Baltimore City Paper

CityLab Baltimore provides a salve for technocrats and influencers

NAACP in soul-searching mode at last week's convention

The Undercard: Bring Kaepernick to Baltimore

Stop fetishizing normalcy to condemn Trump

Behind the Scenes at The BBQ in Photos

The BBQ on Greenmount blasts blues and proffers pulled pork, pit beef, and ribs that are delicious but won't leave you falling into a food coma either, all without being so damn bougie about it. That's important. No really—while there is a tendency to kick against everything even remotely respectability-grabbing...

On Baltimore's climate of fear and righting systemic wrongs

Between Pratt Street and the waters of the Inner Harbor lie three beams recovered from the wreckage of the World Trade Center in New York. The marble base on which they rest bears memory to the 68 Marylanders whose lives ended there on Sept. 11, 2001. I never knew those people, but I watched them...

Baltimore City Power Rankings: down for Trump, Amerikkka, Pugh, up for Baltimore Bloc

⬆︎ Baltimore Bloc Baltimore came out in a big way for a rally-turned-impromptu-march in solidarity with Charlottesville. On Sunday, about a thousand people took to the streets of Charles Village following a rally at Wyman Park Dell near the Lee-Jackson Monument. Organized by Baltimore Bloc, the...

Dispatches from Baltimore Ceasefire

Only Line of Defense: In confusing world of civil debt proceedings, volunteer attorneys pick up the slack

On a Tuesday morning last Spring, Judge Mark Scurti took the bench at the District Court for Baltimore City before dozens of defendants summoned to small claims court: Some navigated the crowded courtroom with canes, some with partners and fussing children in tow, and others alone. Many were in...

Melo Returns

Carmelo Anthony adds to his Charm City legacy as host of The Basketball Tournament

Murder Ink: 7 murders this week, 218 murders this year

While violence elsewhere captures national attention, Baltimore City's violence continues at record levels. Aside from the murders, there were also 18 non-fatal shootings this week, including a triple-shooting on Sunday. Tuesday, Aug. 8 1:21 a.m. Tyrese Davis, a 15-year-old African-American boy,...

Baltimore City Power Rankings: Baltimore Ceasefire edition

⬆︎ Erricka Bridgeford Bridgeford, the public face of Baltimore Ceasefire, had a lot on her plate this weekend, but she handled it with grace. She said what needed to be said—focusing on community, trauma, and joy—rather than what was "supposed" to be said, showed up at the spot of the first homicide...

Murder Ink: 7 murders this week, 211 murders this year

The murder-per-day pace continues despite the best efforts of community mediators and police. Four people were shot at noon on Aug. 2 at the intersection of Broadway and Eager Street. One 30-year-old man was in such bad shape that homicide was notified, although since then there has been no update....

Something for Nothing: An open letter to residents within the Western District

I'd like to talk a little bit about the enthusiasm with which you seemed to greet the changes made to the new police station. I saw you last week when I went to tour the Western District. You bustled along next to me as we gathered into repainted corners, and waved makeshift fans in the hot, overcrowded...

Baltimore City Power Rankings: Up for Tyrone West's family and Marc Steiner, down for Trump, more

Community Mediation: Organizer Erricka Bridgeford talks Baltimore Ceasefire

Murder Ink: 10 murders this week, 205 murders this year

Monorail!!!: Elon Musk is here to save us with Hyperloop—but not really

Murder Ink 8/23: 7 murders this week; 225 murders this year

Another week, another seven murders, although one of the victims counted in this week's column was stabbed last September and died in March. There was also a mass shooting Monday in the Park Circle neighborhood which left three people injured and one man dead. Monday, Aug. 14 12:30 p.m. Terrence...

Murder Ink: 8 murders this week, 195 murders this year

Another week for Baltimore at the one-murder-per-day pace. Oldest victim: 97. There were also 18 non-fatal shootings this week and 12 gun arrests. Monday, July 17 7:00 p.m. Maurice Finney, a 22-year-old African-American man of the 800 block of Stoll Street, was on the 3200 block of W. Baltimore...

