Nearly 40 years after its founding, a radical Catholic commune finds new allies
As you drive down West Baltimore’s Bentalou Street, passing boarded up houses and the brown grass of Easterwood Park, you probably wouldn’t notice the unnamed alley marked with signs for Emmanuel Tire and McDonald Salvage unless you were looking for it.
If you did turn down the alley, you’d see belching black smoke and endless rubber towers at the tire factory and the long lines of tractor...
Thirty years ago, the Dunbar Poets were the greatest show on hardwood. A look back at that storied hoops team and the showdown that wasn’t with Calvert Hall.
Inside Paul Laurence Dunbar High School’s windowless gymnasium, the air is thick with humidity—and history. Today is winter solstice, yet outdoor temperatures in the 60s have transformed the home of Baltimore’s premier high school basketball dynasty into a furnace.
The Poets are systematically slicing up overmatched Carver High, a scene that harkens back 30 years, when the most talented of all...
An assistant coach for Towson University’s basketball team (alas, 0-17 at press time) also happens to be Bill Murray’s son
Q: When did you first get into basketball?
I’ve been playing since I was 3 years old. But, the first time I coached was for AAU as a senior in high school. They were 16 or 17 years old, so there wasn’t much of an age gap. And I coached all the way through college.
Q: This is your first year here. Did you know what a challenge it would be?
I knew they were struggling. And we’ve had some bad...
A local illustrator gets his first one-man show
When Okan Arabacioglu came here from Turkey to attend MICA, he first saw the city via an Amtrak train. But now, 10 years later, Arabacioglu has fallen in love with Baltimore and made a name for himself as an illustrator. “When I was in Turkey, I learned a very traditional style of painting,” he says. “But my mentor at MICA, Warren Linn, showed me that it can be done in different ways.”...
Without much training or education, Bill Bateman has turned a tiny bar into a multi-million dollar franchise.
Bill Bateman never donned a cap and gown, never shifted the tassel from one side of the mortarboard to the other, never clutched a diploma.
He’s revealing this, the regret evident in his eyes, as he sits at a table sipping a glass of HobNob Pinot Noir at the Parkville restaurant that bears his name. There are 17 other such restaurants scattered from Edgewater to southern Pennsylvania, a mini...
Edmund Skrodzki, ex-Secret Service and current executive director of campus safety and security at The Johns Hopkins University Homewood campus
I worked for 22 years with the United States Secret Service. I was going to graduate school at the time here at University of Baltimore and one of the students there was a Secret Service agent. The Secret Service intrigued me because they have dual responsibilities: They have protection, and they have criminal investigation. So, I applied.
They check you out from the day you were born to your...
A year after a same-sex marriage bill died in the state legislature, advocates try again.
Last year, when state legislators tried to make Maryland the sixth state to legalize gay marriage, their once rock-solid coalition fell apart one Sunday at a time.
"We found Mondays to be bad days for our vote count," says Delegate Heather Mizeur of Montgomery County, one of a handful of openly gay legislators. "Each passing Sunday, many local pastors spent entire services devoted to preaching...
A look back at the local luminaries we lost in the past year
William Donald Schaefer, 89With his lumpy physique, occasionally dour demeanor, and complete indifference to fashion, William Donald Schaefer did not exactly cut a dashing public figure. And yet, absolutely no one exerted a more profound influence on this city in modern times.
From 1955, when he was first elected to the Baltimore City Council, until 2006, when he was defeated for a third term as...
A local nonprofit provides new homes for abandoned and neglected animals.
In 2007, Michelle Ingrodi suffered a bad breakup. So, she did what many do in that situation and decided to get a dog. After exploring a couple of adoption agencies, she discovered the option of fostering.
"I fostered a puppy and, a week later, it got adopted," she said. "I loved it and wanted to do it again."
So she took out an ad on Craigslist saying that she could foster pets. Eventually, she...
A documentary about Elmo's local creator, Kevin Clash, debuts at the Charles.
When Being Elmo premiered at the Charles Theater on November 18, it was a homecoming of sorts.
The documentary focuses on Kevin Clash, who grew up in Baltimore County, graduated from Dundalk High School and Towson University, and honed his skills as a puppeteer at the Inner Harbor. He went on to join Jim Henson at the Children's Television Workshop, where he created Elmo, the beloved red monster...
