Two of the weekend’s highlights were from the family advent calendar: Saturday evening we went to dinner at Amoora, a Syrian restaurant in the Inner Harbor. It’s always fun to get dressed up and go out with the girls, and the food and company was excellent.
Sunday we drove back into Baltimore to the Senator theater to see Wicked on the big screen. Unfortunately I didn’t realize they’d added smaller theaters on to the building and that we were in one of those annexes. Still, we all really enjoyed the movie—I was, honestly, a bit dubious about the whole thing but within the first half hour they had hooked me and I was on board. 2h40m went by very quickly. I will definitely be looking forward to the second half.
One of my favorite local joints from the old neighborhood is closing down after 30 years in business. Nacho Mama’s, a staple of Canton from back when Hons still walked the streets, was our go-to Irish-owned Mexican restaurant, with cheap National Bohemian on tap and a great menu for eating in or takeout on movie night. I have tons of great memories both eating in the restaurant and scarfing down a towering plate of Mesa Fries across the park at Rob’s house.
One night I met friends for dinner there, wearing my National Bohemian delivery shirt, and ordered some kind of draft beer. The waitress took our order and noticed my shirt; she turned and called over to Scunny, the owner, who was a voracious collector of all things Natty Boh, Orioles, Baltimore Colts, and Elvis. Pointing at me he yelled, “HEY!” and the noisy bar got very quiet. He leaned over the bar and boomed, “WHERE DID YOU GET THAT SHIRT??!”
I stammered back something about Saks North Avenue (IYKYK) and he began to offer me money for it, then spied whatever beer I was drinking. “YOU CAN’T DRINK THAT SHIT. HERE! HERE’S A NATTY BOH!” The beer hit my table, I took a long swig, thanked him, and the bar returned to its normal volume.
Sadly, Scunny passed in 2012 from a freak accident in Ocean City. His family kept the bar running, but it wasn’t the same; I went back several times but the food wasn’t as good and the vibe was gone.
Finn’s high school was ranked in the 99th percentile of Maryland high schools, according to the 2024 school report card. Not too shabby.
File this under It’s About Fucking Time: the Baltimore County School system will allow cellphone bans in their classrooms starting this coming year. Our daughter wasn’t allowed to bring her phone to school last year for various reasons, but I’ll be glad to have the rest of the students hang theirs up too. I’d link to some of the appropriate local news channels here, but they’re all behind paywalls or not even reporting on this.
I stumbled across this photo of Canton online the other day: newly constructed row homes directly south of Patterson Park. My first house would be to the far left of this shot as far as I can tell, in the block directly in the foreground. It’s hard to see what’s happening in the immediate foreground, but if I had to wager it’s an area of low ground being filled with dirt and oyster shells.
Saturday morning, the family rose early and walked down the street to help sort and assemble boxes of foot for two local food pantries. We’ve done this for a couple of years now, and we’re getting to be pros at it; this year’s date was a month or so early, so the amount of food donated wasn’t as large as we were used to. But we all pitched in and made ourselves as useful as possible. At events like this, with decentralized leadership, we’ve found it’s always best to stand back and let someone else explain how things are going to work and what needs to be done, and I think we’re all very good at staying out of the way but pitching in where needed.
We walked back home, let the dog out, and then drove into the city for a tasty sushi lunch in my old neighborhood at the foot of Boston street. It’s boring and repetitive to write about how much things have changed down there, but it’s good to see some things are still similar. After filling ourselves on lunch I bought the girls our first PSLs of the season at the Starbucks up the street, which were…underwhelming. For $16 I was really expecting a lot more flavor. Then we drove up to my other old neighborhood and stopped in to the MICA bookstore for Finn to find some art supplies. I picked up a new watercolor pad and some window stickers to replace the one that crumbled on the Accord, and while I was there I spied a big retrospective book they produced a couple of years ago:
Thumbing back through the years I stumbled on a page about Portfolio Review day, which is (in an oft-told tale here at Lockardugan Central) where Mom and I drove down to Baltimore, I showed them my work, and was offered admission to the school on the spot. I took a picture of the page because this is exactly how I remember it—sitting on the steps in the Main Building to visit the various desks. Thankfully my friend Jeff and I had already attended a series of other Review days at Pratt and Cooper Union so we knew what to expect and how to set up our work.
On Sunday I got up and drove over to Columbia, where I met up with Scout friends and helped Bennett get the Hudson off the trailer and moving under its own power. We really didn’t have to do much, other than unstrap it and get it started; the accelerator pump is shot so it bogged down when he got on the gas, but it ran enough for us to take a few short drives up and down the lane.
Then we headed back to Bennett’s house to help demo a trellis on his back deck, which has been leaning drunkenly under the weight of a 20-year-old wisteria. We strapped it to an adjacent tree and used various power and levering instruments to remove most of the wood and stacked in in the back of his truck. Then we paused for some lunch and cold beer, and by 3PM were packing up for home. The rest of the day was pretty relaxed and we were all tucked into bed by 9:30.
We drove over to the other side of Baltimore to see a double-feature of Legally Blonde and Barbie last night at the only remaining drive-in theater in the area. Apart from watching most of the first movie through windshield wipers as a giant thunderstorm swept through the area.
Barbie was surprising and bright and thoughtful and everything you don’t expect it to be; we all enjoyed it immensely. I hope it wins awards for best original screenplay and acting—for the leads and supporting roles alike.
Great! Catonsville is in the news for excellent reasons; apparently some dumb-ass white supremacist here was talking to Florida Man about blowing up power substations in Baltimore, and somehow that would equal freedom, or something?
The Patterson Bowling Center, a duckpin bowling center near my old neighborhood, is in danger of being shut down to make way for a condo.
An unpretentious community fixture where bowlers of all ages came to play a traditional Baltimore game, Patterson Bowling Center opened in 1927.
“I loved what it stood for and I love what it brought to that neighborhood,” Drayton said. “It stood for everything Baltimore.”
Duckpin bowling began around the start of the 20th century, but its geographic origins are muddy. Popular legend in Baltimore says that 1890s Orioles John McGraw and Wilbert Robinson invented duckpin at their alley The Diamond.
There’s a chance it may stay open, in a diminished size, but that’s currently up in the air.
