JUly 2009 Issue

Eat Your Lawn! • The Ultimate Chicken Barbecue • Local Authors Talk Books july 2009 issue no. 61

SIN CITY

Sex and Culture in Baltimore PLUS: Health

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july 2009 issue no. 61

the sex issue

contents

adults only 28 keynote: sex educator deborah roffman on how to raise sexually healthy young people interview by marc steiner

30 bump and grind

one night on baltimore’s infamous block brings together vintage burlesque and modern exotic dancers. who wins the stage? by greg hanscom

36 dirty work

the rise of online pornography inspires one former adult industry employee to wonder whether easy access to explicit materials is good, bad, or somewhere in between. by michael m. hughes

32

departments 9 editor’s note doing it

11 what you’re saying this wheel’s on fire

13 what you’re writing

heat: sweating it out, a breath of fresh air, and surviving the big chill

17 corkboard

this month: waterfront invasion, film in the outdoors, and a world-record skinny-dip

53

this month online at www.urbanitebaltimore.com: resources: tips for the urban vegetable gardener photos: more scenes from the burlesque revival

19 the goods

flying high. plus: eco-friendly pottery and a local roast

observed 23 baltimore kitchen confidential

what’s eating chef timothy dean? by jeffrey anderson

change 27 courting a druid hill b-ball anniversary by natalie sherman

39 scope: urbanite’s bi-annual health supplement

when traditional western medicine meets alternative healing practices, the sparks fly. by deborah rudacille

on the air: radio: urbanite on the marc steiner show, weaa 88.9 fm july 6: sex educator deborah roffman talks about teaching adolescents about sexual health. july 9: inside baltimore’s burlesque renaissance july 13: orrin webb, founder of the druid hill park players, on basketball and community july 14: scott carlson rips up his lawn.

49 space ground rules

sowing surprise with a front-yard vegetable garden by scott carlson

53 eat/drink wings of desire

the tasty truth about barbecued chicken by david dudley

57 reviewed: victoria gastro pub and trinacria italian deli 59 wine & spirits: where there’s smoke 61 the feed: this month in eating 63 art/culture the alienist

chimamanda adichie is a writer between worlds. by marianne k. amoss

plus: a slam poetry sendup, a family secret revealed, and this month’s cultural calendar on the cover:

illustration by emily c-d

to eye 74 eye urbanite’s creative director, alex castro, on katie miller w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 0 9

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URBANITE JUNE 09 INTEGRITY:Layout 1

6/2/09

12:07 PM

Page 1

Issue 61: July 2009 Publisher Tracy Ward Tracy@urbanitebaltimore.com Creative Director Alex Castro General Manager Jean Meconi Jean@urbanitebaltimore.com Editor-in-Chief David Dudley David@urbanitebaltimore.com Managing Editor Marianne K. Amoss Marianne@urbanitebaltimore.com Senior Editor Greg Hanscom Greg@urbanitebaltimore.com Literary Editor Susan McCallum-Smith literaryeditor@urbanitebaltimore.com

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Join our community of

Great Thinkers The Master of Liberal Arts (MLA) Program at Johns Hopkins University thrives on the curiosity, passion, and diversity of its students and faculty.

Students can explore mythology, art, literature, politics, sustainability, film, music, and much more.

Our program offers a flexible, parttime format with courses in the evenings and on Saturdays. Take advantage of rolling admissions and apply online anytime.

Proofreader Robin T. Reid Contributing Writers Michael Anft, Scott Carlson, Charles Cohen, Mat Edelson, Lionel Foster, Clinton Macsherry, Tracey Middlekauff, Richard O’Mara, Andrew Reiner, Martha Thomas, Sharon Tregaskis, Michael Yockel, Mary K. Zajac Editorial Interns Cara Selick, Natalie Sherman Design/Production Manager Lisa Van Horn Lisa@urbanitebaltimore.com Traffi c Production Coordinator Belle Gossett Belle@urbanitebaltimore.com Production Interns Christine Abbott, Valerie Paulsgrove Senior Account Executives Catherine Bowen Catherine@urbanitebaltimore.com Susan R . Levy Susan@urbanitebaltimore.com Lois Windsor Lois@urbanitebaltimore.com Account Executive Rachel Bloom Rachel@urbanitebaltimore.com Advertising Sales Assistant Erin Albright Erin@urbanitebaltimore.com Bookkeeping/Marketing Assistant Iris Goldstein Iris@urbanitebaltimore.com Advertising Intern Caroline Martinet Founder Laurel Harris Durenberger Advertising/Editorial/Business Offi ces P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD 21211 Phone: 410-243-2050; Fax: 410-243-2115 www.urbanitebaltimore.com

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Editorial inquiries: Send queries to editor@urbanitebaltimore.com (no phone calls, please). The magazine is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork. Urbanite does not necessarily support the opinions of its authors. To subscribe or obtain assistance with a current subscription, call 410-243-2050. Subscription price: $18 per year. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission by Urbanite is prohibited. Copyright 2009, Urbanite LLC. All rights reserved.

Urbanite (ISSN 1556-8105) is a free publication distributed widely in the Baltimore metropolitan area. To suggest a drop location for the magazine, please contact us at 410-243-2050. Postmaster: Send address changes to Urbanite Subscriptions, P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD 21211.

editor’s note

courtesy of Natalie Sherman

photo by Jessie Unterhalter

contributors Baltimore-based artist Emily C-D received her BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2005.

When she’s not drawing, biking, or exploring Baltimore, C-D teaches after-school art classes and leads neighborhood beautification projects. She created both the Adam and Eve image on the cover of this issue and the illustration for “Dirty Work” (p.

36), which ponders the sexualization of popular culture. For the latter, C-D sourced vintage pornography for arms, legs, and mouths—“very suggestive parts of the body that have interesting forms,” she says. She then collaged them into a pyramidal shape to look like “a tumble of bodies,” with a fertility goddess at the top and a faceless body at the bottom. “It’s the contrast between two different ideals of the feminine body.”

Urbanite editorial intern Natalie Sherman graduated from Harvard College in 2008.

Her work has previously appeared on the political blog Talking Points Memo, and she recently traveled to Argentina and Mexico to write for the travel guide Let’s Go; in June, she bid Baltimore adieu and moved to Boston to work as a research assistant for commentator and author David Gergen. For this issue, she wrote about the Druid Hill Park Players, a volunteer group that keeps a close eye on the basketball courts in Druid Hill Park (“Courting Change,” p. 27). “It’s a real community, very welcoming and inclusive,” says Sherman, who spent a Saturday afternoon with group founder Orrin Webb. “I also quickly learned that I knew nothing about basketball.”

Two of the most reliable

generators of Web traffic are sex and Sarah Palin, so let’s begin by invoking both of these not-unrelated topics. (And then pause to welcome our new online readers: Greetings from Baltimore, Maryland, USA!) Palin played a starring role in the dopey celebrity feud du jour in mid-June—something involving David Letterman, a pregnancy joke, and daughters Bristol and Willow. I won’t dwell on the particulars, but the key point is this: Talking, writing, or thinking about sex makes people crazy.

The Palin family saga might serve as a vivid illustration of this axiom. Based on her popcultural omnipresence, the Alaska governor must project a kind of mind-clouding cocktail of sexual signifiers. Add her unwed teenage daughter’s pregnancy, its coded role in the “values” debate, and Bristol Palin’s emergence in May as a “Teen Ambassador” for an anti-teenagepregnancy foundation, and you have a combination that manages to stroke several American sexual anxieties at once. It’s all in there: moral panic and guilty pleasure, sin and redemption, desire and repression. We know we should stop looking at them, but we can’t.

So-called abstinence-only sex education programs, the kind that Bristol’s mother and the previous presidential administration favored, have cost the federal government more than $1 billion since 1996, according to Dr. Freya Sonenstein, director of the Center for Adolescent Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a longtime opponent of programs that don’t include information about contraception. “It’s a huge waste of money,” she says. The Obama administration’s emphasis, she says, is on funding “sciencebased programs,” meaning curricula that have been proven to work. Radical, eh?

It’s easy to mock the very concept of teen abstinence, in part because the phrase itself sounds so implausibly juiceless. Teenagers are many things, but abstainers they are not. Lost, perhaps, in the sex-ed wars—for an inside look, read Park School sex educator Deborah Roffman’s interview with Marc Steiner (“Adults Only,” p. 28)—is the idea that, whatever you call it, delaying sex is pretty much universally considered a good thing, whether you’re a sex-ed advocate or a card-carrying “values voter.” “I think we need a new word that captures the idea of having kids delay the initiation of sex,” Sonenstein says. Such waiting is a reasonable expectation, too, as long as educators are given the tools they need to inform adolescents about their options. Which, yes, means telling them about condoms and other scary stuff.

This isn’t an academic debate. In the 1990s, Baltimore’s sky-high syphilis rate made national headlines; our teen pregnancy numbers remain impressive enough to earn the old “City That Breeds” tag. The city has disproportionately high rates of several kinds of sexually transmitted diseases, including the nation’s second-highest rate of new HIV infections. Perhaps a little more candor wouldn’t hurt.

In that open-minded spirit, take a deep breath and dive into a distinctly PG-13 issue of Urbanite. Baltimore’s sexual culture is a mixed bag. The nightclubs of Baltimore’s Block once had a reputation for raunch that drew sin-hungry visitors from points north and south, and, as senior editor Greg Hanscom discovers in his eye-opening look at the city’s current crop of striptease revivalists (“Bump and Grind,” p. 30), Charm City remains fertile ground for the intersection of art and titillation. Michael M. Hughes, who once labored in the nether regions of Baltimore’s adult entertainment district, wonders whether the explosive rise of online pornography is making us more or less sexually healthy (“Dirty Work,” p. 36).

Whatever the answer is, we should make peace with it, because the naughty pictures aren’t going away: One cybersex expert estimates that 60 percent of the traffic carried on the Web contains adult materials. We are, as Deborah Roffman says, living in a sexualized culture, one that is mixing unpredictably with the puritanism still embedded in the national character. In other words, prepare for more craziness ahead.

—David Dudley

What happens next?

Coming Next Month: The Stories Issue, our third annual salute to Baltimore’s emerging writers www.urbanitebaltimore.com w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 0 9

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what you’re saying

photo by Chris Rebbert

component of the school system.

Based on the new policy implemented

by BCPSS CEO Andres Alonso, students who are caught committing arson or detonating explosive devices will be expelled from city schools and, in some cases, never allowed to return. Traditionally, students who are expelled could attend an alternative school or be home-schooled with the assistance of BCPSS. BCPSS is eliminating both options.

These kids are at-risk children and need help. In a perfect world, students expelled or suspended for violent crimes would be identified so that they can be referred to the appropriate agency. Until we take a holistic approach to child development, there will be tragic stories similar to this one. City agencies have to work together to create positive outcomes for Baltimore City children.

—Adam Milam, Owings Mills Get a Clue The Wrong Track Regrettably, I can’t buy into the upbeat piece about a proposed Charles Street Trolley (“A Streetcar Named Conspire,” June).

Seems to me there are serious livability issues happening in the city, and it might be nice to get them resolved before urging the expense of millions on fantasy concepts.

The “Jolly Trolley” ideas are much like Saturday night disputes on the R.M.S. Titanic about the appropriate dishes and silver for the next day’s tea party!

It is unfortunate your writer did not point out one problem with all of these mass transit proposals: Once in place, none are expected to ever return net surpluses from riders served. Much like the demanding plant in Little Shop Of Horrors, the mass-transit beasts require perpetual feeding from taxpayers everywhere.

Transit should be expected to pay its own way at the fare boxes. It can be done.

—Vern Tyler, Bel Air Flat Tirade I’m extremely disappointed in the June issue of Urbanite. Pitting people on bicycles against people in motorized vehicles in a highly combative and childish tit-for-tat is irresponsible in the extreme (“Road Rage”).

Road rage is very real, and pedestrians and cyclists pay with their lives, in the right or wrong, when it occurs.

Sharing the roadways responsibly has

everything to do with civil rights. As I see it, “civil” means being mutually respectful and “rights” are those inalienable freedoms that cannot be abridged.

Just as everyone has a right to sit anywhere on a bus, cyclists have every right (and responsibility) to the road and to an entire lane if they deem it necessary for their own safety.

Safety trumps convenience in every case.

Urbanite should be ashamed that they pandered to popular angry sentiments at the expense of our minority right-of-way users. I expect to see a much more intelligent followup in the future.

—M. Gregory Cantori is president of bike ad vocacy group One Less Car. From the eds.: We received several letters and comments about “Road Rage,” our June exer cise in inter-vehicular dialogue. To read more, go to www.urbanitebaltimore.com.

Thanks to Urbanite for the fine article about the Six Napoleons of Baltimore (May). It struck the right note and gave an accurate picture of our efforts to keep the memory of Sherlock Holmes green. One statement about our annual Saturday with Sherlock Holmes event at the Enoch Pratt Central Library might be corrected: The 2009 event will not be “the 7th such gathering,” but the 30th. The program, titled “A Gallery of Rogues,” will take place on Saturday, November 8, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Like all events at the Pratt Library it is free, and the public is cordially invited.

—William Hyder is a member of the Six Napoleons.

From the eds.: Special apologies to contribut ing writer Michael Yockel. The above error was added during editing.

Correction

Dying Young in Baltimore This tragic story is all too common in Baltimore City (“The Departed,” May). Last year, there were twenty-seven homicide victims under 18. While I understand that the Baltimore City public school system is doing all they can with the resources they are allotted, more has to be done. Delvon Butts was expelled from school for good reason, but he should have been followed by the school system or a partnering agency. We cannot give children the opportunity to go down the wrong road; comprehensive support services need to be a core

We miscredited two photos in the June story “Ranch Dressing.” The photos on pages 44 and 45 were taken by Paul Burk. Urbanite regrets the error.

We want to hear what you’re saying. E-mail us at mail@urbanitebaltimore.com or send your letter to Mail, Urbanite, P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD 21211. Please include your name, address, and daytime phone number.

Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 0 9

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what you’re writing

H e at

—Amy Malloy lives in the city with her hus band and dog. In her new used car, she drives all over Baltimore and the surrounding coun ties, running mentoring programs at local schools.

illustration by Michael Morgenstern

O n t he

mid-July night before I was to make the trek from Western New York to Baltimore, I sat in my parents’ driveway in disbelief. My car windows would not roll down.

I tried restarting the car, driving it around the block, and punching the dashboard, but there was still no response when I pressed my finger on the small black buttons. Unfortunately, I had no choice but to make the drive.

I was unemployed and had just spent all of my money on my car and new apartment in Baltimore.

What was usually a six-and-a-half-hour drive turned into a hellish nine-hour experience. I could only go about forty-five minutes before needing to stop for air (my air conditioning was also broken). I’d pull up to a rest stop or gas station, opening my door before even coming to a full stop. Face as red as a beet, I’d slowly turn off the ignition, set my feet on the ground, and take five minutes to give thanks to God, Allah, Buddha, whoever, for releasing me from oppression. Once inside, I’d wash the thin layer of salt off my body, fill up my spray bottle with water, and take a deep breath in preparation for the next leg of the trip.

Truthfully, I don’t recall much about that drive except the emotion guiding my journey: jealousy, aimed at every driver and passenger along the way who had access to cool air.

I’d look over at a happy family in their SUV, laughing and talking, hair blowing from the vents that were pointed at their curly heads of hair, and I’d shoot daggers with my eyes.

I’d see a dog with his head out the window, happily gulping up the good stuff, and I’d give him the finger. A passenger sleeping peacefully while the driver soared along the open road would send me over the edge.

Needless to say, I did finally make it to Baltimore. And after just a few days in the city, I realized I was lucky that my car windows hadn’t been stuck rolled down.

We for m

a single line leading to the sweat lodge, wearing gym shorts and bathing suits. We stoop through the 3-foot opening into the igloo-shaped hut. It is 10 feet in diameter, a skeleton of crisscrossing branches totally encased in layers of thick blankets.

Inside, we sit on straw mats circled around a shallow earth pit. Rock-bearers carry stones in on pitchforks and load them into the center. After hours of roasting in the campfire, they glow bright red. As the pile builds, the temperature rises. I shift on my mat and try psyching myself up with I-cantake-it machismo. I feel the sweat forming.

Finally, the leader of the lodge yells, “Enough!” and pulls a blanket over the entry.

All daylight is gone. Now the rocks, the heat, myself, and nineteen other people are shut into this small space, lit only by the radiating stones.

It’s not suffocating, but it feels close. The sweat comes easily now, as do the grunts and cries of the others. One person gives up and crawls back out. Some press their heads to the ground, getting as low as possible. I shut my eyes tight and tense up, determined to endure the ordeal.

We are invited to feel the oppressive heat as only a sensation and not react to our desire to escape the discomfort. We’re encouraged not to simply ignore the heat, but rather to try to observe it with equanimity; go through, not around. Every breath stings and evapo-

rates the moisture in my throat, but I try to unclench my muscles and watch the movement of my inhalations. And for one remarkable moment, I feel the heat like just another limb, another part of my body—not in pain, just there. Then thoughts of escape return.

In closing, a tortoise shell is passed around like a collection plate; each person clasps it and speaks his or her mind while the leader scatters sage on the rocks, releasing a bittersweet aroma. I thank everyone for being here. Then we are instructed to shout, “All of my relations!” (What does that mean? I wonder.)

We hunch-walk, single-file, back through the opening into the blue-sky sunlight. A wash of cool air on my body is replaced by shock when a former rock-bearer sprays me with frigid water from a hose.

On the way home, I imagine going back for another round. How cool would it be to develop calm focus in that torrid dome?

