayworks; Native American dance at Camp Puh’Toc in Monkton. The images compounded wildly as we jostled with parents to get face time with directors. How much does it cost? Can we do partial days?

How come you don’t send a bus into the city? Look at the old man coming at us with a tennis racket, giving away free lessons.

That night, with our required reading piled on the kitchen table, my wife and I pieced together all the summer possibilities. And it wasn’t just picking one camp out of the multitudes; after some phone calls to überparent friends, we discovered you could mix and match: a sports camp for two weeks, a little horseback riding the next, followed by art camp. What started out as joyful expectations of an ideal summer for our daughter turned into a major decision reverberating with lifelong ramifications. We had the power to design her summer the way parents will undoubtedly be checking off gene strands for their offspring in the not too distant future.

Should we immerse Ellie in nature? She loves bugs, but she freaks on butterflies. She loves to draw, so the girl’s got to have art.

But too much of a good thing could ruin her.

Sports? She likes running down the sidewalks, that’s for sure, but competition—the pressure and winning and losing—makes her crazy. And what if the camp with colorful murals is secretly boot camp? Get a

THERE’S

PAGE 44

CAMPED

OUT

TRYING TO ENGINEER YOUR CHILD’S PERFECT SUMMER

BY CHARLES COHEN ILLUSTRATION BY SMELL OF STEVE INC.

grip, man, it’s just camp. But that’s what this parent thing does to you. The choices, followed by the real and imagined results, hit you like gamma rays.

But camp is a pretty big deal. I mean, if I am lucky enough to get old, really old, and putz around with half a memory, there’s a good chance I’ll be daydreaming about those days of picking blackberries after a bonechilling swim under the gazebo guarded by faux Roman statues at my old camp. Those memories are like forgotten ice cream found in the freezer.

Camp is a state of mind, a specific place guaranteed to serve up memories both to cherish and endure. Good memories like joy-riding with derelict counselors, stealing corn from a farmer’s field and eating the cob raw in the car, or forsaking baseball and

playing a mammoth game of capture the flag and outrunning everyone—what I’d give to play one more game. Bad memories like getting bit on the ass by a German shepherd while trespassing on someone’s yard to play capture the flag, or getting caught by the fencing coach swashbuckling with a foil, being put in a corner during practice, getting videotaped, and then having footage shown to the class afterward.

The first half of our decision was relatively easy. We managed to get Ellie into a summer arts afternoon program at the Creative Alliance. Free is a good thing, and considering the girl’s hands are covered with markers by dinner time, arty afternoons in July are a good bet. Still, our goal was to get out of East Baltimore, which seems like the hottest place on earth when

I OWED THIS GIRL, WHOSE FRONT YARD IS A DOG-SHIT-FILLED TREE WELL, A RUSTIC SUMMER CAMP EXPERIENCE. C I T Y

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you’re bound by stubby rowhouses on each side, grilling under the sun. We made phone calls to camp directors, compared notes with friends and parents—strangers with kids, really, whom we happened upon during walks in the park. Everyone had their little camp odysseys going on.

We requested tours, straining to picture summer on chilly March mornings. We hit Beth Tfiloh out in Reisterstown, a camp that I attended at Ellie’s age. The biggest memory I had was tripping on my shoelaces while racing to the water fountain and cutting myself on a piece of glass. I proudly displayed the scar on my wrist to the camp director. Despite selling off a lot of its land, now an industrial park on a hill, Beth Tfiloh is still rustic, down to its un-air-conditioned bunkhouse. Ellie likes her comforts, so we moved on.

We found ourselves on the opposite end of the spectrum on the manicured campus of Notre Dame. Kids there do everything indoors, from swimming twice a day to romps in the gymnasium to playing board games in the cafeteria. Weather permitting, they eat outside on the rolling campus of pines and playing fields. “You know the climate around here during the summer is really oppressive,” our guide said. Images of confronting a pasty Ellie at the summer’s end kept us looking.

On the next weary stop, Ellie and I found ourselves out on the North Baltimore campus of Boys’ Latin. Man, they sure like lacrosse over there on Lake Avenue. I was mulling over the perplexing fact that they only swim twice a week—swimming is summer, summer is swimming—and Ellie took off down a trail. The trail led to a playground clamoring with kids. She climbed a wooden boat and made best friends with some strangers she found on the way. She doesn’t care about activities. She’s just thrilled that the boat has a trapdoor that leads to room of portholes, somewhere she could duck down and spy. All it took was a “Come on, Daddy,” and I was on the playground with her. Dinner would have to wait.

Shoot, there’s no way to program summer. A day later we signed up for a camp program offered at Friends School, and did so without a tour. It is structured and features daily swimming, but seems loose enough to allow fun to take over. The folks there have a love for the outdoors but also central air.

I had relaxed my grip on the parental control system after a few hours spent in Patterson Park after school. I came there aiming to kick a soccer ball around with my daughter, to build up her confidence and perhaps cut down on her propensity to fling herself down in frustration during soccer clinics. But those big plans were scuttled when she and her sister, Lilah, squatted down in a fallow Patterson Park field to build ant houses out of stems and dandelions. Try as I may, I will never again be able to recapture such grassstained improvisation (there weren’t even any ants around), so why sweat it. Summer is her specialty. All I need to do give her the space, and she’ll fill in the rest herself. ★ May 21, 2008

★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★

May 21, 2008

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★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★ ORIOLES WERE PLAYING THE NATIONALS AT WASHINGTON’S NEWLY MINTED baseball stadium on March 29, and among the crowd there could be heard a rousing “O” during “The Star-Spangled Banner”— as in, “Oh say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave . . . ” Baltimore fans have been chanting “O” during the national anthem for years at Camden Yards and Memorial Stadium. At Nationals Park, however, it sounded strange.

Perhaps it was a trivial moment before a meaningless exhibition game, but it also raised an interesting prospect: Why not make outings to Nationals Park a regular part of summer?

For years, Orioles owner Peter Angelos beat back efforts to return baseball to the nation’s capital. The assumption was he feared a loss of ticket revenue, as folks from Virginia, D.C., and its Maryland suburbs might stop trekking up to Charm City to watch baseball as they have since the Washington Senators left town in 1971.

Maybe there’s something to that, but now that the Nats have built a tasty new ballpark with all the amenities, Baltimoreans are not losing fellow O’s fans as much they are gaining a National League team and an opportunity to bond with their neighbors to the south.

Sure, everyone’s had it with the hype about Nationals Park. The cheerleading from the sportswriters at The Washington Post, ballyhooing the opening of the city’s $611 million publicly funded stadium, is getting stale. And there’s that bitter Sun opinion piece by George Weigel, back in March, who gave thanks for the Orioles’ ability to be Baltimore’s team again, without the baggage of having to serve as the MLB club for an entire region. “That rootedness can be reclaimed, now that the siren song of Washington marketing and regionalism has, necessarily, abated,” he wrote.

But really, Major League Baseball in the nation’s capital—how can you resist it?

Die-hard baseball fan Harold Hirsch has been supporting both teams since there were two teams to support. A tax lawyer who lives and works on Capitol Hill, Hirsch moved to the D.C. area in 1968. When Angelos built Camden Yards right near I-95 on the south side of town, making it easy for Washingtonians to get to the new ballpark, he was all over it.

Even in recent years, as the O’s have stunk up the joint, Hirsch has taken in 15 games a year at Camden Yards. He sees 35 Nationals’ games a year, and switches his outfits depending on which park he’s at. When he goes to Baltimore, he drives 45 minutes up the parkway, parks west of Russell Street, buys a bag of peanuts, and heads right in.

“Cheapest entertainment there is,” he says.

“You can’t beat it.”

