Perhaps no fall pastime is more popular than paying a visit to a local pumpkin patch. Once the ‘ber months hit, we hit up our friends, cross-reference our calendars, and pick a day to trek out to a family-friendly farm to celebrate the season.

Luckily, in Baltimore we’re only a quick, scenic drive away from a number of pumpkin-picking destinations that go all out with harvest treats and activities—from apple cider and spice cakes to hayrides and petting zoos.

Below, browse our master list of area farms to find perfectly plump gourds, whether you want to bake pies, carve spooky jack-o-lanterns, or simply step up your porch decor this season.  

Weekends in October: Baugher’s Orchards and Farms
1015 Baugher Rd. Carroll County/Westminster
Hours: Weekends from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
How Far From Baltimore City? About 32 miles.
Harvest Highlights: Pick-your-own pumpkins with a hayride to the patch, plus enjoy play zones, scarecrows, a petting zoo, and more. As always, sweets—including Baugher’s famous apple cider donuts—are a must.

Oct. 1-31: Brookfield Pumpkins
8302 Ramsburg Road. Frederick/Thurmont
Hours: Mon.-Thurs.: 3-6 p.m.; Friday- Sunday: 10 a.m.-6:00 p.m.; Wagons to the pumpkin patch run hourly from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
How Far From Baltimore City? About 44 miles.
Harvest Highlights: Pick your own pumpkins, gourds, and squash (priced from $1-40, based on size.)

Weekends in October: Buppert’s/Doran’s Chance Farm
6914 Ridge Road, Marriotsville
Hours: Mon.-Fri.: 9:30 a.m.-6 p.m.; Weekends from 9:30 a.m.-5 p.m.
How Far From Baltimore City? About 18 miles.
Harvest Highlights: Hitch a hayride to the “U-Pick Patch,” select your perfect pumpkin, and enjoy unlimited rounds of family corn maze fun.

Sept. 19-Nov. 1: Butler’s Orchard
22222 Davis Mill Road. Germantown.
Hours: Wed.–Fri.: 1 p.m.– 6 p.m. (Last entry 4:30 p.m.)
Sat-Sun and Columbus Day: 9 a.m.-6 p.m. (Last entry 4:30 p.m.)
How Far From Baltimore City? About 33 miles.
Harvest Highlights: Enjoy pick-your-own pumpkins (priced at 79 cents per pound,) hilltop jump pads, pedal tractors, corn hole games, and straw maze mischief. Also available: pony rides, face paint, giant slides, and pumpkin cannons.

Weekends Sept. 19-Nov. 1: Chapel Hills Farm and Nursery
4356 Chapel Road. Perry Hall.
Hours: Sat: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sun: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
How Far From Baltimore City? About 12 miles.
Harvest Highlights: Come for the pumpkins. Stay for the pony rides, kettle corn, fresh-baked goods, and frozen treats.

Sept. 18-Nov. 8: Clark’s Elioak Farm
10500 Clarksville Pike. Ellicott City.
Hours: Tues.-Fri.: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Weekends: 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. 
How Far From Baltimore City? About 15 miles.
Harvest Highlights: Kiddos get a hayride to the pumpkin patch and one cute “kid-sized” pumpkin of their choice. They can also take a pony ride, climb aboard the cow train, and visit furry friends at the beloved petting zoo.

Sept. 4-Nov. 1: Gaver Farm
5501 Detrick Road. Mount Airy
Hours: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. daily
How Far From Baltimore City? About 34 miles.
Harvest Highlights: Gaver Farm visitors can pick their own sunflowers, apples, and pumpkins. Also worth mentioning are mini mazes, jumping pillows, pedal karts, animals, and farm fresh grub.

Weekends through October: Knightongale Farm
3924 Solomons Island Road. Anne Arundel County/Harwood.
Hours: Check social media for weekend events and hours throughout the season.
How Far From Baltimore City? About 27 miles.
Harvest Highlights: In addition to pumpkins, be sure to take advantage of a moon bounce, pedal tractors, farm games, cow-milking, and petting zoo fun. And check out the giant spider. 

Sept. 19-Oct. 26: Mary’s Land Farm
4979 Sheppard Lane, Ellicott City.
Hours: Mon.-Sat.: 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Sun: 11 a.m.-4 p.m.
How Far From Baltimore City? About 26 miles.
Harvest Highlights: Look out for animal encounters, hop on a wagon or train ride, and fly down the mega tandem slide. Weekends also feature food truck fare and live music.

Sept. 12-Nov. 8: Montpelier Farms
1720 Crain Highway North. Upper Marlboro.
Hours: Fridays: 5 p.m.-10 p.m. (last admission 9 p.m.); Saturdays: 10 a.m.-10 p.m. (last admission 9 p.m.); Sundays: 10 a.m.-7 p.m. (last admission 6 p.m.)
How Far From Baltimore City? About 30 miles.
Harvest Highlights: Traverse a pick-your-own pumpkin patch (selections five pounds and under priced $3; others 60 cents per pound) or purchase a Fall Festival ticket to enjoy hill slides, pumpkin bowling, barnyard basketball, and more.

Sept. 26-Nov. 1: Summers Farm
7503 Hollow Road. Frederick/Middletown.
Hours: Times vary by day and month. See details, here. 
How Far From Baltimore City? About 47 miles.
Harvest Highlights: Catch a wagon to the pick-your-own patch. Plus, get the kiddos riled up with everything from farmer mini golf and tug of war to an obstacle course and giant tunnel slides.

To Oct. 30: Valley View Farms
11035 York Rd. Cockeysville.
Hours: 8 a.m.-7p.m.
How Far From Baltimore City? About 14 miles.
Harvest Highlights: Marvel at the storefront’s Halloween Village display, pick pumpkins of all sizes, and guess how many seeds are in the biggest one. As always, WBAL’s Tom Tasselmyer makes the final count. Winners take home gift card prizes.

Sept. 14-Nov. 8: Weber’s Cider Mill Farm
2526 Proctor Lane. Parkville.
Hours: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. daily (10 a.m.-5 p.m. in November). Last entry at 4 p.m.
How Far From Baltimore City? About 9 miles.
Harvest Highlights: Pick pumpkins, sip on cider, and partake in a host of wholesome barnyard fun. (Think: play structures, face painting, mini mazes, gem mining, hillside slides, tire climbing and more.)

Additional reporting by Grace Hebron and Isabella Passalacqua

There are stores you happen upon and stores you seek out. Annapolis Maritime Antiques, tucked into Eastport just beyond the tourist path of downtown Annapolis, is definitely one you seek out.

Inside the 800-square-foot shop, a ship’s wheel rests near antique navigation instruments while a six-foot model of a 1933 Duck amphibious plane hangs from the tin ceiling. Vintage lanterns cast a soft glow over furniture crafted from salvaged maritime materials. Ship hardware, books, and nautical curiosities share the space with handcrafted pieces of furniture fashioned from reclaimed wood. Nearly every object bears evidence of a previous life at sea.

The effect is neither gimmicky nor kitschy. It feels curated and connected to place, less like retail and more like stepping into a living archive of Chesapeake maritime culture. In an age when coastal decor can be reduced to mass-produced anchors and carefully distressed finishes, Annapolis Maritime Antiques offers something increasingly rare: authenticity.

“This isn’t about making something look old,” says owner Tony Kime, a retired Coast Guard commander whose wit and tenacity are as strong as ever despite the white hair and measured gait that reflect the passage of time. “The history is already there.”

In an age when coastal decor can be reduced to mass-produced anchors and carefully distressed finishes, Annapolis Maritime Antiques offers something increasingly rare: authenticity.

The shop’s origins didn’t grow from a business plan but out of boredom. “I was 67 and retired,” Kime says. “Five or six weeks later, I was really bored.”

Looking for a project, Kime decided to take on building a table from a World War II Liberty Ship hatch cover—a massive, five-foot, 120-pound wooden panel used aboard a wartime cargo ship meant to protect it from fire, flooding, or explosive shock. But there was one problem: He didn’t have a hatch cover.

Kime tracked down a craftsman who made hatch-cover furniture and asked if he could buy a single cover to try his hand at furniture making. The man, who had a heart condition and was looking to get out of the business, instead offered him two and a half cargo containers filled with them.

“Somewhere around 1,800 to 2,000. I had to buy a pickup truck just to move them,” Kime recalls. Then another problem presented itself. “I’m not a carpenter,” he says with a laugh. He had never built anything. Kime rented a waterman’s shed in Shady Side, 20 miles outside Annapolis at the point where West River opens into the Chesapeake Bay.

One cold November day, he hired two high school students to handle the heavy lifting, sanding, and othe chores while he learned to build furniture. He relied on his own sketches and online tutorials to build his first table. A restaurant owner ordered two more. Word spread, and a business took shape. As the business grew, Kime expanded beyond furniture making, collecting nautical antiques through online auctions, dealers, and word of mouth.

“I knew sitting around idle wasn’t for me,” he says. “I wasn’t built for that.”

After several years selling his goods online, Kime felt it was time to expand and opened the Eastport store in 2014. The building itself has a story. The former Raven Maritime Studio on Severn Avenue was in disrepair when Kime first saw it. The owner wanted to tear it down, but city preservation rules prevented demolition.

“[The owner] said, ‘If you come up and be the project manager for renovations, you can open a retail store and sell your antiques,’” Kime recalls. It was an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Rather than erase the building’s past, Kime preserved its maritime character. Wood and aged brass create a backdrop that feels both historic and warm, a fitting home for a business devoted to preserving pieces of nautical history.

Prices range from a few dollars for vintage postcards to $28,000, the amount a Wyoming physician recently paid for a complete World War II dive suit and helmet with matching serial numbers.

Behind many of those one-of-a-kind pieces is a second location most visitors never see. Nearly all of the store’s custom work is created at AMA Woodworks in Tracy’s Landing, where antique maritime materials are transformed into dining tables, desks, bars, and commissioned pieces for homeowners, yacht clubs, and restaurants. Among the most distinctive creations are pieces crafted from the same Liberty Ship hatch covers Kime once stacked in a shed, now reborn as functional heirlooms.

“We don’t just plop things on a shelf,” he says. “The majority of pieces, we work on.” Some items are restored to a shine while others retain their original patina. “Sometimes the history is in the wear,” he says.

Now that he’s mostly retired, Kime insists the store would not exist without his staff. “We would have sunk years ago without these folks,” he jokes, pun intended. They are the interpreters of the space, helping visitors understand the history behind the objects.

Shelby Herrera, who moved to Annapolis three years ago and is now the store’s manager, delights in explaining a boatswain’s whistle by way of The Sound of Music or recounting the day a child jammed a replica cannonball into a cannon, prompting one visitor to suggest firing it down the street.

“I told him, ‘Sir, this is Annapolis. We are not shooting a cannon down the street,’” Herrera says.

Visiting the shop feels less like shopping and more like stepping into the maritime culture that helped shape the city itself.

For collectors, decorators, and Chesapeake Bay enthusiasts, the inventory extends far beyond decorative accents. Historic ship photographs, maritime lighting, and nautical instruments attract everyone from first-time visitors searching for a unique gift to yacht clubs and homeowners looking for a statement piece. Some customers call from overseas.

“We’ve shipped to Australia, Hong Kong, and London,” says business manager Meredith Farrington. “Sometimes it’s Americans living abroad. Sometimes it’s just collectors.”

The store’s location only deepens the experience. Eastport remains Annapolis’ working waterfront, where commercial fishing, boatbuilding, and sailing traditions are still woven into daily life. Visiting the shop feels less like shopping and more like stepping into the maritime culture that helped shape the city itself.

Kime is 84 now, and his once-commanding stride has slowed. Recently diagnosed with a medical condition he believes is connected to his service in Vietnam, he speaks matter-of-factly about the future.

“This can’t go on forever,” he says. He knows the business will eventually belong to someone else. His hope is that its mission won’t change. “I hope whoever takes over finds the same beauty in these one-of-a-kind maritime artifacts as I have,” he says. “This is history worth preserving and cherishing today and long after I’m gone.”

This past weekend, fans of Baltimore’s boisterous underground music scene bounced back and forth between neighboring North Howard Street venues Le Mondo and Current Space for Subscape—the city’s ever-evolving DIY music fest that features a lineup of more than 60 area punk, alternative, and metal bands across three days.

Though the shows are all free to attend, in keeping with the event’s DIY spirit, organizers turned to crowdfunding (with rewards like VIP perks and locally designed merch) to make sure all talent got paid and production costs were covered. They raised more than double their goal.

“Our city has one of the best music scenes on the planet, and it deserves to be championed by everyone who lives here,” organizers Michael Habif of Baltimore Showplace, Andy Phillips of Wax Atlas, and Kim Te of the band Natural Velvet, wrote on their Indiegogo page. “In a time when it’s harder than ever to find community in the non-virtual world, the DIY music scene is a refuge for countless people to connect and support each other. ”

Amen to that. Browse the gallery below to get a sense of the energy of the third-annual Subscape weekend, captured through the lens of contributing photographer Josh Sisk.

Since his 2015 photograph of Baltimore protests following the death of Freddie Gray appeared on the cover of Time, the now 38-year-old Devin Allen has used his camera to challenge uninformed narratives about his hometown.

In 2017, the Gordon Parks Foundation, named for the artistic pioneer and first Black photographer to shoot for LIFE magazine, tapped Allen as its inaugural Gordon Parks Foundation Fellow in Art. The ongoing dialogue between Parks’ legacy and Allen’s vital documentary practice shaped a recent conversation between Allen and award-winning Baltimore writer D. Watkins on the opening day of Devin Allen and D. Watkins: Baltimore, an exhibition at the Pleasantville, New York foundation running through August 28.

The show parallels the release of his new photobook, Devin Allen: Baltimore, and presents photographs from 2015-2023 alongside original texts by Watkins, who also contributed to the book.

Over the span of three books and in exhibitions across the United States and abroad, Allen—who also curated this year’s SCOUT Art Fair at Artscape—has confronted stereotypes and celebrated the city. Meanwhile, he continues to expand his commitment to Baltimore youth with his photography program, “Through Their Eyes,” which provides city students with cameras and mentorship.

Three books in 10 years is an incredible accomplishment. How have your photographic intentions changed between your first book and the most recent one?
A Beautiful Ghetto was made after the uprising, trying to show Baltimore in a different light, for Freddie Gray. We were known for The Wire, for crime, but I wanted people to better understand the uprising and see it through my eyes. I also wanted to show what I see every day walking the streets, how I perceive…where Freddie Gray grew up, the kids on the street with family and friends, the little things that a lot of people don’t see: the joy, the love, the camaraderie that we have in Baltimore.

In my second book, No Justice, No Peace, I was looking more at protests and protest movements, shooting six or seven years after the ones in Baltimore. With that [project], I was more hands-off because the Gordon Parks Foundation, D. Watkins, [writer and activist] Darnell Moore, and others kind of curated it amongst themselves and helped select the imagery.

This one has my work over the past 10 years, my portraiture, my landscapes, my protest work. I started out as a photographer in 2013 so it’s a look back at what I’ve done in this city.

Can you describe your evolution as a narrator and photographer?
When my grandmother helped me buy my first camera, I just wanted a camera. I was reading about and studying pictures of Gordon Parks, and wanted to be like him, but I didn’t have a clear perspective of what I wanted to say or what I stood for. I didn’t really know much about photography. I found my voice from Freddie Gray’s death and the uprising. It was then I started understanding what Gordon Parks meant when he said the camera was his “choice of weapons.”

Then I started studying more, [learning about] the power of portraiture from people like Carrie Mae Weems and Dawoud Bey, and the importance of telling Black stories. I understood how a lot of people that I grew up with in these communities that I roam every day don’t feel seen, or as if their stories are important. I could have gone to New York, I had that chance. I could have gone to LA too because I had that spotlight after the Freddie Gray protest image in Time.

But I was like, “no,” I need to pull a page out of Roy DeCarava’s book. He shot in and never left Harlem. Or Jamel Shabazz, who stuck 10 toes down in New York for so many years capturing these stories. That’s when I understood my power of being in Baltimore.

How has the city itself changed in the decade-plus since Freddie Gray’s death?
Remember in The Lion King, when Mufasa tells Simba not to go to the “shadowland?” That was Baltimore. Growing up we were always proud of our ’hood, where we came from. Now, the communities I used to hang out in, the places I’ve been documenting, I sometimes no longer recognize. The projects are disappearing because of gentrification. It’s so important to people like me to document the way things were, are, and be a part of the change. This is probably the safest Baltimore has ever been…[and] now everyone wants to move here.

I hate when people say it’s a “renaissance.” Baltimore has always been in a renaissance, always evolving. I remember my grandmother talking about Billie Holiday, The Sphinx Club. Baltimore has always been a city where we thrive no matter if the chips are down. We’re going find a way.

This story was originally published by The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here.

In early July, more than 100 people stopped by Sawmill Creek Park just across the Baltimore City line in Glen Burnie for the third-annual “Aaliyah Day.” It was a good turnout, especially given the triple-digit temperatures that threatened to keep some away.  

The stifling weather didn’t stop attendees from playing basketball or entering raffles for cash, shoes, and Orioles tickets. A DJ played upbeat music as family and friends handed out food and cold water. People chatted and exchanged quiet smiles. Many paused to look at the tribute on the black metal fence, where Aaliyah’s portrait hung alongside eight others, all young people lost to gun violence. 

The day before the event, Krystal Gonzalez, Aaliyah’s mother, felt overtaken by emotions.

“Yesterday was full of tears, a rollercoaster,” she said. “This was the last day that I saw my baby alive on July 1, three years ago.”

For Gonzalez, the July 2 celebration was meant to be completely different from the block party where her daughter died. It was her way of reclaiming the day and restoring hope.

“But it’s also inspiring change,” she said.

Aaliyah was 18 and a recent high school graduate when she was shot and killed. She was one of two people who died after shots erupted in the largest mass shooting in modern Baltimore history. Twenty-eight others were also wounded—including 15 minors.

They were shot at the Brooklyn Day block party, an annual community event in the Brooklyn Homes section of Baltimore. The event was banned after the shooting, and the city Housing Authority is now being accused of negligence in a lawsuit filed by Gonzalez and the family of 20-year-old Kylis Fagbemi, the other victim who died in the shooting. Four people injured in the shooting have also filed lawsuits.

“My eyes were opened to the many disparities and injustices that caused this awful event to happen,” Gonzalez says. “There were a lot of missteps and finger-pointing, and as a result, my daughter is no longer here.”

Gonzalez’s journey from grief to activism has been driven by her desire for answers and change. She has become a prominent voice in the media and at the Baltimore City Council, calling attention to systemic failures around Brooklyn Day. She has pointed to years of unpermitted block parties that were allowed to continue, a public housing authority that looked the other way, and police officers who did not respond to several 911 calls about guns at the scene.

The last moments Gonzalez shared with her daughter felt strangely eerie. She had cooked Aaliyah’s favorite meal for dinner, and her gut had urged her to pull Aaliyah into a tight embrace in the hallway, for no particular reason. They had shared similar moments many times— quick hugs before Aaliyah’s shifts at Starbucks, after rides to school, or during late-night check-ins. But this time felt heavier, as if Gonzalez sensed something was wrong that July evening. 

When Aaliyah stopped by her bedroom to say goodbye before leaving for the party, Gonzalez again felt she needed to pay close attention. Aaliyah’s last words to her mother were, “I’m leaving. I love you, Mom. I’ll see you later.”

That night around 1 a.m., Gonzalez was woken up by her husband’s screams. Aaliyah had been shot. They hurried to Brooklyn Homes, hoping to find their wounded daughter. First responders told them to go to MedStar Harbor Hospital, but the hospital told them to go back to Brooklyn Homes. Back on the scene, Gonzalez found Aaliyah’s body, identified by the tattoo on her arm, lying on the ground covered with a sheet. 

Shocked and inconsolable, she learned Aaliyah had been pronounced dead at 12:34 a.m. and that her body had been waiting there all along amid the chaos of overturned tables and broken glass, blood spatters, exhibit tags, and crime scene tapes. 

“I could feel the fear of people in that place,” Gonzalez says. “I knew Aaliyah might have been scared. It was an awful thing for any parent to experience. It never leaves you.” 

Five people have pleaded guilty to charges related to the Brooklyn Homes shooting, but no one has faced murder charges for the two deaths. The Baltimore Police Department has not responded to requests for comment. 

The lawsuits filed by Gonzalez and the other victim’s families claim the Housing Authority failed to provide proper security that could have prevented the shooting.  

The city’s “after-action” report, released in August 2023, placed much of the blame for events spiraling out of control on the Baltimore Police Department. The report noted BPD’s failure to gather intelligence around the event, to deploy needed officers, and to respond to 911 calls prior to the gunfire.

The report added, “Officer indifference may have compromised the awareness, planning, and response to Brooklyn Day prior to the large crowds arriving.” Ultimately, one police officer was terminated along with one BPD civilian employee. Seven other officers and three other civilian employees were assessed days of lost pay.

“There’s nothing that they can do criminally to give me justice for my child,” Gonzalez says. “What I can focus on is seeing my community change as a result of my daughter losing her life.” 

