An awesome shot of Frederick Road, down the street from us, in 1963 and now, via RetroBaltimore, the site I linked to last month.
Retro Baltimore is a Tumblr run by the Baltimore Sun with historical posts about the city. It’s kind of heavy on reprinting historical covers, but every once in a while there’s a good before/after shot that’s fascinating.
By way of rationale, Hogan dismissed the Red Line as a “wasteful boondoggle,” and the downtown tunnel, in particular, as a costly indulgence — as if it was outlandish for rail lines in cities to run underground. Soon afterward, it would emerge in public-records requests from a pro-transit group that his administration had given the question zero study.
My Governor is an asshole from the country who has made it clear he doesn’t give a shit about Baltimore.
I had no idea the Maryland Historical Society was writing such excellent pieces. This one is about the lost breweries of Baltimore, from Gunther’s to National.
Jen and I attended a silent auction in the spring, and one of the things we bid on and won was a night at a hotel in Baltimore and a dinner for two, something we were really excited about. We planned a month in advance to have Finn stay at the neighbors’ house and made reservations for both places.
Last weekend, we got churched up, checked into the hotel, dropped our bags, and then drove to the restaurant, which is on the far side of my old neighborhood. Pulling into the valet lane, we were dismayed to learn there was a private party that evening, and that our reservation was no good. Let me be clear here: We made a reservation a month in advance, and the restaurant fucked it up. After the shock wore off, we pulled around the corner, got on our phones, and found another local restaurant with a 45 minute wait and a bar.
The Fork and Wrench was exactly right for us, and the man at the front desk seated us almost immediately at a lovely table upstairs. We proceeded to have an outstanding meal, starting with cocktails and a roasted pork belly in beer-adobo glaze over mashed yucca. Things only got better from there. What could easily have been a horrible evening was saved by excellent service, delicious food, and, of course, the company of my lovely wife.
The hotel was nice, but the room we were booked in was downmarket compared to the pictures on the website. We joked that they put us on the gift certificate floor, but really we didn’t care: we were by ourselves and away from the house for an evening.
Postscript: I called the restaurant who fucked up our reservation (they made it for the day Jen called, not the day she asked for), talked to the manager, and got nothing resembling an apology. Now, I’ve tried to control my temper in the last 20 years; time was when I’d just fly off the handle and either start swearing or go throw something. Not one of my finer traits. Perhaps I’ve swung back the other way too far, or maybe I just don’t like making waves, but I got off the phone without any resolution from the guy at all. Thinking it over for a few minutes, and talking with Jen about it, I called back a few minutes later and got the manager back on the phone.
At this point you might ask what I was expecting the guy to do. Comp me a meal? Pay for my hotel? Actually, no. I just wanted an apology for their booking mistake. What I got from the guy was a bunch of fumbling, repeated insistence that he didn’t know who was at fault, and, at one point, he told me my call was breaking up. I don’t know if this is a common scam or something, but how hard is that to do? Realizing he wasn’t going to make any effort, I got fed up and hung up on him, something I rarely do with anybody, and decided we were going to skip the meal we’d already paid for and sell the stupid gift card on Craigslist for 75% of its face value.
When I worked in food service, I learned how to deal with unhappy customers; there were always times when things got messed up and it was our fault. My manager (the owner of the restaurant) taught me it costs little to apologize and comp a bottle of wine, a burrito, or a soda to customers who have already committed to walking in the door. Keep them happy, and they’ll return. This guy? I don’t know where he learned his business, but I’m not happy. Fuck him and his restaurant.
Two tech notes for this week. First is the rebirth of an old lens: the Nikon 1.4 manual lens I bought this summer came back after only a few days away for an upgrade. A nice man in Michigan filed part of the barrel down so that I can mount it safely on my D7000, and holy shit, it’s sharper than a knife. Some quick test shots show it’s got a razor-thin depth of field, and the glass is in great shape. I’ve fallen into my usual pattern of shooting less in the fall, but I’m going to put it on the D7000 and carry it with me for a week.
Secondly, my neighbor and I got to talking about our AV setups over brewing beer, and I explained to him what I was facing: the need for a $400 head unit that switches HDMI signal so that I could get all of the components up on the shelf and away from the TV, as well as feeding audio through the speakers on the floor instead of the tiny ones on the TV.