Baltimoreans could find the journey equally smooth to either the Greenbelt or New Carrollton Metro stop, with subway service to within walking distance of Nationals Park. Or park for free at RFK Stadium and take a free shuttle. There’s even a cement plant just outside the park in case you get homesick for that industrial vibe.

The point is you now have a National

THE

PAGE 52

League park within striking distance to complement the American League experience at classy Camden Yards. If you never liked the designated hitter, now’s your chance to see “real” baseball on a regular basis.

Of the two ballpark experiences, Hirsch says: “Aesthetically, Camden Yards is the best ballpark there is, but at Nationals Park, the sightlines are unparalleled. If Camden Yards was down here and Nationals Park was up there, I’d do the exact same thing.”

BUT REALLY, MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL IN THE NATION’S CAPITAL— HOW CAN YOU RESIST IT?

LIKE HIRSCH, PLENTY OF BALTIMORE fans have already taken advantage of the joys of living in a two-team market. Joshua Devaparsad, a 9-year-old Baltimore native, recently made his first trip to the new park and he can’t stop talking about it, according to his mom. Medfield resident and City Paper calendar editor Wendy Ward, an appreciator of all things Baltimore,

C I T Y

P A P E R

May 21, 2008

★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★ has a key with a Nationals’ logo—the signature curly W—to go along with her red Nats baseball cap.

Obviously, there are those who will end up choosing one baseball park to frequent over another. For this very reason, the Orioles may have noticed ticket sales dip due to the lure of the understated, highly accessible and modern new park that the Nationals have built on the banks of the Anacostia River, at the foot of the Frederick Douglass Bridge in southeast D.C. Take Dave Woodward, a lifelong Orioles fan. Growing up in Cambridge, on the Eastern Shore, the 42-year-old always went to a couple games a year at Memorial Stadium. Even after he moved to D.C. in his 20s, he went to a dozen games a year at Camden Yards.

But all that changed with the Nationals coming to D.C. in 2005. “I started to drift,

though at first I still watched the Orioles on TV,” says Woodward, who is married with two kids. “Now I just read the box score. I guess you could say I’ve embraced D.C.’s home team.”

Woodward says there are others like him: baseball fans in and around D.C. who’ve stopped going to games in Baltimore. “I still like the orange and black,” he says. “I feel a little bad for abandoning them. But they’ll always have a place in my heart.”

Not that Baltimoreans should abandon their team, but it makes good karmic sense to get to know the other half of what could someday be a historic October showdown— a “Beltway Series,” or a “Parkway Series.”

Another way to look at it, if you harbor antiWashington sentiment, is you can venture south to watch the Nats struggle for respectability. O’s fans can relate to that. ★

TAKE ONE FOR

THE

OTHER

TEAM

AN O’S FAN SUGGESTS THE UNTHINKABLE—THAT YOU WATCH THE NATIONALS, TOO

BY JEFFREY ANDERSON PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANK KLEIN

DIVIDED LOYALTIES: HAROLD HIRSCH HAS SPACE IN HIS HEART FOR BOTH THE O’S AND NATS.

May 21, 2008

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THE EXHIBITION AT THE WALTERS ART MUSEUM IS MADE POSSIBLE BY THE EXTRAORDINARY GENEROSITY OF AN ANONYMOUS DONOR. This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Additional support is provided by Signal Hill, a Contributing Sponsor, and Mr. and Mrs. John R. Rockwell.

IMAPS

PAGE 56

FINDING OUR PLACE IN THE WORLD

Through June 8, 2008 A Once-in-a-Lifetime Chance to See the World’s Greatest Maps!

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★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★

Recreation/58 Gardens, etc./61 OC Alternatives/66 Downy Ocean, Hon/69 Festivals/71 Fairs/74 Sports/80 Fourth of July/83 Art and Stuff/86 Summer Concerts/88 History!/98 Kids/101 Zoos/102 Food/105 Berries/105 Markets/105 Drinks/105 Theater/107 Info/110

BALTIMORE’S JULY 4TH FIREWORKS CELEBRATION

SIZZLIN’

SUMMER IT’S NOT ALWAYS EASY BEING GREEN IN THE SUMMER, what with staying hydrated but not using plastic water bottles and wanting to chillax in nature but having to get in the damn car to get to the trees. Still, it’s on our mind. So, in the midst of a forest full of summertime attractions and happenings in this lovely Sizzlin’ Summer guide, we remind y’all—more than once—to leave your campsite cleaner than you found it. Better yet, leave everywhere you go from here to Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, May through August, from berry festivals to outdoor concerts, museums to parks and streams and the beach, better than you found it by recycling, carpooling, or just going easy on the plastic plates. Every event’s a kids’ event when you consider the health of our big blue marble. And hurry, your soysicle is melting.

Katherine Hill filled this big yellow bin of a Sizzlin’ spectacular with as many summertime attractions and happenings as could fit without overflowing onto the so-hot-it-could-fry-anegg curb. Christina Bumba and Stephanie Thornton were invaluable as collectors and rinser-outters, and Wendy Ward rallied the girl power, ’cause No Boys Allowed in this hug-a-tree house!

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★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★ ATTRACTIONS Beartown State Park, near Hillsboro, W. Va., (304) 653-4254, www.beartownstatepark.com, free. Natural rock formations plummet and soar among stretches of boardwalk provided for visitor. Minimal work has been done to keep your experience as natural as possible.

Blackwater Falls State Park, near Davis, W. Va., (304) 259.5216, www.blackwaterfalls.com.

Picturesque falls drop five stories and wind through an eight-mile gorge among hemlock and red spruce trees. These trees have graciously provided their needles, which in turn, turn the water dark brown with tannic acid.

Big Run State Park, 349 Headquarters Lane, Grantsville, (301) 895-5453, www.dnr.state. md.us/publiclands/western/bigrun.html.

You don’t want modern amenities when you camp. You eschew cabins with stoves, campsites that allow generators, and would never buy your supplies at Target. It’s time you took those Scout awards and put them to use on the “unimproved” rustic sites 16 miles from a real road.

Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge, 2591 Whitehall Neck Road, Smyrna, Del., (302) 6536872, www.bombayhook.gov, $2-$4. 16,000 acres of salt marsh, freshwater pools, and timbered swamps reserved for the birds. The land was reserved in the late ‘30s to connect Canada and the Gulf of Mexico.

Cabin John Regional Park 7400 Tuckerman Lane, Rockville, (301) 469-7835, (301) 743-7613, www.mcmncppc.org/parks/facilities/regional_parks/cabinjohn/index.shtm, $5. This 528-acre park in Montgomery County features places to play tennis and softball, an indoor ice skating rink, and a miniature replica of a 1863 steam locomotive. Rides are $1.50.

Calvert Cliffs State Park 9500 H. G. Truman Parkway, Lusby, (301) 743-7613, www.dnr.state. md.us/publiclands/southern/calvertcliffs.html, $5 per car. If your kids think fossils need to be dug by a khaki-clad team in Arizona, take a two-mile hike to the open beach and search for old detritus.

Casselman River Bridge State Park, New Germany State Park, 349 Headquarters Lane, Grantsville, (301) 895-5453, www.dnr.state. md.us/publiclands/western/casselman.html.

Citizens and bridge aficionados criticized the Casselman River Bridge on its structure upon its completion in the early 1800s, expecting that the bridge would soon crumble. Jokes on them. The 80-foot span, the world’s longest single-arch bridge during the National Road’s era, survived and now stands as a primo fly fishing spot.

Carroll Park Bike and Skate Facility, 800 Bayard St., (410) 245-0613, $5. Because if you don’t practice your extreme skillz from park’s open (dawn) to close (dusk) you’ll never be the next Bucky Lasek.

