The food pied piper on skipping college, Berger Cookies, and hating the word "foodie."
Through Charm City Food Tours, Celeste Corsaro gives out-of-towners (and locals) guided gustatory tours through Baltimore’s neighborhoods. Yes, there will be crab cakes. And no, you won’t overeat (she promises). We check in with Corsaro on the state of local cuisine.
Where did you go to school?I dabbled with college, but didn’t have much time for it. I don’t regret it, though. I’ve...
Court-appointed volunteers advocate for neglected children when no one else can.
Jerry Lawler met Ricky*, then 13, shortly after he’d been removed from his latest foster home and placed in another residential institution.
“His foster care mother basically said, ‘I can’t deal with him anymore,’” Lawler says.
A volunteer with the nonprofit CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) of Baltimore, Lawler was assigned to Ricky by the Baltimore City Family and Juvenile Court. His job...
The Camden Yards maven on bad advice, pale imitations, and the egalitarian glory of baseball.
She helped create the best ballpark in baseball (if we do say so ourselves), and now architect Janet Marie Smith is back with the Orioles, renovating the club’s new Sarasota spring training facility and sprucing up her old baby Camden Yards (now one of the oldest parks in the bigs!). We catch up with the O’s VP of planning and development.
What is the best advice you ever got? The best...
A Muslim restaurateur makes his name in the bagel business.
Drive north from the Beltway into Liberty Road’s abyss of chain stores, and just after the Carroll County line, in the nondescript Oklahoma Center strip mall, a sign begs for a double take: Habib’s Kabob and Bagel Cafe.
Can peace in the Middle East be far off?
The Eldersburg sister eateries are the brainchildren of Habib Rahimi, who was raised in the Iranian city of Tabriz, about eight hours...
Chef Ned Atwater is on a roll with his successful bread, soup, and salad shops.
When Ned Atwater was growing up in the close-knit community of Catonsville, one of his favorite pastimes was going to Gilbert’s to buy oatmeal cookies, three for a nickel.
These days, the old-fashioned general store is long gone, but Atwater can now walk to his own place, Atwater’s Naturally Leavened Bread, from his nearby home.
In January, after years of planning, Atwater moved the baking...
Catharine Robertson, executive director, Baltimore Improv Group [BIG]
“What I like most about being on stage is the feeling of playing with the other people. It’s like playing a game of tennis. You hit a ball to them and you know a ball is coming, but you don’t know what kind of ball is coming back. You have to pay very close attention, and that’s what I love about it.
The basic tenet of improv is to say, ‘Yes, and . . . ’ which means if you hand me something...
The local author on Oprah, his bright future, and having faith, not fear.
Since writing his critically acclaimed book, The Other Wes Moore, about another young man from Baltimore who shares his name but a very different fate, it’s been a whirlwind of interviews, lectures, and awards for Wes Moore. We catch up with him to see how he’s handling the ride.
Where did you go to school? I graduated from Junior College at Valley Forge Military College and was...
For the past 100 years, John Pente has been watching the world change from the same one-block radius in Little Italy.
Seventy-five years ago, John Pente's Model T Ford was the talk of Little Italy. He bought it used for $12, and had it, as the kids might say these days, completely tricked out.
The 25-year-old painted the car's wheel spokes red and the fenders around the tires bright blue. He installed a homemade radio under the rumble seat that tuned in the city's one station.
"It was my pride and joy," he...
The new law dean on her dreaded crab allergy, Baltimore taxis, and building a more loveable lawyer.
One year ago this month, the University of Maryland School of Law hired Philadelphia's Phoebe Haddon as its new dean. We check in with her and see how she's transitioning from Brotherly Love to Charm.
Where did you go to school?In the legal profession, that question usually refers to your law school. But I've been in Baltimore long enough to know you're asking about high school. I went to...
Bob Hieronimus obsesses over symbols, esoteric teachings, and the paranormal. Is he the one who doesn’t get it—or are we?
It’s nearly 8 p.m. on a Sunday night, and Bob Hieronimus is scurrying around the basement radio studio of his Owings Mills home.
As he has for the past 22 years, he’ll be broadcasting his unconventional take on the world. He settles into his chair and places headphones over his ears; his wife Zohara (or “Zoh”) enters the room surrounded by three barking dogs. She sits down at a second microphone...
