Daily Record's On the Record: Let The Senator Fail Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Joe Bacchus of On the Record, December 19, 2008:

I understand people have memories attached to the place, but all their praise and all their memories haven’t translated into the dollars needed to keep the theater running these past few years. So now it needs yet another bailout. Seems there’s a lot of that going around in this economy.

The market doesn’t want the Senator. It doesn’t care how many single-screen theaters are left in the U.S. It only cares about businesses that can sustain themselves — not those that can only tug on heartstrings every couple of years in order to eke out a little more time on the ventilator.

Even non-profit organizations participate in "the free market," engage in marketing, cope with competition and market realities, etc. The dichotomy between "free market" and "non-profit cultural institution" is a false one.

But I think that Bacchus has a good point generally. A great deal of Baltimore's local cultural and historical heritage is observed in the breach and in the past/present perfect tense. Baltimoreans (and though I live in DC now I don't exclude myself from the label) are among the most parochial people on the planet at times, but not in ways that provide the sorts of support to local institutions and points of heritage.

Everybody remembers the Senator Theater, right? But the annoying multiplexes fill up. Why? Because we have no streetcars any more to take people to the Senator from downtown. Why? Because we ripped them up and replaced them with lower-grade buses that we can barely keep safe. Plus, without the streetcars, without the urban and near-suburban industrial and commercial base, most Baltimoreans live outside the Beltway now. Folks in Columbia or in Hunt Valley aren't driving to Govans to questionable parking and the risk of getting attacked or their car vandalized.

Washington, DC is not a particularly safe city by any stretch; there have been a lot of stabbings and shootings here of late. But the idea that the city is just doomed and is giving up, the sense of "Teh Fail" from so many things in Baltimore from transit to crime to open-air dope dealing rendering almost entire ZIP codes into combat zones, just doesn't dominate DC, even the nastier parts of the city. Even in beleaguered Anacostia, one sees signs of hope, discussions of new development, etc.

Unfortunately, Baltimore cannot just say "we fouled up" and get a federal bailout because, unfortunately, Baltimore is neither Wall Street nor Detroit's feudal industrial base (whose workers are often from Detroit and maybe Dearborn and the executives are from Grosse Pointe, never Detroit.) To quote Kurt Vonnegut, so it goes.

Baltimore Elections 2007: No Endorsement from Crab Media Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

No candidate has impressed me with his or her ability to lead, administer, budget, cheerlead, "fight crime", "get good-paying jobs," "support our families," etc. I want to vomit upon hearing these words from any candidate for City office, especially Mayor. I spew them out of my mouth and indeed out of all orifices.

My only regret is that I cannot vote for Mayor next week, in part because I am not a City resident and in part because I do not belong to the de facto single party of the City. My only wish is that everyone currently in elected City government - female or male, young or old, black or white, gay or straight, Democrat or Democrat - could be, somehow, caught in an embarrassing sexual act or solicitation inside a toilet, so all could depart in disgrace, yielding every office open for other City residents less obviously and immediately connected with machine politics, payoffs, financial misconduct and a sickening sense of inherited or other entitlement. Every last one of them. Consider this an explicit anti-endorsement of all incumbents - including Keiffer Mitchell whom I once met and found pleasant and engaging, and Stephanie Rawlings-Blake whom I recall as a solid and serious law student in the early 1990s - but an endorsement of no one.

There are days when I wish that elected office were a draft by lottery rather an than election, adults randomly chosen from the voter rolls. Corruption would set in fast but the first 8-10 weeks of relative sunshine before the corruption ossified might yield a few good results.

No endorsement. May every office sit empty and may this term serve as a metaphorical extended Sabbath year.

Baltimore Sun: William "Wild Bill" Hagy, Orioles' Fan Beyond Compare, Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, August 20, 2007:

William "Wild Bill" Hagy started out as just another Orioles fan from Dundalk who loved his Budweiser in Section 34 of the upper deck at Memorial Stadium.

But with his sloping gut, fluffy beard and straw hat, he cut a striking visual. And eventually his O-R-I-O-L-E-S cheers, replete with dramatic contortions of his out-of-shape body, became the emotional fulcrum as crowds at Memorial urged the baseball team to improbable comebacks in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

...

Mr. Hagy became such a fixture that he was allowed to climb atop the Orioles' dugout to rally the crowd with his act. He was so popular that all he had to do was stand in his section to get the crowd roaring. For a generation of Orioles lovers, he was the quintessential fan.

I remember the summer of 1979 well. We lived in densely residential Reisterstown; while I was not the baseball card fanatic in the house the team was the biggest news of the day. The Orioles were playing incredible baseball, with four legitimate candidates for the Cy Young award in rotation: Steve Stone, Scott McGregor, Mike Flanagan and the famed Jim Palmer, with Bozo-the-Clown-coiffed Don Stanhouse bringing up frequent lunatic antics along with great relief pitching. Brooks Robinson was no longer playing but was a beloved sportscaster along with "Ain't the Beer Cold" Chuck Thompson. They played in Memorial Stadium located at 34th Street, a deeply residential neighborhood maybe 2 miles from downtown, reflecting the old-time Baltimore community loyalty to the team, before the era of the personal seat license in football and the corporate luxury box. Other personalities - down home Rick Dempsey, the furious umpire-torturer Earl Weaver, the cool and distant batter Eddie Murray and easy-going Ken Singleton. Cal Ripken Jr. came later but Cal Sr. was a line coach, I forget whether he was 3rd or 1st base line.

I recall freezing through a Webelos camp day during game 5 of the World Series that year, a game we won through offensive heroics of pitcher Tim Stoddard - an unusual event even in the National League but nearly incredible for a pitcher who had not gone to bat in "prime time" in years. We lost that series to the Pirates in Game 7.

