FRIDAY Amirror Don’t miss Baltimore singer, City Paper Big Music Issue honoree, and fabulous colorful wig wearer Amirror at Artscape this year. In that issue, CP contributor Nia Hampton said she first heard Amirror at a Kahlon event during First Fridays in Station North, and the performance brought...
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...
Baltimore officials, philanthropists, and the business elite packed a new community room at the Western District Police Station today to hear Scott Plank extol the renovation his company did, apparently using $4.5 million in charitable gifts. "We've done police station fitness facilities in two...
I'm a 35-year-old straight woman, recently married, and everything is great. But I have been having problems reaching orgasm. When we first started dating, I had them all the time. It was only after we got engaged that it became an issue. He is not doing anything differently, and he works hard...
The 2017 Fiction and Poetry Issue Edited by Rebekah Kirkman Saida Agostini Olu Butterfly Woods Janea Kelly Charlie Jay Anna K. Crooks Suzanne Doogan Sharea Harris Grace Davis Maya Martinez Alain Ginsberg Lily Herman Caitlin Goldblatt jessica hudgins Ellen Paul Aurora Engle-Pratt celeste doaks Evan...
The Sondheim finalists, reviewed—and inching toward an art practice based in resistance
Long Ride: A Baltimore addict escapes the city for the South in hopes of getting clean Long Ride A Baltimore addict escapes the city for the South in hopes of getting clean by Kenneth Stone Breckenridge Illustrations by Krysten Hayes John, a 36-year-old handyman from Baltimore County who describes...
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...
Four murders a week, for Baltimore, is actually an improvement over the normal pace. And it's just luck: There were 20 non-fatal shootings reported last week, including one to which homicide detectives were called, another in which a man was shot in the throat, and one that police encountered because...
One good thing about the week is that there were no homicides over the weekend. This was remarkable because seven people were shot between Friday afternoon and Monday morning. So if you happen across a trauma surgeon or an off-duty EMT this week, buy them a drink. They probably need it. Monday,...
At halftime Baltimore is well into a record murder pace, with no signs yet of slowing. Happy Independence Day to those able to enjoy it. Tuesday, June 27 4:05 a.m. Travis Rogers, a 25-year-old African-American man of the 2400 block of Druid Hill Avenue, was found dead in Leakin Park. Police said...
The investigation into Russian influence on the last election reached an absurd apogee on June 16, as President Donald Trump tweeted that he was under investigation for firing FBI Director James Comey ("I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director!...
Because of vacation and a holiday, this week's Murder Ink covers three weeks from May 30 through June 19. The first two were quiet weeks, by Baltimore standards, with several murder-free days. Last year by this date there had been 129 murders, 31 fewer than this year. Young people continue to commit...
↑ Md Attorney General Brian E. Frosh Frosh and D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine are filing a lawsuit against President Donald Trump, saying that Trump is in violation of the Constitution's Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses. Those rules were put in place to keep the president's financial...
↑ Creek Boyz Woodlawn rap group Creek Boyz, consisting of J Reezy, Turk P Diddy, Young Fedi Mula, and ETS Breeze, have been slowly gaining interest for a few months now thanks to their touching, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony-esque song, 'With My Team.' You've no doubt heard it on 92Q and playing off kids'...
In police body-camera footage obtained by Democracy in Crisis, the scene in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 20, 2017 shows the war zone our nation really is right now. The balance of power in the battle—both on the streets then and in the courts today—is deeply asymmetrical, with the police and the government...
Every adult you've ever met named Andy made a decision at some point in their young lives to be taken a little less seriously. Many Andrews do a childhood stint as Andy and then let the name expire around high school. Some Andys do their time before promoting themselves to the sexier, team captain-sounding...More
When McCabe's suffered a fire in December 2014 that ended up closing the restaurant permanently, it was a loss felt keenly in Hampden. Sure, there were (and are) plenty of other taverns and restaurants just blocks away. But McCabe's had its own particular casual vibe, one that drew patrons from...
The sounds of a hammer slamming nails into the frame for a new fancy DJ booth and power saws slicing through wood battle the humping beat of Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 'Relax' at G.A.Y Lounge about a week before Pride and just a couple hours before the new Mount Vernon polyglot queer spot opens...
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....
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...
Big Freedia's voice is steady, strong, and commanding. It is powerful even when she isn't yelling out instructions on how and when to shake your ass in her songs, or showing up in Beyoncé's 'Formation' ("I did not come to play with you hoes," she exclaims as Bey, dressed all in black, nods her...
The first time I ever went to Texas was on a bus with curtains draped over the windows. I just joined the military and got shipped off to basic training in San Antonio. I didn't see much when I stepped out, because I had an armed soldier in my face telling me how much of a bitch I was even though...
At Maryland's music mega-fortress, Merriweather Post Pavilion, 17-year-old Lindsey Jordan yells at concert rabble-rousers in a heavy, stern voice: "Sir, don't stand on that chair! . . . Sir, put that out!" She has been laying down the law and holding doors for bands backstage as a Merriweather...
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...More
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...
"It Comes At Night"—the sophomore release from "Krishna" director Trey Edward Shults and reliable indie production company A24—opens with a scene horrifying in its mundanity: The son-in-law and grandson of an elderly man infected with an unknown contagion euthanize and dispose of their family member....
“It Comes At Night”—the sophomore release from “Krishna” director Trey Edward Shults and reliable indie production company A24—opens with a scene horrifying in its mundanity: The son-in-law and grandson of of an elderly man infected with an unknown contagion euthanize and dispose their family member....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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?...
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...
I put on the headphones that are part of Joyce Yu-Jean Lee's 'Red vs. Blue Polarity,' in the group show "Whatchamacallit" at Gallery CA, and a noisy barrage of cameras clicking and flashes flying is the only audio accompanying a video of Donald Trump at a press conference, gesticulating as he does...
David Gessner, "Ultimate Glory: Frisbee, Obsession, and My Wild Youth" (Riverhead Books) A sprawling memoir and charting of one semi-toxic male's evolution as viewed through the oft-derided, but very popular and high-impact sport of ultimate frisbee, "Ultimate Glory: Frisbee, Obsession, and My...
1. Heather Ann Thompson, “Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Aftermath” (Pantheon Books) In September, Red Emma’s was packed the night Heather Ann Thompson came to talk about what happened at the Attica Correctional Facility in 1971, when a takeover of the prison by...
At the corner of North Avenue and Charles Street, on top of an abandoned bank building, there is a gray billboard with large black letters that read "Whoever Died From A Rough Ride." Below, in smaller letters: "the whole damn system…" Despite spending a good deal of time in Station North and that...