Catoctin State Park, 6602 Foxville Road, Thurmont, (301) 663-9388, $2-$3. In March the park opens for weekend-long maple syrup demonstrations, but come spring the park really comes alive with hiking, camping, swimming, and basking in the summer sun.

Cunningham Falls State Park, 14039 Catoctin Hollow Road, Thurmont, (301) 271-7574, www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/west-

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★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★ ern/cunninghamfalls.html. History buffs will like the Catoctin Iron Furnace, used by settlers to make coal and a big part of Frederick’s Civil War ghost lore. Eco buffs will rejoice that it’s not been used since the ‘50s. If your friends aren’t into that stuff, they can sun themselves on the rocks, go for a hike, or take a dip in the falls.

Dan’s Mountain State Park, 12500 Pleasant Valley Road, Flinstone, (301) 722-1480, www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/western/dansmountain.html. Named for one of Allegheny’s first settlers, this park has picnicking, an Olympic-sized pool, and hiking trails. The 16-mile mountain is for Daniel Cresap. Dude fell out of a tree and was dragged to safety by a Delaware American Indian.

Druid Hill Park, 2600 Madison Ave., (410) 396-0616. The city’s first planned park includes city overlooks, a pool, a zoo, and a body of water. And if you need it, it’s just-off 83.

This year we’re finally hitting the Frisbee golf course.

Fort Frederick State Park, 11100 Fort Frederick Road, Big Pool, (301) 842-2155, www. dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/western/ fortfrederick.html. Older than the Constitution (dating back to the French and Indian War, in fact), the park sports a 23-mile trail neighboring the Western Maryland Rail Line, reenactments, and tons of photo-ops.

Gambrill State Park, 14039 Catoctin Hollow Road, Thurmont, (301) 271-7574, www. dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/western/gambrill.html. Gambrill is hailed for its scenic overlooks and economic conservation, but it’s the perfect time of year for the park’s abundance of dogwood and laurel blossoms.

Garrett State Forest, 1431 Potomac Camp Road, Oakland, (301) 334-2038, www.dnr.state. md.us/publiclands/western/garrett.asp.

Hiking, fishing, yadda yadda, and a ton of trees: red, white, and scarlet oaks, black cherry, red maple, white pine, hemlock, and hickory. Plus cranberry bogs! Squish, pop, squish.

Gathland State Park, 21843 National Pike, Boonsboro, (301) 791-4767, www.dnr.state.md. us/publiclands/western/gathland.html.

Hike and picnic, but make sure you explore the park for the astounding architecture. Gathland was home to Civil War journalist George Alfred Townsend, who designed and constructed the unique—and kind of weird—structures on the grounds, including the castle-like entrance.

Green Ridge State Forest, 28700 Headquarters Drive, Flinstone, (301) 478-3124, www.dnr.state. md.us/publiclands/western/greenridge.asp.

Camping, fishing, backpacking, and hiking in the state’s second largest 46,000-acre hickory oak forest which touts the least amount of annual rainfall in the state.

Greenbrier State Park, 21843 National Pike, Boonsboro, (301) 791-4767, www.dnr.state.md. us/publiclands/western/greenbrier.html, $3-$4. Canoe, hike, camp, fish, paddle, boat, or dig your feet into pebble-sand around the lake. Closer than the beach, just crowded enough with a popsicle stand, and definitely closer than Ocean City.

Gunpowder State Park, 2813 Jerusalem Road, Kingsville, (410) 592-2897, www.dnr.state.md. us/publiclands/central/gunpowder.html .

May 21, 2008

Just in case you didn’t know, you can fish, camp, hike, and commune just off York Road and through Hereford. Cool, right?

Gwynns Falls Trail, Leakin Park, (410) 3960440, www.gwynnsfallstrail.org. The privately owned and volunteer/communitysupported trail that connects 30-plus neighborhoods has been extended to drop you in the harbor in front of the National Aquarium.

Herrington Manor State Park, 222 Herrington Lane, Oakland, (301) 334-9180, www.dnr.state. md.us/publiclands/western/herringtonmanor.html. It’s way out there in Garrett County, but the 3.5-hour drive for the three mountain biking and three hiking trails and cabins for camping make for a great getaway.

Marshy Point Nature Center, 7130 Marshy Point Road, (410) 887-2817, www.baltimorecountymd.gov/Agencies/recreation/countyparks/marshypoint/index.html. Exhibit halls, picnic tables, and wetland you can explore intimately by canoe. (Hiking trails are in development.)

New Germany State Park, 349 Headquarters Lane, Grantsville, (301) 895-5453, www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/western/newgermany.html, $2-$3. Fishing, camping, lake beaching, hiking, and boating in this currently renovating park and historic site of Swauger’s Mill Dam. Late sleepers beware: Log cabins are under renovation and the sand blasting begins at 7:30 A.M. Northwest Park Golf Driving Range, 2101 W. Rogers, (410) 664-2824, $5-$9. Practice your swing just steps away from I-83 so you can show up your friends for that early-morning tee-off.

Oregon Ridge Nature Center, 13555 Beaver Dam Road, Cockeysville, (410) 887-1815, www.oregonridge.org, free. Though a hub of iron and marble industry in 1850s, this shares-a-name-with-a-hippie-state park offers year-round hikes under the full moon, canoe trips, and explorations through local wilderness providing the same ease as a getaway commune to the Pacific Northwest.

Patapsco Valley Trail Maintenance Days, June 7 and July 12, Patapsco Valley State Park,

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May 21, 2008

★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★ RECREATION

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366-2110. Drink some wine while getting the answer to your composting issues: red worms in a bin do all the work while taking Brookside Gardens, 1800 Glenallan Ave., Wheaton, (301) 962-1400, less space. www.mc-mncppc.org/parks/brookside, free. A children’s garDaylily Show, 1:30 P.M. June 29 and sale 9 A.M. until sold out Aug. den, rose garden, azalea garden, fragrance garden, two conservatories, and a Japanese-style garden. Take Claritin first.

17, Brookside Gardens, 1800 Glenallan Ave., Wheaton, (301) Chanticleer, 786 Church Road, Wayne, Pa,, (610) 687-4163, www.chan962-1400, www.mc-mncppc.org/parks/brookside. Sponsored by the National Capital Daylily Club. ticleergarden.org, $5, ages 15 and under free. A pleasure garden Yew Shearing, July 8, Ladew filled with lovely plants and flowers along with Garden 3535 Jarrettsville Pike, benches, hillsides, and Monkton, (410) 557-9466, courtyards. Smoking and www.ladewgardens.org, $10. pets are not allowed, but Yeah, we thought that meant there are three picnic arsheep too, and our heads were eas so bring a basket lunch and eat outdoors. filled of visions of Scotland, where we’d retire with a herd to call Cylburn Arboretum, 4915 Greenspring Ave., (410) 367-2217, www.cylour own, but they meant gardening demos, which is totally cool, too. Maybe we can trim a shrub in the backyard into the shape burnassociation.org. This 207-acre park represents nearly every habitat on the planet: Japanese maples, a bog, Maryland oaks, of a sheep instead? coniferous trees, and wild grasses plus guided tours and severPotomac Lily Show, July 12-13, 12:30-5 P.M. Saturday, 9 A.M. Sunday, Brookside Gardens, 1800 al trails ensure you can Glenallan Ave., Wheaton, see ... well almost most of (301) 962-1400, www.mcit. This is the Met of namncppc.org/parks/brookture parks.

CHANTICLEER side. Sponsored by, you Dumbarton Oaks, 32nd St. guessed it, the Potomac Lily between S and R streets, Society.