Up high in the cheap seats, Wild Bill would get the crowds going crazy. He looked like he should have been an alumnus of Hell's Angels rather than a working cab driver. But everybody loved him; he was arguably as important to the team's success at home and with the fans generally as were the great play and the actual players themselves.

R.I.P.

Sun: Carjacker, Bank Robber to Serve 70 Months Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, August 17, 2007:

A 47-year-old man was sentenced today to nearly six years in prison for robbing four banks in two weeks in Baltimore City and Baltimore County and committing an armed carjacking, the Maryland U.S. Attorney's office said.

Anthony Mabray of Baltimore pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to walking into the banks, implying he had a gun and escaping with thousands of dollars, prosecutors said. The robberies and the carjacking occurred between Jan. 13 and Jan. 27.

According to authorities, Mabray robbed the Sun Trust Bank on Baltimore National Pike in Catonsville of $1,458; the Chevy Chase Bank on Edmondson Avenue in West Baltimore of $1,959 and again of $953; and the M&T Bank on South Greene Street in the city of $3,307.

This moron probably saw Pulp Fiction and thought that it was about as easy to rob a federally insured bank as to rob a restaurant. Thugtastic.

Sun: Slots Not the Way to Save Horse Racing Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun Editorial, August 16, 2007:

The horse-racing business in Maryland is worth trying to save, for three main reasons. It employs about 9,000 people; the Preakness is a great national showcase for Baltimore; and, maybe most important, the horse farms in the state supported directly or indirectly by racing occupy 685,000 acres of land as open space, about a tenth of all the open space in Maryland.

But slot machines are not the way to save the horses.

On Tuesday, the administration of Gov. Martin O'Malley began distributing a report by Thomas E. Perez, the secretary of labor, licensing and regulation, that examines the impact of slots on neighboring states and on their racetracks, and finds it to be significant. But there are all sorts of apples and oranges in this debate (we're tempted to say road apples and oranges) - and perhaps a fig leaf or two, as well.

Crab's commentary below the fold...

I am neutral about slots. Part of the problem with government spending is that when times are good, government tends to get creative and the pork spreads all around. Then times get lean, and pork's constituents stand up to be fed anyway. Political economy suggests that demand will roar in to meet the excess supply of money into Annapolis, that the money will be wasted rather than used but wasted more painfully in hard times, once its constituency is well ensconced. The very thing that makes slots useful makes them a little addictive - for Annapolis, not the gamblers.

But more obnoxious than the sound of 10,000 bleeping, ringing slot machines echoing through a neon-and-puke-juice-colored-plastic-bunting-trimmed whorehouse of clinking greed is the "neighing" from Maryland's wealthy horse industry come-a-begging for yet more financial support, more hand-holding. The Sun has it backwards. These welfare "queens" ride in $85,000 BMWs, not the #20 bus from public housing in West Baltimore. The idea that the horsey set need yet more state coddling while Baltimore sits in ruins amazes and stuns me. I mean, I understand that it's expensive to send "Trip" to Gilman, but really. While I don't favor putting the tax screw on the Valleys for the non-crime of being rich, they don't need Annapolis' teat either.

Yesterday I took the light rail from Hunt Valley adjacent to much of Baltimore's horse country into downtown Baltimore to visit my old law school and the law library. The light rail train creaked, grinded loudly, as if MTA had not bought lubrication since trolleys and long-distance passenger trains last ran along about the same right-of-way over 40 years ago. The right-of-way was ugly with uncut grass and weeds almost sneaking up between the railroad ties. And of course the train's schedule and actual arrival times even before downtown's infamously slow shared right-of-way and stop-light ridden path compares not that well to a well-handled bicycle until the train hits Lutherville and runs more or less express. Then it finally hits downtown, and slows to a crawl. General rule: if you are under 40, have two legs and cannot outrace a light rail train going south through downtown Baltimore, you need to get to the gym. Howard Street looked like pictures I have seen of the "urban-unrenewed" side of Tijuana, replete with buildings fit for tribes of rats and of roaches.

But it's what's north and northwest of Hunt Valley's light rail station, the lots of 10, 20 and 40 acres or more replete with horses and lawn jockeys that so desperately needs the permanent attention of Annapolis, not the underdeveloped urban and suburban infrastructure. I know that infrastructure is not sexy but reasonable people invest in maintenance anyway, despite its near-fatal unsexyness.

Some people of good will and fair mind have accused me of bringing out my libertarian "claws" from time to time. My only problem with that claim is that they are not claws, they are damn sight seven inch fangs. Government should have enough money to build and maintain its infrastructure but not enough to create a new class of welfare queens with riding crops. If that's libertarian, then I am betting "all in."

Sun: Arabbers Stabled at Pimlico Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, August 15, 2007:

Baltimore's Arabbers welcomed the return of 51 horses and ponies to the city today and were on hand to greet the animals at Pimlico Race Course where a temporary stable has been set up.

...

Though city officials had vowed to help the Arabbers find a way to maintain their tradition, some last week questioned the city officials' promises and warned that the practice of horse-drawn produce wagons, which dates back to the 19th century, could be on the verge of being wiped out.

For the record, the word is pronounced /'e: 'r(ae)b r/ or "AAY-Rab-er".

Sun: Keiffer Mitchell is the "White Candidate In This Race" Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, August 13, 2007:

According to the results of an opinion poll conducted last month for The Sun, white voters make up the bulk of [City Mayoral candidate Keiffer] Mitchell's support. But he still trails Dixon among white voters, though the gap is narrow and within the poll's margin of error. Mayor Sheila Dixon leads in every category, especially among black and female voters, according to the survey.

...