—Mike Shattuck is a Baltimore City native.

W ith s now on the ground of our suburban Pittsburgh ’hood, my friends and I set off early to the Seven Springs ski resort for a Sunday on the slopes, dreaming of meeting girls. It was January 1978; I was 17, a senior in high school.

It wasn’t particularly cold or windy when we arrived. At Seven Springs, a weekend with w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 0 9

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urbanite july 09

Voted Baltimore’s Best Mediator

good snow meant a two-minute run followed by ten to twenty minutes waiting in a lift line.

But around three o’clock, wind began to blow and flurries and temperatures fell—drastically. From one run to another, the queue had dissipated to twenty people milling around.

Great, a one-minute lift line! I raced through a dozen or more runs; not waiting kept me from cooling too much.

Tired and hungry, we talked about what great cheap food we’d eat when we got home.

But the mercury had sunk to seventeen below, with some ridiculous wind chill factor. And my car, a ’72 Mercury Capri, had a broken heater. The trunk lock froze, so we crammed skis, poles, and boots in among the five of us.

Of course, the wiper fluid was solid ice.

As we piled into the car, thick frost formed on the inside of the windshield. No heat meant no defroster, so we opened all the windows. My copilot used a plastic cassette case as an ice scraper.

Usually confident of my driving, especially in snow, I began to dread our return trip as we entered the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The heavily salted roads were both a blessing and a curse. The traction kept the Capri on the road. But only road spray from trucks would clear the glazed windshield.

We all had become silent—but at least the stereo still worked. With a different type of adrenaline flowing, the thought of food was secondary. I only wanted to get my friends to their warm homes safely, so that we could dream of meeting girls another day. ■ —Robert Moore is a freelance computer geek with carpentry and soccer habits.

“What You’re Writing” is the place for creative nonfiction from our readers. Each month we pick a topic. Use the topic as a springboard into your own life and send us a true story inspired by that month’s theme.

Only previously unpublished, nonfiction submissions that include contact information can be considered. We reserve the right to edit heavily for space and clarity, but we will give you the opportunity to review the edits. You may submit under “name withheld” to keep your essay anonymous, but you do need to let us know how to contact you. If you’ve already changed the names of the people involved, please let us know.

Only one submission per topic, please.

Send your essay to Urbanite, P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD 21211, or e-mail it to WhatYoureWriting@urbanitebaltimore.com.

Submissions should be shorter than four hundred words. Because of the number of essays we receive, we cannot respond individually to each writer. Please do not send originals; submissions cannot be returned.

Topic

Deadline

Publication

Hard Lesson Shelter All Grown Up

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corkboard

Waterfront Invasion

Through Sept. 7

The summer-long Waterfront Invasion features family-friendly events centered on two new major exhibits: The Maryland Science Center’s Chinasaurs: Dinosaur Dynasty, which includes more than twenty fossilized dinosaur skeletons, many of which have never been displayed outside China; and Jellies Invasion: Oceans Out of Balance at the National Aquarium, featuring nine species of those astonishingly delicate but dangerous creatures. Go to www.waterfrontinvasion.com for information on other events.

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Outdoor Film Festivals

July and August

Distract yourself on muggy nights at outdoor film festivals in neighborhoods around the city. Two highlights: Little Italy’s version celebrates ten years with Italian-flavored films such as Roman Holiday. And the American Visionary Art Museum’s Flicks from the Hill features movies that complement the museum’s current exhibit, The Marriage of Art, Science, and Philosophy, such as Raiders of the Lost Ark. (There’s also free museum admission before the show starts.) Arrive early or expect to see the action through a telephone pole.

Free Little Italy Open-Air Film Festival: www.littleitalymd.com/openair.htm Flicks from the Hill: www.avam.org

Showcase of Nations

July 3–5, 10–12

Baltimore’s series of summer ethnic festivals continues this month. The three-day African American Heritage Festival at M&T Bank Stadium offers live music, educational exhibits, and family activities. Then, the weekend after, don your best island wear for the Caribbean Carnival in Druid Hill Park, which features a parade, reggae and steel drum bands, and Caribbean cuisine. Go to www.bop.org for more information on the rest of the summer’s festivals.

www.bop.org

Skinny-Dip Across North America

July 11, 3 p.m.

The American Association for Nude Recreation is inviting naturists across the country to help set a Guinness World Record for simultaneous skinnydipping. Help the cause by joining the Maryland Area Naturist Association’s local effort. MARNA has reserved a pool at an undisclosed location in Northwest Baltimore County for the occasion. Shy attendees can jump in the pool wearing their swimsuits, remove them underwater and hold them aloft, then re-dress before exiting the water. Contact Walter Green of MARNA for registration and location.

Admission fee for accompanying party (1 p.m.–5 p.m.); discount for skinny-dippers 410-949-5391 www.marylandnudism.com

Artscape

July 17–19

Heralded as “America’s largest free arts festival,” the three-day Artscape showcases local talent in crafting, sculpture, music, film, fashion, and more. This year’s headliners include Dionne Warwick and Robert Randolph & the Family Band. There’s also the annual Billie Holiday and Cab Calloway singing competitions, heaps of food and drink, family activities, and probably plenty of heat and humidity.

www.artscape.org

World Football Challenge

July 24, 8 p.m.

Attention, riot police: The Ravens yield the field to the other kind of football on July 24, when international soccer powerhouses Chelsea Football Club and Associazione Calcio Milan compete as part of the inaugural World Football Challenge. Their Baltimore showdown is part of a six-city tour of exhibition games, pitting four international teams against each other. Organizers expect a sell-out, so get your tickets early.

M&T Bank Stadium 1101 Russell St. www.worldfootballchallenge.com

Photo credits from top to bottom: no credit; photo by Nick Prevas; courtesy of AAHF; © Photoeuphoria | Dreamstime.com; courtesy of Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts; © Maja Schon | Dreamstime.com

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Metal God Randy Slaysman grew up in Rodgers Forge, the Baltimore County neighborhood named after 19th-century ironworker George Rodgers, but that’s not why he became a blacksmith. “I guess I always had it in me to work with my hands,” Slaysman says. He completed an informal eight-year apprenticeship under Peter Wilkinson, a friend of his grandfather, of southeast Baltimore’s Unique Metalworks, and branched out on his own in 1996 under the name Slaysman Forge (www.slaysmanforge.com). Now, he designs furniture, gates, rails, and interior decorations out of metal, wood, stone, and glass for residences and commercial buildings. He relies mostly on a gas forge and mechanical hammer—and, just like blacksmiths of yore, bangs out some pieces by hand on an anvil.

—Natalie Sherman

Scoot!

“My scooters aren’t measured in horsepower or cc’s. They’re measured in watts,” says Ray Carrier, president of Green Rider, which opened in Fells Point in mid-March (723 S. Broadway; 410-5225857; www.greenriderusa.com). This may leave motorheads a little puzzled, but Carrier hopes it will make perfect sense to the eco-minded set. His 500-watt Motorino electric scooters can cruise 30 miles on a charge, with no direct emissions and almost no sound. To refuel, just plug them into any electrical outlet. (He suggests traveling with an extension cord.) Prices range from $2,000 to $2,300 for models that range from futuristic to retro. The scooters can hit 30 miles per hour, but there’s no gas required— or registration or insurance, for that matter. What’s more, you can park on the sidewalk.

—Greg Hanscom

By the Book Fans of the recently closed Pigtown bookstore and music venue Baltimore Chop, dry your eyes: Owner Andy Rubin has set up shop again, this time in Station North. With Cyclops (30 W. North Ave.; 410-752-4487; www.myspace.com/cyclopsbaltimore), Rubin, an artist and the vice president of Baltimore/Nashville label 31 Tigers Records, sticks with the formula of coffee, live music and readings, and books—with a new emphasis on art books. Before 6 p.m., when the parking meters stop, Rubin will personally pay your fare so you can browse for free.

—Marianne K. Amoss

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urbanite july 09

Sky-High Hair Lilly MaRitza Salon and Gallery in Ellicott City (8001 Hillsborough Rd.; 443-574-8986; www.lillymaritza.com) does triple duty as a gallery, a unisex hair salon, and a showroom for MotoArt, a California-based company that turns old airplane parts into furniture. Lilly Maritza, the salon’s co-owner and namesake, and other stylists store brushes in modified galley carts. Tables are made from Korean War-era bombs. Maritza’s husband and business partner, Mike Rudden, who designed the shop, manages MotoArt’s East Coast division from a red navigator’s chair. “From the moment you step in here,” he says, “you’re on sensory overload.”

—N.S.

True Brew Bruce Heinlein didn’t touch a drop of coffee until the age of 17, when he got a job repairing coffee equipment. Twenty years later, he’s a “one-to-two-cups-a-day” guy and a coowner of the Crofton-based Chesapeake Bay Roasting Company. Since 2002, CBRC has roasted all its beans in a cooker that minimizes emissions in part by using the skins of the beans as fuel. CBRC donates 10 percent of the net proceeds from its Chesapeake Bay-themed brands—such as “Oyster Reef ” and “Capital City”—to such organizations as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “Coffee’s a social product, and the most socially discussed thing about the bay is its health,” Heinlein says. “We thought it would make a lot of sense to connect the two.” CBRC’s roasts are available at such local spots as Latte Da in Fells Point and Harbor East and Read Street Books, and at www.cbayroasting.com.

Pot Deal Baltimore Clayworks, a nonprofit ceramic arts center in Mount Washington, has taken its wares online. In March, it introduced eCeramica.org, a Web-based storefront selling ceramic gifts handmade by Baltimore artists. The offerings include mugs, bowls, and pitchers, as well as more whimsical pieces such as salt and pepper shakers shaped like babies’ heads. The gifts are shipped in recyclable packaging and, for an extra fee, can include personalized porcelain tags.

Proceeds benefit both community arts programs and the artists themselves. “[Your] purchases make a social impact by providing artists with income and help sustain educational programs,” says eCeramica Director Betsy Laucks.

—Cara Selick

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 0 9

Photo credits from top to bottom: courtesy of Stephen Bobb Photography; photo by Bonnie J. Schupp; photo by Tasha Treadwell

—N.S.

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37 Transformer A Druid Hill basketball oasis endures.

Something’s cooking: Chef Timothy Dean is preparing to open a new upscale eatery in Prince George’s County this fall. His namesake restaurant in Fells Point has been the focus of community controversy since last summer, when he turned it into a nightclub and lounge.

community

Kitchen Confidential Timothy Dean is beaming as he steps off the street into the bare 7,500-square-foot space that will soon house his latest culinary vision: Timothy Dean Bistro and Jazz Club, due to open this fall across from the Gaylord Hotel and Resort in National Harbor, the new $4 billion waterfront complex on the banks of the Potomac River in Prince George’s County.

“This is it,” says the avuncular chef. Since 2004, Dean has run an eponymous restaurant in Fells Point, but this is his home turf: He’s a P.G. County native and graduate of Howard University in Washington, D.C. Today he’s meeting a business partner to go over permits for his new venture. Look for a menu full of $25 entrees, two bars, an open kitchen, and a bandstand for live jazz. “A high-end bistro, but fun,” Dean says. His ten-year lease comes with a ten-year option. “It’s great to have your name on the door, but it’s all about employing people, putting out a great product, and making a profit.”

Since his days as a protégé of celebrity chef Jean-Louis Palladin, Dean has hopped from France to California to New York and

Atlanta, working with A-list chefs Patrick Clark, Alain Ducasse, and Roberto Donna.

He’s a relative rarity in the culinary world—an African American chef/owner of a fine-dining establishment. But his last ten years as a restaurateur in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore have been troubled. Recently, Dean has been feuding with his Fells Point neighbors over noise complaints at his T.D. Lounge, which opened in 2004 as the more upscale Timothy Dean Bistro. Now, with his sights set on opening his National Harbor restaurant, Dean appears ready to put Baltimore in the rearview mirror. “Baltimore runs itself,” he says of T.D. Lounge. “I’ll be down here mostly.”

Dean’s Baltimore debut was full of promise and high praise. Baltimore Sun critic Elizabeth Large lauded the wit and ambition of the bistro’s French-influenced menu, granting three and a half stars for “mostly wonderful food.” But misfortune and the sagging economy caught up with Dean. In 2006 he saw revenues dip. His wife died of breast cancer in 2007. New eateries in nearby Harbor East boomed, but he was stuck in less fashionable Fells Point.

With recession looming, Dean changed his concept in 2008 from high-end dining to groovy lounge with affordable food. The new

name brought a new clientele: Timothy Dean Bistro drew affluent, predominantly white patrons; T.D. Lounge, which opened last July, attracts a young black professional crowd with a taste for nightlife. Neighbors started to complain about late-night disruptions.

Zoning inspectors first visited T.D. Lounge in August 2008, after receiving complaints of loitering, double-parking, and noise. Dean asked for a zoning revision to allow for live entertainment and outdoor seating but was denied after a number of community groups objected. He began renting his place out for private parties and political events, collecting $20 cover charges and showing pay-per-view boxing matches that drew big crowds. Dean was still turning out his popular lobster mac-and-cheese, but he also brought in a DJ, a violation of his liquor license. Neighbors took their complaints to the city’s Board of Liquor License Commissioners. And then matters got ugly.

Tim Chng is a software programmer who lives across the street from T.D. Lounge. He and fellow members of the Upper Fells Point Improvement Association came to see Dean’s club as a serious nuisance. “He has lines out the door on Saturday night, and the valet parking creates a traffic backup,” Chng says. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 0 9

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—Jeffrey Anderson

baltimore observed

photo by Suzanne Curtian

and the case was resolved out of court, after hotel owners accused Dean of altering the e-mail that backed his claim.

This use of e-mail evidence to support claims of racism reemerged here in Baltimore.

Last November, Dean filed a $500,000 defamation suit against a couple who live nearby, Lynda and Armand Sebastianelli, alleging that the Sebastianellis accused him in e-mails and statements to neighbors of harboring “definite drug presence” at T.D. Lounge. At a liquor board hearing in January, Dean further alleged that Lynda Sebastianelli used a racial epithet—a claim that Sebastianelli denies.

“We’re not racists,” she says. “I thought Timothy Dean was our friend. This is testing my faith in human nature.”

Richard Evans, attorney for the Sebastianellis, says Dean’s claims are baseless, but neither Evans nor the Sebastianellis would comment on the specific allegations. Dean’s attorney, Anthony Butler, contends that emails show the Sebastianellis used a racial epithet in defaming Dean as connected to drug activity. However, Butler would not share those e-mails.

Though no one will say where this drug activity issue might have originated, one incident lends a clue as to what could have gotten the neighbors talking. The arrest of a valet at Timothy Dean Bistro in October 2007 on suspicion of crack cocaine possession led to criminal charges in circuit court. According to a police report, investigation revealed that the valet “distributes cocaine in front of the business while working.” The valet, who has a history of criminal charges, later pleaded guilty on separate charges.

So is Dean—by all accounts a superb chef—a victim, a bully, or just a no-nonsense businessman? Some say the bar is set higher for black chefs. Casey Jenkins, the Culinary Institute of America-trained chef-owner of the Waverly restaurant Darker Than Blue, can relate to Dean’s struggles. Like Dean, he’s a charismatic, ambitious chef trying to cook serious food in a changing neighborhood. But drive and talent do not guarantee success for a black chef, Jenkins says. “People want to label us as owning bars and clubs,” he says. “It’s hard for people to believe we can cook outside chicken and collard greens. We’re given one shot, and if we can’t capture a crowd, we get pushed off.”

Whatever the case, Dean says he’s looking to grow his businesses “like any other American,” and that for him, there’s opportunity beyond Baltimore and D.C. “We’re gonna be hitting home runs in P.G. County,” he says. “By late 2010, after we get this place off the ground, I’ll be looking to punch out another one. I’m gonna call it TimTim. It’s an Asian concept.” ■

u p d at e

Beyond the quality-of-life issues, the clash took on racial overtones. And Dean didn’t hesitate to mix it up on those terms.

Beginning last November, a series of noise and nuisance complaints led to a pair of liquor board hearings that threatened Dean’s license. At one hearing, Dean claimed that a Baltimore City police officer called him “boy” and implied that he was involved with drug activity. Baltimore City Councilman James B. Kraft got involved on behalf of Dean’s neighbors; in January the board imposed a $3,100 fine against Dean for operating a dance club and failing to cooperate with inspectors.

But Dean mustered some powerful people in his corner. In February, WOLB radio personality Larry Young took to the airwaves and claimed that racist sentiments were behind the dispute; Marvin “Doc” Cheatham, president of the Baltimore NAACP branch, held a public forum this spring that reached the same conclusion.

At a liquor board hearing in April, Dean agreed to drop live entertainment and dancing and promised to keep the noise down. As the hearing ended, Maryland State Delegate Nathaniel Oaks rose to endorse the embattled chef: “I’ve been to his place several times, and, frankly, I like what I see. I’m going down there tonight.” Afterward, Oaks too leveled charges of racism against Dean’s detractors: “Being a black legislator, I see this whole controversy as a lot of racial stuff going on.”

Chng and his neighbors insist the issue has always been noise and unlicensed entertainment—not race. “I feel like Cheatham and others let themselves be manipulated,” he says. “Dean is trying to run a business, and we want him to make it. But his attitude is not one of peace, but that of a bully. When you are a black person and you accuse people [of racism], it’s incendiary.”

One night in February, before the April agreement was brokered, Dean stood upstairs at T.D. Lounge as the downstairs bar buzzed with young professionals and the sound system cranked up. He conceded that, if he was located in upscale Harbor East, then his original concept for Timothy Dean Bistro might still be going. Of the transition from restaurant to lounge, he said that he did what he had to do. “Baltimore doesn’t like change,” Dean said, referring to what he sees as a community backlash against the younger, more hip—and black—clientele of T.D. Lounge.

