Baltimore Living Winners 2000

Best Reason to Live Here
Neighborhoods
There are plenty of cities that are undoubtedly more livable than ours--cities with cleaner streets,...

Best Reason to Leave Here
Public schools
They've been privatized, reconstituted, tested to within an inch of their lives, sliced and diced, f...

Best View
Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center
No, you can't really see the bay from Bayview, down Eastern Avenue just short of the county line, bu...

Best Sound
Tugboats
If you live in any of Baltimore's waterfront neighborhoods, on rare mornings, about 6:30, you might ...

Best Cool Old Building
The Odorite building
Of all the hoary historical edifices, of all the towering examples of the architect's art, of all th...

Best Doomed Building
Memorial Stadium
Some things are so ironic that no one should point them out because it'd be insulting to the intelle...

Best Mural
ABC Playground
Wall-painting in Baltimore has been a boost to the city's psyche since the Schaefer administration. ...

Best Sign
hooker free zone
Much to the surrounding neighborhood's frustration, prostitutes were plying a thriving trade along W...

Best Square
Franklin Square
Union Square gets all the glamour, but just north of Mencken's old turf is Franklin Square. A bucoli...

Best Festival
Baltimore Herb Festival
Most outdoor festivals are about immediate gratification--loud music, greasy funnel cakes, beer you'...

Best Answer to the City Fair
Artscape
Some years ago, our Best of Baltimore issue included the entry "Best Reason to Slap an Art Student: ...

Best Place for a Date
American Visionary Art Museum
So, you've met that special someone. You want to impress him or her with an intelligent, intriguing ...

Best Place for a Cheap Date
Harbor walkway across from Pier Six Concert Pavilion
It's hard to plan a good date without anticipating a significant dent in your wallet. So it's nice t...

Best Place to Score
Paloma's
Your regular booty call just met the love of his or her life, and none of the available honeys at yo...

Best Scandal
Senate Bill 509
It's a truism in politics that if you want to hold on to your office in the next election--and espec...

Best Politician
William Donald Schaefer
Didn't see this one coming, did you? Yes, we've had our differences with William Donald Schaefer, in...

Best Neighborhood Activists
Clayton Guyton and Elroy Christopher
As city fathers ponder ways to end this burg's signature violence, help the one in eight adults whos...

Best Environmentalist
Terry Harris
It ain't easy being green, especially in an old brown town like ours. Which means that committed fol...

Best Reason to Love the Mayor
Calling the elderly during January's blizzard
In a move that will pay political dividends--and was just plain nice--Martin O'Malley instructed his...

Best Reason to Hate the Mayor
Capitulation to business interests
Amid all the hullabaloo surrounding Martin O'Malley's election and the eternal honeymoon that has fo...

Best Reason to Be Tired of the Mayor, Already
Martin O'Malley, rock star
Sure, it's great that our overburdened, stressed-out mayor has an outlet--his Hibernophilic band O'M...

Best City Council Member
Keiffer Mitchell Jr.
On a body that inexplicably veers from do-nothingism to empty finger-pointing, the cool and collecte...

Best City Council Newcomer
Catherine Pugh
When Pugh ran for a 4th District seat, we worried that her résumé (heavy on public-relations jobs), ...

Best Political Misstep
Sheila Dixon's moonlighting
It's one thing for an elected official to have divided, potentially even conflicting loyalties. It's...

Best Disappearing Act
Lawrence Bell III
It's not enough to become a desaparecido; you've got to do it with style--to overcome a great degree...

Best Abandoned Neighborhood
Near Heritage Crossing
If anything proves that Baltimore is truly the land of opportunity, it is the endless blocks of bomb...

Best Argument Against Federal Funding
Empowerment zones
During the Kurt Schmoke years, the city supplicated for any federal monies it could get, regardless ...

Best Argument for Casual Office Wear
The police commissioner's uniform
We didn't think it was possible, in this golf-shirt-and-khakis age, for anyone to bug us by being ov...

Best Reason to Pay Your Taxes
Municipal Concert Band and Baltimore's Big Band
It's easy to begrudge the city all of your tax dollars when you hear what outgoing cabinet members t...

Best Hope for the West Side
Maryland Historical Trust
Maybe the west side of downtown doesn't face oblivion. Maybe the city's old shopping district won't ...