"Sheila has a lot of strong black support," said 2nd District City Councilman Nicholas C. D'Adamo Jr., who has been knocking on doors for a couple of weeks in his re-election effort.

"Mitchell has a lot of white support," D'Adamo said. "I'm seeing it. I'm hearing it. That black vote and female vote is definitely going with Sheila. There's a lot of white support for Mitchell in my district. Here's the thing: Is the white vote enough to put you over?"

...

"To the extent that there is a white candidate in this race, he's it," said Matthew A. Crenson, a political scientist at the Johns Hopkins University. "White voters are more likely to vote for Keiffer Mitchell than black voters are because he seems more receptive to the white communities."

From website of
Friends of Keiffer
Mitchell, Jr.

If I wanted to inflict ruin upon Keiffer Mitchell (which I don't, am benignly neutral from my perch in suburban Reisterstown), make him hemorrhage, I would run an article in my paper calling him the "white candidate in this race." As the Sun article went on to note, race and racial politics influence substantially all aspects of politics in the City of Baltimore. In one particularly infamous example in 2002, bad blood developed between the Jewish and Black communities in the 41st District between Senate candidate (now Senator) Lisa Gladden and incumbent Senator Barbara Hoffman when, amidst a post-redistricting contested primary, Gladden's political godfather Howard "Pete" Rawlings asserted that voters want candidates who "look like them, smell like them and think like them."

White voters do vote disproportionately in Baltimore for a variety of reasons, as elsewhere, but the city is 2-1 Black, the city's Democratic registered voters in about the same proportion (Republicans competing with the Libertarians and Greens for second place there.) D'Adamo's East Baltimore district is more ethnically diverse than most of Baltimore. Mitchell represents Bolton Hill and downtown, among the "Whiter" districts in the City.

The very Irish, "very White" Martin O'Malley did win and win big, but O'Malley's Irish rock-band personality gave him additional strength and he was elected while sitting as a City Councilman from one of 6 districts rather than one of 14. Sheila Dixon has been City Council President and then Mayor after O'Malley's election. O'Malley also had two significant but relatively weak Black opponents in his first Mayor run, and commentators mused after O'Malley's first win whether a single Black candidate would have conserved resources and galvanized Black support early. Mitchell is in a very different scenario and a different city politically.

Mitchell takes notice in his advertisements that his family, particularly his grandparents, were major civil rights leaders in Baltimore. I think that that, politically, gets you the interview but not the job. I suspect that the people supporting Dixon, particularly black women, will have a more compelling intuitive reasons or motivations to vote for Dixon than Mitchell's supporters will to vote for Mitchell. She is the incumbent, has not yet had a full term in which to serve and has not obviously messed up her new office at City Hall. She would be the first elected black woman mayor of Baltimore and the only or nearly the only black woman mayor of a major U.S. city (if we fudge a little and call Baltimore "major.") I have no dog in the fight but if I had to bet cash, I would bet the mortgage money on Dixon winning without hesitation.

Sun: Teenagers Batter Patterson Park Resident Into Coma Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, August 4, 2007:

It was her one free weekend amid a hectic schedule juggling work and graduate school, and Anna Sowers spent it shopping for purses and jewelry with friends in downtown Chicago. But she couldn't reach her husband back in Baltimore, who had been out with friends in Canton the night before.

...

Anna had no way of knowing her new husband had been beaten into a coma just steps away from their rowhouse near Patterson Park. Police say the young men accused of the beating live nearby and stole his Timex watch and used his credit card to rent two action movies.

...

Sowers was attacked on a Friday night, June 1, when two men walked up to him and asked for a cigarette, some of the suspects told detectives. Then, police said, they beat him. An unidentified witness told police he saw one stomp on Sowers' head. The pair ran to a car, where two others waited, and the car sped away, police said.

Obviously one's heart goes out to the victim, his wife and family.

For a watch and some Blockbuster videos, this man was nearly killed, and is not yet out of the woods. Mortality rates of coma-survivors are high from a multitude of maladies, including but not limited to the damage that induced the coma in the first place.

I once represented a 15 year-old who was found "involved" (juvenile-speak equivalent of "guilty" in MD) in the gunpoint robbery of a Domino's pizza-deliverer. Three teenagers were found to have called Domino's, ordered a pizza and then stuck a gun in the face the deliverer, robbing him of, I think, $30.00. What struck me in open court was the complete indifference of my client. He did not care whether he went to Cheltenham's Juvenile Facility or not. His single mother's affect and demeanor were bizarre as well; she seemed resigned to his going to Cheltenham, and may well have been in a pattern of child neglect for years with him. A few days after my client was placed at Cheltenham, I drove over to debrief him and gave him a copy of Ken Hamblin's "Pick a Better Country." I have no idea whether Cheltenham was boring enough that he might have been tempted to read a few pages out of sheer tedium. I was hoping that his low threshhold for boredom - what led him and his friends to execute this stick-up - might lead him to think about things differently somehow. Liberal optimist to the end, one must say.

Why did the assailant or assailants do this? Because they could not think of anything else that they both 1) could do, and 2) wanted to do more than beat this man nearly to death for his wallet and watch. It's as simple as that.

Patterson Park is border country between some of the severest, nastiest neighborhoods of East Baltimore to the north, Fell's Point's lively drinking zone to the West and Canton's gentry to the east and southeast. When I had a law office on Eastern Avenue near Patterson Park pretty much right out of law school in the mid-1990s, a hooker worked the evening shift in front of my front door. I remember thinking it odd that both of our professions required street knowledge, geographical positioning and courthouse management. At one time, Patterson Park was a largely Ukrainian, Czech and Polish neighborhood; a Ukrainian Byzantine Rite church continues to hold services there. It's now a neighborhood of gamblers - happy, wealthy gamblers who rehab houses under the gambler's hope that Fell's Point and Canton are expanding trends in Baltimore, not barbed-wire islands of middle-class sanity; drug dealers who are the quintessential gamblers; and young thugs who feel they have nothing to lose, so why not gamble?