As one of the few victims’ family members to speak out publicly since the tragedy, she realized the community had come to accept violence as normal because it had gone on so long. Without action, this cycle would likely continue.

“Bullets have no name—wrong place, wrong time,” Gonzalez says. “I refuse to let this be a world that we live in. We have to do so much to change the culture.”

That’s how her nonprofit foundation, Redirecting Our Culture (ROC), was born seven months after Aaliyah’s death. The organization helps families rebuild after trauma, focusing on mental health and interrupting the cycle that turns traumatized youth into future perpetrators. 

Key initiatives include bi-weekly peer-to-peer meetings for bereaved mothers affected by gun violence, grief support sessions, and youth character development workshops. ROC also serves as a bridge, connecting survivors with community violence interrupters to access wrap-around services through the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (MONSE). 

“Our vision is to turn those same moms into victim advocates, which is going to open up more of a space for more victims to be touched,” says Mark Mason, who oversees victim services at MONSE.

During this year’s Aaliyah Day, representatives from the Anne Arundel County Workforce Development Corporation provided job resources, while officers from the Baltimore Police Department were present not just to ensure safety, but also to engage with the community, Gonzalez says. 

Sitting on a shaded bench, Tamica Howard looked at her son’s portrait displayed on the fence across the field. A rush of emotions came over her as she took in the tribute. Her oldest son, 19-year-old Diamante Howard, was killed in April 2018 during a dice game, and even now it still feels like it happened yesterday.

“I am just trying to bear with it,” she said. “So it’s rough.”

Howard was attending Aaliyah Day for the first time, having recently joined ROC. She takes part in the group chats, Zoom calls, and in-person meetings with the other bereaved mothers. 

“We went through the same thing, but differently,” Howard said. “If you need someone to talk to, you can call them. It’s awesome to have support from people who know what you’re going through.”

Baltimore has seen historic reductions in gun violence in recent years, in line with the national downward trend. Research suggests this is driven by the city’s approach—a coordinated system that combines focused deterrence, community violence intervention, victim services, and improved investigations under the sustained leadership of the Mayor’s Office.  

Nationally, though, gun violence remains the leading cause of death for Generation Z, something that has held true since 2017. That’s where Aaliyah Day comes in, and why it can play a key role in maintaining progress toward reducing gun violence.

From the start, Gonzalez has framed Aaliyah Day as more than just a vigil. She views it as part of a greater effort for community safety, with city agencies, violence interrupters, neighborhood leaders, and survivors all working together.

“It absolutely is a collective effort,” she says. “Everybody has to work together in order to see any kind of change.”

Mason, MONSE’s chief of victim services, says events like Aaliyah Day complement government-led initiatives and can be “hugely effective” in changing how young people see violence and their options. 

“Which is why [Aaliyah Day] is so unique,” he says. Gonzalez “has put things together where, everywhere you turn, as a young person, you can find something or someone to engage with.”

For young adults like Kayla Green, watching people from different backgrounds and cultures come together at Aaliyah Day was inspiring.

Green, a 25-year-old makeup artist from Baltimore, had planned to go to the Brooklyn Day block party three years ago, but ultimately stayed home. Even though she did not know Aaliyah personally, Green was deeply affected by her story. Almost attending the deadly block party changed how she thinks about safety and community responsibility. 

She believes government programs are important, but says survivor-led events like Aaliyah Day “just take away the tension.” She feels that while politicians should do more, the community often does better.

“I feel like we as a community could work faster than them,” she said. “We want the younger community to have a say in protesting, getting out in the field, and sticking up for ourselves.”

On the same day Gonzalez brings families and young people together for Aaliyah Day in Sawmill Creek Park, MONSE, through its Safe Streets Baltimore program, hosts a quieter wellness event at Brooklyn Homes to mark the anniversary of the mass shooting there. These healing events are designed, as Mason puts it, to bring “a more serene type of atmosphere” to Ground Zero.

Along with promoting community events like the bi-annual healing hikes and the annual Aaliyah Day, Gonzalez has spent many hours meeting with lawmakers. She met with Maryland Governor Wes Moore about the ENOUGH Act to fight child poverty after Brooklyn Day, testified for gun control laws to stop DIY machine guns, and spoke at rallies. 

Recognized as a leading advocate for victim services, she attended the Biden-Harris administration’s Mother’s Convening on Improving Services for Gun Violence Victims at the White House in March 2024.

Even as she navigates unresolved grief, Gonzalez is intent on widening the reach of Redirecting Our Culture. She wants to build on her partnerships with MONSE and to one day open a trauma recovery center for youth and parents. 

Gonzalez, who now works as chief of staff for a state delegate in Annapolis, says she feels “no trepidation, no fear, no anxiety” when it comes to standing before those in power to prevent other families from enduring what her family has. 

“There are days where I sit with my tail down, but I let those days come and go,” Gonzalez says. “In the meantime, I have to keep moving forward, because the only things in life that are guaranteed are death and change.”

The Saturday farmers market in Ellicott City doesn’t officially begin until 9 a.m., but on a recent sunny June morning, many of the dozen-plus vendors opened earlier. Before long, customers formed lines to purchase savory empanadas, sourdough, and bright red heirloom tomatoes as vendors made small talk with regular customers.

Guests piled onto picnic benches at Tiber Park, located at the bottom of this hilly historic town that dates to 1772. Adults and kids dug into croissant sandwiches and Nutella-filled crepes while listening to local musician Mike Walls, who pivoted from Bob Dylan to “Wheels on the Bus” during his opening number.

Held from Memorial Day weekend to late October, the Old Ellicott City Farmers Market debuted last year, bringing foot traffic and enlivening a town hit hard by two floods (in 2016 and 2018) and the economic toll of the pandemic.

“The farmers market is the best new thing I’ve seen out of Ellicott City in the past 10 years,” says Mark Hemmis, owner of Phoenix Upper Main, a restaurant known for its extensive beer selection. “It’s been a tremendous addition to town. It really brings some life.”

The farmers market is just one of the additions that have contributed to what some locals describe as a comeback for a beloved shopping and dining destination. Visitors from around the state shop at its independent businesses housed in preserved 18th- and 19th-century buildings replete with distinctive architectural details like intricate ironwork. A host of new businesses, a weekend shuttle that moves people up and down Main Street’s steep slope—not to mention a county-led flood mitigation plan—have also boosted optimism among locals.

“I think we’re on the cusp of a renaissance down here,” says Matt Krist, who owns Backwater Books & Bibliopub with his wife, Alli.

The former teachers opened the bookstore in 2022 and the bar, which serves beer, wine, and nonalcoholic drinks, the following year. According to Alli, people who haven’t been to Ellicott City in years are “rediscovering” the place and feel like it’s coming back.

The Ellicott City Partnership, the nonprofit that supports the town’s small businesses, says it no longer tracks foot traffic. But many entrepreneurs anecdotally report growing sales and increased shoppers, though performance will naturally vary across the more than 80 businesses in town. The town’s most recent SpringFest, held in April, was the busiest for The Wine Bin since the festival began 12 years ago.

“It was slammed,” says owner Dave Carney of his 18-year-old wine shop. “I love seeing the town hopping.”

That sentiment is a far cry from how Ellicott City would have been described only a few short years ago, when two floods killed three people and devastated shops. Main Street was shut down for nearly a month after the May 2018 flood, straining business owners’ cash flow. Eventually, flood damage resulted in several buildings being demolished (though some architectural elements were salvaged and repurposed elsewhere in town).

Several cherished restaurants left the town for good after the second flood, including Portalli’s, Cacao Lane, and the humming coffee shop Bean Hollow Cafe. The devastating damage prompted Gordon Ramsey to highlight Ellicott City on his “24 Hours to Hell and Back” series, spotlighting several businesses in the town. Among them was the Jaxon Edwin Social House, which closed due to the pandemic soon after the episode aired.

“The first flood was shocking and heartbreaking,” says Julia Sanger, past president of the Ellicott City Partnership. “The second flood was soul-crushing.”

Sanger and her mother, Donna, own a 10-year-old gourmet food and cookware store, Park Ridge Trading Co., and, until last April, a popular ice cream stall, Park Ridge Creamery.

“THE FIRST FLOOD WAS SHOCKING AND HEARTBREAKING…THE SECOND FLOOD WAS SOUL-CRUSHING.”

Floods are nothing new for Ellicott City. It has experienced at least eight floods in its history, the earliest recorded in 1868. During storms, water from the Patapsco River and creeks rushes down the sloped valley, gaining speed as it descends, making downtown prone to high water. But the most recent ones prompted Howard County officials to make substantial changes to prevent the same type of lasting damage from happening again as part of its Ellicott City Safe and Sound Plan.

The $350 million that have been secured for the project come from local, state, and federal sources. Some county residents have grumbled about the use of taxpayer money, but the county says that they were able to use grants, low-interest loans, and federal dollars in addition to local and state funding.

Construction began two years ago on a mile-long, 18-foot-wide tunnel that will divert 26,000 gallons of water per second from Main Street into the Patapsco River. A tunnel boring machine, nicknamed “Rocky,” began tearing through the granite blocking the path this summer and will wrap up in the fall of 2027. The plan also calls for five stormwater retention ponds, three of which have been completed.

Vendors say that the flood mitigation work has been slow-moving, but they’re cautiously optimistic that the damage won’t be as excessive during the next big storm.

“I hope that what they’re investing in now changes the future for Ellicott City,” says Tammy Beideman. She owns Sweet Elizabeth Jane, a women’s clothing and accessories shop on Main Street.

When flash flooding occurs in Ellicott City, the buildings at the lowest elevations are most vulnerable. The 2016 flood prompted Beideman, whose shop once resided near the bottom of Main Street, to move a couple blocks up the hill to higher ground.

Hemmis also moved to a safer spot. His former restaurant, the Phoenix Emporium, was one of the four flood ravaged buildings the county slated for demolition (it was ultimately torn down in 2024). So, in 2020, he purchased the former Ellicott Mills Brewing Co. four blocks up the street, renamed it Phoenix Upper Main, merged the concepts, and retained many staff from the restaurant when he acquired it.

Turns out, the upheaval was fortuitous—Hemmis says that being in a larger space with 250 seats allows him to serve bigger groups and host more banquets, boosting sales by five to six percent the last few years.

“We did a fairly good banquet business at the previous location. And now that I’m up here, we’ve got more room to do it,” he says.

In place of the demolished buildings, the county expanded Tiber Park, an expanse of green with cornhole games and planters. The park also hosts the tree-lighting ceremony during the holidays and a community art project during SpringFest in addition to being a space for young kids to play.

“The Tiber Park space has been an amazing addition,” Sanger says. “It feels more open and welcoming.”

Other improvements to the town include the Ellicott City “trolley,” a free, 14-passenger county van that runs on Saturdays and Sundays along Main Street. Inspired by a streetcar that operated here for 50 years in the 19th and 20th centuries, it eases congestion along Main Street and helps people with mobility challenges traverse the steep incline.

Vendors note that it’s especially needed during the town’s two major festivals, autumn’s Main Street Music Fest and SpringFest, when food trucks, artists, and musicians take over one of the bigger parking lots.

Several businesses that opened since the 2020 pandemic have infused the town with new energy and broadened the appeal of an area once known primarily for its antiques stores. Doc Taylor’s Toy Emporium, a whimsical purveyor of games and toys, and The Crazy Mason Milkshake Bar draw families. The boba and sweet shop Sugar Plum Tea & Pastry opened in a spot formerly held by the Jaxon Edwin Social House of Gordon Ransey infamy. Umi Sushi became the town’s first Japanese restaurant in 2019 and has expanded its indoor space twice. On warmer days, diners rush to its serene patio, where they can hear the water flowing down the Tiber River.

New business owners have reinvigorated the town, Sanger says. “All they know is that they love this town, and that is kind of infectious.”

Once the site of a significant department store that lasted 50 years, the historic Caplan’s building opened last fall as an incubator for small Howard County businesses. The Market at Caplan’s features local artisan pasta makers, Black-owned beauty businesses, and pottery studios.

Home decor and gift shop store Lucky Lane Interiors and Al’s Love Cafe, which employs neurodivergent employees, opened this year. The Wine Bin’s Carney is opening a small plates restaurant and cocktail bar, Vesper at Pike & Main, this summer. He brought on Howard County native Rachel Bindel to lead the kitchen. Her impressive culinary stints include the lauded Charleston, South Carolina, restaurant Husk and the Michelin-starred D.C. restaurants Gravitas and the now-shuttered Tail Up Goat.

Carney says he hopes Vesper will fill the town’s need for an intimate spot that’s special enough for date nights but \ casual enough to attract regulars who tune in for the changing menu.

“Restaurants drive business,” says Carney, who notes that Ellicott City has yet to regain many of the eateries it lost to the floods. “I think [Vesper] is going to help.”

“THIS IS A VERY STUBBORN GROUP OF PEOPLE. AT THE END OF THE DAY, THE TOWN IS RESILIENT.”

As space becomes available, new tenants are stepping in, an indicator that Ellicott City still has the cachet to attract businesses. Take for example the eminent French eatery Tersiguel’s, which bid adieu in December after 50 years in business. This year it’s been replaced by River House On Main. “People want to come here and start a business down here,” Sanger says.

More events are also bringing people back to the town. The spring and fall festivals have always been a key driver of foot traffic in Ellicott City, but there are small community events, too. The Wine Bin’s parking lot overflows with adults and kids taking in blockbuster and classic films on Saturday nights in the summer—a seasonal event Carney has been hosting for 17 years. Other business owners are hosting their own gatherings.

With its cozy reading nooks, live music, and author events, Backwater Books has captivated literary lovers of all ages. Hosting poetry readings, live music, book clubs, and other events nearly every night, the bookstore has become a community hub.

“We joke that we’re a community center that’s masquerading as a bookstore,” Matt Krist says.

Sweet Elizabeth Jane hosts jewelry-making classes and farmers market vendor Enchanted Flower Farm has led bouquet-making workshops, adding another layer of experiences for customers. The goal of these events isn’t necessarily to generate a ton of same-day sales. Beideman explains that gatherings like these build community, and community supports business.

“People feel like they’re a part of something,” she says.

Beideman says business is better than ever. She attributes it to several changes she made to her shop, such as focusing more on local professional women rather than tourists, selling online, and promoting on social media. Sales during the first four months of 2026 were up 20 percent compared to last year and 10 percent compared to five years ago.

But there’s more to the Ellicott City renaissance than retail. A new cultural hub, the Capitoline Center, opened in March in a former county circuit courthouse. It features the new headquarters of the Howard County Arts Council, a black box theater, rotating art exhibits, and the Asian American and Pacific Islander Cultural Center.

“It’s a draw for everyone to come to Ellicott City, so there’s more besides the shops and the restaurants,” says Lisa Scarbath, a resident artist at the Capitoline Center and a member-owner of the Artists Gallery on Main Street.

The center’s arts classes, from dance to figure drawing, can also draw more people downtown. There’s a push to bring more residents close to town, too. Just over the Baltimore County line in Oella, an eight-story, former flour mill constructed in 1916 is being adaptively reused into 190 luxury apartments. Expected to open by the end of September, the development will likely bring more residents within walking distance of Main Street later this year.

And all of this positive change and growth has led to a real air of hope in Ellicott City today—for the first time in a while.

“I hope in five years, the town is back to normal,” says Carney. “All the buildings have been renovated. The tunnel’s done. The flooding is in the distant past, and people don’t remember it. None of us want to talk about that anymore.  We’re all over the flood.”

But even if the town faces more setbacks, Ellicott City isn’t going anywhere, says Beideman.

“This is a very stubborn group of people. At the end of the day, the town is resilient.”

It’s never too late to be an up-and-coming writer. Just ask Joe Lertch, 72, (pictured above, left) the owner of The Vineyard Wine Bar in Havre de Grace, and Mark Robinson, 69, (right) a food and wine enthusiast who lives in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. The two men co-authored their first cookbook at the end of November, a five-year labor of love. And they’re going to do it again—books two and three are already in the works.

Their first book, The Art of Spice & Wine Pairing: Simple Recipes to Enjoy Everyday (self-published, $44.95), offers just what the title advertises, featuring recipes like Chive and Herb-Crusted Pork Tenderloin and Spicy Cayenne Shrimp Tacos, with detailed chapters on wine grapes. The recipes are accompanied by Mark Robinson’s mouthwatering photography.

Both men started cooking at a young age: Lertch in Neptune City, New Jersey, at age 8 when he made a botched egg breakfast for his parents that prompted him to keep trying; Robinson in his native Sydney, Australia, where Graham Kerr and his cooking show The Galloping Gourmet stirred his culinary curiosity. They met when Robinson, who relocated to the U.S. for a job in the printing industry, had dinner at Lertch’s Harford County wine bar and restaurant.

Soon, Robinson was helping Lertch with his business website, and together they launched The Wine Matrix on YouTube, exploring topics like “How to Open a Bottle of Wine Without a Corkscrew While Staying at Your Hotel” and “Using the Right Glassware.”

Tell me what made you decide to write a cookbook?
JL: We get a lot of customers at The Vineyard Wine Bar because we’ve got a nice selection of retail wines. They’ll say they’re preparing dinner and want a good bottle of wine. I’ll ask, “What kind of spices are you using? How are you preparing it?” My decades in the wine industry have enabled me to process what the spices are and how the meal is being prepared, so I can pick out a bottle of wine.

But my hours have trimmed back, and there are times when I’m not there. I told the staff that I’m going to get a book on spice and wine pairings so that they can use it as a reference. But I couldn’t find any books on spice and wine pairing, so I started writing down what spices go with what wines.

Why did you add chapters on wine grapes?
JL: A lot of times, people come into the Vineyard, and they’re very intimidated by wine. We want to make it easy for them to understand. So I started putting together a chapter on indigenous white grapes and white wines, what country they come from, and how to pronounce them phonetically. I did the same with red grapes. It’s so much easier if you look at a grape and know how to pronounce it, what flavors it works with, and what spices it works with. That takes the intimidation factor away.

How did Robinson get involved?
JL: Mark is a very talented chef, a great food photographer, and an audio-video whiz. I started running things by him, and he began collaborating on the book, eventually taking over the spice section. The next thing you know it’s four-and-a-half years later, and we decided this could be a great reference tool for any home kitchen, any professional kitchen, and even for someone getting carry-out food.

How did you decide which spices to include?
JL: It started turning into what looked like a set of encyclopedias because we had so many spices. We said, let’s determine the top 15 spices that basically every kitchen is going to have and every grocery store is going to carry. Mark worked his magic and started putting together recipes with his own photos.

How did you pair the spices and wine with the recipes?
MR: We looked at the flavor profile. It’s like if you walk into a restaurant, and the sommelier comes to your table, and he asks you a couple of questions. What wines do you currently drink? Are you interested in stepping outside of the box? The book is the same concept.

Where did you get the recipes?
MR: They came from different places—from family, from my mother, from meals Joe and I deconstructed. We each have had a great opportunity to travel around the world for business and for pleasure and go to different restaurants. You come back with ideas and deconstruct what a meal tasted like.

How would you describe the recipes in the book?
MR: You don’t have to be a CIA-trained chef to be able to do them. They’re meant to take 30 to 40 minutes, so you can come home from work and make one of them.

Step into Amma’s Kitchen in Hydes in Northern Baltimore County, and you’re immediately enveloped by aromatic cooking smells, apple-red walls flecked with gold, and a cheerful proprietor welcoming you.

It’s not a typical storefront restaurant. Mavis Sackey, or Pastor Mavis Sackey as she prefers, is the head chef, turning out a menu that concentrates on the African food she grew up eating in Ghana and a handful of Caribbean and American dishes. The tiny eatery is staffed by volunteers, and proceeds go toward providing feminine hygiene products to girls in rural Africa and to other projects supported by Above the Call Ministries, founded by Sackey.

Standing in the restaurant’s open kitchen, Sackey was on another mission recently. She was developing a sweet-potato soup. Her secret ingredient: vanilla. The golden brew was thick but not too sweet, capturing the flavor of the cooked root vegetable.

The cooking prep here is rustic, with an emphasis on slow-cooked stews and fall off-the-bone meats. Just about everything is served with rice because, as Sackey points out, it’s used as a staple around the world. She relies on garlic, onions, turmeric, Scotch bonnet chile peppers, and warm Indian spices like cumin and coriander to flavor her various dishes.

We were soon feasting on ginger chicken along with jollof rice, a traditional West African preparation. We savored the hunks of succulent dark meat in a sesame-ginger sauce flecked with parsley that mingled with the tomatoey red rice.

While the restaurant’s ambiance is casual, the food is served on pretty, white plates rimmed in gold along with gold flatware. Sackey has incorporated the colors of the Ghanian flag (red, gold, and green with a black star) into her décor, and her food pops on the bare red tables.

The curry goat (you can also get it with chicken) was a success, served with coconut-milk rice and beans. But be prepared for bones as you dig into the tender meat and zingy sauce. The fried, glazed plantains provided a calming foil to the spiciness.