Washington, (202) 339Pond Care, July 18, Ladew 6410, www.doaks.org, $5Garden 3535 Jarrettsville 6. Mildred and Robert Pike, Monkton, (410) 557Woods spent more than 9466, www.ladewgar20 years carefully plandens.org, $10. So you dug a ning the layout of each hole in the backyard for the shrub, flower, and tree in koi fish you thought you’d this estate (which includes get, but you tore up the yard a museum), to plan the instead. Ladew’s profesperfect country home. sionals can probably help Ladew Gardens, 3535 you fix that.

Jarrettsville Pike, Monkton, Climbing Rose Pruning, (410) 557-9466, www.

July 22, Ladew Garden 3535 ladewgardens.org, $2-$13.

Jarrettsville Pike, Monkton, You could knock us over (410) 557-9466, www.ladewwith a feather when we gardens.org, $10. Because found out Ladew Gardens if you don’t, the neighbors wasn’t designed—and iswill start to call you Miss n’t maintained—by anyHavisham. one with shears for hands.

Yew Shearing, July 29, This 22-acre garden realLadew Garden 3535 ly one-ups Edward with Jarrettsville Pike, Monkton, 15 themed “garden rooms” (410) 557-9466, www.ladewdepicting a variety of gardens.org, $10. Now that “scenes.” your shrubs are sheep, Longwood Gardens, Kennett maybe the rest of your plant Square, Pa., (610) 388-1000, life could use a classier upext. 100, www.longgrade, too. woodgardens.org, $32, ages Cactus Show, 9 P.M.-5 P.M. 15 and under $16. These Aug. 2-3, Brookside Gardens, 1,050 acres of outdoor and 1800 Glenallan Ave., indoor gardens, woodWheaton, (301) 962-1400, lands, and meadows feawww.mcture over 10,000 different mncppc.org/parks/brookvarieties of flora, but do side. Sponsored by the they deliver a bang? This National Capital Cactus and summer they do, with fireSucculent Society. work shows May 25, July Plant Repotting, Aug. 12, Ladew Garden 3535 Jarrettsville Pike, 4 and 19, and Aug. 31.

Monkton, (410) 557-9466, www.ladewgardens.org, $10. We found Tawes Garden, 580 Taylor Ave., Annapolis, (410) 260-8189, those cute little pots in Target’s dollar bins, but thumb-sized terwww.dnr.maryland.gov/publiclands/tawesgarden.html. Named ra cotta ceramics aren’t meant for sunflowers, are they? for the 1959-1967 First Lady of Maryland, this garden rests in what Turf Maintenance, Aug. 19, Ladew Garden 3535 Jarrettsville Pike, was once a cinder-block lot and is now a lush garden—rife Monkton, (410) 557-9466, www.ladewgardens.org, $10. After you with Black Eyed Susans—nestled among the Department of planted mothballs in the garden to keep the moles out, the kids, Natural Resources’ office building.

EVENTS dog, and lack or (or too much) rain ruined your hard work instead.

Wine and Worms, 6-7 P.M. June 6, Earth Alley, 3602 Elm St., (410) We understand, it’s hard upkeep.

ATTRACTIONS 8020 Baltimore National Pike, Ellicott City, (410) 461-500, www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/central/patapscovalley.html. We like the hiking and biking and exploring, but we’re really into the idea of an activity that involves lounging while holding a can of beer. Enter tubing in Orange Grove.

Patterson Park, 27 S. Patterson Park Ave., (410) 276-3676, www.pattersonpark.com. Walk your dog, go for a run, throw the ball, cool in the pool or shade of the pagoda, and when you’re done, stroll home because you didn’t need the highway to get here.

Potomac-Garrett State Forest, 1431 Potomac Camp Road, Oakland, (301) 334-2038, www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/western/potomacforest.asp. From the top of Backbone Mountain, the highest point in the state at 3,220 feet, you can see two other state parks, a real important creek, and probably your house.

Quiet Waters Park, 600 Quiet Waters Park Road, Annapolis, (410) 222-1777, www.aacounty.org/RecParks/Parks/quiet_waters_park/index.cfm, $5 per vehicle. Sometimes Fido needs a beach experience to settle into the season, too. He can romp here with other dogs, one of the few pet-friendly parks in the state.

Robert E. Lee Park, entrances off of Lake and Bellona avenues, (410) 396-0808. It’s too nice to hit an indoor gym. Take the daily run outside and soak some much needed Vitamin D instead.

Rocks State Park, 3318 Rocks Chrome Hill Road, Jarrettsville, (410) 557-7994, www.dnr.state. md.us/publiclands/central/rocks.html. Rocks State once provided stability and support to area farms, allowing settlers to prosper; before the Pilgrims arrived it was a spiritual and ceremonious area for the Susquehanna tribes to worship. The breathtaking views are the same and offer challenges for daring hikers.

Savage River State Forest, 127 Headquarters Lane Grantsville, (301) 895-5759, www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/western/savageriver.asp. It’s not dangerous or scary like a teen summer camp movie, we promise.

Seneca Creek State Park, 11950 Clopper Road, Gaithersburg, (301) 924-2127, www.dnr. state.md.us/publiclands/central/seneca.html.

Six trails, a farm tract, a hunting area, and a one-room 19th century schoolhouse for a well-rounded, just out-of-the-district park.

Soldiers Delight Park, 8020 Baltimore National Pike, Ellicott City, (410) 461-5005, www. dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/central/soldiers.html. Just over our line are 1,000plus acres of barren land, teeming with rare and endangered foliage, wildlife, insects, and flowers. It’s like a deciduous rainforest!

South Mountain State Park, 21843 National Pike, Boonsboro, (301) 791-4767, www. dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/western/southmountain.html. The battle for South Mountain helped keep the Confederates at bay. Other than how things ended we’re not sure how we feel about that since all those people died, but we’re stoked enough for the foot-path

May 21, 2008

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through the Appalachian Trail.

Swallow Falls State Park, 222 Herrington Lane, Oakland, (301) 387-6938, www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/western/swallowfalls.html. Neighboring Herrington Manor but offering different amenities, Swallow Falls has an astounding number of campsites, fishing, hiking and biking trails, and a rock-studded falls site that begs for wading and picnics.

Washington Monument State Park, 21843 National Pike, Boonsboro, (301) 791-4767, www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/western/washington.html. Okay, here’s the truth: our monument in Mount Vernon did come before the obelisk down in D.C., but this stately mound of rocks was indeed the very first monument to our wooden-toothed president.

Youghiogheny Scenic and Wild River, 898 State Park Road, Swanton, (301) 387-5563, www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/western/youghiogheny.html. Whitewater boating and hiking in waterways that connect to the Mississippi, Appalachians, and the Rockies. You’re a multi-tasker, aren’t you?

EVENTS Campfire Hikes, the Gwynns Falls Trail, check web site for summer dates, 4300 Windsor Mill Road, (410) 396-0440, www.gwynnsfallstrail.org, $5. Is there anything more American during the summer than roasting s’mores, telling stories ‘round the fire, and swatting mosquitoes?

Bike Jam, May 24, Patterson Park, 27 S. Patterson Park Ave., (410) 276-3676, www.bikejam.org. Day-long races and activities for the family with opportunities to win, win, win.

Guided Canoe Trip on Tuckahoe Creek, May 25, Tuckahoe State Park, 13070 Crouse Mill Road, Queen Anne, (410) 820-1668, www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/eastern/tuckahoe.html, $4-$6. Serene, guided, and—gasp—historical tour by way of water around wooded marsh and 60acre lake.

Twilight Canoe Escape, May 28-Aug. 20, Middle Branch Park, Hanover Street and Waterview Avenue, (410) 396-0440. Paddle to dusk. No guarantees the boat next to you isn’t filled with frogs singing, “Kiss the Girl.”

Saturday Afternoon Hikes, May 31-June 28, July 5-26, Aug. 2-30, Gwynns Falls Trail, Winans Meadow, 4500 Franklintown Road, (410) 396-0440, $1. Guided tour through the city’s trail system focused on nature education.