He shook his head and told me all I needed was a $15 HDMI switcher and a couple of patch cables, and sent me Amazon links, which I purchased the following morning. Because Prime, they were at the house the next day, and I hooked everything up last night. Sure enough, he was right: the AppleTV is now sitting atop my cable box, and both go into the splitter, which sends the signal out to the TV. I get cinema audio via an optical cable to the head unit. The splitter is smart enough to know it’s got two viable inputs (out of a possible five) and only switches between what’s plugged in.
He also told me about HDMI over Ethernet, which piques my interest, because I don’t want to lease another FIOS box for our bedroom. I ran at least two data cables to each bedroom, so I could split the signal out of the downstairs box, send it up to the TV, and use a wireless remote to change channels on both floors.
I remember walking with my friend Kevin past a woman whose long hair had fused into a single filthy dreadlock, like a thick spout of vomit that had been bronzed. We were dumbstruck. We had no witticisms to offer. It’s a city that defeats efforts to ironize.
This woman used to stagger through my old neighborhood during the summertime; her hair was some kind of beehive that had been encased in decades of product until it was a hard waxen shell hanging off the back of her scalp. (Via The New York Times)
This is pretty cool. It’s a visualization of how Baltimore looked 200 years ago, with an overlay of what it looks like now and some basic landmarks for orienting. Funny to see that my house in Canton was underwater in 1815. (You will need Chrome to view it; unfortunately, we’re back to 1998 when you need a special browser flavor to view a site.)
I’ve just described for you the culture of the Baltimore police department amid the deluge of the drug war, where actual investigation goes unrewarded and where rounding up bodies for street dealing, drug possession, loitering such – the easiest and most self-evident arrests a cop can make – is nonetheless the path to enlightenment and promotion and some additional pay.
Looking at CNN this evening, you’d think every block of Baltimore was overrun with mobs of looters. Jen and I watched some of the initial coverage from a Pho restaurant while Finn picked up noodles with her fingers. Later, after we got her into bed, the tempo of the reporting picked up, and we sipped cardamom tea while the senior center burned on the east side of town–miles away from earlier footage. Anderson Cooper actually did a decent job of keeping some sense of balance up until 10PM, frequently reminding the audience of the expanded scope and scale of the reported incidents, showing a map of their locations. Then, at 10, Don Lemon came on and immediately declared the city was falling apart into chaos.
I lived in Baltimore for fourteen years. For eight years I lived less than a half mile away from the Rite Aid you saw burning this afternoon. I bought a house downtown and lived there for six good years. I love Baltimore. It’s a confounding, mysterious, friendly, enchanting little city clinging desperately to relevance and prosperity. It doesn’t deserve to tear itself apart again, especially the areas that need investment the most. Because Rite Aid isn’t going to rebuild that store anytime soon, and the people in that neighborhood need it more than it needs them.
I hope to God things settle back down quickly.
The summer of 2014 has been relatively temperate, which means we’re able to do a lot of work in the front yard that would have melted us into blobs of flesh-colored goo in years past. I planted our third cherry laurel on Saturday, and then worked hard to dig out a dying rhododendron by the driveway. I set the sprinkler up for Finn to run through while Jen and I dug and mixed and moved decorative plants to fill the space, and we spent the bulk of the afternoon together in the sunshine.
That evening I took Jen to dinner at Wit & Wisdom in Baltimore, which has been the subject of fawning reviews. The restaurant is on the ground floor of the Four Seasons in the Inner Harbor, set right next to the water. After threading our way past drowsy Otakon and Oriole traffic downtown, we were seated next to a window and then waited about 10 minutes for a drink. After that slow start, we enjoyed stellar service and delicious food, but the atmosphere was tainted by a poor choice of music–there’s a fair amount of dissonance when ordering a $35 entrée to the soothing sounds of Welcome to the Jungle–and retail-store-bright lighting. Way to set a mood, guys. After dinner we were caught up in a choke point of traffic as three weddings, Otakon, and a Heart concert at Pier Six all converged at the same time in one small place. So: go for the nerds, stay for the wine selection, but don’t expect an intimate setting.
Sunday morning I drove over to a Lutheran church right inside the beltway to shoot photos for a web project I’m working on; this being the summer and the middle of vacation season means I labored hard to make thirty people look like three hundred. I’m going to gave to return in the fall when it fills out, but that’s OK. The bones of the site are live but I’ve got to start working on the layout to stay on schedule.
In the afternoon we went out to take advantage of tax-free shopping while it lasted; Finn got some winter boots, Mama got some rain boots, I got a cheap case for my iPad, and we all got dinner at Wegman’s before returning home to watch Nanny McPhee until bedtime.