Best Testimony
Kurt Kocher
Most of the time, frankly, we wish Kurt Kocher would keep his mouth shut. Along with the odd angry p...

Best Lame Excuse for Civic Pride
"So why do you live here?" billboard campaign
TWO WORDS--STEAMED CRABS. Damning Baltimore with their faint if well-intentioned praise, the Greater...

Best Total Absence of Shame
The Sun's O'Malley coverage
Hey, we endorsed the guy. More to the point, we live here and work here, and we want the mayor to su...

Best Reporters
Michael Hill and Kate Shatzkin, The Sun
When it comes to the daily paper, we'll always read the latest news about crime or what's going on a...

Best Columnist
J.K. O'Neill, Dundalk Eagle
Simple concept, enjoyable results. Each week in his column What's Up With That?, J.K. O'Neill takes ...

Best Police Blotter
The Baltimore Guide
The Baltimore Guide's Crime Scene, a weekly sampling of crimes in the Southeastern police district, ...

Best Telling Statistic
The Sun's death count
If there's one thing worse than The Sun's relentless pandering to the suburbs, it's The Sun's pathet...

Best Parallel Universe
The mind of Jim Haner
One of the highest achievements in newspapering is for a writer's work to become part of the city he...

Best TV-News Personality
Lesli Foster WBAL-TV (channel 11)
Only five months into the job as a general-assignment reporter for WBAL, Lesli Foster is making almo...

Best Weatherperson
Lori Pinson, WBFF-TV (channel 45)
Marty Bass is not generally someone we turn to for smart talk. But the WJZ weatherperson had it righ...

Best Old Guy
Julius Westheimer, WBAL-TV (channel 11)
Every weekday morning we vow that this is the morning we're gonna get a leg up on the rest of the wo...

Best Radio Talk-Show Host
Marc Steiner, Noon-2 P.M. weekdays, WJHU (88.1 FM)
OK, we give. We've always been of two minds about WJHU's gravel-voiced midday host and have thus res...

Best Reason to Bring Allan Prell Back to Morning Radio
Chip Franklin
Any visitor to Baltimore could dispatch this city's claims to cosmopolitan status with four words: W...

Best Proof That F. Scott Fitzgerald Was Wrong
Larry Young
The bibulous F. Scott Fitzgerald got away with a lot of silly behavior, and sillier talk, in his bri...

Best Radio/TV Sports Freak
Milton Kent
We're not sure "freak" is the best word here. But in a market where a witless goon like John Buren c...

Best Sports Announcer
Jim Palmer
We generally keep the mute button on when the Orioles are on television so we don't have to hear the...

Best Oriole
Mike Mussina
This category pretty much took care of itself at the end of July, when most of the leading candidate...

Best Oriole to Trade
Syd Thrift
We were going to give the O's general mana--sorry, vice president of baseball operations--a pass thi...

Best Reason to Hope the Expos Move to Washington
Peter Angelos' lawsuit
We're not lawyers. Peter Angelos is a lawyer, and a very successful one, and we generally bow to his...

Best Raven
Ray Lewis
Ever since this category debuted in 1996 (winner: "Fuck the Ravens"), we've been wondering how to ke...

Best College Sports Team
Western Maryland College football
The '90s weren't an easy decade for local collegiate-sports fans. The once-dominant Johns Hopkins la...

Best Golf Course
Mount Pleasant Golf Club
Like, say, Arizona or Japan, the Baltimore area enjoys a cornucopia of golf courses, and the questio...

Best Park, City
Druid Hill Park
All those suburbanites who malign the city haven't discovered one of our favorite parts of urban lif...

Best Park, Suburbs
Cromwell Valley Park
When Baltimore County and the state became alarmed at the rate of development west of the Loch Raven...

Best Bike Trail
Baltimore & Annapolis Trail
On a recent Saturday morning, we motored to Marley Station Mall and left our car in the parking lot....

Best Hiking Trail
Cromwell Valley Park trail to Loch Raven Dam
Take the gravel-road trail from the Cromwell Valley Park's Willow Grove parking area up the hill, pa...

Best Place for a Stroll
Roland Park
In the world of walking, there are two paths. There's hiking, which involves special boots, packets ...

Best Pocket Park
Duncan Street Park
The Duncan Street Park is proof that injecting a little green space in the concrete jungle does much...