When representing another client, a 17 year-old accused of dealing heroin on the street, I recall him bringing me his fee for services to be rendered. The first fact that struck me was that he brought $600.00 (reduced fee) in a bill pile consisting mostly of very raggedy one and five dollar bills. The second fact that I recall was that it was amazingly difficult for him to imagine visiting Pikesville. Pikesville abuts Baltimore City to the immediate northwest and is relatively easy to reach by public transit. I practiced technically outside the Beltway but only by about 200 feet or so. He lived in northwest Baltimore between Pikesville and downtown, pretty much on the bus line that he would need to take, maybe 4-5 miles southeast of my front door. But for my client, it's was like I asked him to meet me in Bangkok or Minsk. His world was so small that going out to Pikesville - a relatively prosperous, stable suburb with a very active community life - disturbed and confused him.

Major factors in ghetto sociopathology are sheer tedium and smallness of vision. No ghetto walls keep people in the ghetto today; while housing discrimination is a reality, sundown towns no longer exist and meaningful if imperfect legal remedies exist against housing discrimination. While people made fun of the "Midnight Basketball" programs sponsored by police agencies, it seems that for kids to get to know police better and vice versa is a good idea and anything done to fight raw tedium has to be an improvement.

On a podcast some weeks ago, I learned about an environmental cleanup and supervision program started in Southeast DC by a DC resident with a troubled past, may have been drug dealing, I forget. The program sought out volunteers and paid workers who lived in the affected communities, and the group did things like E.coli testing of the infamously polluted Anacostia River and the creeks that fed it. Some of the best volunteers in this project got killed in meaningless shootings or busted for violence or other problems, but some took on the project as a career step towards getting jobs with EPA or the Department of the Interior. My impression is that smart, interesting things like this project happen in DC and not in militantly and defiantly hopeless Baltimore.

Baltimore Sun: Analysis of Mayor Dixon's Firing of Police Chief Hamm Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, July 20, 2007:

While the political consequences of firing a police commissioner two months before an election remain unclear, several experts predicted yesterday that the potentially risky decision may ultimately pay off for Mayor Sheila Dixon's campaign.

...

Dixon's decision to replace Hamm came after her opponents in the Democratic primary race - including City Councilman Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr. and Del. Jill P. Carter - spent weeks demanding change in the Police Department's leadership and trumpeting their own proposals for how to deal with violence in the city.

...

There have been 178 homicides in Baltimore this year, up from 149 at the same point last year, police said.

A few points.

The crappiest jobs in Baltimore are coroner, Police Commissioner and State's Attorney. Mayor is crappy too but at least it carries prestige and some power and patronage. The first three get the body count dumped on their table, physically and literally in the first case and metaphysically in the latter two cases. Baltimore is on track to have over 300 homicides this year, a number that it had avoided for about a decade.

I think that to want any of the first three jobs, you have to be either more or less the biggest egomaniac on the planet, a moron or a crook. Mind you, you don't have to be them to do the job, just to want the job.

Baltimore has had miserable luck with its police commissioners. Remember Kevin Clark, who sued the City on his departure and who embarrassed the city with a domestic violence charge against him (the factual foundation of which remains unclear)? Remember Ed Norris, who went to federal prison for corruption and lying on his tax returns, and now works talk radio? The job is undoable; the position exists because it needs to exist politically, in part as the "person to blame." Q.E.D.

Baltimore Sun: Church Damaged in Fire Splurged on Bentley Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, July 18, 2007:

The First Mount Olive Free Will Baptist Church bought a luxurious custom Bentley in 2005, the same year the inner-city church failed to pay a $12,000 water bill that has led to the filing of a foreclosure suit, motor vehicle records show.

...

In addition to facing multiple foreclosure suits over the still-unpaid 2005 water bill of $12,342 and other municipal bills, First Mount Olive was notified just days before the fire that the property it acquired in 2002 would be auctioned at the end of this month. The church is accused of defaulting on its $1.5 million mortgage, held by SunTrust Bank, records show.

...

Matthew Smith, a car salesman at EuroMotorcars in Bethesda said a Bentley Arnage, which takes as long as three months to construct by hand, costs at least $225,000 new. He estimated that the car the church bought was worth between $130,000 and $150,000, assuming it was in good condition. Today, it is worth about $120,000, he said.

I knew I went into the wrong line of work.

Baltimore Sun: Spot The Fallacies in This Article About Crime Polling in Baltimore City Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

I won't summarize it here but analyze this article's claims about both crime and the perception or apprehension of crime in Baltimore City. See if you can spot the mischaracterizations, logical fallacies and math errors that the article either explicitly committed or seems to have committed.

Baltimore Sun: Historic West Baltimore Church Burns, Totalled Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, July 11, 2007:

As smoke billowed from the burning remains of their 140-year-old West Baltimore church, dozens of parishioners huddled around their bishop, crying, singing - and vowing that lightning would not strike down their congregation as it had their place of worship.

Click Here or at Permalink to Read More...

About two hours earlier, a bolt of lightning hit the church steeple, igniting a five-alarm fire that rendered the structure a total loss, fire officials said. As Brown spoke late yesterday afternoon, firefighters continued to deluge the smoldering Formstone-clad building with water from aerial ladders.

...

Fire Chief William J. Goodwin said firefighters took special care to save the church's stained-glass windows. "We were successful in that," he said. "So when the community rebuilds they can take pieces of themselves back."