Dean is no stranger to racial controversy.

Back in 2000, he opened the Timothy Dean Restaurant and Bar in D.C.’s St. Regis Hotel but was quickly at odds with the hotel’s management: In a complaint in federal court in D.C., Dean alleged that the hotel forced him to contend with plumbing and infestation issues and that the general manager referred to him with a racial epithet in an office e-mail.

The restaurant closed in less than two years,

Flush with pride: The women’s restroom in the Tremont Grand (see Urbanite, April 2007) is one of ten finalists in the “America’s Best Public Restroom” contest , sponsored by Cintas Corporation, a national supplier of uniforms and corporate clothing. The contest aims to recognize businesses that “present a pleasant, even memorable experience in a public restroom.” The ornate chandelierbedecked Tremont bathroom (above) faces some stiff competition, including Radio City Music Hall’s men’s room, which boasts an art-deco-themed lounge, and the Shoji Tabuchi Theatre facilities in Branson, Missouri, with their granite-and-onyx pedestal sinks and marble fireplaces. The public will decide: Vote at www.bestrestroom.com until July 31.

Speaking of awards: Urbanite was again nominated for an Utne Reader Independent Press Award , this time for Social/ Cultural Coverage. And once again, we skulk away award-less: New York-based Bidoun (www.bidoun.com), an acclaimed quarterly journal of Middle Eastern art and culture, takes the 2009 prize. Urbanite was nominated in 2007 and 2008 for Local/Regional Coverage. Wait ’til next year.

Out to lunch: Less than a year into his job, Baltimore City Public School director of food and nutrition Tony Geraci says he’s “sort of amazed at this thing.” (See Urbanite, November 2008.) With the help of more than a thousand school kids, Geraci’s new farm manager, Greg Strella, has transformed the Bragg Nature Center in Catonsville into a working farm supplying produce to studentoperated eateries, including one in the schools’ North Avenue headquarters, and to restaurants such as the Dogwood and Atwater’s. Fifty students will trek to the farm this summer to learn how to start what Geraci calls “farmers markets in neighborhoods that yuppies don’t go to.” Coming to the cafeterias this fall: meatless Mondays. “It’s as much a social statement as it is an economic statement,” he says. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 0 9

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Game on: Since 2000, Orrin Webb has led a volunteer mentoring program around the Druid Hill Park basketball courts.

transFormer

Courting Change Growing up in West Baltimore, Orrin Webb played a lot of basketball in Druid Hill Park.

After a stint in the Navy, he came home to Baltimore to work managing medical records in the Shock Trauma Center at University of Maryland Medical Center. There, he saw firsthand how street violence spiked during summer months. And he wondered if his home

courts at Druid Hill might help staunch the bloodshed.

So in 2000, Webb founded the Druid Hill Park Players, an informal community organization that provides loose oversight of the pickup games that flourish in the courts on the eastern side of the park—breeding grounds for stars such as Carmelo Anthony.

During the day, several generations of volunteers gather around a picnic table, playing chess, watching for fouls, and policing the courts for signs of trouble. Webb, who also volunteers at the Weinberg YMCA and Digital Harbor High School, serves as master of ceremonies. Kids call him Mr. O. “It’s not just basketball that we’re playing,” he says. “In the park, we’re family.”

But when the group first moved in, the courts had seen better days: The hoops had rusted; cracks snaked through the concrete.

When night fell, the b-ballers stayed away. In 2000, Webb extracted a pledge from Mayor Martin O’Malley to fix up the courts and add lighting. Nothing came of it, but three years later, when O’Malley visited the park on a campaign swing, Webb reminded him of his promise. “The next day, the director of parks and recreation called me,” Webb recalls. Within a year, he got his lights and new courts.

Once the facilities improved, the program took off. It now functions like a free summer camp, serving as many as 120 kids

baltimore observed each day, and has expanded its repertoire from basketball to tennis, softball, and swimming. Adult volunteers are matched with kids for mentoring; coaches rotate in during morning, afternoon, and evening sessions.

“We knew how much it costs to send a kid to camp these days,” says Trina McCullough, the Players’ program director. “This is a place where parents can bring their child and know they will be safe.”

This July 25 and 26, the Players plan to host their sixth annual basketball tournament, now expanded into a two-day affair.

Along with the games, there will be health information, free books for kids, and plenty of food. Webb himself plans to man the grill.

“I used to fuss at Orrin every single day,” says McCullough. “I said, ‘You treat the court like it’s a second job.’” But when she got involved with the Players, she saw for herself the community he’d made. “When he comes out there, those kids run straight to him. He’s like a big Santa Claus.” ■ —Natalie Sherman Orrin Webb talks about basketball and community on the Marc Steiner Show, WEAA 88.9 FM, on July 13.

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keynote

Adults Only

Sex educator Deborah Roffman on raising children in a sexualized nation Interview by marc steiner

I

n the mid-1970s, the Park School of Baltimore hired Deborah Roffman to teach a course called Human Sexuality. The class dealt candidly with that most perilous of topics, the developing sexuality of young people. “This was a time when, under health education in the state of Maryland curriculum guide, the sex education part was called ‘genetic perpetuation,’” Roffman says. Now a national expert on sexuality education, she’s written two books, 2001’s Sex and Sensibility: The Thinking Parent’s Guide to Talking Sense About Sex and its 2002 follow-up, But How Did I Get In There In the First Place?, which is geared toward parents with young children. Roffman sat down with WEAA radio show host Marc Steiner to talk about what the media gets wrong about teens and sex, how our sexual culture has changed for the worse, and why Americans are terrified of talking about it with their kids.

Q A

You’ve spent thirty-five years teaching human sexuality. Talk about the changes you’ve seen in terms of our mores and attitudes.

I always like to say that we didn’t really have a revolution in the 1960s—we had a revolt. As long as third-graders are still going to the playground to talk about sex instead of talking with their teachers, and as long as teachers aren’t there to answer their questions, I’m going to say that we didn’t have a revolution. That’s the biggest test. How are we supporting our children in growing up to be sexually healthy people?

Q

Part of what changed sexual attitudes during this revolt, as you call it, in the 1960s was the women’s liberation movement. The liberation of women meant the liberation of lots of other things, including our attitudes toward sex. We’re still battling that, aren’t we?

A

Look at advertising. Look at the way women in the workplace on television are sexualized. Young people see that.

You have to think of children as Martians. They’ve never been here before. They’re just looking around, and it’s all coming at them. So they think, “That’s the way you get ahead if you’re a woman at work.” What the women’s movement was about was, “My body’s irrelevant here: I want to be judged on what I know, what I can do.”

Q A

Is it possible that maybe both are true, and that’s the problem? There is sexual tension between men and women.

Absolutely. There is a time and place to be sexual—God knows, I’ve been teaching this for years. What concerns me is that I see girls and women feel that they have to be sexual in all settings.

I think that much of the changes that have happened since the 1990s around sex and gender in this culture are indirectly related to

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urbanite july 09

photograph by Marshall clarke AIDS. We forget what a closed society we were. In the 1980s, nobody said the word “condom” on television. The fear of AIDS caused this culture to grow up in a hurry, and by the end of the decade, I said to myself, “Wow, we’re about to raise the first generation of sexually literate young people.”

But what happened was the advertising and entertainment industries said, “We can be open about sex now.” That’s when they started to push the envelope. In the 1990s, the number of sexual acts and references on television tripled. I think the culture became sexualized to an extent that changed it in fundamental ways.

Q A

So you think we became sexualized rather than sexually—

Healthy. It’s very different. Then you have to add to that this whole “tweens” concept. What parents want to talk to me about more than anything is this adultification of children. Kids always paid attention to adult sexual messages, but now they’re being beamed directly at children, as if to say, “You are part of the adult sexual world.” Hence these unbelievably sexy Halloween costumes for 7-year-old girls.

One piece of fallout from the ’60s that is very unhealthy is that [we concluded that] if being oppressed meant always saying no, then being liberated must mean always saying yes. That isn’t right: Being liberated means that you have the right to decide for yourself.

Q A

We read a lot about oral sex among middle-school kids.

Have children become that much more sexualized?

Yes and no. There have always been middle-school kids who’ve been outliers. Always. By the late ’90s, I was hearing my high-school seniors say they did not recognize the sexual and social lives of their middle-school siblings. And that’s when I started to see the power of this ever-exploding media involvement in sexuality. Every February, when it was sweeps month on television, I could guarantee I was going to get calls from media people because they were doing an oral sex story.

Part of it is talk: There’s more permission for middle-school kids to talk about these things, so that’s what we’re hearing. But just because we talk about things more doesn’t mean they’re happening more. And by the way, if there is all this oral sex going on in middle school, where are the parents? It really always comes back to us as adults and how we’re engaged in their lives.

Q A

Do you work as much with parents as you do children?

Absolutely. One of the things that I’ve observed over the years is this movement away from the concept of sex as intimacy, and part of the reason is because adults don’t know how to articulate this. I encourage parents of young children to introduce the word “intimacy” as a synonym for “closeness.” Then, when their children start noticing this

thing about sexiness, parents can have a frame for the conversation.

Not “sex is about these body parts rubbing,” but “these are the needs that sex is supposed to meet in people’s lives.”

Q

How do you create a conversation around sexuality in a high school situation? These students are at an age when a lot of kids become sexually active.

A Q A

And can I assume that you mean intercourse by that?

Yes.

See, that’s the other thing that we do. Sex is a range of behaviors. This penis-in-vagina frame—and notice how heterosexist that is—goes back centuries, to when that was the only permitted form of sex. If you want to understand sex as intimacy, you have to put those behaviors on a continuum. It involves sharing your body with another person in an intimate way that you don’t usually do with everybody in the world. That’s what sex therapists will tell you is the secret to a long-term sexual relationship: seeing it as different ways to share my body with another person, not this goal-directed vaginal intercourse— ejaculate and it’s over. Which is a very male model, as well.

Do you know how many women in this country think their vaginas are on the outside? You ask a mother today to tell her daughter she has a clitoris, and it’s like, “Oh my God, I have to do that?” But when we don’t name parts of the body, we’re reinforcing the idea that women are only for reproductive purposes, not for sexual purposes. We think in little boxes. What I’m trying to do is blow up those boxes.

Q

Have you ever attempted to do this in a public school?

A

I once gave a talk at a public elementary school in Washington.

The title was “Sex and Sensibility,” and when I walked in, I saw they’d changed it to “… and Sensibility.” The principal said that elementary school students should not see the word “sex” in school. This—and I mean this seriously—is psychotic. What are you supposed to tell a child? Go home and Google it?

Q A Q A

Do you have children?

Yes! So, how’d this work with your own kids?

Of all the research that has come out over the last forty years, there’s one that hasn’t changed: Children who grow up in families where sexuality is openly discussed grow up better able to make decisions, and they postpone risky behaviors of all kinds, including sexual intercourse. This is why I’m an educator. Education works. Nurturing works. The operative word in prevention research is postpone, postpone, postpone. And parents are the most important buffer.

I will say that if you did a study of sexuality educators, you’d find that their children are way conservative, socially. But I don’t think they make great teenagers. They think too much like adults, because they can think critically. I’m not sure if this is a curse or a blessing, but teenage culture doesn’t always make a lot of sense to them. ■

Web extra: Read an expanded version of this interview online at www.urbanitebaltimore.com and listen to the complete podcast at www.steinershow.org/topics/urbanite. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 0 9

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Bump And Grind What happens when burlesque comes back to Baltimore’s red-light district?

B y

G r e g

H an s c o m

P h o t o g r a ph y

by

J .M.

G i ordan o

It’s 10 a.m. on a Thursday, and Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club is waking up. The bartender restocks the shelves, the manager talks on his cell, and a janitor vigorously vacuums the carpet, as if trying to rid the place of its musky, libidinous smell. In the middle of the room, suspended between the twin brass stripping poles on the stage, Trixie Little and the Evil Hate Monkey are flirting with theatrical disaster.

At the moment, Trixie, a petite redhead who is built more like a gymnast than like one of the “Hustler Honeys” who usually perform on this stage, is clinging to a pole with both hands. Her legs are draped over the shoulders of her partner, Monkey, who stands with his head squarely in her crotch, wondering out loud what to do next.

The wild ones: Neo-burlesque performers Trixie Little and the Evil Hate Monkey have sparked a revival of vintage striptease acts. But burlesque, some say, never really left Baltimore in the first place.

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ment here, it vanishes at noon, when the club opens and the house dancers hit the stage. These strippers begin their routines where Trixie and Monkey leave off.

The typical Hustler Club patron does not come for a “show,” in the sense that Trixie and Monkey think of it. Trixie is a sucker for sappy Esther Williams musicals from the 1940s and ’50s; Monkey is a veteran of children’s theater. Their performance tomorrow will feature a parade of like-minded support acts brought in from New York and L.A. But it’s anyone’s guess what the regulars will think of a girl in sequined panties and her boyfriend in his monkey costume.

With thirty-two hours to go before showtime. Trixie and Monkey have heard that plenty of their fans are planning to attend, which is comforting, but also worrisome: How will their crowd handle an evening in the Land of Larry Flynt? Even if the Hustler Honeys are temporarily tucked away behind the scenes, the club’s walls bear the imprimatur of the legendary smut king: huge, explicit photos of nude models, including one sucking a pink dildo. Monkey is nonchalant about the venue, but Trixie admits that she’s a little apprehensive. “People don’t know what they’re getting into,” she says.

“Miss Coney Island” Gal Friday says she once typed seventy words a minute “desk jockeying for ‘the man.’” She and musician Albert Cadabra produce the monthly “Skullduggery and Skin Show” at the Palace of Wonders in D.C.

This is not an unfamiliar position for these two, the twin pioneers of Baltimore’s neo-burlesque scene. Monkey (Adam Krandle by day) once drove a motorcycle across a high wire four stories up, while Trixie (formerly Keri Burneston) did stunts on a trapeze below. He’d learned how to operate the machine just days before.

A typical Trixie and Monkey performance layers campy, vaudeville-style striptease with a certain arch irony. It’s a salute to an era when strippers really teased—peeling away layers of fur and feathers and rarely going farther than G-strings and pasties. But neoburlesque shows add an additional element of pure absurdity that hearkens back to the days before burlesque became synonymous with taking your clothes off—when to “burlesque” something was to turn it on its head.

The routine on which Trixie and Monkey are working is set to premiere on this stage tomorrow night. The pair run through the five-minute sequence several times, starting and restarting a raunchy old garage-rock tune called “Primitive” on a boom box. By opening time, when they have to vacate the stage, they’ve worked out a sequence in which Monkey drops to his back and removes Trixie’s stockings with his teeth. It seems like it ought to work.

This will be Trixie and Monkey’s debut at the Hustler Club, the largest and newest club on the Block, the city’s radically diminished but still-breathing downtown adult entertainment district. Most of their local shows have been in very different venues—stripping for artsy crowds at the Creative Alliance or hipsters at the Ottobar. If there is any doubt that Trixie and Monkey will be out of their ele-

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There was a time when Trixie, at least, would have fit right in on the Block. The district, which once stretched eight blocks along Baltimore Street, was built on vaudeville and its “naughty cousin,” burlesque. The old Gayety Theatre, home today to the Hustler Club, a porn shop, and another strip club called Norma Jean’s, was the pinnacle of the city’s low culture. In its heyday, which lasted well into the 1950s, the Gayety headlined comedians such as Abbott and Costello, Jackie Gleason, and Red Skelton, and strippers like Gypsy Rose Lee, Sally Rand—and Baltimore’s own Blaze Starr. Born Fannie Belle Fleming, Starr launched her career in the city at age 16 and became famous for daring and sultry routines that got her arrested by vice squads nationwide. Starr later bought the 2 O’Clock Club across the street from the Gayety and helped keep burlesque alive long after it had faded from popularity elsewhere.

Former burlesque dancer Bambi Jones has fond memories of her first show in Baltimore in 1950 at the Maryland Theater just off Howard Street. Before the show, airplanes dropped fliers across the city advertising the featured act, Sally Rand, famous for her fan dance. “I couldn’t believe the patrons,” Jones says. “It was like the opera. They were all dressed in formal attire.”

Even then, the burlesque theaters and nightclubs that had kept Jones’ craft alive were beginning a long decline, brought on by such forces as the rise of pornography and the not-unrelated descent of burlesque into bare-bones stripping. Jones (real name Doris Kotzan), who now lives in Greenwich, Connecticut, recalls club owners bringing in “bar girls,” or “B girls,” who earned a commission by convincing men to buy them drinks. When vice squads cracked down on the practice, arguing that the girls had no business being in the bars, the club owners asked the burlesque dancers to teach the girls a few tricks so they could pass as performers. The theatrical element of burlesque faded, and dancers were told that they had to “mix” with the men or find another venue. (The practice continues today on the Block, where clubs sell “lady drinks”—cocktails for the dancers that go for $20 or more. The dancer generally gets a cut, plus a modest “base rate” if she can get enough of these drinks in a shift; otherwise she makes only tips and fees for lap dances.) And of course, in many clubs, “mixing” was just the start of it. (This practice too lives on today.)

The second and last time Jones was booked in Baltimore, in 1951, the Maryland Theater had been demolished to make way for

a parking lot. She danced at the Gayety, and she brought an oldtimey touch. “I had been trained by an ex-Rockette,” Jones says. “She told me, ‘Always wear a hat, gloves, stockings. Be a lady.’” But after her first show at the Gayety, the manager found her in the dressing room. “They [the clientele] want to see less panties on you,” he said.