Best Playground
Dunning Park/Bufano Sculpture Garden
Yes, we love to watch our little darlings develop their climbing and falling skills. But we're tired...

Best Public Swimming Pool
Patterson Park
The Patterson Park pool counters every complaint you may have about going swimming. Too expensive? I...

Best Swimming Hole
Cascade Lake
It's kind of a haul out to Cascade Lake up there in the hills of Carroll County, but this is as it s...

Best Ocean City Surrogate
North Point State Park
Planning to get downy ocean is often an exercise in good intentions. I'll go next weekend, you tell ...

Best Zoo Animals
Prairie Dogs
Talk about a tough gig. Being sandwiched between a pizza stand and the ever-popular polar bears in t...

Best Guerrilla Art
Chick-Fil-A billboard
Oh, those wacky vegetarians. We can only surmise that a militant cell of no-meat activists was behin...

Best Annoying Business District
Pennsylvania Avenue between York Road and Washington Avenue, Towson
There comes a time when right-thinking Baltimoreans have to stand up for what's good and clean and d...

Best Conceptual Highway
"I-395"
So we're getting off Interstate 95 at Exit 53 one day, heading back into town on I-395, and suddenly...

Best Speed Trap
Interstate 95 north at Route 175
In our endless tango with the various traffic-enforcement arms of The Man, we here at Baltimore's Mo...

Best Place for a Left-Turn Signal
Fayette and Colvin streets
Raise your hand if you've ever seen anyone make a legal left turn from Fayette Street into the parki...

Best Reason Not to Live in Baltimore and Work in Washington
The MARC system
Ah yes, the convenience of affordable city living and access to those high-paying jobs in our nation...

Best Street That Shares Its Name With a Major Sports Figure
Hargrove Street
When the Orioles hired Mike Hargrove as manager, our first thought had nothing to do with baseball. ...

Best Synchronized Appearance of a New Urban Menace
Sidewalk cyclists
One day no one rode bicycles on the sidewalks, the next day everyone rode bicycles on the sidewalks....

Best Trucker
Michael Patrick McDonald
Most trucking jobs are measured in miles. Michael Patrick McDonald's is measured is blocks. But the ...

Best Car
The Galaxie 500 of Mount Vernon
We're not sure when we first noticed it, this big silver coupe with the dark-red interior. It just k...

Best Environmental Aroma
The Beverage Capital Corp., Plant No. 2
Wafting odors from light industry is a classic not-in-my-backyard dread. But just where Charles Vill...

Best Pool Hall
Dougherty's Irish Pub
There are pristine billiard parlors, and there are dank bars with remnants of a table. Somewhere in ...

Best Women's Room
Stagecoach Saloon & Restaurant
Sure, there are fancier places to answer the call of nature, but the Stagecoach gets points for payi...

Best Men's Room
Towson Diner
We were all set to give the prize for best gent's head to Planet Hollywood--you know, toss the dying...

Best Mirrored Windows for Checking Out Your Fine Self
707 Building
The 707 Building on the east side of Mount Vernon, an altogether winning example of mid-20th-century...

Best Surveillance Camera
University of Baltimore fields, Enslow Road
The arrival of Big Brother, in the form of surveillance cameras on city streets, was announced long ...

Best Web Site
Maryland Comptroller of the Treasury
Who would ever guess that a state-run Web site that deals with taxation could be so much fun? But we...

Best Mailing List
Max Obuszewski's activist list
An Internet mailing list works best in one of two ways. The first is as a forum wherein people with ...

Best Poll
Hampden 7-Eleven
During the interregnum between the Republican and Democratic conventions, the enterprising folks at ...

Best Phone-Book Listing
"Poe Grave Edgar Allan"
One would think that not even 19th-century America's literary master of the morose, a writer who pla...

Best Daily Wisdom
Odorite
If you're a normal 9-to-5er, you need your morning paper and caffeine fix to survive the daily commu...

Best Sign That Tattoos Are, Like, Over
Baltimore Magazine's Best of Baltimore cover
OK, we admit it, we have no idea whether tattoos are over or not. This is just a flimsy and transpar...

Best Weather
Rain
In the 12 months since the last Best of Baltimore issue hit the streets, we have noticed an almost u...