The church structure probably cannot be saved. "Due to roof construction and how these older buildings are put together, it's almost impossible," he said.

If you want to understand this church more fully, look at the geography. First this close-up shot from Google Maps, then this one from a higher altitude. Helps if you do it in "hybrid" format.

Two major road developments affected the community around this church: The Great White Way and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard.

In the 1800s, Congress authorized the National Road, later the National Pike aka U.S. Route 40, to extend from Baltimore west to St. Louis. The original interstate plans after WWII called for I-70 to go from the Rocky Mountains into downtown Baltimore. Community opposition stopped I-70 proper from entering the City from the west, but not before an unconnected 1.25-odd mile stretch of highway was built in a deep trench east-west through West Baltimore along a widened (read: bulldozed and demolished at great pain to local communities) right of way of old Route 40, i.e. Franklin and Mulberry Streets. For a time, that stretch was known as I-170, but did not connect to any other interstate. That stretch is known by many abusive names such as the "Great White Way" (referring to the color of the Los Angeles-esque white walls and the race of many its early suburban and "outer city" residents before demographics changed) and, more accurately, the "Road to Nowhere." It stands as a monument to the folly of the human race, though current plans for the east-west Red Line light rail may take advantage of its space. As you can probably see, the Road to Nowhere is one block north of this church's location on Saratoga.

Fremont Avenue was once a relatively important artery in West Baltimore, connecting to the Black community's cultural venues on Pennsylvania Avenue and running sort of circumferentially around down the far edge of "downtown" while never entering it. Thurgood Marshall grew up near Fremont; it once had a relatively well-off black community under Jim Crow. It is at about a 20 degree angle west of due north, if the map is hard to read. Harbor City Boulevard, now Martin Luther King Jr., Boulevard (hereinafter "MLK"), increased mobility around the perimeter of downtown, replacing Fremont's southern end and widening the avenue to a divided boulevard artery. North of MLK Blvd., however, Fremont was cut off from MLK, in part by the Road to Nowhere and in part by the need to make MLK a fast boulevard.

What once was an important artery to the edge downtown got reduced to a very local, almost deadend street, recalled by few people today except a few old-timers and of course people who actually live in the neighborhood. Hard-core Homicide: Life on the Streets fanatics may recall an episode with Beau Felton and Frank Pembleton in which Felton referred to the lower part of MLK Boulevard as "Fremont." By the time the show was filmed, no one would have thought to associate even "Harbor City Boulevard", let alone "Fremont", with MLK Boulevard that way. Pembleton called Felton out as a racist for that usage, and he would have had a point had such a conversation been real; it would not have been an "old habit" for Felton, who was fairly cast fairly young in the show.

Along MLK once stood towers of crime and disorder. The Murphy Homes were not "homes" but a set of infamous high-rise, very troubled public housing projects near MLK; other similar towers with other names stood nearby. The City prudently demolished them a number of years ago and replaced them with alternative housing including more traditional Baltimore-style rowhouses.

The congregation bought their church in 1974; the church had served German Lutherans 100 years before. The church building survived the Great War, the Great Depression, World War II, the 1968 riots that struck some of West Baltimore, the Road to Nowhere, the chopping of Fremont Avenue and the unwelcome close company of the crime and drugs not only of some of the most troubled public housing towers east of Chicago's Cabrini Green but of other plagued communities nearby. It survived the increased suburbanization of Baltimore's Black community, with many former church members moving west to greater prosperity in Woodlawn, Gwynn Oak, Windsor Mill and Randallstown and no doubt finding houses of worship nearer to their new homes in many cases. But it could not survive a lightning storm on a hot, muggy day in West Baltimore.

R.I.P. to a piece of Baltimore history.

Baltimore Sun: 2007 Mayoral Candidates File to Meet Deadline Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, July 3, 2007:

... amid the last-minute political wrangling, Del. Jill P. Carter, the fiery Northwest Baltimore lawmaker and daughter of civil rights leader Walter P. Carter, formally announced her candidacy for mayor - vowing to focus much of her attention on the city's climbing homicide count and failing schools.

Click Here or at Permalink to Read More...

Carter, in her second term in the General Assembly, has become one of the most vocal critics of Gov. Martin O'Malley. During her announcement yesterday, she repeatedly blamed the city's ills on what she called the failed leadership of the past. She is running to unseat the current mayor, Sheila Dixon.

In addition to [current Mayor Sheila] Dixon and Carter, other mayoral candidates who filed by last night included: Phillip A. Brown Jr., schools administrator Andrey Bundley, Baltimore Circuit Court Clerk Frank M. Conaway, socialist A. Robert Kaufman, City Councilman Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr. and real estate and equity firm manager Mike Schaefer.

The only new mayoral candidate to appear last night was a Republican, Elbert R. Henderson, who did not return a phone call seeking comment. He lost in the 2004 mayoral general election to then-Mayor O'Malley.

I am impressed that Robert Kaufman has the will to run in light of his publicized health challenges. The article also discusses other City races in this election cycle.

Maryland Conservatarian on Diversity and Cultural Integration Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

In general, I am substantially more pro-immigration and pro-multiculturalism than is fellow Maryland Blogger Alliance member Maryland Conservatarian. But he argues well for his perspective on his recent piece citing noted sociologist Robert Putnam on issues of cultural integration of immigrants and others.

I think his piece is at its strongest when he notes that among the U.S. institutions that have integrated racially most successfully are the military and Southern evangelical churches. The latter is particularly noteworthy in that the Southern Baptist Convention was formed as a white church for resistance against northern white abolitionist Baptists, and remained a substantially all-white denomination for over a century. But my wife reports that her SBC church in Reisterstown is probably about 15-20% African-American, reflecting crudely the rough demographics of Reisterstown and the surrounding zip codes. This is not to say that the Southern Baptist Convention as a whole or at the church level identifies specifically as evangelical or that even most evangelicals in the South are Southern Baptist, though that denomination is very strongly represented there.