She walked out and never came back.

Former burlesque queen Satan’s Angel (born Cecelia Walker) performed in the 2 O’Clock and other Block clubs starting around 1969. She earned her fame twirling flaming tassels on her nipples, then getting five non-flaming tassels whirling at once: “two on my ta-tas, two on my rear-end cheeks, and one on my navel.”

Angel, who now lives in Palm Springs, California, and gives her age as 65, recalls traveling in a circuit from Baltimore to D.C. and Philadelphia, then to Boston and Detroit and back to Baltimore.

The girls called it “the Wheel.” “I was on the road ten to twelve months out of the year, working six days a week, with the seventh for travel,” she says. “The clubs were crappy. The dressing rooms were cramped.” But a “feature” performer like her could make $800 to $2,000 a week, plus extra if she was willing to drink with the clientele afterward. “There were a few who played hanky-panky under the table,” Angel says, “but not me.”

Over time, Angel says she began to feel like “a goody two-shoes” because the most she would give her audience was a quick flash of her nearly naked body before disappearing from the stage. At a show in the mid-1980s, a club owner paired her with rising porn star Vanessa del Rio. Angel took it as a slight; she thought pornography was crude. One of Angel’s next co-stars billed herself as an “insertion dancer.” Her main prop was a Tootsie Pop. The final straw came in New York, at a show with a dancer whose deal with the audience, Angel says, was, “For a dollar, you got a lick.”

“I went to the owner and said, ‘You have got to be insane.

There’s no way I’m doing this,’” she says. “I quit burlesque in 1985.”

Like Bambi Jones, she decided that burlesque’s best days were over.

But there is something vampire-like about burlesque. Every time someone declares it dead, it shows up the next day in a slightly different costume. “Through its history, burlesque was considered the dirty end of the entertainment business, yet it’s the thing that won’t go away,” says James Taylor, one of the creators of the now-defunct American Dime Museum and now a partner in the Palace of Wonders, a combination burlesque theater/bar/curiosity museum in Washington, D.C. The ongoing appeal, he says, goes beyond the titillation factor. “Way back in the day, [burlesque dancers] never got past one-piece bathing suits,” he says. “The best of the queens took off the least and still got you there. Gypsy Rose Lee once literally never took off anything but her gloves. She knew that it was the act that pulled it off. It was the show.”

In 2000, fifteen years after Satan’s Angel quit the business, she was running a dinner theater modeled after an Old West bordello in a movie set-turned-tourist trap in Arizona. A visitor noticed her collection of mementos from her days as a dancer. “Who’s that?” asked the woman. “That’s me,” said Angel. The woman, who turned out to be a writer, put Angel in touch with the Burlesque Hall of Fame in Las Vegas. Unbeknownst to Angel, burlesque was making a comeback. The acts that once attracted the vice cops now looked positively wholesome, and they were drawing a curious new generation of fans—urban hipsters looking for a tastefully racy night out.

Today, Angel is back on stage. She performs in theaters around the country, often paired with younger acts. “I’m 65 years old and still bumping and grinding and damn good at it,” she says. Bambi Jones, now 78, gives presentations about burlesque history in se-

nior centers. “I bring boas and fans,” she says. “They jam in their wheelchairs.”

The Hustler Club show, billed half-seriously as Elegance, will be a typical neo-burlesque performance: a shambling revue of strip acts featuring elaborately costumed dancers, interspersed with comic commentary and magic tricks.

Dancer Bambi Jones, now 78, teaches burlesque history classes in senior centers. “I bring boas and fans,” she says. “They jam in their wheelchairs.”

At 11 a.m.—nine hours until the curtain’s up—about two-thirds of the cast takes the stage in sweatpants for what will have to pass for a full rehearsal. Trixie and Monkey are joined by one of their Baltimore protégés, Paco Fish (Paul Galbraith). With them is New Yorkbased performer Lynn Sally, who calls herself Dr. Lucky and teaches a class on the history of burlesque at New York University, and a young male acrobatic duo called Twig and Berries (Kevin Beverely and Eric Gorsuch). The MC this evening will be the foul-mouthed Miss Astrid, played by Kate Valentine, who created one of the early neo-burlesque shows, called the Va Va Voom Room, in 1997 in Los Angeles.

If Trixie and Monkey’s rehearsal yesterday failed to inspire confidence, today’s isn’t helping much. The performers attempt to piece together the show’s grand finale, looking like a high school drama club trapped in a very adult playground.

But these jokers have one thing going for them: They’re performing in a city where the circus-sideshow aesthetic has never lost its appeal. Megan Hamilton, program director at the Creative Alli-

Waitress and hair stylist Debi Gonzales, a.k.a. Little Luna, performs as a member of Baltimore’s Gilded Lily Burlesque. “Burlesque is a very empowering medium,” she says. “If I have something to say about being a woman, I am able to say it.” w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 0 9

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Kristin Weisman, an English teacher by day, says she adopted the stage name Lena Grove and joined Baltimore’s Gilded Lily Burlesque in the midst of “sort of a midlife crisis.” Her 6-year-old daughter recently told a teacher her mother is a Rockette.

ance, started a vaudeville troupe back in 1983, after dropping out of college. At the time, former vaudeville performer Louis “the Hawk” Hawkins was tap dancing for tips in Fells Point bars. “There were links to the living era of vaudeville,” Hamilton says. “Hawkins always used to tell me, ‘You need a shake dancer [for your troupe].’ I never knew what he meant. He was saying we needed a burlesque dancer.”

Laure Drogoul, artist and hostess of the 14Karat Cabaret, remembers visiting the 2 O’Clock Club in the 1980s and watching an act involving a very large woman who used wastepaper baskets for a bra. “I would call that straight-up vaudevillian striptease,” she says.

In the 1990s, Drogoul brought adult film performer Annie Sprinkle to her downtown performance space. Sprinkle wasn’t doing traditional burlesque; her performances were feminist commentaries on the sex industry—a theme that has carried through into much of today’s neo-burlesque.

George is particularly worried about a move he calls “the dry hump.”

“Please, Lord God,” he prays, “don’t let them add the dry hump routine ...”

So when Trixie and Monkey arrived on the scene in 2002, they weren’t so much reviving a lost art as taking a cherished tradition in a new direction. Before launching her striptease career, Trixie had studied painting at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, only to take up performance art after graduating. Her first endeavors were puppet shows (one featured hot dog puppets acting out the opera Carmen) and the Fluid Movement community water ballet performances in Patterson Park. “I grew up on The Muppet Show and I Love Lucy reruns. I always loved the spectacle of old musicals,” she says.

Burlesque fit her sensibilities perfectly, and in 2002 she signed herself and a longtime artistic partner up to perform at the Tease-

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O-Rama burlesque convention in San Francisco. When things fell apart with her partner, she called Krandle, whom she had been dating for about six months. The two had met while working at the downtown environmental education nonprofit Living Classrooms, and Krandle had performed in one of the water ballets. He had dropped out of college after a couple of years studying musical theater in Philadelphia, and she knew he needed an outlet for his creative energy. “Do you want to do this burlesque thing?” she asked.

“You’re going to be the Tap Dancing Evil Hate Monkey and I’m going to be Trixie Little.”

Krandle responded, “What’s burlesque?”

To prep for the gig in San Francisco, the duo put together a show and performed it at the 14Karat Cabaret. The premise: A marauding monkey was spreading hate, and the only thing that could save the world was the superheroine Trixie Little, who spanked happiness into the populace. Both shows went well enough that the pair decided to keep developing the characters. Trixie also began offering stripping and act-development classes, training such future co-conspirators as Paco Fish, who now puts on monthly shows at the LOF/t theater on North Avenue with the Gilded Lily Burlesque.

Along with a handful of local honors (including first place in the Mayor’s Christmas Parade in Hampden and a near-arrest for indecent exposure at a Charm City Roller Girls competition), Trixie and Monkey won Best Burlesque Duo at the 2006 Exotic World competition in Las Vegas, put on since 1990 by the Burlesque Hall of Fame. They developed a small if fanatical cult following (Monkey’s fans sometimes bring him bananas backstage). And they landed gigs at arty venues in Washington, D.C., and New York City, where the duo plans to move this fall. To hone their acrobatic skills, they spent two years attending circus school in Vermont.

But while they fantasized about someday taking burlesque back to the Block, it seemed impossible: Burlesque and modern stripping were like estranged siblings who wouldn’t be caught dead in the same room.

Then, one night this January, a man named George approached Trixie after a show at the Ottobar. George (who prefers not to use his last name in this article) had been brought to Baltimore by the owner of the Hustler Club to breathe some new life into the place and shake off the Block’s unsavory reputation. He was looking for something, he said, that would recall the Gayety Theatre’s glory days. “I want a show,” he told Trixie. “I want musicians and acrobats.” Trixie nearly jumped out of her pasties.

It’s 6 o’clock, and George is a nervous wreck. In the year and a half he’s been here, he has done his best to turn the Hustler Club into “a gentleman’s playground,” featuring such attractions as Henry Hill, the ex-mobster who inspired the movie Goodfellas, and Ultimate Fighting Championship prizefighters. But this will be his first foray into burlesque. He has hardly seen Trixie and Monkey, who are just back from circus school. Trixie booked all their accompanying acts and corresponded with George by e-mail.

Particularly vexing to George: men on the Hustler Club stage.

George saw Twig and Berries perform at the Ottobar and fears the regular clientele may not take kindly to their racy stunts. (During their rehearsal this morning, a club janitor skulked around the edges of the theater, muttering, “What are they doing up there?”)

George is particularly worried about a move Twig and Berries pulled at the Ottobar that he calls “the dry hump.”

“Please, Lord God,” he prays, “don’t let them add the dry hump routine to this one.”

George is also worried about the house dancers, who will have to sit through this circus when they would otherwise be performing.

Hustler Club dancers are independent contractors; they actually pay a small fee to use the space and take home only tips (their “ones”) and fees for lap dances and shows in private rooms. Then there’s the portion of the audience that will be visiting the club—and the Block itself—for the first time. George hoped to have the place done up “real throwback,” with white tablecloths and a valet parking service.

“You want your customers to spend as little time on the Block as possible,” he says. Neither have materialized. This evening’s guests will get the raw experience.

This is especially true because the posters advertising the event say the show starts at 8 p.m., but Trixie and friends won’t take the stage until 9. So, as the crowd rolls in, they are greeted by a full hour of the Hustler Club’s standard fare.

As the crowd files in, the house dancers go through their paces, strutting and writhing for a handful of men sitting belly to the bar. A brass-haired beauty spreads her legs for one of the patrons as Aerosmith’s “Rag Doll” blares from the speakers. The newcomers look positively bewildered. Some gather in reserved booths and try not to gawk at the activity onstage. Others stand awkwardly in tight clusters. A gray-haired woman sits, legs crossed, watching the dancers with a mixture of disdain and pity.

Forty agonizing minutes tick by. But the dancers are gorgeous, every one, and they’re good at what they do; those who allow themselves to look can’t help but be drawn in by the spectacle. When, at 8:55, a Hustler Honey slides down one of the brass poles from the second floor, legs flared, wearing nothing but a G-string, the crowd erupts in applause. On the dance floor, it begins to snow money.

Even the too-cool burlesque crowd has been won over.

A little after 9 o’clock, a voice announces the start of Elegance, an Elvis tune replaces the heavy metal, and the show everyone has come for begins. Coney Island burlesque sensation Gal Friday struts onstage in cowboy boots, a halter top, full panties, and a purple belt buckle the size of a tea saucer. She wields a pair of popguns and keeps the crowd riled for twenty minutes, raking in a pile of tips while never giving up her panties and tasseled pasties.

The rest of the night is a blur of fur and feathers. Peekaboo Pointe, a performer from New York, cranks out a series of athletic numbers, doing impossible, pepper-grinder gyrations with her muscled, tattooed torso. A musician billed as Albert Cadabra pulls a succession of oddities out of his pants. Twig and Berries do a bullfight routine that culminates with them wearing only shiny gold hot pants. And Trixie and Monkey bring the house down disrobing each other to Bonnie Tyler’s cheesy ’80s hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”

During one of Monkey’s solo numbers, three Hustler Honeys stuff his furry vest with tips.

Finally, a giant champagne glass is carried in and filled with bubbly. The cast slides out of the spotlight, and the evening’s grand dame, burlesque legend Catherine D’lish, struts in to the tune of “Hey Big Spender.” A porcelain-skinned goddess in an ermine coat, D’lish begins to peel off her clothing, one silky, sequined piece at a time. A man tipsily approaches the stage with a bill in his hand; Paco Fish, taking the man for a club regular, pulls him back and tells him to drop the tip onstage, so he doesn’t disrupt the routine. But D’lish, who got her start as a teenager in seedy strip clubs in San Di-

ego, knows exactly what to do. She has the man slip the bill under her garter belt, then remove one of her elbow-length white gloves with his teeth. Then she sends him back to his seat.

D’lish finishes the evening by climbing into the glass of bubbly and sponging off her not-quite-naked body. It must be the sexiest thing this club has seen in a long time. Even the Honeys are wowed.

Tomorrow, George will send the club owner a video of the performance and suggest that he schedule Trixie and Monkey at one of the clubs he owns on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Trixie and Monkey will start to plan their move to New York and practice their routines for the upcoming Exotic World competition in Las Vegas. But tonight, it’s time to celebrate.

When the crowd at the Hustler Club thins out after midnight, the burlesque cast heads across the street to the 2 O’Clock Club, Blaze Starr’s old stomping grounds. There, they slide into the undulating crowd—the music bumping, the girls stripping down to nothing but their high-heeled dancing shoes—and marvel at how much, and how little, has changed. ■ —Greg Hanscom is Urbanite’s senior editor.

For more on this story, listen to the Marc Steiner Show on July 9 and see a slideshow of burlesque photos at www.urbanite baltimore.com.

Right: New York-based Peekaboo Pointe, who has taken on the title “the fastest tassel twirler from East to West,” can occasionally be seen at the Palace of Wonders in D.C.

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dirty B y

M i c h a e l

M .

H u gh e s

Is porn When I was 9, I saw my first images of naked women in a moldering Playboy a friend found stashed in the woods. Before that initiatory game-changer, the hottest material I could get my hands on was the J.C. Penney catalog, the women’s underwear ads in my mother’s Redbook, and the naked African woman in the wellthumbed copy of Born Free in my elementary school library.

Now, a kid clicking on a link in a spam e-mail can stumble upon material that my bosses on the Block were legally forbidden to show. (If you’re familiar with the infamous viral video clip involving two women and a plastic cup, you know of what foulness I speak.) The “think of the children!” moralizers, with their warnings of apocryphal middle-school orgies and “rainbow parties,” have been guilty of hyperbole, but there’s no denying that my Playboy in the woods now seems as quaint and nostalgic as an episode of Leave It to Beaver. Adolescents today are often more porn-savvy than their parents. The hardcore stuff, once confined to a few downtown blocks, has escaped; we all—most of us, anyway—smell like porn.

I can’t help but wonder what this unprecedented eruption of dirty imagery is doing to us.

Pornography has never lacked for critics. Back in the 1980s, second-wave feminists such as Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon argued that pornography served as an extension of rape and promoted violence against women. On the other side of the ideological spectrum, religious conservatives fulminated that porn incited lust and led the unwary into pedophilia.

The scientific data is a mixed bag, but even advocates have a difficult time dismissing the downsides: relationships destroyed by compulsive cybersex, children exposed to age-inappropriate material, endemic abuse of women by an unscrupulous industry. Those who fret about economic productivity can marvel at the amazing statistics that online pornography generates: According to one cybersex researcher, 70 percent of the Web’s massive adult site traffic occurs during the 9-to-5 workday.

That’s a lot of people peeking at naughty pictures at work.

But other damage may be more subtle, a reflection of how the tropes and culture of pornography have invaded the non-porn universe. A friend of mine, a professor at a Maryland university, told me how a student confided to him that he couldn’t ejaculate inside his girlfriend because all of the porn movies he’d watched ended with the men ejaculating on the women.

Paradoxically, living in a sex-drenched pornotopia may well be making us less sexy. Few mortal men can keep up with the on-screen (and carefully edited) megastamina of priapic porn stars hopped up on Viagra, and both sexes can feel inadequate when a partner desires an obscure, embarrassing, or impossibly acrobatic act, or can’t get aroused without a behavior or kink acquired from online grazing. With

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bad for us? the emphasis on an unrealistic performance ideal, sex can begin to feel less like pleasurable human interplay and more like taking a driving test.

Are there social benefits to pornography? Clearly, porn-educated adults have an advantage when it comes to the cornucopia of human sexual experiences. While virginal wedding-night fumbling might have a certain nostalgic appeal, the possession of basic sexual literacy is now a given—thanks, in part, to easily accessible adult material. Additionally, the Web has democratized porn itself, at least compared with my days toiling in the basement of the industry; a contingent of sex-positive feminists, including many women sex workers and adult film stars, has turned “feminist porn” from an oxymoron into a lucrative and perhaps empowering genre.

Some new research even suggests that viewing sexually explicit material is medically beneficial. Newsweek recently reported that viewing porn can boost flagging testosterone levels in men. Rutgers University anthropologist Helen Fisher suggested that regular exposure to erotic imagery could serve as the equivalent of testosterone-replacement therapy.

Although the delivery mechanisms are new, pornography is ancient. Scientists recently unearthed the oldest known artistic representation of a human, the Venus of Hohle Fels—a 35,000-year-old sculpture carved from a mammoth tusk. The figure depicts a woman with enormous breasts and an exaggerated vulva—the Neolithic equivalent of a Penthouse spread, according to some scholars.