A dish that gave us pause was the peanut-butter soup, whose captivating broth featured its namesake ingredient, various spices, and fresh tomatoes. We chose chicken as our protein, only to find that meat had not been deboned. The soup was delicious, but we had to slurp carefully around small bone remnants. When we asked Sackey about the soup, she explained that it is a standard African technique to cook with whole chicken pieces.

“When people come in, we say, if you’re here for the experience, you should expect it to be made in a way that is authentically true to the country,” she says.

For those not seeking authenticity, Sackey also whips up platters like spaghetti and meatballs, shrimp Alfredo, and barbecue wings for her customers. While there were no puff puffs—West African deep-fried dough balls—the night we visited, Sackey had made a German chocolate cake, a great finish to our meal.

“I have no culinary experience, just a raw passion for cooking,” she says. “Food is really good when it’s cooked from the heart and soul.”

AMMA’S KITCHEN: 12600 Harford Road, Hydes, 410-510-7113. HOURS: Mon.-Sat. 11 a.m.-8 p.m. PRICES: Salads and veggies: $6-13; soups: $15-19; entrees: $14-20; desserts: $4-6. AMBIANCE: cozy cafe.

If you were looking for Arsh Mirmiran during the early 1990s around lunchtime, chances are he was at The Village Food Market at The Village of Cross Keys, eating a Reuben or fried chicken and western fries. Known as the Cross Keys Deli, it was a popular (and nearby) destination for Friends School of Baltimore students like him who were permitted to leave campus for lunch.

In fact, not just the deli but all of Cross Keys was a familiar spot for Mirmiran, today a partner with Caves Valley Partners, the Baltimore-based commercial development firm that has recently revitalized the iconic Baltimore location.

Growing up, he accompanied his parents to Cross Keys for shopping trips and more meals at the deli. His mother had her hair done by Howard at Carl Intercoiffurie, one of the original tenants. Later, after he and his wife, Lauren, moved to Homeland, Donna’s Cafe at Cross Keys was a frequent family meal spot with their young daughters.

“When I was younger, I didn’t have the big picture to understand that it felt like community,” says Mirmiran. “There was good stuff there, and we went. For me it was all about the deli.”

“Community” was the vision that Jim Rouse and The Rouse Company had when Rouse purchased the former 68-acre Baltimore Country Club golf course in 1961 to embark on a new concept: a multi-use complex with high-end retail, gathering spots, offices, and luxury condominiums. It was Rouse’s first, pre-Columbia planned community.

Rouse took the name “Cross Keys” from the 18th-century tavern that once welcomed travelers on the Falls Turnpike Road (now Falls Road). Located where the current CVS Pharmacy is on Falls Road, the inn burnt to the ground in 1909, but the two crossed keys of the original inn’s logo informed the new development’s own logo featuring three crossed keys.

The name was also inspired by Cross Keys Village, the free Black enclave on Falls Road, just north of Cold Spring Lane that dated to the mid-1800s. Most of the robust community had been razed around the time Rouse Co. was negotiating to buy the land for the Village of Cross Keys.

In his comprehensive history, Baltimore’s Two Cross Keys Villages, Jim Holechek writes, “To make room for the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute-Western High School complex and a highway entrance ramp, all Cross Keys homes on the west side of Falls were condemned and demolished in the fall of 1961.”

Then a resident of Roland Park, Rouse worked with the Roland Park community to gather buy-in for his low-density concept, hosting numerous in-home gatherings. When construction began on the residential section in September 1963, Rouse took his inspiration from Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.’s Roland Park plan, writes Holechek. “The directive from Rouse was to follow the land contours and not to remove trees except for a few in the footprints of the section of the development.”

When The Village of Cross Keys opened in 1965, it quickly became the place to be. And remained so for decades. Oprah Winfrey lived there during her WJZ TV days, and Gov. Harry Hughes and poet Ogden Nash called it home. (The latter wrote handwritten letters to Rouse complaining about his condo’s TV reception and the parking.)

Legendary jewelry designer Betty Cooke relocated her Mt. Vernon studio to Cross Keys, establishing the iconic The Store Ltd. alongside retailers like The Village Set sportswear store, Hess Shoes, and Octavia, the destination for elegant dresses. Stores shared walkways with Silber’s Bakery, Equitable Trust Co., Cross Keys Pharmacy, and Chappell Brothers food market. Professional offices, doctors, lawyers, RTK&L architects, the Phyllis Mollett Travel Agency, and the Rouse Co. headquarters rounded out the neighborhood hub Rouse envisioned.

The hotel on the property (not owned by Rouse) attracted athletes, celebrities, and high-end clientele. During the 1980s and early 1990s, The Village Roost, first owned by the Rouse Co. before becoming the coffee shop for the hotel at Cross Keys, attracted Baltimore’s movers and shakers for power breakfasts.

At the turn of the 21st century, though, Cross Keys’ shine began to wane. Mirmiran’s beloved Cross Keys Deli had already closed in 1994 when owners Irv Falk and Morris Tossman retired. In 2004, the Rouse Co. was acquired by Chicago-based General Growth Properties (GGP) in a $7.2-billion deal that included the assets of Cross Keys and high-profile Rouse properties like Harborplace and Boston’s Faneuil Hall Marketplace.

“Those were the Rouse assets they wanted,” Mirmiran says. GGP didn’t pay attention to the smaller, less flashy retail complex—and it showed. During the 2008 Great Recession, GGP went bankrupt and, in 2012, sold Cross Keys to another non-local owner, New York’s Ashkenazy Acquisitions Corporation. Mirmiran, coincidentally, had become a Cross Keys “regular” again, driving back and forth from his mother-in-law’s condo there.

Ashkenazy initially had plans to revamp the property, but they never materialized. Cross Keys languished as local retail competition ramped up after the 1991 renovation of Towson Town Center—with its flashy anchor, Nordstrom and the growth of other regional malls.

The fashionista destination for the area and Cross Keys staple, Ruth Shaw, left in 2017 for The Shops at Kenilworth. Donna’s shut its doors a year later. Online shopping was ascendent. At the time, Cross Keys retail occupancy was at 62 percent, with a mere 40 percent of the office space leased. With each trip through the Cross Keys’ gatehouse, Mirmiran saw more shuttered store fronts and vacant offices.

“Every time, I would think that what was happening at Cross Keys was a real shame,” he recalls.

Rosemary “Cookie” Schneider, owner and manager of The Pied Piper, has lived through Cross Keys’ ups and downs. Her mother, the late Kitty DeVincentis (“Mrs. D.” to customers), was a former Peck & Peck buyer who saw the need for an upscale children’s clothing shop in Baltimore. DeVincentis opened The Pied Piper in 1965 on Wyndhurst Avenue and was wooed by Rouse to relocate to Cross Keys in 1995.

“When we came to Cross Keys, it was almost like the Rodeo Drive of Baltimore,” Schneider recalls. “Immediately our business doubled.”

She remembers diplomats driving from Washington, D.C., to shop for their children. However, that dried up after the economic downturn in 2008 and the promised—but never delivered—improvements by out-of-state owners. “We languished, but we stayed,” she says. “My mother and I believed in Cross Keys.”

So did Mirmiran, who was exhausting his spouse with complaints about the center’s plight. “Finally my wife said to stop complaining and to do something about it,” says Mirmiran. He and his Caves Valley Partners, Arthur Adler and Steve Sibel, approached Ashkenazy.

“FINALLY MY WIFE SAID TO STOP COMPLAINING AND DO SOMETHING.”

“This was about nostalgia and commerce, but it had to make economic sense,” adds Mirmiran, who sent persistent emails to Ashkenazy. “Local ownership is important. We knew what it could be. It’s still an incredible location, but it was dated and just needed love for it to come back to life.”

By late 2019, Caves Valley and Ashkenazy were talking. Through the pandemic’s lockdown phase, they worked out the details of a sale that was finalized in July 2020. It excluded the on-site hotel, owned by Delta by Marriott, and the nearly 700 condos at Cross Keys. But Mirmiran finally had the keys to Cross Keys. He and his partners began a major overhaul.

First up was improving property access, signage, road configuration, and parking. Working with the The Cross Keys Maintenance Corp. that owns the Falls Road frontage, Caves Valley Partners funded the clean-up of the tree line along the road. The gatehouse got a needed facelift, with Caves Valley Partners officially naming it the “James Rouse Memorial Gatehouse” in 2022 to honor Rouse’s pioneering vision for mixed-use development.

“Originally the way it was designed was to look like a gated community,” Mirmiran explains. “But if you are looking to bring back the retail, you can’t have it look like a private community.”

Honoring the residents’ wishes to keep the gate arm for safety, they refurbished the gatehouse with a new brick façade, metal roof with a cupola, and better signage for non-residents.

Local architect Design Collective reimagined The Village Square retail and office area, replacing the original vertical planking, which had been damaged over the years, with natural cedar siding. Rouse’s red brick got a modern coat of white paint, and the outdoor lights, what Mirmiran called “1980s globes from Harborplace,” were replaced.

Designer Brian Swanson had developed a criteria package for the signage and storefront of the original Cross Keys in the late 1970s. At the time, he was part of a now-defunct global architectural firm that specialized in large shopping center complexes.

“I knew nothing about the Rouse Company,” says Swanson, who was working out of the firm’s South Africa office in Johannesburg. “But it was the ultimate project with its mixed use and courtyard landscaping—almost forcing the customer to walk around the perimeters against the storefronts.”

Swanson didn’t set foot on the property until 1980, when he moved to Baltimore. “I remember having lunch at The Roost, and it was so crowded,” says Swanson, who founded Swanson Design, a Baltimore-based firm specializing in retail and residential design. “Having worked on it remotely and then seeing it in person was quite an eye-opener.”

In 2020, Swanson saw the banner on Falls Road announcing redevelopment plans and immediately called Caves Valley Partners to share his history with Cross Keys. “Arsh called me back, which led to a meeting on-site with Design Collective architects and Arsh, who asked for my ideas,” says Swanson.

Much of the design work was already complete, but Mirmiran jumped at the chance to connect the old Cross Keys with the new. He hired Swanson to create the new retail signage standards (basically, a set of guidelines retailers adhere to when creating their own signs).

“The opportunity to bring Brian’s career full circle at the property led us to think about how we could incorporate his talents into the project,” Mirmiran says. “We feel like he made a major impact on the design of the retail space, even in his limited role.”

Swanson, who also envisioned the trellises that now surround the shopping perimeter, says that Rouse’s vision of a mixed-use property is as relevant today as it was 60 years ago.

“It’s the intimacy of it,” he explains. “Cross Keys has an esteemed sense of value to it. It’s looking spectacular.”

“IT WAS DATED AND JUST NEEDED LOVE FOR IT TO COME BACK TO LIFE.”

Part of Caves Valley Partners’ due diligence in the early days of the sale was meeting with current tenants as well as Rouse’s sons, Jimmy and Ted, and connecting with former Rouse Co. executives who were involved in Cross Keys.

“I did a whole tour of people who I knew had a history with the property to let them know that we were doing more of a refresh,” Mirmiran says. One of those tenants was Betty Cooke. “Betty was happy that we were keeping the flavor of Cross Keys.”

Before she died in August 2024 at the age of 100, Cooke shared with Mirmiran the original brochure for Cross Keys, displaying illustrations of the original tenants. Today, it’s blown up as wall art for an office hallway.

“The cool factor on the original brochures is through the roof,” Mirmiran says. “She also gave us a stack of old Baltimore Sun ads, which we put on Instagram.”

Under Caves Valley Partners’ stewardship, Cross Keys is nearly fully leased since the completion of close to $175 million in upgrades, renovations, and expansions. That includes a new luxury apartment complex, Sanctuary at Cross Keys, being built by Questar Properties.

“We never thought we would get to 100 percent office leasing, but people want to be here,” says Mirmiran.

It’s not just the offices that are full. Kiddie Calvert was an early arrival, bringing youthful exuberance and a stream of young parents. Foodies flock to new eateries like Nine Tailed Fox, Kneads bakery and coffee shop, and Always Ice Cream Company, located at the new standalone extension near the upper-level parking lot. Mexican restaurant Luna Oaxaca occupies Donna’s former spot overlooking the retail area, and the buzzy Cece’s Roland Park includes seasonal seating in the Village courtyard. Easy Like Sunday and ZaVino, an Italian market, round out the dining options.

When Sanctuary at Cross Keys opens this fall, the six-story complex will house 331 luxury rental apartments, a resort-quality pool, a pet-grooming salon, and 24/7 concierge service.

“It’s going to be a great asset to the community,” says Penny Lane, owner of Pilates House, which moved into Cross Keys last September.

When Lane was looking to expand her Pilates studio, she knew Cross Keys was right for her third location.

“There aren’t that many elevated shopping centers that have done a great job at curating their tenants in the way that Cross Keys has,” Lane says. “With more opportunities for shopping, browsing, and having lunch and coffee, Cross Keys has become more of a destination rather than just a drop-in, drop-out location,” she adds.

Schneider says her mother, “Mrs. D.,” who died in 2023, held hope until the end that Cross Keys would come back—it just needed someone who believed in it.

“Cross Keys needs specialty owners who bring quality merchandise and exemplary service,” Schneider explains. “That’s what Caves Valley is trying to sustain in Baltimore.”

Since the renovation, Schneider has seen an increase in foot traffic and use of the store’s playroom while families wait for lessons at the Baltimore School of Music or for dinner reservations. She knows online shopping isn’t going anywhere, but Schneider learned from the master—her mother.

“Retail is entertainment,” she reflects. “People want to touch it and see it.”

Ruth Shaw, Baltimore’s one-of-a-kind source for European-style designer brands, opened in Cross Keys in 1973. Ray Mitchener, who bought the boutique from Shaw with Brian Comes in 2008, remembers the early Cross Keys days. “It was the place to go and to be seen,” he says.

But, “In 2017, Cross Keys and our sales were dying,” Mitchener says. He and Comes made the hard decision to move to Kenilworth that year. When Cross Keys returned to local ownership, it didn’t take much to convince them to return to the store’s roots. Fittingly, Ruth Shaw, which reopened in Cross Keys in April 2025, took over the former Store Ltd. spot.

“In the 1970s and ’80s, Cross Keys was unique because it had so many female owners: Betty Cooke, Kitty DeVincentis, Octavia Dugan, and Ruth,” Mitchener notes. (Shaw died in 2024 at age 96.) He and Comes are excited that Cross Keys is, once again, a place where people can spend the whole day.

“There is no place like home,” says Comes. “Our window dressing for our re-opening referenced different quotes [about] home.”

He chuckles that their homecoming was something of a resurrection—literally. “Customers have come in since we returned who I assumed were dead because I hadn’t seen them in seven years!” he says.

Building out the complete community feel, Mirmiran contracted with Misty Valley Farms to have a farm stand in the parking lot opposite The Village Square. Now locals can get produce, fresh-cut seasonal flowers, and pick up CSA boxes there.

It fulfilled a dream co-owner Sally Fleischmann had since she visited Cross Keys post-COVID. “I loved the energy there,” she recalls. “Our Cross Keys customers are very loyal,”

Fleischmann continues. “It’s a unique shopping experience. People bring their pets to meet us and bring iced drinks to us on hot days. It’s a community where we take care of each other.”

For Caves Valley Partners, that community has always been the point.

“Cross Keys was part of Baltimore, and it had gone dark,” Mirmiran says with pride as he strolls past the shops and restaurants. “When I walk around Cross Keys, people thank me for bringing it back.”

This article first appeared in our May 2026 issue. If you connected with it, consider becoming a print subscriber. 

Once news hit that Herman’s Bakery would be closing its doors on March 31 after a 103-year run—due to its owners wanting to slow down and prioritize their health—customers formed lines out the door to stock up on their favorite fudge-topped cookies, strawberry shortcake, and German chocolate cake.

It’s no wonder why. Herman’s has been revered by Baltimore for generations. But for me, it’s a family legacy—all credited to the perseverance of a quiet but ambitious immigrant who found success despite minimal education.

The history of Herman’s begins with Harry’s Bakery in East Baltimore. It’s namesake, Harry Francis Herman, who we called “Grandpop,” was born in Russia in 1886 of Polish decent. He came to the United States “on the boat” when he was six years old, likely due to extenuating family circumstances. He was sent to Baltimore by his biological parents to live with a family he didn’t know.

His Polish name was Waclaw Grzeskowiak, and it’s still something of a family mystery as to why he changed it to Harry F. Herman. Grandpop’s naturalization papers were certified in 1918. He was described as “a short (5’5”) 32-year-old.” His indoctrination to the United States required him to denounce Czar Nicholas II of Russia.

In 1923, Grandpop opened Harry’s Bakery in a converted rowhouse on the corner of Fleet Street and Montford Avenue, on the fringe of Highlandtown and just a block south of Patterson Park. His family was growing, and he had to provide for them. He had apprenticed as a baker and knew the local clientele, so opening a bakery was an obvious choice.

It was a neighborhood where transplants from Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine settled and united as a community. They loved Grandpop’s baked goods and fresh bread. Grandmoms in their babushkas would be greeted by my Aunt Dene with “Good Morning” or “Good Afternoon, Panie,” which means lady in Polish.

The year he achieved citizenship, Grandpop and his wife, Mary (age 28), already had four children. (Another was yet to be born). The youngest at the time was their son (my uncle), Harry James Herman, who was only three months old, but would ultimately become the heir apparent to the family business.

After working for his father for several years, my uncle realized that Dundalk was booming. It was the late ’50s, when big employers like Bethlehem Steel attracted a melting pot reminiscent of the East Baltimore neighborhood that had enabled Harry’s Bakery to thrive. In 1958, with his wife Sophia right by his side, Uncle Harry made the bold move to open Herman’s Bakery in Dundalk, ironically 40 years after his father became a U.S. citizen. Grandpop’s store, Harry’s, continued operating until 2003.

The façade of the new bakery on Holabird Avenue—with the business name spelled in block letters under retro-styled arches—became a local landmark. It started the expansion and contraction of the business, which at one time had locations in Baltimore-area malls including Golden Ring, Kenilworth, White Marsh, Hunt Valley, and Eastpoint. Compared to Harry’s little rowhouse cubical, which the family had to expand by taking out the first floor living room, the Dundalk store was huge. People came and went with regularity, and there rarely was a lull.

Uncle Harry’s children—Cassandra, Harry Jr., and Harriet—were a tad young to work in the bakery when it first opened, but that changed soon enough. Cassandra and Harry became fixtures, especially in the business’ heyday with its six locations. Eventually, so did their children, and their children. Four generations benefitted from the family affair. Customers were more like friends, and Herman’s products were in high demand for weddings, birthdays, and anniversaries.

Cassandra and Harry Jr. continued an active presence in recent years. But Cassandra’s daughter, Adrienne Porcella, has become the chief baker and “keeper of the formulas”—a term she uses to describe the time-honored recipes, some of which have been inspired by Old World techniques Uncle Harry picked up while in Europe.

I have many happy Herman family memories, including gathering around my grandparents’ kitchen every Saturday night for crabs and beer, and packaging fresh-baked cookies at Christmas time.

Through it all, Herman’s Bakery has been the thread that tied us together. But there would never have been a Herman’s without the vision of that young Polish immigrant Waclaw Grzeskowiak.

Mary Jo Tarallo was Ski Editor for the Evening Sun during the 80s, and she worked for the ski industry for almost 30 years after leaving the paper. She also worked for several nonprofits in the Baltimore area including United Way of Central Maryland, where she won a Gold Award for a campaign television show that starred Oprah Winfrey and Richard Sher.

From the moment you walk through the automatic doors at Dundalk’s Drug City, it’s clear this is not your average pharmacy. Sure, it has endless aisles of medical and beauty products, like every CVS or Walgreens. But there’s also an on-site liquor store, featuring a front display of bourbon bottles and, in old-school style, a soda fountain, selling everything from deli sandwiches to ice-cream floats to something unexpected: house-made, old-fashioned craft cocktails.

Slowly but surely, a theme emerges, with the pièce de résistance found through a door in the back left corner. There, a staircase leads to a dimly lit hallway that seemingly dead-ends at a stately bookcase. But here, Drug City owner George Fotis pushes an inconspicuous black button that reveals a hidden room beyond it.

“It really doesn’t have an official name,” says Fotis, 50, walking into the pharmacy’s second-floor speakeasy—a sort of sumptuous Bat Cave equipped with leather armchairs, rustic wooden tables, and a bust of Shakespeare. “It’s more of a community than a club.”

The Drug City speakeasy, as we’ll call it, might be North Point Road’s best-kept secret—a local whiskey club that happens to be known by aficionados around the world. There’s no cost to join and anyone can patronize it, with one main caveat: The room only fits 40 people. So its monthly events—first-come, first-served, and announced via the GroupMe app—typically sell out quickly.

“We’ve had whiskey royalty here—the top people in the industry,” says Fotis, who started at Drug City as a cashier in 1996, before becoming a pharmacist in 2000, and taking over the business in 2016. It was around this time that the Greektown native first got interested in liquor. With the rise of the craft cocktail movement, brown spirits were experiencing a boom across the United States.

“IT’S MORE OF A COMMUNITY THAN A CLUB.”