Meanwhile, while the current President of the very liberal Unitarian Universalist Association is African-American, the overwhelming bulk of the various UUA churches' membership is liberal, educated Euro-Americans. There are no UUA churches in West Baltimore, or East Baltimore. But there are two very large, prominent UUA churches in Bethesda, each about 2.5-3 times as large as the sole UUA church within Baltimore City's limits. Bethesda has about 15% of the population of Baltimore, maybe 25% if you count the small towns immediately adjacent. But Bethesda's chock full of white liberals who live mostly near other white liberals and join mostly other white liberals at about 11:00 on Sunday morning, the most segregated hour of the week, they say. My inclination is not to pick on the UUA (to which I am largely sympathetic), but facts are facts.

Empowerment Temple's Website Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

A few weeks ago, I put up a post about the Reverend Jamal-Harrison Bryant and Baltimore's Empowerment Temple. Per SiteMeter, that post has generated a rather large amount of traffic to Crablaw; interest in the pastor and in the Temple appear to remain strong.

Curiosity got the better of me when I examined another site discussing the Temple. Someone commented that she had never seen a church website like that of the Empowerment Temple. I am not a follower specifically of church website design, but I had to go look. I concur with the comment; it is a church website sui generis.

Baltimore Sun: Calls for Police Chief Hamm's Termination Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, June 22, 2007:

City Councilman and mayoral candidate Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr. called yesterday for the resignation of Police Commissioner Leonard D. Hamm, stepping up the political battle over what has become the defining theme in this year's city elections.

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"I really don't see a sense of urgency coming from the Police Department, and it starts at the top," Mitchell said. "I think it stems from a lack of direction, period. There needs to be a clear direction in terms of trying to avert what's happening out there during this crisis."

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Mayor Sheila Dixon, who is running for re-election, denounced Mitchell's statement as a "very cheap political shot," indicating that she is evaluating Hamm, among others.

"I think one of the things that people miss is the fact this period is interim, and I'm assessing all of my department heads," said Dixon, who was appointed mayor in January after Martin O'Malley's election as governor. "Am I happy? I have concerns with every department. But right now, at this moment, the commissioner, his command staff, police officers, all of us have to step up and work to make a difference in this city."

The article goes on to quote other candidates for city-wide office. Disclosure: I am acquainted warmly through professional work with Keiffer Mitchell's (I believe) sister and acquainted more generally from law school with City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

I don't have a basis by which to measure Chief Hamm's performance. He has almost certainly the most miserable job in the City after the City Medical Examiner (i.e. coroner.) The job seems cursed; seemingly no one can get the job, keep the job and perform the job ethically and successfully. A revolving door at the top promotes a culture of cynicism and despair about Baltimore ever being able to reduce crime down to, say, Philadelphia levels, i.e. high but not debilitating. How much of the blame for increased City violence belongs with Hamm versus State's Attorney Patricia Jessamy (a long-time target of former mayor O'Malley's wrath) or upon the City Council itself is beyond me.

I respect the idea of Councilman Mitchell setting up his "office" regularly on the corners where drug-dealing takes place. I think this is excellent both to get the Councilman more real information than he would get through his interns staffing the phone line downtown and because government should serve the entire community, including specifically drug-dealing corners. Of course, I would prefer that drug distribution be legalized, heavily regulated and through legalization taken off of the sidewalks and indoors. Drug dealers don't deal on the street because they like Baltimore's climate; they do it because they need to be both accessible to floating customers but not arrestible by the police. Dealing in a building makes you inaccessible to customers and an easier bust for the cops. There is no easy path to legalization but the drugs ruthlessly and violently chase the smuggler's profit margin. The only other remedy is to kill demand either by treating successfully 80-90% of the 50-60,000 drug addicts in the City (horribly expensive and practically beyond impossible, given relapse rates and huge other impossibilities). Hoping that the 280-300+ murder victims a year are all or mostly drug addicts and dealers, even if true, just won't cut it.

The incompatibility between basic economics and basic anti-drug politics is the core reason why coroner, Police Chief and State's Attorney will continue to be the most miserable jobs in Baltimore City.

Baltimore Sun:City Pledges $$ For Charles Street Trolley Study Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, June 20, 2007:

The Board of Estimates approved $200,000 Wednesday -- the initial portion of up to $800,000 the city has promised -- to help pay for a study that will determine whether a trolley is logistically possible.

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The engineering study will examine how the trolley might interfere with utility lines and if the train could make it up the hills of Mount Vernon.

The [Charles Street Development Corp.] sees the 7.5-mile line heading northbound on Charles Street and southbound along St. Paul Street north of Mount Royal Avenue and Cathedral Street below.

Calling this proposed line a "7.5-mile" line is somewhat misleading. It's like saying that the Baltimore Metro is a 30-mile line because it has two tracks running parallel for 15 miles each with switches and junctions from Owings Mills to Johns Hopkins in East Beirut Baltimore. The line proposed is a figure-8 loop with extreme north-south ends (loosely defined) about 3.5 miles apart.

If they space the stops wisely and can get trolleys that can handle the fairly challenging grades around Mount Vernon, this could be a winner. I hope that they can find trolleys that allow curb-level boarding and alighting for disabled citizens; new bus designs allow for step-less boarding in Washington and the Hudson-Bergen light rail in Jersey City also allows such boardings. Charles Street's sidewalks are fairly narrow and are not particularly accommodating of high block ramps for wheelchairs, crutches and injured passengers.