It’s not that much of a stretch to imagine the zaftig Venus getting passed around at a Stone Age bachelor party, like my friend’s iPhone. “If there’s one conclusion you want to draw from this,” anthropologist Paul Mellars commented in Nature, “it’s that an obsession with sex goes back at least 35,000 years.”

So perhaps we should stop thinking of porn as either good or bad, but understand it as complex and morally ambiguous, transcendent and ugly. In other words, it’s just like us. ■ —Michael M. Hughes lives in Baltimore with his wife and two daughters. His writing and photography can be found on his (non-pornographic) website http://michaelmhughes.com.

continued on page 73 w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 0 9

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urbanite july 09

URBANITE’S H E A LT H SUPPLEMENT

Doctor without borders: Johns Hopkins internist Anastasia Rowland-Seymour mixes her traditional Western medical training with an interest in alternative healing techniques such as hypnotherapy. “I felt that in order to provide quality care I should know a little about what people were using,” she says.

Scope is a special editorial supplement to Urbanite magazine.

Twice a year, Scope will explore emerging issues in Baltimore-area health care and medicine.

P H OTO G R A P H Y B Y DAV I D R E H O R w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 0 9

39

Mixing Medicine A new school of “integrative” health-care providers sets out to wed alternative treatments to mainstream medical practice B y

S

ince childhood, Wendy Lafferman, 27, has suffered from headaches. Diagnosed with migraines in high school, she has seen numerous doctors and swallowed a mountain of pills to combat pain so severe that “sometimes I’m literally digging my head into a pillow,” she says.

So when a friend of her mother raved about a neurologist in Pikesville who had assembled an unconventional team of practitioners—including a hypnotherapist, an acupuncturist, and a naturopath—to treat headache, Lafferman was not impressed. “I’ve been seeing doctors for fifteen years,” she told her mom. “Nothing is going to help.”

But at the Mid-Atlantic Headache Institute (MAHI), she found a neurologist, Marcia Ribeiro, who supported her use of alternative healing practices like acupuncture and cranio-facial massage while fine-tuning a pharmaceutical regimen aimed at reducing the frequency and severity of her headaches.

“Dr. Ribeiro is willing to walk that path with me,” Lafferman says. A few months after starting treatment at MAHI (and switching to a nutritionist-recommended diet free of gluten and sugar), she says she is doing much better.

“This is the first time I’ve made it completely through a full week of work in months.”

Lafferman’s embrace of “integrative medicine,” which links a range of alternative healing practices with traditional Western medicine, is shared by a steadily growing number of Americans. Approximately 38 percent of people over the age of 18 (and 12 percent of children) use some form of alternative or “complementary” medicine, according to a 2007 survey carried out by the National Center for Health Statistics. Use of non-vitamin, non-mineral natural products such as fish oil, flaxseed, and echinacea top the list; other therapies include deep breathing, meditation, and massage. From acupuncture to herbal supplements to yoga, alternative healing—

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urbanite july 09

Deb o ra h

R u d a ci l l e

typically dispensed out of people’s homes, small offices, and clinics—is booming.

But most American physicians are considerably less enthusiastic about these treatments than their patients. A kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy rules—many doctors don’t ask and patients don’t tell them about their use of alternative healing methods not legitimized by science. “[Doctors] are not familiar with this, and

“There’s a lot of good in conventional medicine, and we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater,” says Brian Berman, director of the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “But we need other members of the team, like the acupuncturist, nutritionist, and maybe the yoga teacher. yet nearly 50 percent of their patients are using alternative or complementary medicine,” says Brian Berman, director of the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “We need to make sure they know about them so they can refer appropriately. Whether or not they use the therapies themselves, they need to be able to work together in a larger team.”

When Berman founded CIM—the first such center in an academic medical institu-

tion in the country—eighteen years ago, he and other proponents of integrating alternative therapies with Western medicine were on the far fringes of medical practice. Today, forty-five universities around the country have some kind of program in integrative medicine, combining research, teaching, and clinical practice in varying proportions. But the approach has been slower to penetrate the ranks of practitioners. “I would like to see it more widely adopted so that it’s part and parcel of standard care,” Berman says. “But there are still quite a few skeptics.”

MAHI provides a glimpse of the kind of integrative medicine practice that Berman and other alt-med pioneers have long envisioned. The institute looks like a typical doctor’s office, with a suite of examining rooms and offices. There are no trickling fountains or Chinese ideograms on the walls in the waiting room—just copies of WebMD and patient information brochures, industrial carpeting, and a receptionist’s counter with glass windows and stacks of insurance forms.

But some of the activities carried out here are revolutionary in such a setting. In one room, physical therapist Rupal Davé massages a patient’s head, neck, and shoulders, easing the tension that can lead to headaches. Licensed clinical social worker Dale Liebman conducts hypnotherapy, helping patients manage stress via visualization.

Cognitive psychologist H. Richard Waranch uses biofeedback and behavioral counseling.

Acupuncturist and naturopathic physician Stacey Kargman checks for food allergies and recommends herbal supplements.

“Other practices are largely driven by pharmacy,” Liebman points out. “We take a more holistic approach.”

MAHI was founded by Ribeiro and nurse practitioner Maureen Ann Moriarty in 2004.

Both had worked in conventional medical practices for many years. But they wanted to

do something different. Their experience at MAHI has shown that headache patients— “people sick of being sick”—were also looking for a different approach. Patients meet first with Ribeiro, and then she and Moriarty craft an individualized treatment plan for each patient that combines pharmacy with one or more of the other services provided at the clinic. “Sometimes it’s a little bit of everything,” Ribeiro says. The team treats not just the pain of the headache, but also the factors behind the pain—diet, stress, personal habits, and lifestyle.

It’s precisely that attention to the whole person that is touted by proponents of integrative medicine as an improvement on the traditional treat-the-symptom model, particularly when it comes to chronic pain. Berman says that when he founded CIM at the University of Maryland in 1991, “we started based on pain and pain management because that’s one of the areas that we don’t have all the answers for in conventional medicine.”

Housed partly in an old mansion on the grounds of Kernan Hospital, a short drive from the Social Security Administration in Woodlawn, CIM has grown far beyond its modest roots. The center has received more than $30 million in research funding from the National Institutes of Health Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine since its founding and has been an NIH Center of Excellence since 1995. Integrative medicine is now part of the medical school curriculum at Maryland, and Berman’s center has worked collaboratively with the Greenbaum Cancer Center, R. Adams Cowley Shock-Trauma Center, and other medical and surgical departments. Soon, it will be conducting research with the Institute for Genome Sciences. “I would never have expected that back in ’91,” Berman admits.

Across town at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the integrative approach hasn’t yet penetrated the curriculum or garnered as much institutional support. But even at that bastion of empiricism, some clinicians are exploring the use of complementary modalities and have formed a loose support network.

Anastasia Rowland-Seymour, a Hopkins internist, was introduced to folk healing methods while a resident at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, where she

The new age: “Pain comes from a lot of different levels: emotional, mental, physical, and maybe even spiritual,” says Brian Berman, director of the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “A lot of people are saying that we need a more multi-disciplinary approach to deal effectively with that.”

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 0 9

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also attended medical school. “My patients were largely Dominican,” she says, “and there was a lot of use of teas and tinctures and other ways of healing that seemed to have some effect. I felt that in order to provide quality care, I should know a little about what people were using and whether it was safe to take with their other meds.”

After completing her residency and working for a year and a half at Harlem Hospital, she did an integrative medicine fellowship with Dr. Andrew Weil, the godfather of the discipline. “I thought I was going to learn about nutrition and supplements, which I did,” she says. “But I also got exposed to other types of healing that I hadn’t known much about, like acupuncture and mind-body practices, and more esoteric things like energy healing and homeopathy.”

Rowland-Seymour doesn’t use all of those methods in her own practice. Some patients come to her specifically because she has been recommended as someone who uses an integrative approach, but about half “don’t have a clue that I’m interested in integrative medicine,” she says. “For all they know, I’m just a general internist.”

Patients often hesitate to volunteer information about whether they are using alternative practices or supplements because they are apprehensive about the reactions of medical doctors—with good reason. Doctors rely on data, not anecdote, when treating patients. And it’s precisely the lack of good data establishing the efficacy of alternative and complementary therapies that impedes their acceptance, critics say.

Steven L. Salzberg, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, maintains that there is no evidence to support the claims made by proponents of acupuncture, homeopathy, and other types of alternative healing.

“It’s pseudoscience and quackery,” he says.

Salzberg, a biostatistician who is a vocal advocate for open access to research data, has helped sequence the genes of hundreds of organisms, including human and avian influenza viruses and anthrax. For scientists like him, medicine is and ought to be based in rigorous science, with data that can be quantified and results that can be validated. Alternative and complementary treatments are conspicuously lacking in these essentials, he says—and the number of people who actually use them is far lower than proponents claim, because everything from drinking herbal tea to practicing yoga is included in surveys.

“They include all kinds of common practices

that people don’t use instead of medicine. I have herbal tea in my kitchen,” he says. But that doesn’t make him a supporter of what he terms “non-medical, non-scientific” approaches to treating disease.

Salzberg doesn’t object to the wellness aspects of integrative medicine—controlling diet, exercising, and managing stress. He says doctors should and do regularly speak with patients about such preventive practices, which are “all good things with plenty of evidence to support them.” But he has strong words for medical schools that have begun offering fellowships in integrative medicine that include such practices as Reiki (a spiritual healing technique from Japan) and traditional Chinese medicine. “They are training reputable doctors in what is nothing more than voodoo,” he says.

Much of the improvement experienced by people who use such alternative therapies can be explained by the placebo effect, he adds. “If they are being treated for mild pain, which comes and goes, and they are seeing a therapist, they’ll give them the credit. The only harm is to their wallet.”

He is much harder on acupuncture, which is probably the most accepted alternative therapy but whose effectiveness is unsupported by data, he says. “Acupuncture, ayurveda, homeopathy—all of these things were made up in the premedical era, and people still cling to them despite the fact that whenever controlled studies are done, there is no evidence that they work at all.”

And that has real-world consequences, he says. He points to a British study that revealed alternative practitioners recommending homeopathy as a substitute for vaccination for people preparing to travel

in Africa. “Most of the stuff is harmless. Where it becomes harmful is when people who have real diseases use it as a substitute for medicine.”

Rowland-Seymour, Ribeiro, and Berman all point out that herbs, yoga, and massage are not a replacement for medical treatment. “I don’t want to give people the impression that just because they walk into my office and I know something about supplements that may be useful that I am going to tell them to use that instead of conventional remedies,” says Rowland-Seymour. “That would be irresponsible.”

Rowland-Seymour understands the skepticism from other physicians. Integrative medicine “is not well-accepted by many of my colleagues in part because there are concerns about what might be suggested to patients and what patients are doing already that physicians don’t know about,” she says. “Also, there are studies that are perfect in terms of continued on page 47

The skeptic: Steven L. Salzberg of the University of Maryland’s Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology has strong words for medical schools that include such practices as Reiki and traditional Chinese medicine in their curricula. “They are training reputable doctors in what is nothing more than voodoo,” he says. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 0 9

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Mixing Medicine continued from page 43

bated by diet and lifestyle—and that’s particmethodology and there are studies that are ularly true of chronic pain. “Pain comes from very much less than perfect. That makes it a lot of different levels: emotional, mental, very difficult to determine whether somephysical, and maybe even spiritual,” Berman thing has efficacy, whether it’s really safe. So I points out. “A lot of people are saying that we completely understand the reticence.” need a more multi-disciplinary approach to But she and others like her are more willdeal effectively with that.” ing than the average physician—and certainly The anecdotal evidence, at least, bears more willing than scientists like Salzberg—to this out. Both Lafferman and Sharon Chafee, believe that practitioners other than media patient of Kargman’s who adopted a diet to cal doctors have a role to play in health care. treat her fibromyalgia (chronic muscle pain Ribeiro, for example, works closely with and fatigue), experienced significant imnaturopathic physician Stacey Kargman, who provement. Chaffee also dropped 30 pounds. has a busy practice of her own, the Maryland “I’m 53 years old, Natural Health Center, and I’ve never felt a few miles from MAHI. this good,” she says.

Naturopaths promote “Acupuncture, ayurveda, Both women also the innate healing ability say that when they homeopathy—all of these of the human body and up and eat a forrely on diet, exercise, things were made up in the slip bidden food, their lifestyle changes, and herbal supplements premedical era, and people symptoms return.

“I did it for about to combat disease and still cling to them despite the a month and felt maintain health.

In working with fact that whenever controlled good, but then ate two chocolate cookheadache patients, studies are done, there is no ies and I got so sick,” Kargman examines their Lafferman says. She lifestyle and diet and evidence that they work at was convinced her does allergy testing for all,” says Steven L. Salzberg, to stick to the diet. corn, wheat, and dairy.

Weight loss “If I find something, director of the University of can be quantified, we’ll do a trial for six to Maryland’s Center for but pain is subjeceight weeks, maybe stop tive and difficult eating wheat, for exBioinformatics and to measure. When ample,” she says. “Often improvement can Computational Biology. that does the trick. Just be quantified and by eliminating or cutvalidated in a conting down something in trolled study, skeptics may relinquish their the diet you can eliminate or at least reduce doubts. “A good scientist wants to know the the frequency of headache.” When she sees truth,” Salzberg says. “If a treatment works people with serious illnesses, however, she and can be shown to work by scientifically refers them to specialists. “I will send people valid studies, we call it medicine.” to a cardiologist or neurologist if I think they However, the history of medicine shows need a more specific diagnosis or treatment,” that radically new approaches often need she says. time to be accepted, even when empirical eviThe reason the collaboration with Ridence supports their efficacy. In 1847, when beiro works, Kargman says, “is that we both Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis ordered obstetricians support what the other is doing. We use the at his Viennese clinic to wash their hands in best of both worlds.” chlorinated lime solution before attending That, notes Berman, is the very definiwomen in labor, he was ridiculed. Even after tion of integrative medicine. “There’s a lot of the mortality rate from “childbed fever” fell good in conventional medicine, and we don’t from 18 percent to 4 percent at the clinic— want to throw the baby out with the bathwaand to nearly zero when instruments too were ter,” he says. “But we need other members of treated with the solution—his observational the team, like the acupuncturist, nutritiondata were dismissed because he could not ofist, and maybe the yoga teacher. We shift the fer a scientific explanation for his findings. focus so that [health care] is not just about He was vindicated, of course, when disease management but health and wellbegerm theory was developed—about thirty ing across the life span.” years later. ■ The approach is especially effective in treating chronic disease, he and other prac—Deborah Rudacille writes frequently about titioners point out. Unlike infectious disease, health and science. chronic disease is often created and exacer-

Buyer Beware Just because something is natural doesn’t mean it’s harmless. Herbal supplements and vitamins are not tested for potency, safety, or efficacy by the Food and Drug Administration—and many are little more than filler. “People bring in stuff they’ve bought cheaply,” says naturopathic physician Stacey Kargman of the Maryland Natural Health Center, “and when you look at the ingredient label, it’s mostly colors and dyes.”

Some herbal preparations and vitamins can react with drugs. Johns Hopkins internist Anastasia Rowland-Seymour recommends developing a good relationship with a pharmacist if you plan on self-medicating with herbal remedies.

“Pharmacists have access to great databases and can check if there are known interactions,” she says.

If you want to do research on your own, check out the data reviews in the Cochrane Collaboration (www.cochrane. org), an international clearinghouse for information on evidence-based medicine.

In 2007, the National Institutes of Health granted a five-year, $2.1 million research grant to the Cochrane’s complementary and alternative medicine arm, based at the University of Maryland’s Center for Integrative Medicine. Center director Brian Berman says the funding has helped gather and publish clinical trials of alternative therapies and conduct research to improve the methodology of literature reviews. “We’ve been working with people all over the world,” he says.

It’s also important to check the credentials of alt-medicine providers.

“Ask about licensing and whether or not they went to an accredited naturopathic program,” Kargman says. She attended a naturopathic medicine program in Arizona, one of only four in the country, and is currently licensed by the state of Vermont. (Maryland does not license naturopathic physicians, though the state does license acupuncturists.) To find a licensed practicioner, go to www.naturopathic.org, the website of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians.

No matter which alternative practices you are using, your primary care doctor should know about it, says Rowland-Seymour. “Even if your physician doesn’t have a huge knowledge base about integrative medicine, they need to know what you are doing.”

—D.R. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 0 9

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Ground Rules “Kitchen gardens” are having their moment in the sun. But eating your lawn takes some planning.

By scott carlson PHoto By alan GilBert

H

orticulturally, my formative years were schizophrenic.

My father was a salesman for a lawn-fertilizer company; I’ll always remember him on top of a riding mower, plying his monotonous expanse of suburban green. My mother, on the other hand, grew up a farmer’s daughter, and she was used to putting the land to work, growing peas, lettuce, or rhubarb for the table.

Four years ago, when I bought my own home in suburbia—a run-down Rodgers Forge rowhouse with a scraggly, south-facing lawn—I had to choose which side I would follow.

I get my environmental sensibilities from Mom, so I did what

seemed natural: I started ripping out the grass and planting vegetables.

Today, a little over half of my front lawn is taken up by arugula, lettuce, radishes, tomatoes, beets, peppers, beans, onions, squash, cucumbers, and various herbs and flowers. And the agricultural spirit is spreading: My neighbor offered half of our shared strip in return for salad greens and vegetables; my friend down the street, Joe Hamilton, tore up a good deal of his backyard for a garden, and he has been going around the block, persuading neighbors to turn unused corners of their lots into raised beds in return for some produce. Joe and I even started an organization called the Rodgers Forge Farm Initiative (www.theforgefarm.blogspot.com), with a goal of helping our neighbors start at least one vegetable garden on every block.