Here in Baltimore, a Scotch-loving friend suggested that Fotis meet the moment by enhancing the pharmacy’s liquor store offerings. Soon enough, he became a fan himself, partnering with other enthusiasts to form the Maryland Bourbon Society group on Facebook, and, with a “tavern license,” it wasn’t long before Drug City was slinging drinks itself.

Today, it not only carries a wide variety of bottles in its liquor store, from the local Sagamore Spirit to the well-known Maker’s Mark to world-renowned labels like W.L. Weller, Willett, and Pappy Van Winkle, but also pours hard-to-find bourbons at The Fountain. For brown-spirit aficionados, says Fotis, pictured above, “We are now a destination store.”

(For the uninitiated, whiskey is an umbrella term for a liquor distilled from fermented grain, whereas bourbon and rye are types of whiskeys—one made from majority corn, and majority rye, respectively, typically made in Ireland or America. The latter has deep roots in Maryland, with Baltimore being an epicenter of its production well into the 20th century. Meanwhile, whisky, spelled with no “e,” hails from Scotland, Japan, or Canada.)

Of course, Drug City’s hype is due in large part to the upstairs club, which Fotis runs with his friend Justin Jarvis, who owns Allview Liquors in Howard County. Not only do they draw devoted drinkers, but also the master distillers behind many of those beloved brands, who often pop in to host talks and tastings on their way through the Mid-Atlantic. These events are what set Drug City apart from other well-stocked bars in Baltimore, with each special guest offering historical anecdotes and insights into how spirits are made today.

“This is what makes us different—we share the stories with people, and that’s something special,” says Fotis.

And for those just passing through, there’s always a pour at The Fountain for reasonable prices. For him, that’s half the fun—allowing the public to try rarities they might not otherwise be able to find, let alone afford.

“I like giving people that opportunity,” says Fotis. “I get a customer for life.”

When Luca Useli arrived in Baltimore from the island of Sardinia, he was 18 years old, spoke no English, and worked as a dishwasher at his aunt’s restaurant, Daniela Pasta & Pastries, in Hampden. Eventually, he moved from the kitchen to the front of house and managing roles. Today, Useli is 31, has mastered the language barrier, and is the owner of La Tavola in Little Italy.

He took over the restaurant two years ago when former chef Carlo Vignotto retired after more than two decades. Useli says he misses the country where he was born and raised but has no regrets about the move. “I was meant to be here,” he says.

Useli calls himself an entrepreneur, not a chef, though he is responsible for the menu’s lineup, which features many family recipes.

“It’s a work in progress,” he says, as he slowly introduces Sardinian food and wine to the menu’s more traditional Southern Italian offerings. Useli wants to provide the same quality food from his homeland that led to the island being designated one of the world’s Blue Zones, where residents live long, productive lives, many to age 100.

A simple diet is considered a contributor. As such, you’ll find dishes like a regional preparation of linguine vongole, featuring a mound of bottarga, which Useli calls Sardinian caviar. Tangles of fresh-made pasta, glistening in a white wine sauce and surrounded by castanet-sized clams, get a salty kick from the dried fish roe.

On the more traditional front, tomato-sauce lovers will find many dishes to satisfy, from veal scallopini to rigatoni puttanesca. We lapped up the lasagna Bolognese, which weaved a stew of red meat sauce and a subtle bechamel sauce amid the ribbons of noodles.

But before diners indulge in the big plates, there are antipasti and salads to consider. The fritto misto takes a light-handed approach with flash-fried calamari and shrimp delivered to the table with, yes, more red sauce. The rounds of squid and tentacles were tender, and the shrimp was juicy. We just wish there had been more of the shrimp, instead of the two buried in the pile. We appreciated the well-portioned eggplant appetizer. Rounds of aubergine are fried before being layered with tomatoes and mozzarella and then baked in a pomodoro sauce.

Salads range from field-greens to a lush burrata presentation, showcasing a tennis-ball heap of the creamy cheese atop strips of roasted red bell peppers and arugula splashed with balsamic vinaigrette.

If you haven’t had your fill of cheese, the formaggi misti is a satisfying finish to a meal. Our platter was laden with goat cheese, Taleggio, Gorgonzola, pecorino, and semistagionato. La Tavola’s house-made cannoli gets full marks in a town where the pastry is a mainstay on many menus. A pizzelle shell bundles ricotta cream studded with pistachios, almonds, and dried fruit for a dreamy melding of texture and flavor.

Useli, who has been remodeling the interior of the restaurant himself, is just getting started. His goal: “I want a beautiful restaurant filled with people who are having a good time.”

LA TAVOLA: 248 Albemarle St., Little Italy, 410-685-1859. HOURS: Wed. 4-10 p.m.; Thurs., Fri., Sun. 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Sat. 11:30 a.m.-10:30 p.m. PRICES: Appetizers: $8-22; salads, $12-18; entrees: $22-36.

There are more than 150 medical specialties recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS). And there are approximately 6,000 hospitals in the U.S.

The fact that father and son Dr. Stephen “Steve” Pollock, 76, and Dr. Jeremy Pollock, 41, both became cardiologists is rare enough. That they both work at the University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center in the same group of cardiologists is nothing short of astonishing.

The two doctors have their own reasons, though, for choosing both the field and the hospital.

“My dad had his first heart attack when he was 36 and died from heart disease at age 54,” says Steve. He remembers sitting bedside in the  emergency room of what was then known as University Hospital, now the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC), after his father passed. “My dad’s death motivated me to do what I do now. I’m really committed to the early diagnosis of coronary disease.”

From age five, Jeremy was primed to take after his dad—at least as far as becoming a doctor was concerned.

“When people asked me what I wanted to be [when I grew up], I said ‘a doctor.’ There are photos of me here in the cath lab with dad when I was six years old,” says Jeremy, now the medical director of cardiology operations at UM St. Joseph Medical Center as well as the co-director of the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) Comprehensive Heart Failure Network. “I always wanted to come to work with dad because I looked up to him.”

He admits, however, that he wasn’t always planning to become a cardiologist. “I thought I couldn’t do exactly what my dad did. I wanted to be a surgeon but quickly realized in med school that it wasn’t for me,” says Jeremy.

“I remember at one point, he said he was going to be a urologist. That lasted about three weeks,” Steve cracks. When Jeremy asked his father what he did all day as a clinical cardiologist, his dad told him it was really about establishing longstanding relationships with patients. That sold Jeremy on the specialty.

“For me, cardiology has it all,” says Jeremy. “It’s complex, the physiology of it. You get to help people when they’re really sick, and you get to help patients for decades. At the end of the day, it fit like a glove.”

Sitting in Steve’s office, it’s impossible not to notice the huge wall across from his desk, filled with framed photos. Many are of him and his wife, his sons, his daughter-in-law, but he admits that now most of the photos are centered around his grandchildren. The oldest photo on the wall, though, shows Steve after a night on call with a baby Jeremy resting on his chest. Behind Steve’s desk is a much younger Jeremy pitching in the championship game in Roland Park Little League.

Jeremy adds, “And now I’ve got family photos on my office wall, too.”

“I THOUGHT, I COULDN’T DO EXACTLY  WHAT MY DAD DID. . . ”

The father and son also took similar—if not quite identical—paths to their current positions. Both attended the Gilman School and then prestigious universities for their bachelor’s degrees (Brown for Steve and University of Virginia for Jeremy) and graduated medical school from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, in 1975 and 2011 respectively.

But while Jeremy was born and raised in Baltimore, Steve was born in Roslyn, Long Island, in 1949 and then briefly lived in Chicago until his family moved to Baltimore after his father’s first heart attack. Back then, if you had a heart attack, you had to stay in bed for six weeks and often lost your job, as you were thought to be on borrowed time. His father worked at a retail store and was let go, but landed a job at Hecht’s in downtown Baltimore.

From that point on, young Steve was a Baltimore boy. “The only time I went away was when I went to Brown,” says Steve.

After medical school, he took three years of internal medicine and then two years of cardiology training at the University of Maryland. In 1980 he was hired at North Charles General Hospital and began working at St. Joe’s because he liked the hospital, and they gave him privileges to work there, which was harder to come by at that time.

Jeremy completed his residency at Vanderbilt University and then did a cardiology fellowship at the University of Maryland, graduating in 2017. While he knew that a lot of sons spent a lifetime trying to get out from under their father’s shadow, he never felt that way.

While he got the job at St. Joe’s on his own merits, it probably didn’t hurt that his father was able to put in the good word for him—and that some of the other doctors had known him since he was a kid. Recently, Jeremy has taken on more of a leadership role in the hospital.

“When I joined here, there were six cardiologists, and dad was the head of the group,” he says. Now Jeremy serves that role. “We joke about me being the boss. I’m not the boss. Dr. Shumile Zaidi is the chief of cardiology. And today, we have 13 cardiologists.”

“I used to be in charge, but he came in, and I’m right out the door,” says Steve with a laugh.

It’s clear that this good-natured, back-and-forth banter is part of the dynamic between father and son. Besides working together, the two are friends, meet for lunch at least twice a week, and share a love for interestingly colored, fun socks. Jeremy, for example, is sporting rose-colored footwear that matches his tie.

“I think they are one of the best things that happened in fashion,” says Steve. “And patients notice them all the time.”

Steve and his wife, Patricia, raised Jeremy and their younger son, Spencer, with an emphasis on family and community. The two boys, born 18 months apart, ended up pursuing very different career paths.

“Spencer is a local, high-powered, cyber-security privacy lawyer,” says Jeremy. “When he started, though, he wanted to be a medical malpractice lawyer! We’re polar opposite humans. I always wanted to be a doc, and Spencer wanted to sue docs.”

“There’s a picture of him when he graduated law school. Jeremy is in a white coat, and Spencer is pretending to choke him,” says Steve.

And is Spencer jealous of the closeness of his father and older brother? “Oh yeah,” jokes Steve. “He’s really unhappy with this interview!”

Reached for comment, Spencer kept the bit going. “I’m totally unhappy,” he says. “In fact, I’m furiously writing in my diary about it. Page 47 is titled ‘Why Jeremy Ruined My Life,’” he jokes. “We have a running joke that my brother is the golden child—always better in school, wanted to pursue medicine, wanted to work with my dad, etc., so this joint exposé fits into the narrative. But I love them for this—plus I carved my own path.”

Getting serious, Spencer, a partner in the law firm McDonald Hopkins, says that he is very close with his father and brother, and speaks to them both daily. “I can’t express how proud I am of them and everything they’ve achieved and will continue achieving.”

Oh, and the family proclivity for fun socks? Spencer maintains he originated the trend in 2012. “They both gave me a hard time about it, but finally came around,” he says.

HIS DAD TOLD HIM [CLINICAL CARDIOLOGY] WAS REALLY ABOUT ESTABLISHING LONGSTANDING RELATIONSHIPS WITH PATIENTS. THAT SOLD JEREMY ON THE SPECIALTY.

Of course, life at St. Joe’s isn’t all rose-colored socks. When Jeremy started working with his dad, he says there were a few inevitable hiccups.

“When I joined St. Joe’s, I wanted to quickly prove myself. I had to think about how I would distinguish myself outside of being ‘Steve’s son’ or ‘Dr. Pollock Jr.’,” Jeremy says. “The positive is that I got an advice-giver, a mentor, from the beginning with dad. The negative is that you’re going to be seen in the beginning as walking in someone’s shadow. I think that quickly changed. We were able to make it so that we were seen as two very separate and different people.”

And it turns out, father and son both have had lessons to learn from each other. When Steve became a cardiologist in 1980, the field didn’t yet know how aspirin could help the heart, for example.

“The medicines, interventions, and the data behind what we do is exponentially greater than when dad was in medical school,” says Jeremy. That said, nothing is a replacement for experience. Seasoned doctors know how to communicate with patients, families, nurses—and health insurance companies.

“The new docs learn all about the practices of medicine from the senior docs,” says Jeremy. “They don’t teach you the business of medicine when you’re in medical school.”

So it’s been a give and take between Steve and Jeremy, and over the years, the relationship has, inevitably, evolved, especially as Jeremy has taken on greater leadership roles.

“It’s taken a while,” says Steve, “but I’ve learned to act as a consigliere and not talk unless I’m asked—and I do get asked about things all the time.”

And Steve, who works regular hours at the hospital but is no longer an on-call physician (he stopped during COVID) is more than just a mentor to Jeremy, he’s a father figure to the whole staff.

“Steve is a saint. He helps whenever and however he can,” says cardiologist Dr. Elliot Sultanik, who has worked with the Drs. Pollock for the last three years. “He loves what he does and has more energy than the rest of us combined. It’s not just a job to [Steve], it’s a calling.”

Working with both Pollocks, Sultanik has developed perspective on their differences. “Jeremy has a clear, rational, and practical approach to medicine. He thinks three steps ahead, coordinates patient care seamlessly, and has a gift for improving efficiency without sacrificing quality.”

He notes that, as leader of the general cardiology group, Jeremy dramatically improved the group’s workflow in just a year. A certain level of humility goes a long way with colleagues, too.

“He takes feedback with grace—no small feat in a leadership role—and handles challenges with confidence.

“Steve is a gregarious, lovable gem of a partner. Jeremy is a talented leader, always striving to make our practice better,” says Sultanik. “Watching the two of them playfully bicker is pure entertainment.”

IT TURNS OUT, FATHER AND SON BOTH HAVE HAD LESSONS TO LEARN FROM EACH OTHER.

There is, of course, the pesky matter of what to call each other while at the hospital. Steve suggests that his son simply call him “Steve.” But Jeremy admits it can be a bit awkward.

“I still don’t know what to do with that,” says Jeremy. “I usually say ‘Senior Pollock.’”

Another hazard of working together so closely? Bringing their work home with them. Jeremy married his high school sweetheart, Elizabeth, who works full-time in the admissions office at the Calvert School, and they live with their two daughters, Reese, 9, and Charlotte, 6, in Lutherville-Timonium. (And lest you think this story can’t get any more wholesome, get ready: The couple had their first date at age 13, when they went to the Maryland State Fair.)

Steve and Patricia live in Reisterstown. And when they gather with family, they try to talk about anything other than medicine.

“It’s very easy for us to get into going back and forth about work, patient care, things that are going on here,” says Jeremy. “So, we’re at a family dinner, and he and I start talking about work—well, my brother doesn’t want to hear it, and my wife doesn’t want to hear it. The rule we’ve had to make is when we’re outside of these walls, we’ve got to keep the talk just about family, the Ravens, the Orioles, anything but work!”

Despite a few growing pains, the Drs. Pollock are grateful to work together in the same field, the same group, and at the same hospital.

“I don’t think there’s anything better. I have two boys who I’m really close to. Watching Jeremy grow in this field, that’s magic. He’s taken the leadership roles I’ve had in the past, and he does them a thousand times better than I did,” says Steve.

“It’s a privilege to get to work with my dad,” says Jeremy. “I feel lucky and honored and blessed every single day.”

The Shops at Kenilworth—a compact mall in Towson—doesn’t have a food court. But it houses several locally owned restaurants, including Absolute Thai-Sushi. The restaurant’s current proprietors, Narissara “Narissa” Johnson and Theerayut Kesornjampa, took over the sleek, modern spot from its previous owners in March 2024.

The business partners, who hail from Thailand—Johnson from Pathumthani, a town near Bangkok; Kesornjampa from Chiang Rai in the northern provinces—can also be found in the restaurant kitchen, preparing their country’s traditional dishes. Johnson turned to cooking when she couldn’t find decent Thai food near her home. “Why don’t I cook it myself?” she decided. “We can make it as we like it and share it with other people.”

She and Kesornjampa focus on an array of traditional Thai food (the previous owners sold sushi, hence the restaurant’s name), including classics like pad Thai and drunken noodles, a popular choice at the restaurant. The colorful bowl features a base of soft rice noodles and crisp-tender vegetables like green beans, broccoli, and flower-shaped carrot slices in a tangy chile-garlic sauce that, despite its kick, feels like comfort food. Diners can also add proteins like chicken and pork or, my favorite, shrimp.

As is true of most restaurants, it’s always worth paying attention to the chef’s recommendations. Here, the crispy Kapraow chicken balances fried chicken nuggets and fried Thai basil in a pleasantly sweet garlicky sauce paired with steamed broccoli florets. A classic street noodle entrée is another success, with shrimp and ground chicken tossed with red bell pepper slices and slicked with a gentle coating with a hint of fish sauce.

If you feel like sampling a lot of different things, the selection of appetizers and soups could become full meals. The Thai dumplings showcase a steamed bundle of minced chicken, shrimp, and water chestnuts encircled by delicate wonton wrappers to be swiped in a thick plum sauce. The chicken satay still has me smiling. The four strips of grilled, marinated chicken on skewers are wonderfully satisfying by themselves, but they get a boost from the accompanying peanut sauce and cucumber sauce.

I’m a big fan of tom yum soup, especially Absolute Thai-Sushi’s version. It is a comfort dish with a soothing lemongrass broth bobbing with tender straw mushrooms and tomatoes. I like the plug of fresh ginger buried in its depths for flavor. You can also enhance the soup with additions like chicken, tofu, shrimp, or a veggie medley.

A crunchy papaya salad could be a beginning or an ending. A gorgeous mound of shredded green papaya, atop crisp lettuce leaves, is interspersed with green beans, tomatoes, and a toss of peanuts in a piquant lime dressing that is refreshing and spicy. Or you can end with a simple dessert of freshly sliced mangoes over sweet sticky rice.

A cart stationed in the restaurant also serves Baltimore’s Taharka Brothers ice cream. Johnson tried many brands before picking Taharka, saying, “We want to support local brands.”

ABSOLUTE THAI-SUSHI: The Shops at Kenilworth, 800 Kenilworth Dr., Suite No. 816, lower level, Towson, 410-881-9100 HOURS: Daily, 11 a.m.-8:30 p.m. PRICES: Appetizers: $5.95-11.95; entrees, $15.95-
21.95; BYOB, $7 corkage fee.

Every month, we poll the Baltimore magazine team about a topic pertaining to a story we cover in the issue and publish the responses on our masthead. In honor of our September cover story, “The Baltimore Pet Lover’s Guide,” we asked staff to tell us about a pet that had a significant impact on their lives. The answers were too good not to share with our web readers.

Take deputy editor Jane Marion, for example, who recalls fond memories of a childhood pet rooster named Max, pictured above.

“I am still grateful that I grew up in a household where (almost) no animals were off limits—rabbits were forbidden,” says Marion, who edited the cover story. “So, when we hatched a rooster in fifth grade at Northeast Elementary in Stamford, Connecticut, it was obvious who was going to take the bird home.

“I dubbed him Max and he followed me around the house. Having imprinted on me at birth, I was basically his bird mom and he was incredibly attached to me. When Max wasn’t perched on my head, he lived in a cage in my room for close to a year until his cock-a-doodle-doos woke up the whole family. He lived out the rest of his life at a nearby nature center.”

Below, read about other furry and feathered friends—from cats and dogs to ducklings and tarantulas (?)—who have been particularly meaningful. And be sure to check out the feature for more heartwarming stories, local pet resources, and even the official Charm City pet Wall of Fame.

Alicia Corman, Assistant Art Director
My late dad once surprised my two sisters and me with a crate of ducklings—one for each of us. We had an absolute blast playing with them in the bathtub and outside in the kiddie pool. I named mine Egon, after the smartest Ghostbuster, of course.

Amy Scattergood, Research Editor
Rose was the fifth of my six German shepherds, a long-haired beauty who I adopted the day before Los Angeles shut down for COVID, and who was my traveling companion when I relocated to Baltimore. We drove cross-country, staying at pandemic hotels, driving through a blizzard outside Cleveland, and sharing bad hotel food. She was older than anyone knew, and so I only had her for two years. I miss her every day, and Angus, her successor, sleeps in the same exact spot next to my bed.

Christianna McCausland, Creative Studio Content Director
My cat Pete was truly one of the greats. He still lives on in lore and legend with all who knew him.

Danny Glazer, Senior Account Executive
My dogs Hazel and Nola.

Jane Marion, Deputy Editor
I was going for Mother of the Year when I let my middle son, Alex, bring home Pepe the Park School tarantula in the summer of 2001. Even before buying him his meal of live crickets at Petco, I purchased a more secure lid for his cage. Spider-sitter is now part of my résumé.

Janelle Erlichman Diamond, Home Editor
Our first dog, Finley, adopted from the SPCA—a black Lab mix with velvet ears who wouldn’t stop barking in the kennel but we knew he was meant to be ours. He ended up being the perfect dog. He lived for almost 13 years and loved his family so much—but he loved me the most.

Jon Timian, Production Manager
I have had several dogs and cats during my time on this planet. All of them I have loved dearly. But if I must pick a favorite it would have to be my cat Sophie, because if I don’t, she will kill me in my sleep.

Marty LeGrand, Senior Contributing Writer
They call ginger cats “Velcro kitties.” Spencer was one. Always by my side—except when he fell out of a window and disappeared for four days. Incredibly sensitive to our feelings, he helped me through tough times. He had flaws, true, like sumo bathing his sister and swallowing gift ribbon (which once required surgery). I miss him still.