Baltimore City Power Rankings: Up for Artscape and down for Baltimore Police, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and this awful, awful weather

⬆︎ Artscape Though the sun didn't always cooperate and the weather was kind of gross when it did (see below), another Artscape has come and gone, bringing together thousands of Baltimoreans to enjoy art, games, food, drinks, music, and much more. Credit to BOPA for picking two great headliners...

Democracy In Crisis: Stoned Reflections from the Opposition Party

Democracy in Crisis: Bannon brings nationalist deconstruction to CPAC

Democracy in Crisis Episode 4: Sohail Daulatzai on Fifty Years of the "Battle of Algiers"

Democracy in Crisis Episode 3: Immigration Crackdown Special--Aura Bogado & City of Immigrants

Farm Brewery-To-Table: Old Ellicott City's Manor Hill Tavern offers up crab fondue, smoky pizza, and upscale beers

A quick history lesson: The line of particularly colonial looking structures that sit on the first uphill block of Old Columbia Pike just off Main Street in Ellicott City is locally known as "Taylor's Row." While the neighboring Tonge Row once served as rowhomes for 19th century millworkers, these...

The High Life: Mystery weed Gray Haven reviewed and in praise of smoking in public

I'm smoking a bougie apartment complex on the edge of the city with hella amenities; I'm smoking a charming supporting character with a mysterious past from an '80s soap opera; I'm smoking a third-tier metal band signed to Metal Blade that opened for Fates Warning in 1986; I'm smoking Gray Haven,...

So long, Schnapp Shop: City Paper staff reflects on the beloved neighborhood liquor store, which has closed after 30 years

My Dinner with Andy: An Andrew tours Baltimore's food establishments named Andy

Wicked Good: Wicked Sisters offers insanity burgers, magnificent fries, and a touch of McCabe's vibe

Self Help: Kendrick Lamar's "DAMN." as intervention

Kung Fu Kenny, the 5-foot-5 giant and hip-hop's resident Vitruvian Man, awoke from his sleep to deliver us his fourth studio album back in April—"DAMN.," a proper follow-up to put detractors of 2015's "To Pimp A Butterfly" back in their cocoons. "DAMN." is a 14-track, 55-minute cathartic therapy...

Southern Exposure: Jason Isbell discusses reckoning with white Southern masculinity on new album "The Nashville Sound"

Jason Isbell's "The Nashville Sound" is the summer soundtrack for those of us who fled small towns because of the sexism or the racism or the lack of opportunities, only to see all of those things amplified with the election of Donald Trump, rendering our hometowns almost hostile to our very existence....

2017 Big Music Issue

City Paper’s Big Music Issue I’ll level with you: This year’s Music Issue is a rip-off of the New York Times’ feature “25 Songs That Tell Us Where Music Is Going,” a very neat thing that paper has done over the past two years, offering up some great song recommendations and music writing along...

Playful and Persistent: Julius Eastman, Abdu Ali, and the Women's March are all vital to Horse Lords' latest release

On Horse Lords' cover of 'Stay on It,' a composition from noted '70s and '80s New York composer Julius Eastman who innately bridged disco and classical music, drummer Sam Haberman aggrandizes the rhythmic punctuation latent in Eastman while Andrew Bernstein's wailing sax feels like vicarious liberation—the...

Guerrilla screenings of "13th" popping up across Baltimore this summer thanks to two activists

"Damn, where'd you come from," a man who just walked out of the Baltimore City Detention Center back in early June asked as he filled a plate with pit beef, watermelon, and vegetables and then—"Thank y'all, bless y'all." "We're doing like Jesus did," activist and chef Duane "Shorty" Davis, who...

This Will Kill: History Channel's "Forged in Fire" and American economic anxiety

Few things are as satisfying as a slow-motion shot of a bladed weapon cutting through a hanging pig carcass—the scccclk sound that comes as steel carves through flesh. This revelation comes via "Forged in Fire," History Channel's competitive reality show in which bladesmiths try to make the sharpest...