But if the process of re-greening the Forge has earned us the admiration of some neighbors, it’s also stirred some ire. This spring, I got a letter from the Rodgers Forge Community Association telling me that my front-yard garden “does not adhere to the ideal of keeping a traditional design.” The association wants the garden gone.

The letter highlights a central tension of living in a place like the Forge: Is our Ozzieand-Harriett suburb destined to remain as it was in 1951, when my house was built, with uniform patches of grass? Or, like all landscapes, will it evolve to reflect the needs and values of a new generation?

You might think I’m setting up a straw man, but I really do wonder. Writer and local-food advocate Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, has argued that America has never developed a gardening culture because we fixate on two opposing visions of landscape: the wilderness and the lawn. In an era of collapsing ecosystems and resource depletion, should we really invest water, chemicals, energy, and land in growing a mostly useless crop like grass?

Certainly, many people across the country now get this, as our little plot is part of a back-to-the-land trend that echoes the Victory Garden movement of World War II. The White House, the Maryland governor’s mansion, and Baltimore’s City Hall all planted vegetable gardens this spring. The Open Society Institute-Baltimore and a nonprofit called Baltimore Green Space have set up “land trusts” to protect open space that urban gardeners have claimed; the city’s similar Adopt-a-Lot program encourages people to garden in abandoned spaces. The National Gardening Association predicts that an ad-

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ditional seven million households will take up vegetable gardening this year, a jump of 20 percent. The Home and Garden Information Center, part of the University of Maryland’s extension service, has a campaign called Grow It Eat It (www.growit.umd.edu), with the goal of getting one million Marylanders to start digging.

Jon Traunfeld, the director of the Home and Garden Information Center, has seen home-gardening movements come and go— he’s been gardening for more than thirty years. But this one, he thinks, is different. A combination of recession-era frugality (he’s calculated that a 64-square-foot garden can produce up to $275 in vegetables), food safety scares, and the locavore revolution has made home gardening the summer’s hottest pastime. Above all, Traunfeld says, “I think people really just want to get their hands in the dirt. We spend so much time with electronic devices. There is something deep inside humans to get out and touch the natural world, and this is a great way to do it.”

But people who dig up their front yards have had to fight some battles. Recently in Sacramento, gardeners and sustainability advocates won a lengthy battle against a city ordinance that would have outlawed some front-yard gardens. Traunfeld himself caught hell when he was living in Nashville many years ago after he put twenty-five tomato plants in his front yard. The notion is provocative enough to have inspired California artist/architect Fritz Haeg to undertake a “conceptual land-art project” called “Edible Estates” that consists of front-yard vegetable gardens, including one in Baltimore (see Urbanite, August 2008).

Some objections to yard gardens come from fear, ignorance, and confusion: The letter from the Rodgers Forge association raised the specter of rats feasting on the vegetables.

In fact, rats are more likely to be attracted to bird feeders, dog feces, and open garbage cans. Other objections are aesthetic. At a neighbor’s request, I took down ill-considered (and admittedly unattractive) trellises for peas and cucumbers. I’ve planted a bunch of flowers, for both appearance and attracting pollinators. I’ll avoid winter squash this year, which sprawled all over the sidewalk last season, and I won’t even think about doing potatoes in stacked tires. But making vegetable gardens look “perfect” can be difficult, because they go through a period of exuberant, rampant growth at the height of summer—that is, if they are doing what they are supposed to be doing.

But it’s worth it: A garden can both feed and pull together a community. Recently, a little girl and her aunt stopped to stare in wonderment at the strange plants growing in my yard, and I sent them off with a few tips and a head of lettuce. My neighbor Jamie said that the day Joe and I came over to help him start his compost pile and plant his tomatoes was just about the best thing that has happened to him since he moved to Baltimore.

Now, whether my vegetable garden adheres to a “traditional design,” as the community association wrote, hinges on your definition of the term. The vegetable garden is the truly traditional use of property; prior to World War II, manicured lawns and shrubbery were luxuries largely reserved for the wealthy. Browsing through historical photographs of gardens at the Baltimore County Public Library, I was struck by how images of common people and their yards frequently featured vegetable gardens. A 1920 picture of a Catonsville family is typical: The daughters are kneeling amid a riot of what looks like beans, tomatoes, and potatoes; the father stands by a patch of shoulder-high corn. That family would not recognize their landscape today—nor might the people who occupy that landscape in the future.

Because our neighborhood association claimed that residents were complaining about our garden, my wife and I sent a letter to our neighbors, inviting them to talk to us about their concerns. So far, our critics have remained silent. Instead, neighbors all around—even ones we had suspected were not fans of our unruly yard—approached us to say that they like the garden. They ask questions about what we’re growing and how we’re growing it.

So, for now, our little plot should be safe. You know how neighbors can talk. And I hope they do. I hope that talk includes a discussion of what we’re eating, how we’re sitting on the land, and how we might rediscover a new foundation for our lives, in the dirt under our feet. ■ —Scott Carlson interviewed agricultural activist Vandana Shiva in the April Urbanite.

Scott Carlson and Jon Traunfeld talk live about urban gardening on the Marc Steiner Show, WEAA 88.9 FM, on July 14.

And find more growing tips online at www. urbanitebaltimore.com.

sp ace space

Reinventing the Yard

The urban gardener who wants to make the most of his or her property faces several challenges: too little room, too much shade, too many hills, or not enough soil amid all the concrete. Jon Traunfeld of the University of Maryland’s Home and Garden Information Center considered four difficult yard types in Baltimore and offered suggestions for what to grow on them.

① The Shade Yard: You often can’t till a yard with a lot of trees without damaging roots.

Instead, bring in compost and soil and plant above the roots. Some fruits and vegetables can thrive in the heat of the summer in partial shade.

Arugula, lettuce, and spinach are cold-weather crops that can’t tolerate a hot July sun, but they might do well with four hours of sun in hot weather. Try herbs like mint and cilantro and fruits like currants, blueberries, and gooseberries.

Want a challenge? Grow mushrooms. If crops need more light, try removing the lower limbs of the trees. ② The No-Yard Yard: If all you have is

concrete, go for container gardening. Gardening stores sell self-watering containers with a water reservoir at the bottom. Or make your own: Fresh Food From Small Spaces, a new book by hobby gardener R.J. Ruppenthal, includes plans for making a self-watering container out of a Rubbermaid storage bin; California gardener Ray Newstead’s EarthTainer (http://earthtainer. tomatofest.com) uses a similar design. The Grow It Eat It website (www.growit.umd.edu) features plans for making self-watering containers out of 5-gallon buckets, plus a shallow “salad table” made from two-by-fours.

③ The Hill Yard: If you strip off the vegeta-

tion on a hillside yard to start planting, the soil will run off in the first hard rain. That land needs to be terraced, a major project that requires maintenance. Traunfeld, whose own yard is terraced in front and back, says to avoid using wood that has been treated with chemicals or petroleum products, such as old railroad ties.

④ The Rowhouse Strip: It’s long, thin,

and hotter than hell in the summertime. Build boxes for raised beds to keep the soil from washing onto the sidewalk. Most anything will grow here, but pick heat-tolerant plants that will offer a lot of production in a small space: tomatoes, peppers, and trellising cucumbers. More adventurous gardeners might try potatoes. Keep the soil cool and moist with mulch.

I l l u s t r a t I o n s b y k I m b e r ly b a t t I s t a

—S.C.

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 0 9

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57 Reviewed

Victoria Gastro Pub and Trinacria Italian Deli

eat/dr ink

59 Wine & Spirits

Burning question

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The Feed

This month in eating

Wings of Desire

The strange saga of Maryland’s archetypal chicken barbecue Taste and time and place are famously conjoined, as Mr. Proust demonstrated. So it’s little wonder that Eastern Shore-style barbecued chicken seems so inextricably tied to its summertime milieu. Here’s the scene: It’s July, and you’re driving to the ocean; everyone’s hot and dazed by the bright, traffic-choked flatness of the inland dash across the state. Also hungry. You see a battered yellow sign in the approximate shape of a b y d av i d d u d l e y

photography by chris hartlove

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 0 9

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resists burning over open flames, unlike the sugary tomato-based stuff. Baker carefully described the proper grilling technique (let the flames die well down, turn birds, and baste every five to ten minutes) and provided instructions, complete with diagrams, for how to organize a cookout for hundreds of people. Then he took his act on the road, going county to county across the state grilling chickens. He opened a stand at the New York State Fair and sold cooked birds at his family farm, Bakers’ Acres, outside Ithaca, where socalled “Cornell Chicken” remains an inescapable Finger Lakes favorite.

But Baker’s birds took flight and roosted in curious pockets across the Northeast and as far south as the Mid-Atlantic, though many practitioners seem to have forgotten their link to the original source. In Buffalo, I grew up eating a wildly popular barbecued chicken known by the name of the catering company that seemed to have a monopoly on the chicken fundraiser scene, Chiavetta’s.

Until I moved to Ithaca, I assumed it to be a unique local specialty, but Chiavetta’s sauce, sold by the gallon in Western New York supermarkets (and available locally at the Hunt Valley Wegmans), is really a doctored version of the stuff that Baker’s Acres was swabbing on broilers every weekend.

So too is the barbecue you’ll get on the Eastern Shore, though sometimes you see Shore recipes that add Tabasco or Old Bay to the brew. The “Delmarvalous Barbecue Chicken” on the Perdue Farms website is essentially Baker’s recipe; it’s also published in a 1979 Perdue cookbook as “Firehouse Barbecue Chicken” and credited, correctly, to Bob Baker. Reenie Baker Sandsted, who now runs Bakers’ Acres, recalls stumbling on a big volunteer fire company barbecue in Delaware using her father’s sauce. When she asked what was in it, the firemen told her it was a “secret recipe.” All this uncredited borrowing was fine with her dad, who never profited directly from his many chicken-related innovations.

“All he wanted to do was promote chicken,” Sandsted says.

Frank Perdue himself may have been the node of transmission for Cornell Chicken to Maryland: The late Salisbury chicken magnate was a friend and collaborator who worked closely with Baker’s lab in developing the processing techniques that built the modern industrial poultry industry, the one that, for better or worse, now produces $845 million worth of chicken every year on the Delmarva Peninsula. So even if the recipe is a foreign transplant, the birds themselves are likely to be homegrown.

Does it matter that a Dorchester County chicken barbecue fundraiser is essentially identical to the one folks in Buffalo or Cen-

eat/drink tral Pennsylvania (another chicken barbecue hotbed) are enjoying? Perhaps because these events of summer are such defiantly local affairs, they seem to have all been born of their respective regions, not imposed upon the landscape by a lone evangelist.

When my brother and I get together out at his place in South Dakota, further west than Dr. Baker ever penetrated, we invariably fire up the grill and bust out his sauce, the smoky, salty birds collectively transporting us back to the summers of our youths. I’ve tweaked the inventor’s technique a bit in the years since. Grilling on a Weber, I bank the coals to one side, cover, and smoke-roast the chicken quarters off the direct fire for the first twenty minutes or so, which renders much of the fat and keeps later flare-ups under control. Then I move the birds over the fire and stick to the script, basting and flipping every five or ten minutes until the skin is uniformly crisp.

When the meat’s resting, it gets another final shot of sauce. Even though I’m an inveterate improviser in matters of cooking, I’ve never bothered to mess with the formula for the stuff; it tastes complete, eternal, unchanging. It tastes like home. ■ —David Dudley is Urbanite’s editor-in-chief.

Bob Baker’s Chicken Barbecue Sauce This recipe can be varied to suit individual tastes. It makes enough for ten chicken halves. Leftover sauce can be stored in a glass jar and refrigerated for several weeks.

recipe

chicken by the side of Route 50, directing you to a church parking lot or volunteer firehouse or Kiwanis club. The setting—big steel barrelstyle grills belching poultry-laden smoke across the road, the heat and light of midday summer in Maryland—conspires to make the chicken itself irresistible. It’s crisp-skinned, cooked just this side of charred (and yes, barbecue purists, it’s technically grilled, not barbecued), and doused with a thin vinegary sauce as salty as the seawater waiting a few miles down the highway.

You’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise, but this isn’t really your bird, Maryland. The distinctive style of chicken barbecue that flourishes along the byways of the Eastern Shore every summer is no regional specialty; it’s an immigrant, and a fairly recent one, devised not by some enterprising Salisbury firehouse cook but by an upstate New York food scientist named Robert Baker.

Baker, who died in 2006, is a towering figure in poultry history. The founder of Cornell University’s Institute of Food Science, he was dubbed the “chicken Edison” by the New York Times for his many feats of convenience-food invention. In 1963, Baker figured out a way to turn scraps of mechanically deboned chicken into a host of products, from hot dogs to nuggets. But his reputation as the father of the McNugget is rivaled by another, more obscure achievement: Baker all but single-handedly invented the American chicken cookout.

This was in the late 1940s, when eating chicken was a comparatively rare treat: The only birds in most markets were whole roasters, the big birds you saved for Sunday dinner. Baker’s job as a New York State extension agent and poultry scientist was to support the state’s chicken industry and build a market for the smaller broilers and parts.

His solution: mass barbecue feeds. And for this, he needed a sauce. “Barbecued broilers without sauce are like bread without butter,” he wrote in a seminal pamphlet Cornell published in 1950 called Barbecued Chicken and Other Meats.

The booklet is a fascinating glimpse into barbecue prehistory, the foundation document for a million Rotary Club fundraisers. It begins not with a recipe, but with directions for constructing a “fireplace” out of rocks.

(The Weber kettle-style grill wouldn’t be invented until 1952.) Baker was literally starting from the ground up.

Accordingly, the basting sauce he came up with was anything but fancy—salt, pepper, oil, and apple cider vinegar mixed up with poultry seasoning and an egg. But the deadsimple concoction proved to be all but foolproof. It works as both marinade and baste, keeps forever in the fridge, can be thrown together from common pantry staples, and

1 cup cooking oil 1 pint cider vinegar 3 tbs salt * 1 tbs poultry seasoning ½ tsp pepper 1 egg Beat the egg, then add oil and beat again. Add other ingredients, then stir. * Salt may be reduced to suit health needs.

—Recipe courtesy of Cornell University

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www.brasserie10south.com 410.528.8994

photo by La Kaye Mbah

Royal treatment: Victoria Marriner presides over her namesake gastropub in Columbia.

It might sound more puzzling than appetizing to American ears, but for years the English have used the term “gastropub” to describe public houses with some gastronomical ambition. Housed in a defunct Bennigan’s in Columbia, the year-old Victoria Gastro Pub represents the partnering of Columbia developer Randy Marriner with chef Joe Krywucki, who trained in England (at a branch of the Cordon Bleu) and did stints in the kitchen at Charleston and the Iron Bridge Wine Co. Daughter Victoria Marriner serves as both manager and namesake.

While the economy may currently muffle the restaurant’s “franchise me!” cry, its concept is so nifty you shouldn’t be surprised if a Victoria Gastro Pub eventually finds its way to a strip mall near you. Nor should you complain. The traditional pub fare is well executed: crisp and puffy batter-dipped fish and chips (duck-fat fries with rosemary and sea salt, also an appetizer, are extra), a Black Angus burger available with bleu cheese, and a Guinness pie made with short ribs and English peas. And the rest of the menu manages to be creative without straying too far from the pub theme. There’s grilled lamb loin with an ale reduction served with couscous and cilantro yogurt, roasted chicken with English

pea puree, and spinach salad with smoked duck confit and a poached egg. The gnudi— described here as ravioli without its skin—is a creamy spinach and ricotta dumpling drenched in aromatic white truffle oil, and there’s an utterly over-the-top grilled cheese sandwich with gooey melted brie studded with chunks of lobster on thick challah bread.

The bar side of the operation is just as exuberant: a twenty-two-page booklet catalogs wines, specialty martinis, and page after page of beer (twenty-five on draught and eighty bottles), with paragraph-long descriptions of each brew.

The pub’s secret weapon may not be in its concept but in the attention of the Marriner clan. Some of the produce on the menu is grown at their home, supplemented by herbs from a patch out back by the parking lot. Victoria herself may stop by your table to ask how things are and encourage you to attend an upcoming beer tasting. While the restaurant itself could be franchised, Victoria herself, alas, cannot. (Lunch and dinner daily, brunch Sat. and Sun. 8201 Snowden River Pkwy., Columbia; 410-750-1880; www.victoriagastropub.com.)

reviewed

eat/drink

Victoria Gastro Pub

—Martha Thomas

Change comes hard when you’re 109 years old. Trinacria, the fragrant macaroni works moored in the middle of a desolate stretch of Paca Street, was founded in 1900 by Sicilian grocer Vincent Fava. (Trivia alert: The trinacria is the three-legged star symbol in the middle of the Sicilian flag.) The current proprietor of this landmark deli and grocery is his grandson, also named Vincent. The Favas clearly believes in incremental evolution: If you stopped by for, say, a pint of salt-cured capers, a tin of white anchovies, and a bag of orecchiette any time in the last few decades, you’d be relieved to find things much the same. The storefront is stocked to the ceiling with imported pastas and cans of obscure Mediterranean foodstuffs (also toiletries—olive oil shampoo, anyone?), while the walls are lined with tubs of olives and the freezer cases bulge with house-made minestrone and meatballs.