Max Weiss, Editor-in-Chief
I’m blessed to say that all my dogs have lived long, healthy lives except for one: my dearest Harriet, a sandy, scruffy, long-limbed girl who was the most gentle and soulful dog I’ve ever had. She had a touch of melancholy about her, as if she knew she wasn’t long for this world. I adopted her at 6 and she died at 8, of a bum heart. I still cry when I think about her.

Micah E. Wood, Contributing Photographer
My dog Ansel and my two cats, Lou and Boo.

Michael Teitelbaum, President
Patches was the dog I had growing up. We were inseparable. I had a lawnmowing business and she was my most reliable employee.

Michelle Coughlan, Senior Account Executive
Chloe, our golden retriever, who is our clingy COVID dog and gets ready for her weekly Zoom sales meeting like she is running the show.

Schaun Champion, Contributing Photographer
My first puppy was General Taz. I loved him so much; he was a beautiful purebred boxer. Clever and the most loving dog I’ve ever had. The second is my black cat, Pyewacket, named after the cat in the 1958 film Bell, Book, and Candle.

Staci Lanham, Special Editions Art Director
Benny was a stray found by a hydrologist in my husband’s office. His girlfriend said no, so instead Benny came to live with us right before we got married. He has been gone for nearly a decade, but I still think about him almost daily.

In 1913, when Anna C. and Henry A. Schenk purchased a lot from the C. Mueller Building Company on Fait Avenue in what was then Baltimore County’s Highlandtown, they looked forward to having a new home, for themselves and their future children. The Schenks couldn’t have imagined that, 112 years later, family members would continue to live in that very same dwelling, in an area of Baltimore City now known as Brewers Hill.

In July of 1976, Mary Lou Hennigan, née Schenk, purchased the home from her two aunts and an uncle, who had inherited the residence when their mother—Hennigan’s grandmother, Anna—died. (Hennigan’s mother, Mary Matthew, had predeceased her own mother, Anna, so the remaining children became the owners.)

“The C. Mueller Building Company was developing consecutive blocks of two-story brick rowhouses in the area—noted for their Classical Revival style. The building company built high-quality, affordable homes for working-class immigrant communities at that time. Each house had a stylish stained-glass transom above the door and the first-floor window,” reads Hennigan, 76, from paperwork left by her grandparents.

“I grew up here, and my children grew up here,” she says. “It’s just a nice place.”

Hennigan, who has spent nearly all her life in the home, found out about the Baltimore Centennial Homes Program when she was talking with a neighbor.

“We were talking about the age of the houses, and she mentioned the program,” says Hennigan, who raised two sons in the home and still lives there with her husband, John. “I saw that a neighbor up the street from us had a plaque saying their home was a Centennial one, and I just thought it was a neat thing to do.”

After Hennigan interviewed with someone at Baltimore Heritage, which runs the program, and provided the necessary documents, her home was accepted. Members from the organization hung the plaque on the outside of her home in 2018. It reads: Centennial Home. Schenk, Matthew, and Hennigan family. Brewers Hill. Baltimore City since 1913. Designated 2018.

Hennigan couldn’t be prouder. “It makes me feel good. I like the neighborhood,” she says. “I think it was nice that the house stayed in the family, because not many do.”

LITTLE OLD LADIES
According to Johns Hopkins (yes, that’s his real name), the executive director of Baltimore Heritage, the Baltimore Centennial Homes Program started because of good old-fashioned door-knocking.

When Jim Kraft was running for the District 1 city council seat in the early 2000s, he was going door-to-door in neighborhoods such as Brewers Hill, Butchers Hill, Fells Point, Canton, and others in the district. Hopkins says the two would often cross paths.

“After he got elected, he said to me, ‘When I was running, I would go knocking on doors and talk to people. A lot of those who answered were proverbial little old ladies who would tell me that their families had been in their house for 100 years. Is there any way we can say thank-you to them? Their families have been part of the anchors of their neighborhoods for literally a century.’”

Hopkins thought Kraft’s idea sounded cool. But he admits he had no idea whether a program existed nationally that honored families in this way.

The Baltimore Heritage staff began digging and discovered that a number of states have what are called Centennial Farm Programs—they acknowledge farms that have been in the same family for more than 100 years—but they couldn’t find anything equivalent being done in a city.

“We decided to take that concept and apply it to an urban neighborhood. That’s how the Baltimore Centennial Homes Program began,” says Hopkins. “One of Baltimore’s greatest assets is its historic communities. It’s not only the buildings, but really the people. That strong sense of neighborhood connection for generations is something that sets Baltimore apart, and our program is one way to help boost that.”

THE FIRST HONOREE
John Pente of Little Italy was the owner of the first home honored by the program. Along with being a Little Italy fixture, Pente was famous for allowing neighborhood organizers to put a film projector in his third-floor bedroom window, which started the Annual Little Italy Film Festival, held on Friday nights in the summer in the private parking lot of Da Mimmo restaurant.

It was especially fitting that Pente was given the Centennial plaque during his own 100th birthday year—and right before one of the movies.

Although the program now has 18 homes that have been recognized, Pente was special because he is, to date, the only person who actually lived in the honored home for 100 years—barring the time he served in the military. Pente passed away in July 2010.

So far, the home that is known to be owned the longest by the same family is that owned by the Crane and Buccheri families in Hollins Market. The house was purchased by Walter J. and Mary Crane in 1891, so that’s 134 years.

In the past, Baltimore Heritage would install a plaque on the family’s house. During COVID, the price skyrocketed from $200 to $700, which is out of the nonprofit’s price range. Hopkins says they give certificates, and if the family purchases the plaque, they will install it.

“We’d love to have a sponsor so that we can buy them for people again,” says Hopkins wistfully.

GET WITH THE PROGRAM
The rules for the Baltimore Centennial Homes Program are pretty simple. Your house needs to have been owned and lived in continuously for at least 100 years by people within the same family. You don’t get credit for owning the home and renting it to someone else—unless that person is a relative.

Eligible family members to own the home include children, siblings, nephews and nieces, cousins, stepchildren, adopted children, and spouses.

“We think of the word family as a big idea. If you’re family, you’re family,” Hopkins says.

But you also have to prove it. Baltimore Heritage will interview people applying, but the owner also needs to submit documentation that is proof of ownership, including deeds, tax records, copies of sales documents, census data, and other documents that show both ownership as well as dates of ownership.

CONTINUING A LEGACY
On Hollen Road in the Bellona-Gittings neighborhood, the last name Bauer has been well-known for more than 100 years. In 1897, Fred C. Bauer founded the Fred C. Bauer Florist. He purchased a home at 188 Hollen Road in 1911, while he operated his business and raised a family. In 1927, his son and daughter-in-law, William F. and Edyth C. Bauer, took over ownership of the home until 1986, when their granddaughter, Linda, became the owner.

At one point, five of the 10 homes on Hollen Road were owned by members of the Bauer family. Thelma Bauer and her nephew, Frederick Sisson, ran the flower shop until they closed the business when Bauer was 90.

Upon Linda’s death in 2022, she left the home to her niece, Lindsey Bauer, 46, and her wife, Marannie Rawls-Philippe, 43. The couple was so thrilled to keep the tradition going that, in June of 2024, they uprooted their lives and moved to Baltimore from New Haven, Connecticut, where they had been living for 14 years, with their two sons, Lucien, 11, and Etienne, 6. Their home became part of the Baltimore Centennial Homes Program in December of that year.

Bauer first found out about the program through a next-door neighbor, who had heard about it on WYPR. Her dad, William Bauer III, passed away in 2011, two years before her eldest son was born. Although he was raised in Towson, he often came back to the neighborhood to visit his grandparents and other relatives.

“My kids don’t know their grandfather on the Bauer side. So, part of the reason my wife and I decided to move here is because of that legacy. This is where my great-grandparents lived for 60 years of their lives, and it was where my grandfather grew up,” she says. “It pains me that my children didn’t get to know my dad. But at least they can play in the same places where he did as a child growing up.”

And it’s even more than that. “I want my children to know the importance of this home,” says Bauer. “Even though our ancestors are no longer with us, the legacy still lives on.”

On a cloudy morning in April, Yul Foster steps out of a shed in his backyard with a pigeon in each hand. These delicate gray birds are the best in Foster’s loft, giving him the strongest chance at winning in the competitive flying season that starts in a few weeks.

His sweatshirt flecked with pigeon droppings, Foster explains that the pair of sisters he’s holding grew up in the same nest last year and only like to fly as a pair, which poses a problem, because it takes at least three pigeons to make a “kit” that flies together for competition.

“They’re in sync with each other,” he says. “They got the same pattern, the same wing beat.”

Foster cradles the pigeons gently, their feet dangling between his fingers and their wings tucked under his thumbs. They’re a dusky color that pigeon men call “dun,” sort of a faded version of the classic city pigeon you see pecking at crumbs on the sidewalk. Today he’s chosen a third young bird to try and keep up with the sisters in a training flight.

Shortly before noon, all three take off together, their powerful wings pulling them in big, looping circles over Foster’s rowhouse in Allendale. Foster stands in the center of his yard, his head tilted skyward. For the next few hours, we stand there together, our necks aching as the birds soar a thousand feet above us.

This is the life of a pigeon man—an increasingly rare breed in Baltimore these days, though their lofts once dotted alleys all across the city. Decades ago, Baltimore’s pigeon fanciers could take their pick of social clubs with dozens of members. Kids who were interested in pigeons hung around one of the feed stores in the city and eavesdropped on the older men to pick up pointers, and homing pigeon race results sometimes made the sports pages.

These days, a handful of small pigeon clubs are trying to keep the sport alive as it is battered by a resurgence of predatory birds, rising prices, and lack of interest from the next generation.

Foster, 63, is the central timer in a local pigeon club, so he organizes the flying schedule and trains his birds when he’s not working 12-hour shifts as a patient-care technician. He devotes precious weekends to the 80 pigeons in his loft and fellow members of the Baltimore United Tippler Club. But he’s not exactly optimistic when I ask about the future of the sport.

“We diehard pigeon guys, we don’t want to give up,” he says. “We want to hang in there just as long as we possibly can and keep going with it, because if it’s not us, there are no more younger people coming into the sport to keep it going.”

“WE DIEHARD PIGEON GUYS, WE DON’T WANT TO GIVE UP.”

Growing up near Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1970s, it seemed everybody in the neighborhood had pigeons, Foster tells me. At 11 years old, he and friends began catching wild pigeons around Monument Street and keeping the birds in whatever they could find: first, a hollowed-out television set with a fan grate stuck on the front, then wooden fruit baskets from Northeast Market. Once, his mother caught him keeping pigeons in his bedroom.

“I was pigeon crazy,” Foster says.

He built something resembling a real coop when he was 13, after thieves came through and stole his pigeons out of a shoddy structure he’d been using to house them. (Pigeon theft was once a huge problem, fanciers tell me, though the issue sometimes resolved itself when perpetrators let their new pigeons out to fly and the birds followed their homing instinct back to their real owner’s yard.)

Foster studied books about pigeons at the Patterson Park library and used the money he made delivering The Baltimore Sun to buy birds from the famous old feed store at Fleet and South Ann streets in Fells Point. You could get a good starter pigeon for $2.50.

“It has to be in your blood,” Foster says. “It’s been with me since I was a little boy.”

Baltimore was well-known for its pigeon culture, and the pigeon men here were seen as experts in the sport, says August Hohman, who races birds out of a loft at his brother’s house in Baltimore County. Hohman’s father and uncles were pigeon men in Baltimore as far back as the 1930s, raising birds on Patterson Park Avenue. One of his uncles was the race secretary for the Monumental City Concourse Association, once the largest club in the city. That same uncle served in World War II and helped care for military carrier pigeons. Now 61, he still flies racing “homers” and keeps a variety of other pigeons with his brother.

Hohman and Foster, who grew up in the same neighborhood and have known each other since they were boys, often get together to “pigeon mumble,” the term for when pigeon guys get together to talk shop.

Hohman’s racing homers, as the name suggests, are trained to get back to their home loft as quickly as possible, sometimes flying hundreds of miles in just a few hours. On a race day, pigeons from different lofts are all released together from the same location—often in Virginia or further south, since race distances can range from 100 to 600 miles—and fly home, where an electronic clock records what time they got back.

Pigeons are incredible athletes, with lightweight bodies and prominent breast muscles that allow them to fly for hours at a time, sometimes reaching 60 miles per hour, without stopping. But it’s their ability to find home that has made them useful to humans for millennia.

Pigeons delivered the results of the first Olympic games in 776 B.C.E.; they helped Paul Julius Reuter establish his news service in 1850; and they saved hundreds of lives in World War I and World War II by flying messages through gunfire when radios failed.

The pigeon’s homing instinct has been sharpened over thousands of years of selective breeding, explains Verner Bingman, a professor at Bowling Green State University who studies animal navigation.

“Any bird is a good navigator,” he says. “What makes homing pigeons special is the depth of their fidelity to their loft.”

Pigeons are so attached to home they sleep on the same perch in their loft each night. And a good pigeon man knows where to find each of the birds in his coop, even in the dark.

How pigeons find home is a tougher question. It’s generally agreed that pigeons can identify directions, like north and south, using the position of the sun and the Earth’s magnetic field, according to Bingman. But to find home from the middle of nowhere, you also need to be able to figure out your position relative to where you want to go.

While there’s disagreement among experts about how pigeons do this, research has convinced Bingman that they parse different smells in the atmosphere to determine where they are and how to travel toward home. That smell “map” gets pigeons close enough to home that they can rely on a sophisticated visual map of the landscape surrounding their loft that they build over many flights.

The local, visual map allows Hohman’s pigeons to fly the distance from the former Key Bridge to his brother’s house in Rosedale in 20 minutes, for example. The smell map is how they find their way back to Baltimore during a race from Georgia.

“IT HAS TO BE IN YOUR BLOOD. IT’S BEEN WITH ME SINCE I WAS A LITTLE BOY.”

An hour into the training flight in April, Foster’s young pigeons are flying well. The sisters are sticking together and the third bird is staying with them, though starting to falter. It’s a good showing for their first flight of the year, Foster says.

“That’s the job as a trainer,” he tells me. “I have to get a third bird that’s on the same page as them.”

Foster’s focus has always been tipplers, a breed of pigeons slightly smaller than racing homers, whose primary strength is endurance—the duration they stay in the air—rather than distance or speed. Instead of racing home from hundreds of miles away, tipplers stay in the airspace near their loft and fly for up to nine or 10 hours or more while their owner and a contest judge watch from the ground below.

Suddenly, Foster sees something: “That’s the falcon,” he says, pointing at a fast-moving bird. “See him? That’s a predator.”

The falcon is heading in the same direction we last saw the sisters flying. “It might be going at them.”

There’s nothing he can do. And we can’t see the sisters. Hoping to at least bring home the third pigeon that broke off from the others, Foster releases a “dropper,” a plump white pigeon that the other birds have been trained to associate with feeding time. Once a tippler lands, it must be back in its loft within an hour or its flying time won’t qualify; the dropper signals it’s time to eat, encouraging the tippler to get home quickly.

We watch as the dropper and the third pigeon slowly make their way back to the loft, keeping half an eye on the sky for the sisters.

Peregrine falcons and Cooper’s hawks are the main threats to pigeons in the sky, and they are more abundant now than in recent decades, thanks, in large part, to the banning of the pesticide DDT in 1970s. But in raw numbers, there aren’t many falcons flying over Baltimore. Most likely, just a handful.

Still, predators are on the mind of every pigeon fancier who lets his birds out to fly. Some lose dozens of birds each season, which might explain why pigeon men talk about the local falcons like familiar antagonists.

Pigeon men see other new obstacles to the sport as well: The city began requiring pigeon coop permits in 2007 and  limits the number of birds a fancier can keep to 125. There are also no feed stores in the city anymore, so pigeon men have to look elsewhere for the specialty supplies they use to keep their birds healthy.

Greg Campbell, the secretary of the Baltimore United Tippler Club, has tried to fill that gap by starting monthly Swap and Sell meetups near the entrance to the Baltimore Cemetery on North Avenue. Known as “Soup,” because of his last name, and also “the Professor,” because of his deep knowledge of pigeons, Campbell often wears multiple pieces of BUTC merch, including a hat with three pigeons on it that reads “Brotherhood, Featherhood.” There are also “Sisterhood, Featherhood” hats for women, he assures me.

Campbell talks with local pigeon men to gauge their needs and develop feed blends for their birds. Pigeons love dried peas, and their feed might also include safflower, wheat, or soybeans. Pigeon men carefully look after their birds’ health, giving them probiotics, administering vaccinations, and inspecting their droppings for signs of illness.

Despite a rep as “rats with wings,” pigeons are no dirtier than any other wild animal, and some studies have found they are resistant to avian flu.

Campbell’s loft in Lauraville is intensely organized. His pigeons are separated by lineage so that he can carefully choose the backgrounds of the birds he wants to breed. Some of his birds are descended from the loft of Harry Shannon, a celebrated Irish tippler man who died in 2019.

Like most pigeon men, Campbell knows the lineage of each bird going back generations (some still use notebooks to track family trees, while others now use specialty apps). He sells birds to other fanciers for $50 or more, depending on their breeding.

After a tour of Campbell’s loft, he sets up metal folding chairs in his driveway and we settle in to watch the tipplers he released that morning. Other guys stop by over the course of the morning to pigeon mumble, including talking a little trash and rehashing old pigeon-related grievances.

“It’s like being around a bunch of fathers,” says Clavon Smith, who at 40 is one of the youngest members of the BUTC. “They’re very knowledgeable. They keep you humble.”

Smith is trying to use social media to raise awareness of the sport today. He produces YouTube videos to promote BUTC, document Baltimore’s pigeon community, and teach others how he works with his birds. The club’s YouTube presence is a sign that even older pigeon men can adapt to newer times, Campbell says, and will leave a record of pigeon culture for the future.

“We might not be here no more, but somebody can look back years from now and see what these guys been doing.”

Across town in Curtis Bay, members of the Baltimore Pigeon Fanciers Social Club still host races and bird auctions in likely the last physical clubhouse for pigeon men in the city. Years ago, the club’s 70 or so members used the building as a social hall, complete with a bar and a kitchen that served burgers, shrimp, and crab cakes.

Now the bar sits empty, the walls covered in pictures of winning pigeons and the fanciers of the 1920s and ’30s, who stood next to their lofts in suits and hats for the photos. The club’s 20 members mostly stick to the garage now, where they meet to load birds for races.

On a Saturday in May, 91-year-old Ed Seitz was pleased to see one of his birds win a 150-mile race from Virginia, flying home at more than 60 miles per hour. Seitz has tried to get young people involved in the sport, but the technology now used to track homing pigeon races can be cost prohibitive. Kids today also have more activities vying for their attention than these men did as children.

“Back then, it’s all we had,” Seitz says.

That morning’s auction only lasted a few minutes, with most of the young birds selling for $35 or so. They’re still babies, with yellow down poking from under their adult feathers, and they let out shrill, indignant peeps instead of the coos of a more mature bird. The pigeon men assess each bird’s frame and lineage before deciding how much to shell out. One particularly good bird sells for $75.

Seitz, the elder statesman here, credits his longevity to his pigeons—though he noted, at 91, he is actually the second-oldest club member. The birds helped him stay active and got him through difficult times, including the death of his first wife.

“I think the pigeons have kept me going,” he says.

By the time I left Foster’s yard on that cool April training day, we had not seen the sisters in flight for more than an hour. Meanwhile, Foster kept shaking a small can of pigeon feed to tempt the dropper and the third pigeon back into the loft. He was concerned about the sisters, his two best birds, who seemed increasingly unlikely to come home.

“In this sport, you can’t have favorites,” he tells me sagely. “They’re the ones that break your heart.”

I go home, but only after making Foster promise he will text me if the missing birds come back. Throughout my interviews for this story, pigeon men have been gently encouraging me to buy a few birds of my own and get back into fancying. (I raised a small flock of pigeons as a teenager in my backyard in Pennsylvania.) But that night, it becomes clear that I don’t have the strength to be a pigeon man.

When Foster texts to let me know that the sisters never returned, I burst into tears.

“Please don’t feel bad,” he writes. “It’s part of our sport.”

This is why many people quit. But, Foster reminds me, there are also moments—almost miracles—that keep pigeon men coming back. The next morning, another text pops up on my phone. It’s a photo of one of the missing pigeons standing quiet on top of Foster’s loft, waiting to be let inside.

We’ll never know what she went through in the sky over Baltimore, or what happened to her sister, but she’s back.

She found her way home.

When Leighton Moore got kicked out of school in the 11th grade for fighting with another student, he went to work full-time at his family’s Gateway Motel in Ocean City before heading to Jamaica, the beginning of a lifelong love of the Caribbean island.

“I picked up on the vibe down there,” says Moore, who’s returned hundreds of times to the lush paradise known for its “irie,” or joyful spirit. “I knew I wanted to have a beach on the bay, like Jamaica, with the sand and the view.”

He kept that idea in mind when he came back to the seaside town where he grew up, finally realizing his dream after he and his siblings sold their 60-unit, oceanfront lodging on 48th Street and another property, the Ocean Club, in 1987.