One benefit of this proposed trolley would be to ferry passengers to North Charles into the underdeveloped stretch that the City is trying to promote as an "Arts" district. Whether the trolley could add a shot in the arm to North Avenue itself is more questionable, but the housing between North Avenue and "Radical Row" on 25th Street where a number of leftist organizations once maintained offices (and a few still do) could become a lot more attractive to professionals. The connection to Penn Station itself would be most welcome; the light rail connection is abysmally weak for MARC commuters coming from Harford and Cecil Counties now and for visitors on Amtrak boarding at, for example, 30th Street Station in Philadelphia who have first-hand familiarity of non-idiot approaches to transit connectivity. Certainly the Baltimore Museum of Art and Hopkins would benefit. If successful, it could be extended in a number of different directions to promote additional development for tourism, residents, students and businesses.

I think it should be called the "Bird Line" suggesting swift flight and the city's two major sports teams.

Baltimore Sun: Prostitution Court Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, June 18, 2007:

She had been charged with prostitution, but instead of jail time Judge Ann O'Regan Keary of the District of Columbia's Superior Court ordered her to a halfway house where she would receive counseling and other services. If the woman sticks with the rehabilitation plan, the charge would not appear on her record and she could avoid jail time.

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Baltimore's court system handles roughly 1,200 prostitution cases a year, not including those involving men charged with solicitation, according to the city state's attorney's office. Some of those cases involve repeat offenders, women who cycle through the system several times a year, in large part due to drug addiction and past physical and psychological trauma, according to court officials and advocates.

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"The prostitution problem in our city is severe," said Judge Keith E. Mathews, chief of the city's District Court. He has given tentative approval to freeing up one courtroom one day a week to hear such cases but still needs reassurance that there would be adequate resources to help women. "It is really a quality-of-life problem for neighborhoods - they are very concerned about it," Mathews said. "And your heart goes out to the women who get caught up in it, 99 percent because they are drug addicts."

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Of course regular readers of this blog will know what is about to follow. What does a self-described left-libertarian prescribe as a means of addressing the social disorder that comes with an illegal drug trade and illegal prostitution trade, especially when the two are linked?

1) Prostitution and drug use are social and medical problems. Robbery is a crime; rape is a crime. Prostitutes should be seen as medically ill people engaged in a dangerous trade that has substantial nuisance effects on their community, and who are extremely likely targets for rape, robbery and other brutality. Prostitutes don't report crimes. Why? Because most prostitutes avoid the police for fear of getting caught in the system or wasting their time. Rapists and robbers and violent boyfriends know this well.

2) The drug war has brought a paramilitary state of siege to American cities. The profits from the trade are extremely high, mostly due to the artificially constrained prices from the severe prosecution of dealers small and large. The police find themselves in the position of commanding high economic "rents" through overtime, etc. as the monopoly holder of lawful force against the thugs who likewise use paramilitary force to maintain their turf, whether through informal crews of sawed-off knuckleheads or hardened gangs like the Crips, Bloods and MS-13.

3) The cure to the drug war and gang violence is to destroy the profits. The way to destroy the profits is either a) kill the demand by killing the demanders, b) killing the supply by burning the last coca and especially poppy plant and seed, or c) lower the price through increasing the supply. I don't know how elastic the demand for heroin is, i.e. how much less gets consumed if the price triples, but price inelasticity is almost a textbook definition of addiction: some addicts will sell their shoes to get high, even in January. Conversely, an increase in supply and a drop in the price may not result in that much more consumption. A drop in price will lower the attractiveness of the market to suppliers; while the de-criminalized drug market is safer, it's less profitable for the risk taker and drug dealers are nothing if not risk takers. How the final price/quantity equilibrium would work itself out, I don't know.

What I do know is that if a product can be possessed openly and legally without criminal prosecution and its price drops, much of the anti-social behavior associated with drug use mitigates or vanishes. Example: people won't get mugged on the way to or from a dope deal. Why? They can do it close to anywhere without little "Shorty" screaming "5-0" when a cop car comes. They can buy a lot at a time because people won't need to worry about getting a felony possession charge for a large stash. They won't have to lie, cheat and steal to get it. They won't have to put up with some violent lunatic to get it, or sell unprotected sex with HIV+ drug users (and dealers) to get it.

Will the gangs disappear if there's no money in dealing? Yes, they are money-making operations. What will they do instead? Detroit, Newark, Compton, Houston, Miami. One way tickets out of tiny town to better climates.

Legalizing prostitution will have many of the same positive effects. Granted, some customers won't buy "legal" anyway under a regulated sex work regime, but many would and it would divorce sex work from dope dealing. I think Canada has the right idea, wherein streetwalking and running a bawdy house is usually illegal but there is (if I understand correctly) a Canadian constitutional right to engage in sex for money. So ads for "call-out services" abound, particularly in Montreal. I think a regulated house in a red-light district is a better idea, as is common in Amsterdam, Hamburg and Cologne (in which latter city an army of sex workers pay brutal taxes for a monthly municipal sex worker license, on the order of several hundred dollars per month.) I know it may be frightening to think about becoming as exuberant and "out-there" as the wild and effervescent North Germans, but I think we can handle the transition.

But even if you think that prosecuting drug possession and sex work is a good idea, there should be a law that absolutely protects crime victims from prosecution for any victimless crimes uncovered in or connected with the course of a criminal investigation of their own victimization. If you get your throat slashed at a crap game that you played or ran or by some john or at some dope deal, you should not be thinking about whether you can afford to talk to the police. Granted, the prosecutors don't usually go out of their way to prosecute such crimes but it should be an iron rule. Call it the "Start Snitching Anti-Crime Act of 2007." Whether it should apply also to non-victim witnesses, I don't know; maybe a blanket rule is more difficult there.