Hiking Hemlock Gorge, Oregon Ridge Nature Center, 13555 Beaver Dam Road, Cockeysville, (410) 887-1815, www.oregonridge.org. Hike and explore a small forest, home to an abundance of ancient hemlocks.

Salt Marsh Boat Ride, June 3, Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge, 2591 Whitehall Neck Road, Smyrna, Del., (302) 653-6872, www.bombayhook.gov. Hop on a small boat and feed shorebirds crab eggs.

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Free Fishing Days, June 7-14, July 4, Maryland, June 6-8, Virginia, June 7-8, Delaware, June 1-7 DC, www.freefishingday.com. Grab yer poles and a can o’ beer for a lazy afternoon in the nearest fresh water resource when states rescind the fees for licenses. Remember: Leave your area cleaner than you found it.

Patapsco Valley Trail Maintenance Days, June 7 and July 12, Patapsco Valley State Park, 8020 Baltimore National Pike, Ellicott City, (410) 461-5005, www.dnr.state. md.us/publiclands/central/patapscovalley.html. If you want to bike, hike, hunt, and find caterpillars on the trail, you gotta help it stay clean, too.

Gwynns Falls Bike Trek, June 7-Aug. 16, Carrie Murray Nature Center, 1901 Ridgetop Road, (410) 396-0440, $7. Now that the trail covers the I-70 Park and Ride to the Inner Harbor and Middle Branch, you’ll cover more land, go over and under railroad passes, and experience more flora and fauna.

Wednesday Lunch and Leisure Series, War Memorial Plaza, 100 N. Holiday St., (410) 396-7900, free. Food, fitness, live entertainment, and more in the heart of the city.

Reptiles of Baltimore County, June 14-15, Oregon Ridge Nature Center, 13555 Beaver Dam Road, Cockeysville, (410) 887-1815, www.oregonridge.org. Search for snakes, turtles, and other reptilian critters. Just take a deep breath before turning over that big log, okay?

Full Strawberry Moon Hike, June 20, Oregon Ridge Nature Center, 13555 Beaver Dam Road, Cockeysville, (410) 887-1815, www.oregonridge.org. This hike promises to explain why we’re so in love with those big, round, juicy berries.

Pea Patch Island Bird and History Field Trip, June 21, Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge, 2591 Whitehall Neck Road, Smyrna, Del., (302) 653-6872, www.bombayhook.gov.

Spend six hours touring the area in search of rare birds and learn their interwoven histories with Delaware’s estuaries.

White and Woody Fundraiser, June 21, Druid Hill Park, 2600 Madison Ave., (410) 3960616. The city’s “annual splash bash,” celebrates the city-wide opening day for Baltimore pools and includes free admission. Yeah, it’s usually $1.50 to get in but we are so there. We’ll use the $1.50 for an after-swim Popsicle.

Morning Kanoe Kayak Escape, June 28-Aug. 9, Middle Branch Park, Hanover Street and Waterview Avenue, (410) 396-0440, $5.

Paddle your way through the “other” harbor without the noise or hassle of morning rush hour. As the morning breeze blows past, you’re almost guaranteed to have a cooler day.

67th Annual Turtle Derby, Pulaski Monument, July 12, Eastern and Linwood Ave., (410) 3966136, free. Box turtles, tortoises, and “other” turtles slow-and-steady their way to your trophies and ribbons. If Slowsky doesn’t make it, you still get a ribbon. We’re all winners, here.

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photo by: maxglanville.com

Selected Items

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★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★

Beaches and Beach-like Activities that have sand and sun, require sunscreen, and include some kinda water, but none of the stress (all drive times are best case, ‘cause, you know, traffic, which also ups the stress, right?)

OC

ALTERNATIVES

Assateague Island National Seashore, 7206 National Seashore Lane, Berlin, (410) 641-1441, www.nps.gov/asis. Hailed as one of the best alternatives to OC, this beach has surf, sand, and wind—ensuring that it’s cooler than OC with highs in the 80s and lows in the 60s, camping, and the famous wild ponies.

Dewey Beach, Dewey Del., www.deweybeach.com. All the things you want—stuff to do, surf, sand—but quietly nestled between Ocean City and Rehoboth beaches.

(2.5 hours/115 miles) Elk Neck State Park, 4395 Turkey Point Road, North East, (410) 287-5333, www.dnr. state.md.us/publiclands/central/ elkneck.html. Hiking is good for your glutes, or something, and at the end of the sandcovered trail is a big beautiful lighthouse.

It’s not the same as the sunburn and the tacky souvenirs, but that’s why you’re here. (1 hour/60 miles) Hart-Miller Island State Park, 2813 Jerusalem Road, Kingsville, (410) 592-2897, www.dnr. state.md.us/publiclands/central/hartmiller.html. We know you’re tired of the tourists and souvenirs. That’s just the reason you need this place: 244 acres of all the good stuff—mooring, wading, sand—and none of the bad. (35 minutes/25 miles) North Point State Park, 2813 Jerusalem Road, Kingsville, (410) 592-2897, www.dnr.state.

md.us/publiclands/central/northpoint. html. That’s right, we got yer alternative right here, in Baltimore County. Get away without getting away for fishing, sand between yer toes, and shimmering waters.

Ahhhh. . . . (35 minutes/25 miles) Oregon Ridge Beach, Oregon Ridge Park, (410) 887-3780, www.baltimorecountymd. gov/Agencies/recreation/countparks/ oregonridgelodge/orbeach.html $4-$7.

Enthusiasts consider this Baltimore’s best kept secret: private swimming hole meets family beach with sand, shade, and cool spring-fed water. We’ve given you the secret to the almost-private beach, but we don’t expect you to keep it. (25 minutes/19 miles) Rehoboth Beach, Rehoboth Beach, Del. www.rehoboth.com. Consider it Ocean City but without the people, the noise, the neon lights, or the chaos. Shopping, restaurants, families, and entertainment within walking distance of the surf. (2.5 hours/113 miles) Rocky Point Beach, 2200 Rocky Point Road, (410) 887-3780, www.baltimorecountymd.gov/Agencies/recreation/countyparks/rockypoint/index.html. Ocean City doesn’t come with all the amenities and convenience it should. Since this beach is only 300 spacious feet, the bathhouse, ginormous pavilion, shade, tents, and play-

ASSATEAGUE ISLAND NATIONAL SEASHORE

PAGE 66

C I T Y

P A P E R

May 21, 2008

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Using too much

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Work together for Peace and Justice through Nonviolence

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★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★ OC ALTERNATIVES

(CONT.)

ground are within walking distance. (32 minutes/20 miles) Sandy Point State Park, 1100 E. College Parkway, Annapolis, (410) 974-2149, www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/ southern/sandypoint.html, Maryland residents $5, nonMaryland residents $6. By the time you get within sight of the bridge you’re so anxious to sun and sand yourself that forging ahead is impossible. If you pull over here you can camp and cook without the hassle of wild ponies. Spin in a few circles once you’re there and it’ll be hard to know what side of the bridge you’re actually on. (44 minutes/36 miles)

DOWNY OCEAN, HON ATTRACTIONS Art League of Ocean City, 502 94th St., (410) 524-9433, www.artleagueofoceancity.com. Non-profit art center hosts all kinds of family friendly events with local artists, totally free.

Jolly Roger Amusement Park, 30th Street and Coastal Highway, (410) 2894902, www.jollyrogerpark.com. When you want to cool off without withstanding the brutal torture that is being covered in sand, come here for the Splash Mountain Water Park, and then stick around when you’ve dried off for games, rides, mini golf, and speed carts in the company of pirates. Yar! Planet Maze and Laser Storm, 33rd Street and Coastal Highway, (410) 5244386, www.planetmaze.com. Now that you’ve fried your retinas and epidermis, it might be a good idea to clock in OCEAN GALLERY some time indoors. Black lights, an ar-

GET WET AND WADE

cade, and minigolf can’t hurt, right?

Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Wicomico Street and Boardwalk, (410) 289-5600, www.oceancityripleys.com. We’re a sucker for weird things, and we’re as equally a sucker for anything mildly nostalgic. Plus, the shark on the side of the building—the one that looks like it leapt out of the ocean and right through the Boardwalk’s storefronts—is a pretty big magnet too. Cheap entertainment won’t rot the brain anymore than the surf and sand already has.

Trimper’s Rides of Ocean City, Boardwalk and S. First Street, (410) 289-8617, www.beach-net.com/trimpers. Trimpers has been as mired in closing-real-estate controversy as Brooklyn’s Coney Island and this may be your last summer to ride the Ferris wheel, play the carnival games, and weather the roller coaster.

EVENTS

B Y K A T H E R I N E H I L L

Powerboat Races, 12:30 and 2 P.M. May 31-June 1, Sunset Marina and Ocean City Beach, Wicomico Street Pier to 36th Street, www.oparacing.com, free for spectators. Street racing? Passé. But racing through OC’s bright choppy waters? That’s the dangerous-yet-safe-excitement we’ve been lookin’ for.

Sandcastle Contest, 9:30 A.M.-3 P.M. June 14, Carousel Resort Hotel and Condominiums, 118th Street, (410) 703-1970, www.oceancity.com, free for spectators. Declare yourself reigning king or queen of the sand by building a winning palace that trumps all others. Proceeds benefit Play it Safe and the winner will be honored at Medieval Times through a choreographed combat exhibition by your new minions. Take this tip we learned from Martha: Bring as many varieties and sizes of scoops, funnels, and buckets you can lug to ensure victory.

OC Air Show, June 10-11, beaches and boardwalk, free from the beach and boardwalk, www.ocairshow.com. Civilian aerobatics, an Army jet aerobatic team, and the U.S. Army Golden Knights (the synchronized swimmers of parachuters) join interactive demonstrations and an open house at OC’s airport for two days where flying turns to an art form.

Art’s Alive, June 21-22, Northside Park, 127th Street, (800) 626-2326, free. Sometimes we want something a little classier than what the iconic Ocean Gallery on 2nd Street is selling. Over 100 artists offer the alternative to Kosmo Kramer painted on velour.

Chincoteague Pony Swim, slack tide between 7 A.M. and 1 P.M. July 30, Assateague Island, (757) 336-6161, www.assateagueisland.com, free. Watch Misty and 150 other ponies swim the Assateague Channel in this historic, wildly popular Maryland-centric annual event. If you want to take one home and braid ribbons in its mane, approximately 80 ponies will be auctioned the next day at the Fireman’s Carnival.

White Marlin Open, Aug. 4-8, Harbor Island Marina, 14th Street, (410) 289-9229, www.whitemarlin.com. You always thought one of those sharks or big fish at the end of the pier would look better in your living room. We agree, sorta, as long as you promise to host your cocktail parties in another room, and this might be your chance to cement yourself as a champion sportsman.

If you succeed in your endeavors, an award ceremony follows at the end of the week.

P H O T O G R A P H S

Baltimore boasts 20 public places to wade, 13 walk-to pools, and three indoor swimming pools. Lift your trousers at Ambrose Kennedy, Canton Playfield, C. C. Jackson, Central Rosemont, Clifton Park, Coldstream, Curtis Bay, Druid Hill Park, FarringBaybrook Park, John E. Howard, Joseph Lee, Lillian Jones, North Harford, O’Donnell Heights, Riverside Park, Roosevelt Park, Traci Atkins, Towanda, and Willow. Stroll to Ambrose Kennedy, C.C. Jackson, Central Rosemont, City Springs, Coldstream, Farring-Baybrook, Greater Model, Harford/Lanvale, Liberty, O’Donnell Heights, Towanda, Walter P. Carter, and William McAbee; make it a day at the park at Cherry Hill Splash Park, Clifton Park, Druid Hill Park, Patterson Park, Riverside Park, and Roosevelt Park. Or shield your skin from the sun at Callowhill Aquatics Center, Cherry Hill Aquatics Center, and Chick Webb Aquatics Center. Everything opens June 21; splash, wade, and walk-to pools close Aug. 17 and park pools close Sept. 1. Cooling off is $1 per visit, $10 season pass, or $25 for the family. You can find out more online at www.ci.baltimore.md.us/government/recnparks/aquatics.php Beaver Dam Swimming Club, 10820 Beaver Dam Road, Cockeysville, www.beaverydamswimmingclub.com, $8-$14. Remember ye olde swimming hole? Diving into the quarry? Or maybe it’s beach-blanket bingo? Whatever it is, it’s here: grills, picnic pavilions, diving, volleyball, two pools, fresh-water swimming, and a rope swing. Geronimoooooo! (22 minutes/17 miles) Cascade Lake, Snydersburg Road, Hampstead, (410) 374-9111, www.cascadelake.com. There’s some sand, but this is more extravagant-water-park-meets-six-acre-lake. Tube through the wilderness or splash through suburban-style wilderness with waterslides, fountains, and a water-based playground.

Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and American Art Museum, 8th and F streets, Washington, (202) 633-1000, americanart.si.edu/reynolds_center, free. Have a drink (the café is open 11:30 A.M.-6:30 P.M.) and splish-splash indoors. Really, go ahead, that’s what architecture firm Foster and Partners intended. After sploshing and swishing in our rain boots during the winter, we’re looking forward to re-living the dream for real this time by wiggling our toes. Have a good look at the steel and aluminum roof: composed of 864 glass panes, no one pane is alike, and the cloud-like roof doesn’t actually touch either building. (38 miles/57 minutes) Rollingcrest-Chillum Splash Pool, 6122 Sargent Road, Chillum, (301) 853-9115. This year-round indoor facility marries the playground—slides, ladders, clomp-tromp bridges—with the pool.

When it’s too hot in September, you can still cool off here. (43 minutes/33 miles) Silver Spring Fountain, Silver Plaza, 1200 East-West Highway, Silver Spring, www.silverspringdowntown.com, free. .22 miles from the Silver Spring Metro Station, and parking a nightmare, this is more like a tip for when you’re getting a bite from Cake Love after dinner at Lebanese Taverna. You’ve already made the arduous journey downtown, the A/C in your car is out, so dive in and push the kids out of the way, you’re allowed.

(39 miles/57 minutes)

RIPLEY’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT

May 21, 2008

C I T Y

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PAGE 69

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Jho ekh Z[b_Y_eki ?dZ_Wd if[Y_Wbj_[i

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Balticon 42, May 23-26, Hunt Valley Marriott, 245 Shawan Road, www.balticon.org, $59.

You’re the ultimate fanboy/fangirl, aren’t you? We know you are because you kicked our butt in D&D last week, have better Magic cards, and optioned that screenplay into the sci-fi community’s response to Eragon (thanks, btw). Stockpile your energy drinks then, because the events never stop, going all day, and all night to best pontificate all that relates to science . . . whether it’s fiction or not.

Sowebo Arts Festival, May 25, 100 S. Stricker St., (410) 244-8368, www.soweboarts.org, free. The committee is still calling for art and vendors at press time, but we’ve been promised three stages, so we’ll remain excited for this weekend nonetheless.

Thee Summer Swarm Festival, 5 P.M. (motorcycle ride at noon) May 31, the Ottobar, 2549 N. Howard St., www.theottobar.com, $12, $10 advance. The Glenmont Popes headline this festival donated to bikes, beer, and bees. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to honey-bee research for colony collapse disorder.