At the time, Moore, who will turn 73 on July 2, was left with a liquor license, a small piece of property on peaceful Assawoman Bay at 49th Street, and an overwhelming drive to create his own slice of tropical heaven in Maryland.

His vision started small in 1988 with a private tiki hut that held, maybe, 50 people. A vintage membership card reads, “For locals only…and for those who wish they were.”

Greg Benson, 54, who worked at the beach then and now lives in Ellicott City, remembers those early days. “It was a hideaway,” he says. “You had to know someone to get in.”

Word of mouth quickly spread about Moore’s oasis. “We were filled,” Moore recalls. “That’s what spurred the idea of starting another bar. Then, I would add another bar.” In 1989, the growing enterprise opened to the public.

Today, Seacrets—named for its one-time, hard-to-find location (it’s a secret at the sea, get it?)—sprawls across about 12 acres from 48th and 52nd streets on the bay and holds almost 5,500 visitors, many of whom wait in long lines for admission during peak summer days.

Even Ocean City’s longtime mayor, Rick Meehan, recognizes Seacrets’ landmark status in the oceanfront town. “It is a destination within a destination,” he says. “You can go anywhere, and Seacrets has become synonymous with Ocean City, or maybe Ocean City has become synonymous with Seacrets.”

The attraction? Twenty-one bars, seven music stages, a concert hall, a distillery, several dining areas, and the bay, where those who are 21 and older settle into tables set in the shallow, albeit murky, placid water, waited on by bikini-clad servers.

This summer, Moore is also focusing on the north side of his property, officially opening The Hideaway, an upscale waterfront restaurant, coupled with a wedding and event space, and transforming another venue, Area 51, into a swanky area for celebrations, including a speakeasy.

Will the fancy digs change Seacrets, often known for its hard-drinking, rollicking good time? “It will stay the same,” Moore assures. “Seacrets will always be akin to Jamaica.”

The scene can get rambunctious when bachelorette and bachelor parties grab prime-time seating in the bay to celebrate their upcoming nuptials with some dedicated day drinking. The women are often dressed in matching outfits, from bright-pink tank tops imprinted with “bride” and “bride’s friend” to glittery tiaras, frilly tutus, and lacy sarong wraps.

They down adult beverages, dance to reggae and rock ‘n’ roll music, and often engage in elaborate scavenger hunts, with challenges ranging from coercing a piggyback ride from a stranger in the watery throng to searching for a tattooed bather for a photo.

EVEN OCEAN CITY’S LONGTIME MAYOR RECOGNIZES SEACRETS’ LANDMARK STATUS.

Owen Breininger, of Coopersburg, Pennsylvania, has witnessed the celebrants many times. He even received a marriage proposal on one occasion. For the past 12 years, Breininger and his fantasy-football league have met up at Seacrets on the weekend before Labor Day. They plant themselves at a bay table and check out the action.

“The people-watching there is always an experience,” says the 41-year-old father of three girls. “It’s just a fun scene. It doesn’t get too rowdy or out of control.”

Two of the guys in his group of 12 were former Seacrets “doormen”—their official title on the job, though they might be better known as bouncers elsewhere. The identical twins—Justin Strickland, from nearby Camden, Delaware, and Shaun Strickland, who now lives in Dover—look forward to being part of the party instead of having to monitor the wild-and-crazy guests.

“We’re the outsiders looking in,” says Shaun, 42, with a laugh. “We take it all in and try to decide if that was us at that age.”

His brother, Justin, was a 19-year-old college football player when he landed a summer job at what he calls “the coolest bar in Ocean City.” But he was quickly introduced to the challenges on one of his first nights patrolling Seacrets. “A guy was so intoxicated he was peeing on the bar,” he says. “It was crazy.”

Besides the yearly bro weekend, Justin takes his wife and three children, ages 12, 5, and 3, to his former workplace for fun. “We’ll have lunch in the restaurant portion,” he says. “All my kids love it.”

Shaun and his wife go there with their two daughters, too. “Our girls like to play in the sand while they wait for their meals,” Shaun says. “It’s like they’re on a tropical vacation somewhere.”

That’s the dichotomy of Seacrets, with its multiple venues. “If you go to the dance hall, people are packed together and bumping into each other, dancing,” explains Butch Arbin, captain of the Ocean City Beach Patrol, who has been guarding the beach for 53 years. “But if you go to another part of Seacrets, you’ll see families sitting down and eating dinner.”

While some locals may see Seacrets as a tourist trap and a source of excessive drunken revelry, others enjoy showing off the beach town’s ode to Jamaica. Arbin, who lives in West Ocean City during the summer when he’s not teaching in Charles County, was especially pleased when he took a couple he and his wife met on a church mission trip to Seacrets.

“They’re Jamaican,” he said. “They loved it.”

George Larson and his wife, Michele, both 65, started going to Seacrets when it first opened. The couple, who reside in Newark, Delaware, have been regular customers since they bought a condo across the street from the bar 20 years ago.

“We love the party atmosphere,” George says. “Sometimes, we stay late into the night; other times, we’ll stay for a few hours.”

They skip the bay, though. “I don’t like to take my shoes off and get into the water,” George says. “It’s more of a younger crowd.”

The rollicking hordes can be a deterrent. Mickie Meinhardt, the owner of The Buzzed Word, a bookstore, wine shop, and wine bar on 118th Street in Ocean City, avoids Seacrets in the summer. “If you’re crowd-averse and don’t really want to be packed into a space with a lot of sweaty tourists, it’s not necessarily a place you feel the need to go to,” she says. “But it’s a joy for me to go in the offseason for food and drinks.”

Ron Pichini, a former Glen Burnie resident who lives full-time in the Wight Bay condos, next door to Seacrets, acknowledges that things can occasionally get a bit out of control, but says the bar has been a good neighbor.

“The issues we have are not with Seacrets or any of their staff. It’s the drunken patrons,” says Pichini, who is vice president of his condo association. “They come over here, walking around our canal, getting in our boats, and jumping in the water.”

Owner Leighton Moore takes the safety of his customers and the community seriously. Several years ago, he changed the title of “doorman” to “peace police,” with their titles emblazoned in black-print letters across the back of their bright-orange T-shirts.

“They try to keep the peace,” he explains. “They also answer questions and help people find their way around the property.”

But most visitors aren’t looking for trouble. They go to Seacrets to soak up a carefree Caribbean atmosphere with a drink in hand and feet in the sand amid the more than 300 fresh palm trees, brought in annually from Florida, and for the camaraderie of fellow vacationers.

Many of the bartenders at Seacrets have been mixing drinks there for decades, like Michael Gray, who was named the 2025 Bartender of the Year by the Restaurant Association of Maryland at its annual gala.

Gray, 49, came to Ocean City to celebrate senior week after graduating from Chesapeake High School in Pasadena and found his calling, eventually ending up at Seacrets 27 years ago. “I’ve always enjoyed the bar business,” he says. “No two days are the same. People are having a good time.”

Adam Peix, who’s been tending bar at Seacrets for 20 years, will transfer his know-how to the new Hideaway restaurant as the general manager. “It’s going to be fun to do something different with a different clientele,” he says. “It’s not going to be such a party crowd.”

His staff will be focusing on craft cocktails and classics like Old-Fashioneds, Manhattans, and dirty martinis, as well as a carefully curated wine list.

Meanwhile, Seacrets will continue to ply its customers with a variety of flavored Crushes—from orange and grapefruit to lemon and watermelon-cucumber—and frozen drinks made with liquors like Seacrets orange vodka and bourbon, produced at the on-site Seacrets Distilling Company.  “It’s very islandy,” Peix says.

Even before the opening of the new wedding venue, couples have been tying the knot at Seacrets. Jen Pavinski and her now husband, Corey Pavinski, moved to Ocean City from Pennsylvania in 2019. Although they got married in February 2021 in a courthouse ceremony, they decided to exchange their vows again on the beach at Seacrets that October and have their reception, complete with the bar’s prime rib and crab cakes, for 100 guests at the on-site nightclub.

And while the beach was blocked off for their wedding, some customers were sitting at an outside bar, watching the proceedings.

“When we said, ‘I do,’ there were strangers cheering for us, which was nice,” Jen recalls.

Moore, an affable raconteur with a self-deprecating wit, seems as surprised as the next person that his humble drinking spot grew into a behemoth bar, restaurant, and nightclub scene. He declined to reveal the property’s annual revenue, although he surmises that Seacrets is one of the largest, independently owned entertainment complexes in the country.

He sees his new projects as a way to stay competitive. “We have to diversify,” he says. “If we want to grow, we have to go after a different clientele.”

Moore describes the ambiance at the new restaurant as casual but refined, where people can dress up and enjoy a delicious meal, indoors or alfresco. His wife, Rebecca, is also involved in the endeavor, relying on her hospitality background, waiting tables and tending bar at Fager’s Island for almost 20 years before opening a restaurant, Jules Fine Dining on 111th Street, which has since closed.

“I put my two cents in for everything, whether they want it or not,” she says with a chuckle.

They hired a new executive chef, Paul G. Suplee, a Johnson & Wales University graduate, who, years ago, spent time at Baltimore-area restaurants like the now-closed Polo Grill and Rudys’ 2900 in Finksburg.

“I’VE ALWAYS ENJOYED THE BAR BUSINESS. NO TWO DAYS ARE THE SAME. PEOPLE ARE HAVING A GOOD TIME.”

Moore often calls Seacrets a “beast,” with its 650 summer employees and thousands of visitors, but he’s personally connected to this land. He lived on the property for a decade in the early ’80s and ’90s, in a house that has become part of the establishment. His former kitchen and office have been transitioned into a music stage; his one-time porch leads to the stage.

He now lives in West Ocean City and often commutes to Seacrets in a boat that he designed for the shallow bay. It takes four minutes before he’s mooring the 40-foot craft at the bar’s pier. He likes being close to home. It’s one of the reasons why his earlier plans to franchise Seacrets at other locations, including Florida, don’t work for him anymore.

“I can’t be in two places at one time,” he says.

But he knows he can rely on his management team. One longtime member is Mary Handy, who joined him in 1979 at the Gateway Motel. She then assisted him while he was building Seacrets. “He is a very kind-hearted, conscientious person,” she says. “I’ve always been part of the family.”

While Moore calls her a company vice president, Handy demures. “It’s not official. I do anything that needs to be done,” she says. But Moore knows she is a force. “You can mess with me, but don’t mess with Mary,” he says. “She’s vice president of everything.”

As he gives a tour of his pride and joy, Moore enjoys pointing out the antique light fixtures, stained-glass windows, and Art Deco antiques that he buys for his various buildings. He spent more than $1 million on items from the 1920s and ’30s to recreate a Prohibition-era experience at the distillery, which opened in 2016. He’s always on the hunt for new additions. Even his wife jokingly calls him a “professional buyer.”

As he surveys the north side of his property, he points to a swath of the asphalt parking lot. That’s where an eight-story hotel will eventually be built. He also wants to add a second floor to the nightclub.

On the cusp of another birthday, Moore is pensive as he talks about the property’s future.

“I’m getting tired,” he shares. “How long do I want to work?”

But he’s not stopping any time soon. He can’t help himself.

“It gives me something to do,” Moore says. “It keeps me from retiring and stops me from being bored.”

A wave of fuchsia, crimson, velvet, and latex spill out of the door of Metro Gallery on the Friday night of February 14. Inside, the air thrums with music as a joyful crowd decked to the nines dances, embraces, and collectively belts out the chorus of “Abracadabra” by Lady Gaga.

The occasion? The hottest spot to be on this most romantic of all evenings: Sweet Spot’s “Stupid Love,” a self-proclaimed “gay anti-Valentine’s dance party.”

“There was a time when we knew everyone on the Sweet Spot dancefloor—that’s not the case anymore,” says local creative Andre Cawley, who co-founded Sweet Spot in 2021 with his husband and creative partner, Chris Uhl. “People find out about Sweet Spot through word of mouth, flyers, and even platforms like Grindr and Reddit.”

Since its inception, Sweet Spot has become a vital and vibrant hub for the Baltimore and Mid-Atlantic queer community, hosting high-energy dance parties that prioritize inclusivity through accessible ticket prices at venues like Metro Gallery, Ottobar, and Soundstage.

Inspired by New York City’s LGBTQ+ party scene and events like Ty Sunderland’s “Heaven on Earth”—a monthly everyone-is-welcome all-nighter featuring DJs, drag, and dancing—the couple envisioned a space for free expression and connection through dance.

The COVID-19 pandemic fueled this desire for connection even further, and when restrictions were lifted, Sweet Spot was born—named after a song by trans popstar Kim Petras—with Cawley overseeing graphic design and Uhl serving as resident DJ, blending pop hits with club classics, R&B remixes, and techno beats.

And they have arrived at the perfect time. Baltimore has a rich history of queer-friendly spaces. But over the last decade, stalwarts like Club Hippo and The Gallery have closed, leaving behind a deep void, as traditional gay bars have played a crucial role in fostering community and providing safe havens throughout the last half-century. In fact, Sweet Spot’s founders met at Grand Central, once a beloved Mount Vernon nightclub that closed after three decades in 2020.

But as their own events show, the queer community has adapted to this shifting landscape through a roving scene of DIY music and DJ collectives. While permanent spaces come and go, these dancefloors fill the void as essential spaces of refuge—as they long have for marginalized communities.

“Chris was going out before he was ‘out,’ and those spaces gave him the freedom to socialize and find community—and a husband!—and dance, free from judgment,” says Cawley. “That was really important then and still is today.”

Cawley and Uhl note that while some LGBTQ+ bars do remain, including newer additions like The Club Car and Melanie’s at Griffith’s Tavern, there are a growing number of other spaces—like 1722, The Royal Blue, and Current Space—that have opened their doors to queer events.

In the city today, “There are so many queer collectives, producers, performers, and DJs working to make fresh, original, and exciting events and nights out all year long in Baltimore,” says Uhl, citing collectives like Version, Tech_METROPOLITAN, GRL PWR, and The Queers Upstairs, which each play a vital role in keeping the scene going. Along the way, Sweet Spot has also featured a wide array of artists and performers, including local rapper Dapper Dan Midas and drag performer Baby’s Not Alright.

Of course, creating DIY queer spaces outside of traditional bar settings presents unique challenges. Cawley and Uhl emphasize all the time and money that goes into booking talent and venues, not to mention promotion and setup. Yet the rewards are significant.

“Sweet Spot is a community that came together organically—we built this from nothing,” says Cawley, who’s particularly proud of the creative freedom of their events, from that anti-Valentine’s fete to their costumed Gay Halloween celebrations to New Year’s Eve parties with free Champagne toasts under a cascade of silver confetti.

Last Friday, June 6, they co-produced the massive “Full Bloom” dance party at World Pride in Washington, D.C., a testament to their increasing influence and reach. And this Friday, June 13, they’re bringing the party home, with a kickoff to the 50th anniversary of Baltimore Pride at Metro, headlined by Maryland native Miss Toto, with guest performances by DJ AAVE and Kayden Chloe.

A portion of proceeds will be donated to Baltimore Safe Haven, a local nonprofit providing a supportive community and essential resources for trans and queer individuals. There is currently a waitlist for the sold-out event.

As the city commemorates a half-century of Pride this month, the Sweet Spot duo is excited about what’s to come, but they also emphasize the ongoing need for activism and awareness, as anti-LGBTQ+ animus is once again on the rise. These collectives are vital in carrying the torch of community building for the next generations.

In the face of adversity, celebration is an act of radical resistance, and the popularity of collectives like Sweet Spot demonstrate the enduring importance of these spaces—for showcasing Pride year-round.

“The fight continues, but there is so much joy on the dance floor,” says Uhl. “Pride is an opportunity to honor our history, our community, and our creativity. A city without queer spaces and events would be a city without joy.”

There’s nothing people love more than a pleasant surprise. And that’s exactly what Lewisburg, West Virginia, is—a small town with big charm in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains and only a five-hour drive from Baltimore, with every minute worth it for a true getaway from city life, even if only for a long weekend.

In fact, Lewisburg was once described by Budget Travel as “America’s coolest small town,” on top of many other superlatives from the likes of Thrillist and Travel+Leisure.

Situated on the Greenbrier River and surrounded by forest, it unfurls like a mini oasis, offering countless delights to visitors—art galleries, antique stores, acclaimed restaurants, and an abundance of cultural institutions. Best of all, it’s a year-round draw, with annual events ranging from April’s Chocolate Festival to August’s Literary Festival to October’s Taste of Our Towns. It’s no wonder the town is becoming more popular with new residents and visitors alike. (Honestly, we hope it doesn’t become too popular.)

The bottom line: Don’t let any preconceived notions about West Virginia fool you. Upon entering the Mountain State, the first thing you might see is a welcome sign hailing this countryside as “wild and wonderful.” As you make your way to Lewisburg ideally with John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” on blast—it’s hard not to agree.

AN EARLY RETREAT

On our most recent visit, we drove out of Baltimore, around Washington, D.C., and through the rolling hills of Virginia, then over the state line into Greenbrier County.

Incorporated in 1778, it is one of the oldest counties in West Virginia, and it was in those early days that the grand Greenbrier Resort first opened as an aristocratic vacationland in White Sulphur Springs. Just 10 miles east of Lewisburg, it’s a requisite pit-stop for local landmark history on the way to your final destination.

An easy train ride from Washington, D.C. (and once owned by the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway), the Greenbrier has long been a respite for guests coming from the urban epicenters of the Mid-Atlantic. That easy access helped draw a well-heeled clientele of politicians, celebrities, and other notable personas.

After World War II, New York society darling and interior designer Dorothy Draper was enlisted to reinvigorate the property, bringing a bright, colorful, maximalist aesthetic that remains today.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Greenbrier still offers old-glam, five-star lodgings—some 710 resorts, 64 cottages, and six estates, to be exact—and then some. These days, there is also an on-site casino, golf course, bowling alley, all-ages arcade, and even “bunker tours” of its once-top-secret Cold War fallout shelters, said to have been created by President Eisenhower and reserved for Commanders-in-Chief.

Much as it was in the 18th century, the resort continues to be a wellness destination, with the region’s cool mountain air providing a reprieve from the heat and humidity of cities, and its natural springs full of mineral-rich water, said to be soothing for arthritis, stress, and other ailments. Today, the luxury spa offers everything from signature soaks to salt-cave treatments, massages, and meditation.

Walk the grounds, breathe in the medicinal air, then move on down the road for the less grandiose but equally gratifying charm of Lewisburg.

TOWN & COUNTRY

Less than 10 miles from the Greenbrier, the Midland Trail Byway, aka Route 60, eventually turns into the tiny town of Lewisburg. Originally established as an outpost in the 1750s by its namesake surveyor, Andrew Lewis, it’s located a stone’s throw from the Greenbrier River, which flows wide and splendid.

Officially laid out in 1780, the town of Lewisburg largely consists of two thoroughfares, Washington and Jefferson streets. Charming houses and eclectic businesses abound, and walking around is the best way to explore them, as well as their array of architectural styles.

It’s a small downtown—population 3,800—but on every street corner, there is a strong sense of community and creative spirit, plus a welcoming attitude toward out-of-towners.

In the springtime, just be sure to stop and smell the red begonias. In a tradition that dates back decades, the town’s unofficial flower will be hanging from streetlights and garden fences throughout the warm-weather season.

ARTS + HISTORY

For those initially lured to Lewisburg by the Greenbrier, there might be history buffs in tow. Luckily for them, the town’s Historic Landmarks Commission has created a self-led walking tour for the many notable local sites.

The route is available online, as well as via a complimentary printed map that can be picked up at the Greenbrier Valley Visitors Center. Highlights include one of Industrial Revolution tycoon Andrew Carnegie’s four Carnegie Halls, which, as in New York City, hosts live performances and rotating exhibits, like their outdoor concert series throughout the summer.

Also worth visiting is the North House Museum and Archives, where exhibitions, lectures, and a research library are on hand for inquisitive visitors.

A less likely time warp can be found at Flanagan’s Barbershop, whose circa-1860 building has continuously housed a hair-cuttery since the turn of the 20th century. With two old-school swivel chairs, you can still get a snip or a shave today.

As the local Carnegie indicates, even all the way out here, there’s no dearth of arts and culture. Another historic site gets a modern twist at the circa-1939 Lewis Theatre, a vaudeville stage turned modernized space with retro film screenings, dance performances, and live music.

Meanwhile, the Greenbrier Valley Theatre, now in its 57th season, serves as the state professional theater of West Virginia. Across town, multiple galleries also showcase art on display and for sale, like Paragon Fine Art, with rotating exhibitions, and the Lee Street Studios artist collective. Housed in a historic elementary school, the latter fittingly hosts on-site classes, from watercolor painting to woodworking, as well as community events.

QUAINT COMMERCE

Looking to take home a memento other than an artistic masterpiece? A bevy of shops is another boon downtown. Fun fact: Many of the businesses are owned and operated by women, like The Golden Rabbit, an eclectic boutique run by art dealer Adrienne French, whose curated selection includes antiques, jewelry, and home goods, from Tiffany lamps to originals by modernist artist Eva Zeisel.