Kevin Dayhoff: National Bohemian Commercial Classics Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Many thanks to Kevin Dayhoff for his recent link to Crablaw and a MAJOR HAT TIP for an awesome piece of Maryland history and culture: National Bohemian movie trailer ads consolidated by Atomic Books ("literary finds for mutilated minds") onto YouTube. Kevin also provides a history of the administrative and judicial proceedings involving Maryland's Board of Censors, which once had prior restraint power over all films shown in Maryland, even during my early lifetime.

National Bohemian is strongly associated with old Baltimore, hairspray Baltimore, the one back when the Orioles and Colts played at 33rd Street in old beat-up Memorial Stadium, when Chuck Thompson would exclaim "Ain't the Beer Cold!" (and you KNEW what beer he meant) and Brooks and Frank Robinson played, when the Orioles finished above .500 regularly and usually had the best 20-30 year record in baseball, better even than the infamous, disgusting Yankees.

I did not grow up in the City, but the whole area lit up in 1979 when the Orioles played the Pirates in the World Series, then won it in 1983 against the Phillies. Now the Orioles are in an 11 year drought from winning, and they don't even make Natty Boh here any more. Maybe that's the problem.

Well done, Kevin - a classic.

Friends for Sheila Dixon Blog Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Crablaw thanks Friends for Sheila Dixon for its generous blogroll link to Crablaw Maryland Weekly. Crablaw Maryland Weekly has not explored the upcoming Baltimore City elections in any meaningful detail and has made no endorsement of, or opposition to, any candidate, slate or committee in any of those elections as of this date.

Liberal blog allies Kujanblog and Free State Politics likewise appear on that campaign blogroll along with CMW and five other blogs.

Baltimore Sun: HonFest 2007 Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, June 10, 2007:

"The original ladies are in polyester, leopard print and their own beehives -- unlike mine," said the 34-year-old Mount Vernon resident, who joined thousands of Baltimore residents and tourists for the opening day of the 14th annual HonFest -- a celebration of Baltimore's idiosyncratic cultural heritage.

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Organizers of the festival, which pays homage to Baltimore's flashy retro fashion tradition, expect 20,000 visitors. The event culminates at 2 p.m. today with the crowning of Bawlmer's Best Hon -- who will claim a $2,000 shopping spree.

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"You just have to have lots of faith in hair spray and pins," said Sue Ebert, a Hampden beautician as she pinned the hair of one of 50 clients she expected as the day wore on.

"We'll probably go through about eight bottles of hair spray and six pounds of hair pins," Ebert said. "You ordinarily don't count pins by the pound."

For out of town visitors, Hampden in North Baltimore is perhaps the neighborhood most reflective of the idiosyncratic style exaggerated in directors John Waters' numerous Baltimore-set movies including Pecker and Hairspray. 36th Street is the beehive heart of the neighborhood.

Baltimore's idiosyncratic style is a "white thing." Hampden is a "white thing," militantly so historically with new black families facing vandalism in the neighborhood. "Hon" is a "white thing"; see this photo array to see just how white this local tradition is in an overwhelmingly black city. Baltimore's large black community has a number of distinct local traditions but beehive hairdos and "HonSpeak" are not among them. Once someone defaced a "Welcome to Baltimore" sign with the infamous local term of address "Hon" thereafter; among the discussions that ensued was how term was "sexist" (not; a Dundalk or Essex diner waitress will use it in a gender neutral manner at any table) or "racist" (not, but its use is definitely a market of being a white Baltimorean, presumably an East Baltimorean or the child of one.) A male probably would be less likely to use "Hon" to another male, though it would not be completely impossible, sort of a verbal hug.

I have argued that there is no such thing as "white culture" in the U.S. that is distinct from so-called "non-white culture," generally distinctive of white Americans as a whole without geographical or class limitations and benign. For example, hockey is much more popular among American whites than American blacks, but white people don't follow it much outside of the Northeast and Detroit, and few white people follow it in those places. Ditto NASCAR, only for different regions. Baltimore's HonSpeak and beehive style are definitely a white thing, but white people in the DC suburbs know nothing of any of it, let alone white people in Memphis, Chicago, Seattle, etc. Most "white" cultural attributes that are more or less nationwide and not limited meaningfully by class or income are also features of the cultures of "non-white" communities however defined. Baseball is arguably a white American "thing," but it's also a black American thing, a Puerto Rican thing, definitely a Dominican-American thing, etc. The only other "thing" that unites white people culturally across region, income and class is racism and white privilege themselves.

Were this not the case, there would be benign celebrations of "White Unity" or "White Pride" that were not sponsored by the Klan or skinhead thugs. After all, if there were something positive or enjoyable about whiteness itself, it would be celebrated by non-losers. (Noting this should not imply my desire for any such event, not in the least.) The only source of white unity IS race privilege itself; the rest of the story of "white people" is one of bifurcation by class, income, region, to some extent by ethnic origin "melting pot" metaphors notwithstanding.

Put it another way: if you are white and you pull ten absolutely random white people, regardless of income, class or region, from all over the country and ten random "non-white" people likewise into a room, what do you probably have in common with the ten white people that you don't have with the ten non-white people? Accent? No, the lobsterman from Maine and the good-old-boy from Lubbock have a hard time understanding each other or you. Religion? Not likely; the Orthodox Jewish woman from Chicago and the Methodist from Raleigh don't both have your religion. I could go on.

Sociological meanderings aside, if you are local and you feel like getting your beehive on, go have a good time. Good places to eat on and near 36th Street; you can even eat at the "Hon Cafe" though I prefer a Mexican hole-in-the-wall near it.