Charles Village Festival, May 31-June 1, Wyman Park Dell, 29th and Charles streets, (410) 662-7777 www.charlesvillage.net.

We’re a city of neighborhoods, ‘cause we’ve got a lot of ‘em, and each has its own personality. Celebrate Charles Village with artisans, food, and music.

Federal Hill Jazz and Blues Festival, June 8, South Charles Street, www.historicfederalhill.org, free. Hey DC, we have a great blues and jazz history, too.

HonFest, 11 A.M.-10 P.M. Saturday, noon-6 P.M. Sunday, June 14-15, 36th St., free, www.honfest.net. Enter your little darlings in the Miss Hon pageantry (stock up on Aqua Net now) and celebrate Baltimore kitsch. It’s all for charity, so go all out.

Baltimore Pride, June 21-22, Mount Vernon and Druid Hill Park, free, www.baltimorepride.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 74

May 21, 2008

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org. One of the oldest pride festivals in the country, ours spans the city with a parade and block party in Mount Vernon and the full-on festival in Druid Hill. The festival kicks off at night at Gertrudeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and spans the weekend with a date auction, fun run, and activities tied in to DC (June 14-15) and Phillyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (June 8) own festivities.

Artscape, noon-10 P.M. Friday and Saturday, noon-8 P.M. Sunday, July 18-20, Mount Royal, Cathedral, and Charles streets, (877) 2258466, www.artscape.org, free. Marylandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest free and public arts festival full of music and mayhem. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll never park in the city, though. May we suggest you park at the light rail and take the train in? No problem, you can thank us later.

Whartscape, July 18-20, www.whamcity.com.

Wham Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s version of Artscape. That means it promises to include neon day-glo, handclaps, and require dancing. Last year it moved alley to alley and was all over the music mags. If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re as hip as you say you are, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be there.

Otakon, Aug. 8-10, Baltimore Convention Center, 1 W. Pratt St., www.otakon.com, $55. Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s second-biggest, longest running otaku-themed convention returns for its 14th year of Cosplay, LARPing, panels, vendors, raves, hobnobbing, and film screenings.

FAIRS Memorial Day Fun Fair, May 24, Rocky Gap State Park, 12500 Pleasant Valley Road, Flinstone, (301) 722-1480, www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/western/rockygap.html. Campground fun and evening karaoke for Memorial Day weekend campers.

Maryland State Fair, 9 A.M.-10 P.M., Aug. 22-Sept. 1, Maryland State Fairgrounds, intersection of York and Timonium Roads, Timonium, www.marylandstatefair.com, $6-$3, children under 11 free. The Maryland State Fair has existed in some form since 1878, merging the joys of carnivalsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;games, ridesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;with all that is Marylandâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;outstanding agriculture, horse racing, and grandmaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s jarred peaches. If we could petition traffic circles within the gates, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d have all our bases covered.

FESTS OUTSIDE BALTIMORE Frederick Festival of the Arts, 10 A.M.-6 P.M. Friday,10 A.M.-7 P.M. Saturday, June 7-8, Carroll Creek, 320 E. Church St., Frederick, (301) 6949632, www.frederickarts.org, $5. Everything you love about craft fairs plus a juried art show, all on a pretty creek in a pretty town.

Bowiefest, 11 A.M.-6 P.M. June 7, Allen Pond Park, Bowie, (301) 262-6200, www.cityofbowie.org, free. Celebrate Bowie with arts, vendors, foods, events for the whole family, and live entertainment.

KarmaFest, 10 A.M.-7 P.M. June 7-8, Harford County 4-H Camp at the Rocks, 8 Cherry Hill Road, www.karmafest.com, $12 per day, $20 for the weekend purchased in advance. Get back into your mind/body by getting out in nature and communing with people who take the whole holistic yoga thing seriously.

Mountain Heritage Arts and Crafts Festival, 10 A.M.-6 P.M. Friday and Saturday, 10 A.M.5 P.M. Sunday, June 13-15, near Charles Town W. Va., (304) 725-2055, www.jeffersoncounty.com/festival, $6, children ages 6-17

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May 21, 2008

★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★

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$3. Everything a festival is supposed to be, from wacky art to homespun dresses, food, demos, and live entertainment.

Columbia Festival of the Arts, June 13-28, venues out and around Columbia including the Rouse Theatre and Centennial Park, www.columbiafestival.org, ticket prices vary with many events free. Two weeks of performance and artsy events meant to get your summer started with culture and family friendly fun. The three-day LakeFest Celebration opens the festival, and the East Village Opera Company ends it with a finale on stage.

Maritime Heritage Festival, June 14, Historic St. Mary’s City, www.st.maryscity.org, $10, seniors $8, students $6, children $3.50. Talk like a pirate, matey, but without the sailor’s mouth, and historical accuracy.

Kutztown Folk Festival, June 28-July 6, Kutztown Fairgrounds, Kutztown, Pa., (888) 674-6136, www.kutztownfestival.com, $12, seniors $11, kids 12 and under free. We are finally going to invest in that handmade quilt, picking out our favorite from the display of over 2,000, and enjoy the tasty Dutch treats this summer in Kutztown.

See you there.

Augustoberfest, Aug. 23-24, Hagerstown, (301) 739-8577, www.augustoberfest.org.

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★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★ FAIRS

(CONT.)

It’s like Oktoberfest, but in August, get it?

Maryland Renaissance Festival, Aug. 23Oct. 19, Crownsville Road, Annapolis, www.rennfest.com, $18, seniors $15, children $8. Have a knight duel for your heart, strum a lute, eat a leg of meat, or cast a spell.

Or, pretend you’re the next installment of Bill and Ted and pretend you’ve traveled back in time, dude.

(BOX IN FEST) ETHNIC FESTIVALS Polish Festival, May 30-June 1, Pulaski Monument, Patterson Park. Dancing, food, crafts, and music; we’d usually ask about sausage but our hearts are set on some authentic baked goods instead.

St. Nicholas Greek Folk Festival, June 5-8, St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, 520 South Ponca St., (410) 633-5020, www.greekfolkfestival.com, free. Fill up on patistisio, souvlaki, and spankaopita! When you’re done, show your appreciation by joining a tour of the grounds.

Saint Anthony Festival, June 7-8, Little Italy, $1. Turns out St. Anthony is more than the statue you bury in your backyard to sell your house; he’s a guy who fills the neighborhood with music, activities, a dunking tank, and a bocce lane.

Philippine-American Festival, 11 A.M.-6 P.M. June 8, Courthouse Plaza and Chesapeake Avenue, Towson, (443) 831-5036, free. Atiatihan parade, Santa Cruzan procession, vendors, Filipino cooking, and music and dancing, all sponsored by the Katipunan Filipino-American

AUGUSTOBERFEST

Association of Maryland, Foundation for Aid to the Philippines, and the Baltimore County Office of Fair Practices and Community Affairs.

Latino Fest, June 21-22, Pulaski Monument, Patterson Park, www.latinofest.org. The 28th annual Latino Fest promises vendors, food, entertainment, and music. It’s about food again: Parking in Fells Point for the perfect taco can be taxing, and now we’re hoping for a taco tour.

African-American Heritage Festival, 5-10 P.M. Friday, noon-10 P.M. Saturday, noon-8 P.M. Sunday, June 27-29, Camden Yards, 333 W. Camden St., (410) 235-4427, www.aahf.net.

Vendors, entertainers, and music are still to be announced, but this festival is so absolutely huge that it simply can’t be missed.

Caribbean Carnival Festival, July 11-13, Druid Hill Park, (410) 230-2969, www.bcacarnival.net. Steel drum bands, entertainment, yummy food, and a gosh-darn authentic traditional costumed parade.