So far from the ocean, you won’t be surprised to learn that, across the street at the Lewisburg Surf Shop, there are no boards in sight, but instead a luxury goods mecca that would be as much at home on Melrose or Madison avenue. Run by fashion industry veteran and Lewisburg native Meredith German, this itty-bitty boutique is home to clothing brands ike Marni, Saint James, and Proenza Schouler.

More clothing can be found at Cat and Kate, a mother-daughter-owned shop with lots of colorful womenswear and gifts. Meanwhile, Istanbul designer Cybele Bo’s Cybele stocks one-of-a-kind, handmade accessories, while Wolf Creek runs a longstanding store that’s stuffed floor-to-ceiling with boho-chic clothing.

For something a bit more literary, the independent New Chapter Bookstore is a bookworm’s must, featuring bindings for all ages. Be sure to check their calendar for the next Scrabble Night or Book Club.

And if you didn’t scratch that antique itch? Collectors are covered, thanks to multiple establishments selling second-hand treasures of every variety. Find them at Robert’s, Brick House, and Patina, to name a few.

EDIBLE DELIGHTS

After all that shopping, it’s easy to work up an appetite. For both real foodies and fans of comfort-food-style Southern cuisine, Lewisburg has a plethora of options all within strolling distance, many of which place an emphasis on local ingredients.

At The French Goat, guests can slowly peruse the elegant menu of this European-inspired, farm-to-table bistro, voted best fine dining and best brunch by WV Living Magazine. We recommend indulging in duck confit and truffle frites.

Around the corner in a converted 19th-century stable, The Livery Tavern also offers sophisticated dining, founded on a bedrock of local steak, plus hints of Creole and Indian flavors. Come for a meal but stay for craft cocktails, using regional spirits, beers, and ciders, mostly made in West Virginia.

For something more casual, the RNCVRT bakery, located a short drive south of town, sells sweet gluten-free treats, healthful salads, and local coffee from Cherry River Roasting Company.

Back at Stardust Cafe downtown, an eco-friendly approach imbues every aspect of lunch and dinner, which means they use everything from fair-trade ingredients to biodegradable packaging. Go for fresh pastas, a signature burger (using Lewisburg beef, of course), and a well-curated wine list.

The Bavarian-inspired Briergarten also shines with a selection of house brewed beers and casual noshes like pretzels and bratwursts, while Thunderbird Taco slings Tex-Mex cuisine with a West Virginia twist, featuring meat and produce from area farms. We especially like the black bean burrito with homemade buttermilk crema and slaw.

Pack some provisions for a hike or the trip home from Bella, a corner shop crafting cheese plates and charcuterie boards, with picnic baskets available for purchase. Also peruse their shelves that showcase specialty ingredients like Momofuku chili crunch, Starlino cocktail cherries, and West Virginia’s own J.Q. Dickinson salts, made up the road in Malden.

THE GREAT OUTDOORS

After singing the praises of Lewisburg’s quaint charms, we want to direct you away from town. After all, more than three-quarters of the Mountain State is—you guessed it—covered in woodland, from the Greenbrier State Forest located just outside of town to plenty of other impressive state and national parks within a short driving distance.

At the former, some 5,000 acres of wild land offer endless ways to hike, bike, swim, fish, and camp. For the amenity-inclined, there’s even a heated pool open from Memorial Day through Labor Day. That said, for outdoor enthusiasts, it’s also an ideal starting point for the 78-mile Greenbrier River Trail, a former railroad path now paved for leisurely strolls, fast-paced biking, and even horseback riding.

Further afield, to the north, the southern-most tip of the massive Monongahela National Forest offers a biodiverse treasure trove of flora and fauna, plus hiking trails, creek-side camping, and places to paddle.

Back near the Virginia line, the 1.8-million-acre George Washington & Jefferson National Forest is an even larger landscape, home to lush groves of old-growth trees, mountain streams, and picturesque peaks as far as the eye can see.

Ladies often get the acclaim for the sartorial sundresses and wide-brimmed hats that are associated with classic Preakness Stakes style. But men often put just as much effort into their ensembles for Baltimore’s annual horse-racing ritual.

“I have photographed the women in hats for years, and they are beautiful,” says contributing photographer Lashelle Bynum, “but I love a sharp dressed man. I mean, they can really put it down.”

This year, Bynum returned to the grandstand for Preakness 150—the last year the race will be held at Pimlico before the facility receives massive upgrades—on the hunt for the some of the event’s most trendy gents. Below, she tells the stories behind 12 looks that stood out in the crowd.

Mel Harris

Dressed in colors he said he wouldn’t normally wear, Harris sported a plaid jacket of blue, brown, beige, and a touch of gray. He paired it with gray pants, black-and-gray argyle socks, and brown shoes.

Shane Lavender

From New York, Lavender grew up with horses. He wore pink to the Kentucky Derby, but for his first Preakness, he decided on this beige suit, adding a blue-and-green pocket square, green bowtie, hotdog socks, and untied brown shoes.

Kenny Simmons

A native Michigander, Simmons said he likes to take a unique approach to his clothing choices. He wore a tuxedo-style suit in two tones of purple. The lighter shade tied in with the lapel and bowtie at his neck, while the darker shade brought the suit together.

Floyd Curley

Preakness attire is nothing new for Curley, a Baltimorean who has attended for almost 20 years. For the 150th anniversary of the race, he showed up to Pimlico in a straw fedora, a blue suit with matching bowtie, plaid socks with shades of blue, and brown monk strap shoes. 

Ron Gates

Michael Ross

Eugene Bell

Saturday marked Bell’s 54th Preakness. Fittingly, he was the “belle” of the ball, wearing blue-tinted shades and a gold-and-blue embroidered jacket with gold tassels to match his blue-dyed goatee. To finish the ensemble: a blue-and-white cane with a white horse head and a pair of posh silver-studded shoes.

Mr. Ricky

Wanting to pay homage to the history of the race, he chose this lightweight gray suit with a “throwback” vest. He accessorized with a black-and-silver brooch, black ankle socks, white SKX tennis shoes, a gray straw hat, a cigar, and a handsome smile.

Germaine

The Baltimore native was outfitted in a plaid suit in two-tones of blue, a blue shirt, navy tie, and flowered pin in his lapel. The navy through-line was also reflected in navy blue socks with white dots, navy suede lace-up boots, and a blue watch.

Ben Waldorf

With a goal to one-up his 2024 ‘fit, Waldorf sported a purple pinstripe suit, purple-and-white flowered tie, white pocket square, two-toned purple hat, purple shades, and “Purple Rain”-inspired Prince socks for good measure.

Duaeno Dorsey

Dorsey, who rides horses himself, was kicking back and hanging out with his uncles on Preakness Day. He said his look—mirrored sunglasses, a white hat, a blue-and-white striped shirt, navy blue suspenders, navy pants, a blue bowtie, argyle socks, and brown shoes—was an homage to the jockeys.

These days, if you told someone you were renting a shore home for the summer, they would probably assume you’re headed to Ocean City. But for ages—until hurricanes wiped out many of them—blue-collar families in Baltimore City owned or rented shore homes in Bowleys Quarters, Millers Island, Sue Creek, and other places feeding into the Chesapeake Bay.

Usually, these shore homes were really shacks with a few rooms, equipped with an outhouse, and if you were lucky, an indoor sink with running water. During the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, I spent time in shore shacks with family and friends. We’d go on weekends to fish and crab from piers, have cookouts, and enjoy the outdoors. We’d plant gardens, eat steamed crabs, play games, or go swimming. At night, we slept inside on beds, cots, or even bunk beds.

These types of shore homes are a faded memory, as folks realized it was lucrative to sell the property, especially when Hurricane Isabel destroyed many and families couldn’t afford to rebuild.

Even with the shore homes gone, the memories linger. Because, back in the day, there was no better place to be in the summer than at the shore.

A WELCOME SHORE
It’s actually quite hard to find recorded history of these shore homes. The Heritage Society of Essex and Middle River has the most comprehensive account of Millers Island. I also found a few mentions about Millers Island and Bowleys Quarters in old Baltimore Sun articles and community newspapers like The Avenue News and The Dundalk Eagle. Much of the rest of the history lives on in memories from local families.

Bowleys Quarters, a Middle River peninsula, is named for Daniel Bowley, a merchant and sea captain, who in the mid-1700s owned 2,000 acres in Baltimore. Historical accounts state that Bowleys Quarters was originally used to house the people that he enslaved. It eventually became a duck-hunting preserve—attracting everyone from baseball player Babe Ruth to U.S. presidents like Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison. Bowleys Quarters became a place to vacation, and, in the 1920s, the first shore homes were built for workers and executives of Bethlehem Steel, General Motors, and other plants.

Millers Island, located on a peninsula in southeastern Baltimore County, was originally farmland. By the mid-1900s, it was great fishing and crabbing grounds. An article in The Avenue News, by late editor Jackie Nickel, states that in the early 1900s, for people who “chose shore shack living, the rent was as low as $5 a week or $100 per year.” In 1922, Baltimore County established the Millers Island community of summer homes for executives from Bethlehem Steel. By the 1930s, people from Baltimore City flocked to the area to escape the heat and relax in inexpensive summer homes on the Bay.

Scott Huffines, archivist and board member of the Heritage Society of Essex and Middle River, grew up in the shore shack his great-grandfather John “Hon” Nickel built.

“Over the years his family and many others decided to make their shore shacks their permanent homes. They added bathrooms, heating, and room additions, usually in such a uniquely haphazard, piecemeal fashion that the buildings still standing could now be considered livable ‘outsider art,’” he says.

“When I think of shore shacks, I think of family,” continues Huffines. “I still live on that property, and I entertain my family and friends just as my ancestors did in the early 1900s. The connection to water is like connection to family. Waterfront has always been paradise to me.”

MY FIRST TIME
The first time I remember going to a shore home was in 1979, the summer when I was 11, a year after my father had died. It was a reunion of sorts, with my old living-room furniture. My paternal grandmother had ordered furniture she didn’t like and gave the set to my mom. In turn, my mom gave our 1970s sofa and chairs, which sported the dark brown slipcovers of the era, to her friends Mel and Ginny Schenning.

The Schennings took them to their shore home. Mr. Mel and Miss Ginny, as we called them, rented the shore home for many summers. But I don’t remember exactly where it was. When you were a kid, you got in the car and ended up somewhere else. Unfortunately, all the people who  would know are long gone.

My closest friend was Sandy Jachelski Vieyra, and we spent our time at the Schennings’ shore home wading into the Bay. If a fish or eel swam by and touched your leg, all-out screaming and running from the water would ensue. We also tried to get a fancy silhouette photo of each other. At sunset, one of us would walk on the pier, and the other took a picture from the shore. We did this a lot, and while we had fun, the chances of our work ending up in a gallery were zilch, as we used my mom’s small 110 film camera.

We had great times, and we’d go home at night dirty, tired, and content.

LAZY SUMMER DAYS
My mom and Sandy’s mom, Miss Zennie, were best friends too. So, we were all invited down to Aunt Katie’s shore home on Millers Island during the early ’80s. (I have no idea what Aunt Katie’s last name was, and she wasn’t an actual aunt to any of us, but back then, that’s what we called certain adults in our lives.)

When I called Sandy recently to talk about those times, she reminded me that our moms bought us cheap, white tenners (now called sneakers) from Shocket’s on Eastern Avenue to wear in the Bay. While they were bright white when we went in, they eventually ended up tinged green from the water. But we didn’t care. In them, we waded out into the warm waters. The only time we got out—until it was time to go home—was either to eat or when it was too dark.

We hated using the outhouse. It was hot and smelly and dark—there was no lighting in them. Sometimes, spiders descended as you sat there, and the goal was to get out as soon as possible. Then Aunt Katie did something miraculous: She got an indoor bathroom installed! We were told to use it sparingly, but we’d go in whenever we had to. It was just too wonderful.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, my Aunt Terrie Brooks Cessna was renting a house on Sue Creek that had indoor plumbing. But her road still had more moderate shore homes, too. When she discovered one was for rent, she called my mom immediately. My mom and stepdad rented it for $750—May through October—for the summers of 1990 and ’91. During those two glorious summers, my mom and I spent time floating on the creek in blow-up rafts, fishing on our neighbor’s pier, and having serious talks I still cherish.

My memories of that shore home are still so vivid. I can close my eyes and hear the ducks, the water lapping on the tiny bit of sand we had, and the boats going by.

“When I think of shore shacks, I think of family. I still live on that property, and I entertain my family and friends just as my ancestors did in the early 1900s. The connection to water is like connection to family. Waterfront has always been paradise to me.”

STILL IN THE FAMILY
In the early ’80s, I went to a friend’s shore home in Bowleys Quarters. It belonged to Anna Marie Shinnick Komisarek’s mom and her siblings—members of the Hock family. Anna Marie’s grandparents, along with nine of their children and her grandmother’s brother, chipped in and purchased the one-floor-with-an-attic home in 1958. After their parents died, the siblings kept it, as a timeshare.

The Hocks had a calendar on a bulletin board at the home, and each family would mark off a week for their vacation. Anna Marie’s family went in August. When she invited a bunch of our friends and me for a hot summer day, I thought it was the coolest place ever. I wore a shimmery, rust-colored, one-piece bathing suit, and we spent the day in the water and on our towels on the lawn getting tan and listening to the radio. We sang loudly when a song played by this “new” band, The Police, came on.

By the early 2000s, Anna Marie’s mom’s generation was getting older and asked the younger cousins if they wanted to buy them out. They did, and now nine family members, including Anna Marie and her brother and sister, own a share of the shore.

Some things have changed though. They still keep a calendar, but now it’s on Google. The family created Bay Drive Shore, LLC, to prevent personal liability in case of any accident. “We run it like a family, though,” says Anna Marie. “Many of us were just starting out with young children, and if anyone had gotten sued, we would have nothing.”

It’s also no longer a one-floor home. After Hurricane Isabel destroyed the shore home I knew in 2003, the cousins rebuilt it. Now it’s two-floors with a basement and can sleep 19 people in beds—or 36, if they use a couch and blow-up mattresses.

From 1958 to 2003, the only damage at the shore was in 1972, when Hurricane Agnes knocked down a tree onto her uncle’s car, Anna Marie says. Since Isabel, though, climate change has caused lots of other issues, including more flooding, which is why even though the new shore home was built on the site of the old home, the basement is where the first floor would have been. (According to the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, sea level along Maryland’s shores will “very likely rise a foot between 2000 and 2050.”) So, if the Bay were to flood the property, the chances it would damage the home are small.

Although the house has many modern amenities, there’s a lot that reminds you of the old days. Black-and-white photos line the hallways. On one wall, black letters spelling the family name, “Hock,” are surrounded by salvaged front panels of the original kitchen drawers, small dishes, photos, and a rolling pin. There’s also the once-white sign (now yellowed) with red letters that was house rule back in the day: No Wet Bathing Suits Allowed in the House.

“This is a sacred place to us,” says Anna Marie. I know exactly what she means.

COMING FULL CIRCLE
Another friend still has her family’s shore home as well. From 1954 until about 1973, Stacy Greensfelder DeCarlo’s paternal grandparents and her great-aunt and great-uncle owned a little piece of property on Millers Island. On it, they had three cinder-block buildings constructed: a house, a shed and outhouse, and one her grandmother called “The Crab House,” since her husband enjoyed crabbing.

Eventually, Stacy’s parents bought out her dad’s aunt and uncle’s share, and Stacy would often take friends down there on weekends to swim, fish, and have fun.

After Stacy’s dad passed away and Hurricane Isabel left the house underwater, Stacy and her husband, Bill, decided that they wanted to buy it.

“It was something I wanted to keep in my family, and my husband just loves boating and fishing, as well as being on the waterfront,” says Stacy.

They were able to rebuild on the original cinderblock foundations, and about a decade ago, they decided to add a second floor with two bedrooms to the main home, along with heating and central air, Wi-Fi, and anything else to make it livable year-round. Over the years, they’ve held tons of family events there as well.

In mid-July of 2022, my shore home experience came full circle. A horrible storm hit, and my Baltimore neighborhood lost power. Because it was so ungodly hot, and because neither we nor our dogs could stand the heat, we decided to get a hotel room. I posted on social media to see if anyone knew of hotels that were open (remember this was during COVID) that allowed pets. Stacy invited my husband, me, our dogs, and our close friend and neighbor, Ernie Keeton, and his dog to use the shore home.

During the days we stayed there, so many memories came flooding back. When I went out and sat on her pier, I realized that the pier further up her street—which had seen better days—was the old Worster’s Pier, where I had spent so much time fishing, crabbing, and having fun days with my mom. On the day that my mom had passed away 17 years earlier, I sat on Stacy’s pier and watched the sunset. I felt like my mom was once again with me.

Stacy’s shore home was about as close as I could get to the ones of my childhood. Yes, her modern amenities were nice, but nothing will top those simpler days of enjoying the Bay in our cheap sneakers, the outhouses, and having fun with all those friends and family on hot summer days so many years ago.

Walking into her first home health care visit 10 years ago, registered nurse Keli Gallagher didn’t know exactly what the next hour or  two would hold. Would her patient be doing well in his transition from hospital to home? Open to working with a stranger to move
toward better health and independence? Or struggling with his new reality?

Whatever the case, Gallagher knew that to really succeed—to ensure a patient recovering from a serious health crisis could heal and even thrive outside of a hospital setting—she’d need to provide more than medical care.

“Your first goal is to build that bond of trust,” says Gallagher, who provides services in Baltimore City and County for Bayada Home Health Care. “Then you get them to understand why you are in their home and what they can do themselves. Once you get that to happen, it’s amazing how much better people feel.”

Like many people released from the hospital to recover at home, Gallagher’s first patient was nervous. An avid baseball and football fan, the elderly man had suffered a serious exacerbation of his chronic illnesses and, though he was home, his challenges were far from over.

“He was overwhelmed and anxious about everything he had on his plate,” Gallagher recalls. After assessing him and ensuring he was safe, Gallagher got to work providing nursing care, plus a healthy dose of education and assurance. “I taught him and his wife how to manage his wounds and explained the chronic disease processes,” recalls Gallagher.

Over the next few weeks, Gallagher would return to the home regularly to provide care, assess her patient’s progress, offer encouragement, and connect the couple to community resources.

“The goal is to allow the patient to be confident and independent and then we just back off and supervise for a while,” she says.

Home health nurses like Gallagher are increasingly in demand due to an aging population, a rise in the prevalence of chronic conditions, shorter hospital stays, and a strong desire by many patients to remain in their home while they receive care. Such nurses provide essential skilled services—wound care, medication administration, post-surgical care, and disease management—and prepare patients and their families to manage their own treatment longer term.

For a patient hobbled with a fractured hip and newly home from the hospital, for example, Gallagher might visit one to three times a week for several weeks. “We go in to educate them on pain management, medications, diet, fluids, and fall prevention,” she explains. “I’m responsible for ensuring patients are safe and that they and their families are comfortable, confident, and competent in managing their care independently.”

To get the job done, Gallagher often coordinates with physical, occupational, and speech therapists, caregivers (like a spouse), and other health professionals involved in a patient’s care. She is among the roughly three percent of registered nurses who work in home health care, according to National Council of State Boards of Nursing.

Home health care is not the same as a private duty nurse, who may visit for longer blocks of time, for longer-term care, or to provide respite for family members or caregivers, with patients usually paying out of pocket. Home health nursing is often paid for by insurance, Medicare, or Medicaid for a limited period of time for patients deemed unable to leave their home for outpatient care.

“The benefit to the patient is that they get to stay in their home environment, they get one-on-one attention, a personalized plan of care, and a complete focus on them to meet their goals,” says Sarah Caro, a registered nurse and clinical assistant professor for Towson University’s Department of Nursing.

“Medicine is such a scary endeavor for so many people…I can’t tell you how many times people have said to me, ‘I’ve never had a nurse who taught me this,’ or ‘I didn’t know this is available.’”

Caro, a nurse for 30 years, has worked in hospital settings as well as in home health care and hospice. “We know people do better at home. With proper support, they really can have positive outcomes.”

It’s a benefit that has ripple effects beyond the patient, with care provided in a patient’s home—whether it’s in a house, apartment, assisted living facility, or other space—freeing up inpatient resources and lessening the burden on families once a patient is discharged.

For nurses, home health care offers autonomy, flexibility, and the chance to move beyond the confines of a facility. There’s also—for patients on the path to recovery—the reward of seeing someone regain independence, says Caro.

“Often in the hospital we don’t get to see that,” she says. “We’re happy when they get to go home, but we don’t get to see that independence come back.”

Even when recovery isn’t in the cards, there is the opportunity to develop deep and lasting connections with patients and their families. Caro’s career is peppered with such connections, including a special bond with one elderly patient in failing health. She’d often linger to chat—and frequently laugh—with her after the visit.

“I would usually save her for late in the day because we sure did enjoy visiting,” Caro recalls. “We worked together so long and she sat me down one day and she said, ‘I just need to tell you—and I don’t want you to argue with me—I am ready to be comfortable.’ She felt like she had to break it to me gently that she wanted to be a hospice patient. It was really precious.” (Caro’s response: “Sweetie, we can do whatever you want.”)