But recently Trinacria has amped up its sandwich and prepared-food offerings, becoming more of a lunchtime destination for West Siders. The establishment now bakes its own breads, and they’re good—dense and deliriously rich focaccia baked with thin shards of prosciutto and sturdy Italian rolls that serve as a worthy foil for the deli’s burgeoning lineup of subs and panini. At the top of the chalkboard is the muffuletta sub, a

variation of the famed sandwich developed at New Orleans’ Central Grocery. Trinacria uses its standard sub bread, not the distinctive round muffuletta loaves, but the sandwich is a reasonably close facsimile of the French Quarter experience: a pileup of ham, salami, and cheese crowned by a briny stratum of chopped olive salad, its garlicky oil soaking into the surrounding bread. The fried eggplant panini may be even better, with thick slices of tender egglant fried in a surprisingly delicate batter, layered with provolone and Trinacria’s bright, chunky marinara.

Don’t forget to take a number when you enter; the lines form early as workers from the nearby University of Maryland complex converge around midday. There’s no seating inside, but you can lunch al fresco on the park-like grounds of the St. Mary’s Spiritual Center & Historic Site two blocks north up Paca. If you plan on picking up the makings of dinner here (including a bottle of Sicilian wine from the trove of bargain-priced bottles in the back), mind the curious hours: Trinacia shutters by 4:30 p.m. and is closed on Sundays and Mondays. Some things, apparently, don’t change. (Open 8 a.m.–4:30 p.m., Tues.–Sat. 406 N. Paca St.; 410-685-7285.)

photo by La Kaye Mbah

Trinacria Italian Deli

Sub commander: Vincent Fava keeps it all in the family at the West Side institution Trinacria.

—David Dudley w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 0 9

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eat/drink

Whether you grill with gas or charcoal, red’s the wine to drink.

photo by Christine Abbott

By Clinton Macsherry

A

giddy do-it-yourself-ism has long defined Baltimore’s art and music scenes, especially where they intersected in the realm of performance art. Beginning in the late 1970s, the Tinklers—musicians Charles Brohawn and Chris Mason—gave local audiences DIY performance at its giddiest. Using homemade, tune-resistant instruments such as a cigar-box guitar with rubberband strings, they sang with the nasal tones and anxious insights of junior-high kids thinking senior-high stuff. They diagrammed human consciousness (four circles representing Mom, Dad, school, and TV), charted the known world into the “scary” and the “not scary,” and drew songlines of evolution following the dual streams of weaponry and food hygiene.

Their song “Mom Cooks Inside, Dad Cooks Outside”—with the lyric “Mom likes to bake/Dad cooks the steak”—became my anti-anthem for grilling season.

I’m not sure where the Tinklers place this milestone in their evolutionary schema, but among other anthropologists, there’s no consensus about when dads (or moms) began cooking with fire. Archaeological evidence reveals the existence of hearths and fire pits 250,000 years ago, but that doesn’t mean earlier, more nomadic ancestors couldn’t have cooked on the go. Some recent excavations in Israel indicate that humans could start and control fires 800,000 years ago. In Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, published this spring, Harvard primatologist Richard Wrangham propounds the more controversial theory that Homo erectus manned a grill as far back as 1.8 million years ago. In the absence of artifacts, Wrangham cites fossils. Compared with earlier forbears like Australopithicus and H. habilis, H. erectus had a much larger brain and significantly smaller jaws and

teeth. The brain size suggests the safer and more nutritious diet that cooking affords; the smaller teeth and jaws imply the prevalence of cooked and therefore softer meats and tubers, which in their raw state require prolonged, vigorous chewing.

For modern-day H. weber and H. charbroil, evolution remains a contentious topic. Reasonable people will agree that almost anything worth cooking tastes best grilled, but then they part company.

I find it self-evident that gas grilling represents a more advanced culinary stage than charcoal, with advantages as patent as indoor plumbing’s. Yet dissent persists. Grill impresarios Bobby Flay and Steve Raichlen differ in their preferences, although charcoal partisan (and Baltimore native) Raichlen concedes that he owns several gas-powered models. Greener-than-thou debates over the carbon footprint of the two techniques rage online, but if you favor additive-laden charcoal briquettes ignited with starter fluid (as opposed to lump charcoal lit in a chimney contraption), you really don’t want to go there.

So let’s seek common ground in wine, where amity and tolerance come with the territory. Whatever fuels your fire, grilled food offers the world’s greatest excuse for uncorking a bottle of red. In my estimation, just about any wine made with red grape varieties, from Abbuoto to Zwiegelt, will dance with sear and smoke.

I like putting this precept to the test with some less-than-usual suspects. A Bonarda (grill-crazy Argentina’s most widely planted grape until the rise of Malbec) and a smoky Cabernet Franc from France’s Loire Valley provided some recent proof. But I have a favorite example: Sangiovese, best known as the primary grape of Chianti.

In its Tuscan home, Chianti and its many Sangiovese-based cousins have never been considered just spaghetti reds, but non-Italians haven’t always recognized these wines’ affinity for grilled meats.

Felsina Berardenga Chianti Classico 2006 ($23, 13 percent alcohol) makes the case in vibrant ruby tones, with a pure, penetrating scent of lavender, bright red berries, and a hint of campground.

Medium-bodied and tangy, its ripe black cherry flavor finishes long and clean, with orange peel and fennel grace notes.

I find it especially gorgeous with grilled pork chops, but the same claim probably applies to lots of other bottles. Grilling makes wine pairing so easy a charcoal fan could do it. ■ w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 0 9

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This Month in Eating Compiled by Martha Thomas KENT COUNTY WATERMEN’S DAY

JULY 5

The watermen of the village of Rock Hall will parade their boats, decked out in patriotic finery, around the harbor and then compete in boat-docking, crab pot-pulling, and anchortossing contests. This year it’s the culmination of a three-day July 4 celebration, and the public dock will be packed with both locals and “chicken-neckers” (outsiders who fish for crabs with a chicken neck on a string). Of course, there’s food: crab cakes, clams, and home-baked goods. Proceeds go to a scholarship fund for children and grandchildren of watermen. Noon. $1.

Village of Rock Hall, Kent County 410-639-7733

33RD ANNUAL J. MILLARD TAWES CRAB AND CLAM BAKE

JULY 15

In election years, tickets for the J. Millard Tawes Crab and Clam Bake sell out fast, as politicians seize on the chance to meet and greet a crowd of six thousand—if not also to be associated with Maryland’s 54th governor. The all-you-can-eat extravaganza, held in Tawes’ hometown of Crisfield, serves up steamed crabs, clams (fried, steamed, and raw), corn on the cob, watermelon, and beer. 12:30 p.m.–4 p.m. $40 (includes a mug and mallet).

Somers Cove Marina 715 Broadway, Crisfield www.crisfieldchamber.com

CRABARET

JULY 16

This year’s Crabaret, the annual House of Ruth Fundraiser held at the Baltimore Museum of Art, is dedicated to longtime event planner John Yuhanick, who died in late February and whose eponymous PR firm (now run by son Todd) has promoted organizations from the Baltimore Opera Company to Phillips Seafood. The crab-centric menu includes cakes, claws, stirfry—and even vegetarian crab cakes. 6:30 p.m.–10 p.m. $90.

Baltimore Museum of Art 10 Art Museum Dr. 410-554-8449 www.hruth.org

SURF AND TURF SUMMERTIME FUN FESTIVAL

JULY 18

The Carroll County Farm Museum’s surf and turf festival goes for nostalgia. Vintage cars and ball players—like ex-Oriole Bill Swaggerty—will be on hand, but the main event will be the grub: hot dogs, beef, and crabs, as well as apple pies and dumplings. Hampstead Mayor Haven Shoemaker will defend his title in the crab-picking competition; also promised are tours of the museum and demonstrations by artisans. Noon–7 p.m. $5; discounts for children and seniors.

Carroll County Farm Museum 500 S. Center St. 410-386-3880 www.carrollcountyfarm museum.org

GERMAN FESTIVAL

JULY 25–26

Let an inch out of your lederhosen in anticipation of the 109th annual festspiele. Gorge on braten, kuchen, schnitzel, sauerbraten, and strudel, as well as beer, beer, and more beer. There’ll also be German dancing, crafts, and live music by the funloving festival-circuit band die Schlauberger. Sat 11:30 a.m.–10 p.m.; Sun 11:30 a.m.–7 p.m. $6; children younger than 12 free.

Timonium Fairgrounds 2200 York Rd. 410-522-4144 www.md-germans.org

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art/culture 65 COMEDY/VARIETY

Marianne K. Amoss on The Stoop’s Baltimoored: Summer in the City

67 BOOK

David Dudley on Annie’s Ghosts

67 THEATER

Martha Thomas on Slampooned! and the Baltimore Playwrights Festival

69 THE SCENE

This month’s cultural highlights

The

Alienist Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie negotiates the distance between Maryland and Africa.

C

himamanda Adichie has made her home country proud. A 2008 MacArthur “genius” grant winner, the Nigerian native and parttime Marylander has written two well-received novels: 2006’s Half of a Yellow Sun, about the Biafran civil war, was a 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and the winner of the 2007 Orange Broadband Prize; 2004’s Purple Hibiscus, about a difficult father-daughter relationship, garnered the 2005 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book and was a finalist for the 2007 Hurston/Wright Legacy

BY MARIANNE K. AMOSS ILLUSTRATION BY LAURENT HRYBYK

The Irish Shrine & Railroad Workers Museum Remembers the “Great Hunger”

Maryland’s only memorial to Irish immigration honors the tens of thousands

who relocated to Baltimore to escape the Great Potato Famine of the mid-1800s.

On May 17th the shrine hosted a Mass at historical St. Peter The Apostle

Church for over 400 Irish Americans as a remembrance of the millions who succumbed to the “Great Hunger”. The Mass and gathering raised several thousand dollars which will be distributed to needy families in the community.

Visit the Irish Immigrant Museum 918 - 920 lemmon Street (one block from B & O railroad Museum) www.irishshrine.org 64

urbanite july 09

A Baltimore City Historic District Place ~ Eligible for National Register of Historic Places

art/culture photo by Kirsten Beckerman

Award. Her latest, the short story collection chronicles a young Nigerian woman’s The Thing Around Your Neck, was published experiences as a recent immigrant to the late last month. Among her other bona fides, U.S. “Your uncles and aunts and cousins Adichie can also boast an unusually intimate thought so, too.” But eventually, they connection to Nigerian literary royalty: Growrealize that things are different: “… rich ing up in the university town of Nsukka, she Americans were thin and poor Americans lived in the former house of celebrated novelwere fat and many did not have a big ist Chinua Achebe, author of the 1958 novel house and car.” It’s a vision that, Adichie Things Fall Apart. says, flows from how Nigerians romantiLittle wonder, then, that her work is now cize the American way of life. “America so popular in Nigeria that a spate of babies is for many Nigerians, and I think for my have been named after her. “I meet women characters, an aspirational idea. People go who say to me, ‘My daughter is Chimamanda,’” to church to pray for visas to go to AmerAdichie says. “It’s very moving.” Her success ica. … You watch the Cosby Show and has changed the face of the country in deeper you think the U.S. will be like the Cosby ways, too. More young people have expressed Show—and it isn’t.” interest in following in her footsteps. “Because The Africa that Adichie depicts is no of Purple Hibiscus, there are lots and lots of less complex. In “A Private Experience,” a young Nigerians now who want to be writers,” young woman named Chika is separated she says. “Maybe they always wanted to be, from her sister, Nnedi, during a fiery fight but they’re willing to between Nigeria’s battling talk about it now. Purple Christian and Muslim comHibiscus meant that it’s munities that left behind actually possible to be a “bodies, many burned, ly“The thing about writer.” ing lengthwise along the Adichie seems to sides of the street.” Chika, not having power be a woman between a Christian, waits out the worlds. Coming to the riot in a basement with a is that often there’s United States to escape Muslim woman, who treats only one story medical school in her a wound on Chika’s leg and homeland, she earned hopes aloud for her sister’s of you,” Adichie says. safety. Most of Adichie’s two master’s degrees here, one in creative stories (all but one “Africa—there’s only African writing from Johns set in Nigeria) might feaHopkins University and ture the expected backdrop one story. And it’s a another in African studof poverty, violence, and story of catastrophe.” human misery, but Adichie ies from Yale. Now she splits her time between insists that those elements Nigeria and Columbia, do not define her take on but seems to never feel African life. “Wars are not completely settled. “To just about somebody killlive in a place that’s not home in the convening and somebody being killed. There are tional sense always has a certain level of dislocomplications in between,” she says. cation. There are times that I’ve felt that in the Adichie addresses these complicaU.S., but also in other parts of the world that tions explicitly in the most autobiographaren’t Nigeria,” she says. “But it’s important ical story in the collection, “Jumping to say that there are times when, even within Monkey Hill,” which depicts a South that Nigerian space, I feel alienated.”

African writers’ workshop led by an EngThat sense of dislocation runs through lishman who criticizes the participants’ The Thing Around Your Neck. Adichie writes work for not being “reflective of Africa.” of everyday sorrows in deceptively simple, It’s a trap she attempts to avoid in her straightforward prose. In “The Arrangers of own work. “The thing about not havMarriage,” the narrator imagines her new ing power is that often there is only one American home as “like those of the white story of you,” she says. “Africa—there’s newlyweds in American films,” but she finds one story. And it’s a story of catastrophe. that her husband, a Nigerian man who has reIt’s either AIDS or starvation or war. … named himself Dave, lives in a hot apartment [Those things] exist, but they’re not the that reeked of “old, musty smells” and “lacked only story. The people who are not starva sense of space, as though the walls had being are just as African as the people who come uncomfortable with each other.” are starving. There are middle-class AfriAdichie’s characters are united by their cans who read Nancy Drew. We don’t get distorted concept of the United States: “You to hear those stories.” ■ thought everybody in America had a car and —Marianne K. Amoss is Urbanite’s mana gun,” says the unnamed second-person aging editor. narrator of the collection’s title story, which

Comic relief: Stoop jokesters salute summertime.

c o m e d y / va r i e t y

Hot Town

The Stoop’s Baltimoored: Summer in the City at Center Stage, July 9–11

It’s hard to be a fan of Baltimore in July. Those lucky enough to get out of town might gloat, but sweating it out means being able to take in the Stoop Storytelling Series’ first radio show, Baltimoored: Summer in the City.

Normally, the Stoop consists of seven storytellers telling seven-minute stories about a theme (see Urbanite, Aug. ’07). But for Baltimoored, five different storytellers— including novelist and former Simpsons writer Larry Doyle and Maryland First Lady Katie O’Malley—will take the stage on each of the three nights. Also promised are oldtimey sketches written by Stoop co-creators/ co-hosts Laura Wexler and Jessica Henkin and members of the Baltimore Improv Group, who will perform the sketches. Since late winter, the troupe has been doing something uncharacteristic for a Stoop production— rehearsing. “Much of the Stoop is ephemeral—what might happen when someone steps onstage,” says Wexler, whose husband, Mike Subelsky, will perform sound effects onstage during the sketches. “This is very planned.”

WYPR will broadcast highlights from all three nights on July 17 at noon and 7 p.m.; Aaron Henkin of WYPR’s The Signal (and Jessica’s husband) will host. “I always wanted to do a live radio show,” Wexler says. “We have friends that are in radio, in improv—it seemed like a fun thing to do.” Wexler says she and Jessica envisioned this as a variety show in the vein of Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor’s long-running public radio program.

But Baltimoored will swap in real-life Mobtown for mythical Lake Wobegon. Topics of the sketches include blue crabs, police helicopters, and the Orioles. House band Caleb Stine and the Brakemen will be joined by locals ellen cherry, the 5th L, and Arty Hill. As Wexler says: “You have to do something pretty interesting to get people out in the summer.”

—Marianne K. Amoss For tickets to Baltimoored, call 410-332-0033 or go to www.stoopstorytelling.com. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 0 9

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courtesy of Steve Luxenberg

One of Luxenberg’s central points is that that the treatment of the mentally ill in the 20th century was a kind of collective national shame.

Family Ties: Why did Steve Luxenberg’s mother (right, with her mother), hide her disabled sister?

book

The Woman Who Wasn’t There Annie’s Ghosts by Steve Luxenberg (Hyperion, 2009)

A (very) rough parallel to Steve Luxenberg’s Annie’s Ghosts hit the paperback shelves last month: New York Times reporter David Carr’s bestselling addiction memoir, The Night of the Gun, which was built around a superficially similar mechanism—veteran journalist trains the tools of his trade on himself. But instead of Carr’s unsparing reconstruction of his lost weekend of a life, Luxenberg, an associate editor at the Washington Post and longtime Lauraville resident, offers a plainspoken inquiry into an extraordinarily well-defended family secret.

The story begins with a curious clue: Not long before her death, Luxenberg’s mother, Beth, remarks to a social worker that she had a disabled younger sister who was sent away at age 2. This comes as news to her children, who had always understood that their mother was an only child. After his mother’s death, Luxenberg discovers that this sister lived with his mother to adulthood. She’d been hospitalized at a vast Detroit-area mental institution at 21 and died there in 1972 at age 53. Her name was Annie.

Beyond her name and a fragment of her treatment records, little trace remains of Annie’s existence. But Luxenberg, who oversees investigative projects at the Post, isn’t one to pass up a reportorial challenge; he takes a leave from the newspaper to pursue the aunt he never knew, as if in her shadowed life he had found a chance to unravel a deeper mystery about family identity. The task before him is daunting: With both parents dead, the only family member who claims a firsthand knowledge of Annie is a little-known cousin,

book proposal because the premise of discovering the truth about the title character seemed hopeless. “She told me, ‘I don’t think you’re ever going to find out enough about her to satisfy me.’”