Howard County Pow-Wow/American Indian Show and Festival, July 12-13, Howard County Fairgrounds, Friendship, (252) 257-5383, powwow@vance.net, $8, ages 3-12 $5. Learn more about American Indians through the arts at this annual festival, now in its 15th year.

You’ll enjoy dance, music, crafters and artists selling their wares, and plenty of yummy Native American cuisine.

International Festival, Aug. 2-3, Poly/Western High School parking lot, Falls Road and West Coldspring Lane, (410) 396-3141, free. We’re

MARITIME HERITAGE FESTIVAL

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kinda like the real melting pot sometimes, blending cultures from all over in our charming city, and this festival wants to include all of it, okay, hon?

FestAfrica 08, noon-8 P.M. Aug. 9-10, Patterson Park, corner of Eastern and Linwood avenues, www.festafricausa.com, $5, ages 10 and under free. In it’s sixth year, this African festival, previously known as Najia Fest, features traditional dance performances and lessons, art and craft workshops, storytelling, vendors, and African cuisine. 50-plus vendors, live entertainment, food, art, crafts, heritage, and history, all jam-packed into two teeny tiny days for one big continent.

Saint Gabriel Festival, Aug. 16-17, Little Italy, $1. Enjoy red wine, macaroni with gravy, music, dancing, and more in Baltimore’s lovely Little Italy neighborhood. In an unofficial way, St. Gabriel acts as a closing time, ending the summer-long activities in Little Italy that began with ol’ St. Anthony.

PowWow Native American Festival, Aug.2224, Patterson Park, Linwood and Eastern Ave., (410) 675-3535, www.baic.org. An intertribal gathering of Native Americans dance, display arts, crafts, and share their culture.

Ukrainian Festival, noon-10 P.M. Sept. 6-7, Patterson Park, Linwood and Eastern Ave., (410) 687-3465, www.ukranianfestival.net.

Four dance groups, egg demonstrations, musicians, crafts, activities for the kiddos, a beer garden for you, and all of the potato-filled pastries you can swallow.

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★ SIZZLIN’ SUMMER ★ ATTRACTIONS Aberdeen Ironbirds, Ripken Stadium, 873 Long Drive, Aberdeen, (410) 297-9292, www.ironbirdsbaseball.com. Cal’s minor league team enters its seventh season. Ripken Stadium shares space with the Little League’s Big Games and feeds into the Orioles. Hello, Field of Dreams.

Annapolis Yacht Club, 2 Compromise St., Annapolis, (410) 263-9279, www.annapolisyc.com. Cruise the waters and pretend you’re a Kennedy.

Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum, 216 Emory St., (410) 727-1539, baberuthmuseum.com, $6, seniors $4, children ages 3-12 $3, members free. George Herman “Babe” Ruth was born in this rowhouse in 1895; now it houses a tribute full of memories of Baltimore’s favorite swinging son.

Baltimore Orioles, Camden Yards, 333 W. Camden St., (410) 685-9800, www.mlb.orioles.com. Even with construction, we’ve got the best stadium. Get the $12 cheap seats, mingle with families and die-hards—even if they’re covered in Boston or Yankees gear, boo!—and cheer extra hard so we can beat those stupid Yankees.

Bonaire Charters, near Charlottesville, Va., (434) 981-5260, www.bonaire-charters.com, $210. More romantic than a private helicopter, and less motion than a boat, sail through the air with a professional license balloon pilot.

Special occasion? A bottle of champagne is included with the ticket price.

Bowie Baysox, Prince George’s Stadium, 4101 NE Crain Highway, Bowie, (301) 805-6000, www.baysox.com. The thud of the bat, the cheer of the stands. . . . You wear white socks with your sneakers at the gym, your red socks have got that funky foot stink, but your bay socks? They’re your lucky pair.

Budds Creek, 27963 Budds Creek Road, Mechanicsville, (301) 475-2000, www.buddscreek.com. We know it says “creek,” but this place is all dirt. Pro Moto-X, amateur events, and lessons Motorcycle Hall of Famers on miles and miles of dirt.

Charm City Roller Girls, Putty Hill Skateland, 8025 Belair Road, www.charmcityrollergirls.com. Yeah, we do that traditional sports stuff, but when it comes to gettin’ rough, it’s the ladies that throw down.

D.C. United, RFK Stadium, Independence Avenue and 22nd Street SE, Washington, (703) 478-6600, www.dcunited.com. So we lost Edu, and California got Beckham, but with enough beer and enough cheer, glory

PAGE 80

can be restored.

Delmarva Shorebirds, 6400 Hobbs Road, Salisbury, (410) 219-3112, www.theshorebirds.com. We know Shorebirds don’t ROAR or BITE, they just kind of CAW, but near the bay in the stadium everything changes.

Frederick Keys, Harry Grove Stadium, 21 Stadium Drive, Frederick, (301) 815-9940, www.frederickkeys.com. Back in the 80s, when the O’s had a chance of winnin’ it all, the Big Guys came from this little team.

Pimlico, 5201 Park Heights Ave., (410) 5429400, www.marylandracing.com. Kentucky, what? Lower the chances, the higher we bid, you know, for fun.

Sports Legends at Camden Yards, 301 W Camden St., (410) 727-1539, baberuthmuseum.com, $10, seniors $8, children ages 3-12 $6.50, members free. Home for all the state’s sports including the historic Baltimore Colts, Negro League teams, Preakness, and the Orioles’ Hall of Fame. Exhibits include Framing the Game: The Art of Our Sports and one about Johnny Unitas.

Washington Freedom, RFK Stadium, Independence Avenue and 22nd Street SE, Washington, (703) 478-6600, www.washingtonfreedom.com. All in all, it’s the women’s team we called our bookies about.

Washington Mystics, Verizon Center, 601 F St. NW, Washington, (202) 628-3200, www.washingtonmystics.com. Maybe if there’s more of us in the stands they’ll get paid as much as the Wizards.

Washington Nationals, Nationals Park, 1500 South Capitol St. SE, Washington, www.mlb.nationals.com. They took notes from Camden Yards when they decided to include Ben’s Chili Bowl for stadium hot dogs. It’s hard to see a game without Boog’s, but we think you can do it.

EVENTS All-StarTennis Academy, through August, Druid Hill Court, 2600 Madison Ave., (410) 396-7019, $65 per week, $375 for seven weeks.

Education and instruction for kids 5-8. After your kid’s Nike endorsement deal they can pay you back.

Baltimore Blast Soccer Camp, through August, Myers Soccer Pavilion, 4300 West Bay Ave., (410) 396-5782, $120. Indoor and outdoor instruction for kiddos ages 5-15 from the Blast superstars.

Open Play/Drop In Soccer, through August, William J. Myers Soccer Pavilion, 4300 West Bay Ave., (410) 396-5782, $5. Complete anarchy meets Futbooool, when all skill levels,

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adults and teens, drop in, drop out, assist a goal, and prepare to bring soccer gold to the 2020 Olympics.

Hidden River Kayak Tour, May 25-Oct. 4, Schuylkill River, Manayunk Pa., 4120 Main St., (215) 482-9565, www.manayunk.com, $50. Join the second season navigating the Schuykill River. They really know what we’re into there, because the group meets and the ends for dinner at a local brewery.

Triple Crown of Cycling, June 3-8, 2650 Audubon Road, Philadelphia, Pa., (610) 676-0390, www.procyclingtour.com. Twenty-five cycling teams bike 85 miles to a photo finish across Pennsylvania. Our knees ache just thinking about it.

Ray’s Summer Days, June 5-7, (305) 535-9937, www.rayssummerdays.com, process vary, as do the locations. Benefiting the Ray Lewis Foundation, special events for this sporty weekend include a gala and auction at Martin’s West Thursday night, American Airlines Golf

May 21, 2008