You Just Don't Turn It Off: 24 digressions about "First Blood"

1. I have a scratchy stick-and-poke on my arm that reads, "they drew first blood, not me." It's what John Rambo (played with Marlon Brando-esque mumbling aplomb by Sylvester Stallone) says toward the end of the 1982 movie "First Blood," once he has been chased into the woods by longhair-hating...

Staring at the Sondheim

The Sondheim finalists, reviewed—and inching toward an art practice based in resistance

Artist Gloria Garrett makes art with makeup

Gloria Garrett is moving her hands. She is moving her arms in wide circles. She is pacing, gesticulating, dancing, and talking. Gloria Garrett talks loudly: "Those dolls are made from old sheets! You cover them with wax paper and then iron them. That wreath is made from a hanger. This is the picture...

Devin N. Morris creates imaginative spaces and softens structure in solo show, 'In A Dignified Fashion' at Terrault Contemporary

In his essay 'Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood,' James Baldwin writes about how the "American ideal" of sexuality and masculinity "has created cowboys and Indians, good guys and bad guys, punks and studs, tough guys and softies" and other such archetypes, resulting in "an ideal so paralytically...

Selfie Obliteration: On Yayoi Kusama's "Infinity Mirrors" and radical self-awareness

A line spirals out from the fountain and wraps around the interior perimeter of the "Brutalist donut" that is the Hirshhorn Museum, spilling out onto the plaza beside the National Mall. Several hundred visitors are here—foreign tour groups, art students, tourists with selfie sticks, families with...

"The Ground" takes on origins, labor, commerce, and legacy at the Hutzler Brothers Palace

I. The river Amazon is a river. It is an extremely long and voluminous river. Passing through areas of bio-diversity, it is a good name for a company which sells books and diverse other products, this river. -Leontia Flynn, 'Jeff Bezos names Amazon,' from the collection "Relentless: Poems by Jeff...

"The Ground" takes on origins, labor, commerce, and legacy at the Hutzler Brothers Palace

Visual Merchandising: "The Ground" takes on origins, labor, commerce, and legacy at the Hutzler Brothers Palace Visual Merchandising "The Ground" takes on origins, labor, commerce, and legacy at the Hutzler Brothers Palace by Rebekah Kirkman I.The river Amazon is a river. It is an extremely long...

Mondawmin residents reflect on illumination and safety with light sculpture parade

Think about the light that illuminates your community and how it makes you feel. When you see red and blue flashing lights, do you feel calm or anxiety? Do the light poles in your neighborhood bear blue flashing surveillance cameras? Have you noticed these cameras as you drive through other communities?...

Wickerham & Lomax remix and reimagine stories and styles from Odell's nightclub

Artist duo Daniel Wickerham and Malcolm Lomax were all of six years old when Odell's closed in 1992. The North Avenue dance club, opened in 1976 by Odell Brock, became Baltimore's legendary hot spot of the disco and house music eras. Brock hired DJ Wayne Davis to keep the dance floor moving, and...

Thomas Dolby's 'The Speed Of Sound' is not like most rock memoirs

Much as the Parisian bourgeoisie of the late-19th century lived in an era of the novel, we are living in an era of the rock 'n' roll memoir. In the past six months alone we've gotten self-penned accounts by Bruce Springsteen, Robbie Robertson, Johnny Marr, Maurice White, Phil Collins (his sadly...

Top Ten Non-Local Books of 2016

Top Ten Baltimore Books of 2016

Summer Of The Slam: How two fearless Baltimore poetry slam teams took over the nation

Jane Jacobs tells us a lot about cities, but a new biography "Eyes on the Street" doesn't tell us much about her

Tourists At Home: Single Carrot Theatre takes audiences on a meandering bus ride through the city in "Promenade: Baltimore"

Shit Hits The Fan: Everyman Theatre is nimble and quick in farcical obstacle course "Noises Off"