Indeed, Annie remains both faceless (no photograph can be unearthed) and voiceless throughout, her life sketched by a heartbreaking cascade of misfortune and abandonment. She’s born with developmental delays and a leg deformity, and her impoverished parents—Jewish immigrants struggling to stay afloat in Depression-era Detroit—and the nation’s nascent mental health care system both prove utterly incapable of treating either condition. But Luxenberg resists the urge to over-dramatize key events or characters. Instead, Annie’s Ghosts moves with the slow-gathering force of a police procedural; the author methodically gathers facts, unearths informants, and compares accounts from his mother’s network of surviving friends, circling the terrible moment in 1940 when Annie was hospitalized forever. Luxenberg also puts on something of a clinic in old-school analog reporting techniques—there are lots of document-hunts in the bowels of Michigan bureaucracy. Like many a detective story, the book concludes with a triple-whammy of reversals as Luxenberg discovers that other family members harbor a few secrets of their own.

Most of these secrets, he finds, were closely guarded for good reason: One of Luxenberg’s central points is that that the treatment of the mentally ill in the 20th century was a kind of collective national shame, one that characters such as Beth were complicit in. If Annie herself remains a cipher, Luxenberg succeeds in an equally difficult task—understanding, if not excusing, the devastating choice his mother made. “I feel closer to my mother now,” Luxenberg says. “Toward the end of her life, I mentally pushed her away. But now I understand her. My mother was trapped by her need to keep this secret.”

—David Dudley

art/culture courtesy of Single Carrot Theatre

Anna, who seems to have had some mysterious falling-out with Beth decades ago.

Even after months of reporting, Luxenberg says one publisher passed on his lengthy

Word: Single Carrot parodies the slam poetry scene.

t H e at e r

Last Lines

Slampooned!, July 9–Aug. 2 at Single Carrot Theatre Baltimore Playwrights Festival, through Sept. 6

A send-up of the slam poetry scene set at a 1991 competition in Chicago, Single Carrot Theatre’s Slampooned! promises to be Best in Show meets American Idol. The actors who wrote the show will interact directly with the audience and “break the fourth wall,” says company member and director Aldo Pantoja.

“There will be a different winner every night.”

The young Single Carrot crew came here from Colorado in 2007 after hunting for a city to establish a theater company. They mix classics with original works, such as a recent production of Ibsen’s Wild Duck, and have a way with the wacky: Last year’s Sects and Violins, a series of comic sketches (featuring Samuel, the lactose-intolerant farmboy) was a great success. Poetry slams, says artistic director J. Buck Jabaily, provide a great template for parody. “There are always reliable types: the overimpassioned person, the militant one who uses it as a platform for revolution, the one with a million bad breakups.” And there’s also the element of surprise: “The MC can make up rules at the last minute,” Pantoja says. “You’ll feel as if you had a real slam poetry experience.”

The Baltimore Playwrights Festival also offers plenty of different endings. This year’s lineup includes ten plays and a first-ever musical: Unraveled in the Gravel, the story of a compulsive hitchhiker fleeing his past (Aug. 6–23 at Mobtown Theater). The series kicked off in June and will finish up with one-acts at Spotlighters Theatre (Aug. 21–Sept. 6). July productions include Lisa Hodsoll’s Turducken, about a family as mixed up as the bird on its Thanksgiving table, and G-Man by Rosemary Frisino Toohey.

—Martha Thomas For tickets to Slampooned!, call 443-8449253 or e-mail boxoffice@singlecarrot.com.

For tickets to the Playwrights Festival, go to www.baltimoreplaywrightsfestival.org. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 0 9

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T H E S C E N E : J U LY JAZZ

Hot Licks

Looking for someone to solo with? The Maryland Summer Jazz Festival gives adult jazz instrumentalists and vocalists a chance to refine their craft through jam sessions and workshops on theory, technique, and improvisation. The workshops are July 22–24 and 29–31 in Rockville. Public concerts take place July 21, 23, 24, and 31. (www.marylandsummerjazz.com) LOCAL MUSIC

Summer Sounds

Once again, Wham City’s music festival, Whartscape, will pack high-energy local and national musical acts, theatrical performances, and an art exhibit into an elevenday span (July 9–19). The crew hadn’t released this year’s lineup at press time; go to www.whamcity.com for more info and to buy tickets—early, if you want to get in.

Small Wonders

Join members of Baltimore’s small but cheerful ukelele community as they show off their pickin’ and pluckin’ skills. The Fleastompers join Victoria Vox, Don Peyton, and Jared Denhard on the Creative Alliance stage. July 24. (3134 Eastern Ave.; 410-2761651; www.creativealliance.org) CLASSICAL

Some Like it Pop

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra lightens up a little this summer with a popculture cavalcade of programs. Two highlights: The classic 1960 Hitchcock thriller Psycho screens at the Meyerhoff with

art/culture

a live performance of composer Bernard Herrmann’s famous score—cue the shrieking violins—on July 9 and 10; later that weekend, Warner Brothers composer Carl Stalling’s zany cartoon music comes to life at Merriweather Post Pavilion on July 11. Go to www.bsomusic.org for a complete listing.

Film Fest, a group show of short films by artists in the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands. Monitors and headphones will be set up on pedestals throughout the gallery. July 10–Aug. 8; the opening reception is July 10. (921 E. Fort Ave., Suite 120; 443257-4166; www.galleryimperato.com)

EXHIBIT

DINNER THEATER

Against the Grain

Take Me Out

At age 70, former aeronautical engineer and computer systems professional Lawrence Schneider decided to turn his woodcarving hobby into a full-time career. The Hunt Valley resident shows six abstract wood sculptures at Evergreen Museum and Library through Aug. 30. (4545 N. Charles St.; 410-516-0341; www.museums.jhu.edu/evergreen/events/)

Back to School

Nine current and recent resident artists of the community arts center School 33 show off their work in the Studio Artists Exhibition. The opening is July 10; the closing reception and artist talks take place July 25. (1427 Light St.; 410-396-4641; www. school33.org.)

More for the Money

The annual salon-style Big Show at the Creative Alliance crams about two hundred pieces of art of various media and styles into the building. Word on the street is it’s a good place to buy inexpensive but noteworthy art.

Through July 25. (3134 Eastern Ave.; 410276-1651; www.creativealliance.org) FILM

Brief Encounters

Gallery Imperato hosts its first Imperato

PARADE

Lola wants you to go see Damn Yankees, presented by the Baltimore arm of Toby’s Dinner Theatre. The Faustian 1955 musical is accompanied by a dinner buffet. Through Aug. 30. (5625 O’Donnell St., in the Best Western Hotel and Conference Center; 410649-1660; www.tobysdinnertheatre.com) LIVING HISTORY

Rabble Rousers

Titled “Rights and Reformers,” the Maryland Humanities Council’s 2009 Chautauqua brings to life three influential figures from 20th-century American history: songwriter Woody Guthrie, social activist Eleanor Roosevelt, and baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson. Scholar/actors will give living history performances at locations across Maryland, including the Community College of Baltimore County’s Catonsville campus on July 9, 10, and 11. (www.mdhc. org/programs/chautauqua/) WATER BALLET

Wet Work

The Flurry Family Vacation. This year, the quartet is trying to get to a potato festival in Boise, Idaho; along the way, they imagine other journeys, with swimmers portraying their stories. The ballet takes place at the Riverside Park Pool in Federal Hill on July 25 and 26 and at the Patterson Park Pool on Aug. 2. (www.fluidmovement.org)

Animal Attraction

The best-dressed pet (along with the one voted “least likely to succeed as a pet”) will walk away with prizes from the Visionary Pets on Parade, hosted by the American Visionary Art Museum. There’s also the Pet Talent (Or Not) Show, where proud owners coax real or imagined tricks from their furry friends. Recent entrants include a rabbit who “incited an outbreak of Peace and Understanding with her gaze” and hermit crabs who re-enacted the Revolutionary War. July 4. (800 Key Hwy.; 410-244-1900; www.avam.org) FESTIVAL

Extra Spicy

The Creative Alliance’s annual SalsaPolkaLooza is a family-friendly international street festival mixing salsa and polka music, art activities, food and beer, and local acts.

July 25. Don’t miss the exhibit of Francisco “Paco” Loza’s brilliantly colored yarn paintings. On view July 22–25. (3134 Eastern Ave.;410-276-1651;www.creativealliance.org)

Fluid Movement’s eighth annual water ballet, Strange Customs: The Flurry Family Odyssey, brings back Mom, Dad, Misty, and Chip Flurry from their 2005 production, Postcards from the Deep End:

Twenty-five years ago, a group of artists and photographers banded together to poke a bit of gentle fun at Artscape, the big city street fest that’s always been as much about Italian sausage stands as art. Thus was born Foodscape, a group show of work inspired by edibles. This year’s show—based, as always, at the Mt. Royal Tavern—runs July 12 through Aug. 2 and includes “Butterfingers” by Ronald R. Russell (pictured). (1204 W. Mt. Royal Ave.) Compiled by Marianne K. Amoss

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imagine the possibilities.

Since 2007, the Urbanite Project has brought together teams of unexpected collaborators and asked them, “What would you do if there were no boundaries? What concern–either here in Baltimore or globally–would you confront if nothing stood in your way?”

This year, we will again include Urbanite readers in the project. Those selected will be invited to join an Urbanite Project team and work with other participants who represent a wide range of fields and professions, from art and architecture to science and education.

To apply, go to www.urbaniteproject.com.

Tell us who you are and why you should be a part of this special annual issue. Applications are due July 28, 2009.

Art on Purpose in partnership with The Library Project

KITCHEN STORIES The best stories are told in the kitchen.

Image (detail) courtesy of Julie Lin

Featuring art about food and life by Julie Lin and clients of four non-profit organizations serving immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers.

Julie Lin Gallery Talks: Saturday, July 11&18, 2pm Closing Reception: Saturday, July 25, 4-7pm The Library Project / 1401 Light St. / Baltimore, MD 21230 www.artonpurpose.org / www.thelibraryproject.net This advertisement made possible by:

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MHIC No. 39601

Dirty Work continued from page 37

When I was 9, I saw my first images of naked women in a moldering Playboy a friend found stashed in the woods. Before that initiatory game-changer, the hottest material I could get my hands on was the J.C. Penney catalog, the women’s underwear ads in my mother’s Redbook, and the naked African woman in the well-thumbed copy of Born Free in my elementary school library.

Now, a kid clicking on a link in a spam e-mail can stumble upon material that my bosses on the Block were legally forbidden to show. (If you’re familiar with the infamous viral video clip involving two women and a plastic cup, you know of what foulness I speak.) The “think of the children!” moralizers, with their warnings of apocryphal middle-school orgies and “rainbow parties,” have been guilty of hyperbole, but there’s no denying that my Playboy in the woods now seems as quaint and nostalgic as an episode of Leave It to Beaver. Adolescents today are often more porn-savvy than their parents. The hardcore stuff, once confined to a few downtown blocks, has escaped; we all—most of us, anyway—smell like porn.

I can’t help but wonder what this unprecedented eruption of dirty imagery is doing to us.

Pornography has never lacked for critics. Back in the 1980s, second-wave feminists such as Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon argued that pornography served as an extension of rape and promoted violence against women. On the other side of the ideological spectrum, religious conservatives fulminated that porn incited lust and led the unwary into pedophilia. The scientific data is a mixed bag, but even advocates have a difficult time dismissing the downsides: relationships destroyed by compulsive cybersex, children exposed to age-inappropriate material, endemic abuse of women by an unscrupulous industry. Those who fret about economic productivity can marvel at the amazing statistics that online pornography generates: According to one cybersex researcher, 70 percent of the Web’s massive adult site traffic occurs during the 9-to-5 workday. That’s a lot of people peeking at naughty pictures at work.

But other damage may be more subtle, a reflection of how the tropes and culture of pornography have invaded the non-porn universe. A friend of mine, a professor at a Maryland university, told me how a student confided to him that he couldn’t ejaculate inside his girlfriend because all of the porn movies he’d watched ended with the men ejaculating on the women.

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Paradoxically, living in a sex-drenched pornotopia may well be making us less sexy. Few mortal men can keep up with the onscreen (and carefully edited) mega-stamina of priapic porn stars hopped up on Viagra, and both sexes can feel inadequate when a partner desires an obscure, embarrassing, or impossibly acrobatic act, or can’t get aroused without a behavior or kink acquired from online grazing. With the emphasis on an unrealistic performance ideal, sex can begin to feel less like pleasurable human interplay and more like taking a driving test.

Are there social benefits to pornography? Clearly, porn-educated adults have an advantage when it comes to the cornucopia of human sexual experiences. While virginal wedding-night fumbling might have a certain nostalgic appeal, the possession of basic sexual literacy is now a given—thanks, in part, to easily accessible adult material. Additionally, the Web has democratized porn itself, at least compared with my days toiling in the basement of the industry; a contingent of sex-positive feminists, including many women sex workers and adult film stars, has turned “feminist porn” from an oxymoron into a lucrative and perhaps empowering genre.

Some new research even suggests that viewing sexually explicit material is medically beneficial. Newsweek recently reported that viewing porn can boost flagging testosterone levels in men. Rutgers University anthropologist Helen Fisher suggested that regular exposure to erotic imagery could serve as the equivalent of testosteronereplacement therapy.

Although the delivery mechanisms are new, pornography is ancient. Scientists recently unearthed the oldest known artistic representation of a human, the Venus of Hohle Fels—a 35,000-yearold sculpture carved from a mammoth tusk. The figure depicts a woman with enormous breasts and an exaggerated vulva—the Neolithic equivalent of a Penthouse spread, according to some scholars. It’s not that much of a stretch to imagine the zaftig Venus getting passed around at a Stone Age bachelor party, like my friend’s iPhone. “If there’s one conclusion you want to draw from this,” anthropologist Paul Mellars commented in Nature, “it’s that an obsession with sex goes back at least 35,000 years.”

So perhaps we should stop thinking of porn as either good or bad, but understand it as complex and morally ambiguous, transcendent and ugly. In other words, it’s just like us. ■ —Michael M. Hughes lives in Baltimore with his wife and two daughters. His writing and photography can be found on his (non-pornographic) website http://michaelmhughes.com.

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“I like the feeling of an unknown drama,” says Katie Miller, an artist currently living and studying in Baltimore. Certainly Miller’s three portraits, all of the same newborn, challenge us to establish the drama behind them, for there is no implied narrative. If we are to make sense of them, we must do so from our own observations, our own experiences and imagination.

Awkward, perhaps disturbing to look at, the subject of these exquisitely rendered paintings seems to mirror our own often perplexed attitude toward life itself. What thoughts does he have? Does he yet have thoughts? As the artist states, “There is an otherworldly quality to the neonate, as if he is not yet one of us.”

—Alex Castro

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katie miller Baby Triptych 2009 oil on linen on panel 35 11/16 x 53 inches http://artistkatiemiller.com/

Baltimore Green Works thanks you for your support!

At Baltimore Green Works, we strive to embrace Maryland’s diverse communities by offering programming that promotes sustainable ways of living. Every spring for the last six years, we’ve brought you the Ecofest and Baltimore Green Week. In 2008, Baltimore Green Week changed its name to Baltimore Green Works and began to offer more free and low-cost year round programming. So far, we’ve added the Ecoball and the Sustainable Speaker Series. New York Times best-selling author Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food, the Enoch Pratt Free Library, and 978 of our friends helped kick off the series!

We’d like to thank YOU, our sponsors, and the great local businesses who support us!

Ecoball: Living Classrooms Foundation, Tilt Studio, McCormick Spice Company, Local Color Flowers, Guttierrez Studio’s, Charm City Cakes, Padma Salon, Waste Neutral Group, High Mountain Signs, Roland Park Country School, Mambo Combo, and Baltimore International College Baltimore Green Week: MTA, Benchmark Asset Managers, Leading Technology Solutions, Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, Baltimore International College, Goucher College, Morgan State University, CBS Radio, Baltimore Community Foundation, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Constellation Energy, Waste Neutral Group, Neighborhood Design Center, Towson Arts Collective, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Tree Baltimore, Wholeness for Humanity, Green for All, The Waldorf School, Episcopalian Diocese of Baltimore, Green Faith, and Urbanite Magazine

Sustainable Speaker Series: Enoch Pratt Free Library, Living Classrooms Foundation, Waste Neutral Group, The Ivy Bookstore, Adrian Harrison Calligraphy, and Lorenz Inc. These makers of fabulous local food have graciously supported our events: Abercrombie, Brewer’s Art, Bon Appetit, Bluebird Artisinal Coffee Roasters, Chameleon Cafe, Chipotle, Feast @ 4 East, Firefly Farms, Gertrude’s, Golden West, Great Sage, Joe Squared, Planet Produce, Tapas Teatro, Two Oceans, True Foods, Trickling Springs Creamery, Roseda Beef, 360 Organic Vodka, Natura Organic Wines, Gracie’s Gotchya Ginger, Red Bamboo Restaurant, Slow Food Baltimore, Donna’s Cafe of Mount Vernon, Maggitti’s, and The Wine Source BGW has received generous support from: Annie E. Casey Foundation, Leading Technology Solutions, Lorenz Incorporated, MTA, Tilt Studio, Josephine Bergin Design, and our benevolent volunteers.

BGW Sustainable Speaker Series and Great Kids Farm presents Will Allen, Friday, July 17th at 7 p.m.

Save the Date! Monday, July 27th 5:30-8pm GROWSHOPS, capacity building for community organizations. Free, RSVP required. For more information, go to www.baltimoregreenworks.com/events www.baltimoregreenworks.com

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