Beyond the relationships there’s also the opportunity for nurses to employ a wide range of skills as they encounter varied health conditions. While some care boils down to the basics, home health nurses also may also find themselves providing the type of complex care that was once limited to inpatient settings. Thanks to increased access to telehealth, remote monitoring, and other advances, these services can now be delivered at home.

“One of the things I really like about home care nursing is it gives me the opportunity to really use all the tools in my toolbox and to continue learning as well,” says Dawn Workman, a clinical nurse manager with Johns Hopkins (JHU) Care at Home’s Personal Care division, which provides private pay services for patients seeking the care of a nurse or certified nursing assistants.

On a typical day this spring, Workman started her day with a visit to a post-partum patient, then moved on to an elderly woman who needed drain and dressing care, plus help with medications, then on to a kidney transplant patient to draw labs and collect a urine sample. The day ended with a quick check-in on a patient who had a debilitating medical condition that has required extensive surgeries.

The variety requires home health nurses to be “expert generalists,” as JHU’s Care at Home likes to think of them. “There is really nothing typical about it,” says Workman, whose 26 years in nursing have included time in emergency care and as an EMT and a medic. “It is truly ever evolving.”

At times, the work requires tackling problems with skills you might not think of as traditional nursing. Polly Easton, a Stella Maris start-of-care nurse, recalls one patient early in the pandemic who was COVID-19 positive and recovering at home.

“So here I am with a double mask, gown, and shield, sitting in someone’s bedroom to go through her medications. She brought out a rolling suitcase filled with medication, and I was like, ‘What do I even do with this?’” Easton recalls with a laugh. A little digging revealed that the patient wasn’t actually taking the medications, unbeknownst to her doctors.

“They’d see her blood pressure was high and add another prescription, and she’d collect them all but never take them because she was too overwhelmed,” says Easton, who quickly devised a solution, working with the medical team to whittle down the medication list. “This is nursing,” she says, “but it’s not really what they teach you in school.”

As rewarding as it can be, providing nursing care outside of a facility brings its own challenges, the least of which may be the logistics of handling weather and traffic when you travel to multiple homes each day. While the autonomy that comes with the job can be appealing, it also brings weighty responsibility. While home health nurses work within a care plan, with an interdisciplinary team, and with a support team a phone call away, “you really are out there by yourself,” says Caro. “It can be a little daunting,” especially for nurses just starting out in home health care.

Home health nurses may also have to push past the worries patients and their families have as they take on medical responsibilities for themselves or their loved one.

“Medicine is such a scary endeavor for so many people and that creates more fear and more resistance,” says Gallagher. Often, she finds patients are surprised by what they can accomplish. “I can’t tell you how many times people have said to me, ‘I’ve never had a nurse who taught me this,’ or ‘I didn’t know this is available, I didn’t know that I could do this.’”

Another possible roadblock is the home itself. Easton has encountered patients whose homes had already been modified—with grab bars, wide doorways, even an elevator—for a parent or spouse. But often, homes are not ready to be makeshift care centers. Loose rugs, stairs, and slippery showers pose hazards for the elderly and infirmed. And then there are the pets.

“The pets are always interesting. There have been some that were small and mighty and gave me a run for my money,” says Caro, who once had a patient with a pet duck that would greet her at her car with a few not-so-friendly ankle pecks.

For Easton, the challenges of providing care in a home are also an opportunity. Walking into someone’s kitchen for example, Easton might notice their food is stored in hard-to-reach cabinets, or that their walk from the living room to the bathroom requires navigating a walker through a too-narrow path.

“I love that I can really figure out what people need that they may not be able to verbalize for themselves but that can really change their quality of life,” she says.

“The pets are interesting,” says Caro, who once had a patient with a pet duck that  would greet her at her car with a few not-so-friendly ankle pecks.

One of her easiest problems solved didn’t require any in-home modifications but instead involved removing a logistical obstacle. The elderly patient had always walked to a local pharmacy to pick up prescriptions, but after a hospitalization could no longer make the trip.

“He had been home from the hospital for three days and he didn’t have his meds yet,” she says. A quick call to switch the patient’s prescriptions to a pharmacy that delivers resolved the issue.

Of course, sometimes the problems are trickier, with medical needs that can’t be met in the home. “You come into the house and they’re like, ‘I don’t know if this looks good,’ and you’re like, ‘No, that does not look good, we’re going to call 911,’” says Easton, who developed the knowledge and skills to make such decisions over nearly 20 years of nursing.

Many home health nurses get their start in other branches of nursing, and some aren’t even aware the career path exists. For Caro, an introduction to in-home care came while she was working full-time on a telemetry unit in a small community hospital that sent nurses into the homes of congestive heart failure patients.

“Had I not had that opportunity early in my career I don’t know that I would have known how amazing home care is,” she says.

As a professor, Caro often encounters students who envision themselves tending to patients in an emergency room or an ICU after graduation. But she believes that nursing’s varied career paths are part of its appeal. “I don’t think people realize just how broad the field is and what can be done.”

The national nursing shortage has tightened the supply of all nurses—and that includes home health nurses. In response, the Home Care Association of America and the National Association for Home Care and Hospice have proposed a range of efforts, including implementing more loan forgiveness programs for nurses entering home health care, making salaries more competitive, and getting the word out so that more nurses consider home health nursing as a career option.

For Gallagher, home health nursing has been not only a viable and exciting career path, but also thoroughly rewarding. “It’s a really emotionally draining position but there are so many instances where it’s just a beautiful thing,” she says.

Often, the payoff comes as patients progress to confidently managing their own care. “I tell people all the time, the best thing is when I see them smile, when I know that they are comfortable enough and happy enough to be able to look forward to tomorrow instead of being scared,” says Gallagher, who recently had a patient burst into happy tears because she could finally leave the house on her own and take a bus to her doctor’s appointment.

Other times, the reward comes later. Gallagher will always remember her first home health patient, not just because she built trust and saw him improve enough to no longer need her care, but because a year later she got a call from his cardiologist with an update.

“He said, ‘I just saw the patient, he was in my office with his baseball cap on and he was about to go to an Orioles game,’” Gallagher recalls. “He thanked me and said, ‘You really made a difference.’”

Being an integral part of the team that helped the patient return to health and independence was its own reward, says Gallagher.

“That’s what makes us motivated to do what we do.”

Having a restaurant in his house while he was growing up wasn’t always easy for Larry Wilhelm, a retired owner of Friendly Farm Restaurant in northern Baltimore County—especially since the family shared an upstairs bathroom with diners.

On one occasion, several young guests decided to explore his bedroom after a trip to the toilet. “I found kids jumping on my bed, taking clothes out of the drawers, and getting my toys out,” says Wilhelm, 73, who was a peeved 8-year-old at the time. “I went downstairs and told my mother.”

He didn’t know he was about to get his first lesson in serving the public. “She said, ‘They’re customers. We have to take care of our customers.’ I was introduced early on to customer service,” he says with a chuckle.

Wilhelm is still surprised that his mother, Dorothy Wilhelm, even agreed to be part of the business venture cooked up by his dad, Jack Wilhelm.

“How does a guy from the country, a rural person, talk a city girl, who lived on Remington Avenue in Hampden, into turning their home into a restaurant?” he asks.

Fate probably had something to do with her decision. Larry’s father learned to cook while serving in the Army during World War II. “He could take things and make them pretty tasty,” Larry remembers. After returning home from the war, Jack bought the 200-acre Upperco property—the future home of Friendly Farm Restaurant—and raised corn, wheat, and beef cattle before marrying Dorothy in 1949.

The couple settled into farming life until 1957, when Jack’s leg got caught in a corn-picking machine, “messing it up terribly,” Larry says. “He thought, foolishly, that being in the restaurant business would be easier. Maybe that’s how he talked Mom into it.”

When Jack and Dorothy opened Friendly Farm, not far from winding Mount Carmel Road, in 1959, Interstate 83 hadn’t been built yet and the now-bustling Hunt Valley area was all horse country. Going to the restaurant, which recently celebrated its 65th anniversary, was considered a day trip by Baltimoreans, who traveled along Falls or York roads to get to the pastoral property.

In the early days, Larry remembers going to Sunday church at 9 a.m. and returning home to find customers waiting to get into the restaurant. “They’d be on the field, playing ball and lying on blankets,” he says. “We’d quickly change and open the restaurant.”

It was all-hands-on-deck for the family, including Larry, who would stand on a milk crate while washing dishes by hand. “The apron would wrap around me twice,” he says with a laugh. “Now, it won’t wrap around me once.”

At the time, the restaurant, then called Friendly Farm Steakhouse, was open only on Saturdays and Sundays, serving fried chicken, ham, and steak with family-style appetizers and side dishes, starting at 95 cents a person. Today, the restaurant is open Wednesdays through Sundays and operates on a first-come, first-served basis, only accepting reservations on Thanksgiving and for parties of 10 or more.

And while those initial entrees are still on the menu, plus numerous additions, prices kick off at $22.95 and include oversized scoops of ice cream for dessert and unlimited drinks, from sodas to coffee. There’s also a children’s menu.

“You get such great portions,” says Bonnie Kabara, who lives in Dundalk and makes the trek to the restaurant twice a week with her partner, Bruce Schmitt. “They always give you extra sides. We eat half our food; then bring the rest home so we have additional meals.”

No alcohol is served in the dining room. “We have several church people who don’t want to be involved in that,” explains Larry. “It’s a family-style restaurant.”

“YOU GET SUCH GREAT PORTIONS. THEY ALWAYS GIVE YOU EXTRA SIDES.”

When the crowds outgrew the 44-seat parlor dining room in the original house, the Wilhelms built a new restaurant building nearby, which opened in 1964 and seats 200. It was around that time that they dropped “Steakhouse” from the name, settling on Friendly Farm. “When people called, it was quicker to say,” Larry says.

After the deaths of Jack in 1976 and Dorothy in 2014, Larry; his younger brother, Gary, 69; Gary’s wife, Jane, 66; and Larry’s late wife, Denise, who died in 2023, continued to run the business. As the Wilhelm brothers grew older, they knew they would have to make a decision about what to do with the property one day.

“We had a great run, Larry and I,” says Gary, who declares himself 80-percent retired. “We weren’t sure what was going to happen to the restaurant. We thought about leasing it or selling it.”

Then, the next generation stepped up. Gary and Jane’s children, Caroline Fouts, 36, and Chris Wilhelm, 33, have become a crucial part of the operation, with Caroline handling accounting and other duties and Chris managing the catering side of the business and day-to-day maintenance.

“I didn’t expect them to take over,” says Gary, who is thrilled with the outcome. “I told them, ‘Don’t assume you have to do it because we did it.’ I didn’t want them to miss out on anything else.”

Gary, a star athlete during his days at Hereford High School, speaks from experience. When he was a graduating senior in 1975, a Detroit Tigers scout reached out to him. But he decided not to pursue the opportunity. “Unfortunately, my dad was very sick,” Gary says. “I let that go for family. I have no regrets.”

So far, neither do Caroline and Chris, who both live on the restaurant property. They have already experienced other jobs. Caroline, a Stevenson University business major who has worked at the restaurant since she was 14, took a position at Under Armour after graduation in the team sports division, working with local high schools and colleges. “It was very rewarding,” she says. But after five years, she was drawn back to the family business, getting married and becoming a mom to daughters Saylor, 5, and Raegan, 3.

Chris, who graduated from James Madison University in Virginia with an accounting degree in 2014, worked for a local accounting firm for four years. “I loved it,” he says. But he, too, felt the pull of family. “You are born into it,” explains Chris, who also worked at the restaurant as a teenager. “It’s hard to let it go. It feels like home.”

The sister and brother hope to put their own imprint on the business. “We have a lot of ideas,” Caroline says. “A wedding venue is definitely in our vision. We do weddings, but we’re not a full wedding venue with a place for people to get ready and stay overnight.”

Getting a liquor license in 2023 was a big plus. “We lost a lot of business because we didn’t have one,” she says.

Even with a liquor license in place for catered events in the recently renovated, lower-level banquet room, the family doesn’t plan to serve alcohol in the main dining room. “It’s one thing my grandma never wanted,” Caroline says. “I’m still trying to abide by her wishes.” Chris agrees. “You don’t want to mess it up,” he says.

In recent years, Chris also worked on getting parts of the property rezoned. “It’s ready in case we want to build something,” he says.

It’s too early to tell if there will be a fourth generation at Friendly Farm, though Caroline’s girls spend a lot of time at the restaurant. “They’re pretty young,” she says. “But they like to come here and run around.”

Cheryl Haglauer, who lives in Lutherville-Timonium and has been going to Friendly Farm since the ’70s, can relate. The acres of green grass surrounding the restaurant in the warmer months are a lure to visitors of all ages before or after their meals.

“We take the grandchildren, who are 2 and 5. They run free through the fields to see the ducks and geese,” she says. She also brought her son to the restaurant when he was younger. “The staff are warm and welcoming,” she says. “And they are so kind and considerate to children.”

Many of the servers have been there for decades. Most are women, dressed in crisp maroon shirts and black pants. One of them, Linda Naylor, 69, has been hoisting trays for 25 years. “It’s the most important job I’ve ever had,” she says. “I like being around people. It warms my heart.”

The setup at Friendly Farm is different from most sit-down restaurants. Customers order and pay for their entrees before they enter the dining room. Jack Wilhelm got the idea after visiting the now-closed Peter Pan Inn in Frederick County, known for its bountiful meals and roaming peacocks.

Some diners were wary at first. “They would say, ‘What if I don’t like the meal,’ and my mother would say, ‘You’re going to like the meal,’” Larry says.

Once diners are seated, the servers take drink orders and immediately place several bowls of appetizers on the table, from cottage cheese and canned sliced peaches to coleslaw and addictive sugar biscuits that taste like beignets. Family-style sides, including green beans, corn, and French fries, are served with the main dishes. Hershey’s ice cream or sherbet finish the meal.

There’s nothing fancy about the food—think American grandma food. “You keep going because it’s always good,” says Haglauer, who first came to Friendly Farm on a date with a boyfriend. “There’s a lot of lump in the crab cake, not a lot of filler. And there’s nothing like their fried chicken.”

Jane, Gary’s wife, started working at the restaurant as a waitress when she was in high school and is clocking in at 50 years. “My kids won’t let me retire,” she says with a laugh. She remembers when the family tried to serve fresh green beans instead of the beans simmered in ham broth. It didn’t last long. “People love the mushy green beans,” she says.

THERE’S NOTHING FANCY ABOUT THE FOOD—THINK AMERICAN GRANDMA FOOD.

Stu Barnes, 46, oversees the daily running of Friendly Farm’s dining room, banquets, and catering jobs. Growing up in central London, the former IT worker never imagined he’d be cooking on a Maryland farm for a living, although he always enjoyed making food for friends and co-workers. Then, Cupid intervened.

While visiting his aunt in Maryland, Barnes met Larry’s daughter, Crystal, and was smitten. They married in 2013 in an outdoor ceremony by the property’s pond, complete with a spraying fountain. It wasn’t long before he found a place in the restaurant’s kitchen.

“I helped Larry out with the cooking one day, and I knew it was what I wanted to do,” says Barnes, who then enrolled in the culinary program at Anne Arundel Community College.

Though the dining-room menu offers the same homey dishes it has for years, Barnes was instrumental in adding a vegetarian eggplant Parmesan dish to the lineup and spotlighting baby back ribs as a special. He also gets to explore his creative side when planning menus for events and weddings.

But he appreciates the predictability of the restaurant’s regular menu. “It’s the consistency,” he says. “People came here with their grandparents. They may not come back for 10 or 15 years, but when they come back, it’s exactly as they remember it. It’s why we’ve been in business so long. It’s exactly what they wanted.”

Barnes also finds comfort in the landscape. He and Crystal now live in the old homestead that once housed the restaurant.

“Growing up in a concrete jungle, I now look out my window, and I’ve got all this,” he says, gesturing to restaurant’s acres of open  and. “I’ve fully become a country boy.”

While the restaurant is surrounded by lush acreage, there are no farm animals or fields plowed with vegetables these days. After the restaurant opened, Jack and Dorothy tried to grow enough green beans and tomatoes to feed their diners, but there were too many mouths to feed. “It became overwhelming,” Larry says.

Currently, Friendly Farm seats about 1,000 people a week.

“It’s a beautiful place to enjoy,” Jane says. “I think that’s why we do the crowds we do. It’s safe. You don’t have to worry about parking. People can let their kids run around and not have to worry about anything happening. We’re very fortunate to have so much and to be able to share it with so many people.”

The first thing you’ll notice when you show up to a Runners Run event is the wide array of people there: moms with strollers, walkers with dogs, seasoned marathoners—bodies of all colors and sizes, mixed ages and paces, moving together.

The second thing you’ll notice, because you won’t be able to miss him, is the co-founder of Runners Run, Lo Johnson, a former NFL defensive end and Bowie State standout. His booming voice and wide smile are unmistakable, and his dap-up greeting could sprain your wrist if you’re not careful.

“I’m Coach Lo and I’m here to get the party going!” he says at the start of each run, before leading the group in a series of warm-up exercises.

That same enthusiasm is at the heart of every Runners Run event, and by design. The goal is to serve as “a safe space for all people who want to come and work out,” says Johnson, especially Black runners.

Because while running has seen a recent boom across all demographics, the sport looked much different back in 2019, the year Johnson ran his first race at the Shamrock 5K in downtown Baltimore. Looking around, he noticed that he stood out, and not just because of his 6’5” frame.

“I felt like it was literally two Black people,” says the 37-year-old Baltimore native.

Despite the lack of representation that day, the race’s vibes were great, recalls Johnson, from the buzzing energy at the start line to the festive atmosphere in the celebration zone, with live music and post-race drinks. At another race the following year, he looked at his friends and said, “We need to put on one of these.”

Soon after, Runners Run was born in 2020, hosting their own running events, as well as “shakeout runs” before other local races. And though it wasn’t exclusively for Black athletes, its leadership made sure those runners felt welcome.

“We wanted to bring more Black people out, show them what the running life is about, how fun it is, and how ultimately you can get healthy from running,” says Johnson.

Within a year, the events—like their July anniversary run and September 5K—were drawing more than 200 people, and inspiring other new run clubs to follow suit.

Since then, the impact of Runners Run is undeniable. “If you go to the Shamrock 5K now, there’s at least 100 to 150 Black runners,” says Johnson.

And going forward, the goal remains the same: Assemble all runners of all abilities, spread positivity, and release it back into the community.

“It’s been a blessing to be a blessing,” says Johnson. “To have people DMing us and saying thank you, telling us they love running, going from couch potatoes to running their first 5K—that’s what keeps us going.”

It’s probably safe to say that most blues musicians didn’t earn a bachelor’s degree from Duke University or attend grad school at the University of California, Berkeley. But Evan Nicole Bell is not your typical rough-and-tumble guitar slinger. The 28-year-old, who was born in Texas but grew up in and now lives in Columbia, boasts a legitimate blues pedigree—according to family lore, an uncle played guitar with blues legend Lightnin’ Hopkins.

Her covers of soul, R&B, and blues songs have been watched online more than 13 million times. In January, Bell released her first full-length album, Shades of Blue. A mix of original compositions and covers, it hit number one on the Roots Music Report’s singer-songwriter chart. Bell played every instrument on the LP—except for drums—while also filling the roles of producer and recording engineer.

When we spoke with Bell this winter, just before she was awarded a 2025 Baker Artist Award, she was already penning songs for her next album

What music did you listen to growing up?
I grew up in a household around funk, soul, gospel. A lot of Motown, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Isaac Hayes, The Isley Brothers, The Bar Kays, Teena Marie—those were the artists my mother listened to. And when I was developing my own musical tastes, it expanded from there.

How did you get into the blues?
I didn’t really know about the blues until I started playing electric guitar, and then I started hearing music differently. I started hearing the blues influence in all modern music—in rock, in R&B—and I started hearing how pervasive it was and how important it was. People hear blues and they think, “Oh, sad.” But that’s not just what it is. It’s stories about human existence. It’s the full gamut of emotions and experiences. Sometimes you’re down and sometimes you’re up. And I think my music reflects that.

How long have you been playing guitar?
I’ve been playing classical guitar since the eighth grade. When I was 21, my mom bought me an electric guitar. That changed my world. That’s when I really fell in love with songwriting. I found that the electric guitar most closely mimicked the human voice. All the micro-bends and vibrato, it was almost like a duet partner. That was new for me. Not just having an instrument to play the underlying melody over but having an instrument that could mirror that vocal melody back to me. I thought that was so cool.

How did you develop such a huge social media following?
[In 2021,] for something called Play Music on The Porch Day, I played Albert King’s “Crosscut Saw” and posted it on my YouTube channel, which had, like, one subscriber. it was there for a year, and then someone in Sweden took the video from YouTube and posted it on Twitter. And things just went viral from there.

That same year you performed live at WTMD as part of Public Radio Music Day, which landed you on the homepage of NPR Music. What was that experience like?
It was exciting. And it was funny to me, too, because it took a video going viral [internationally] to be invited to perform 20 minutes from my house. With NPR Music, I was able to reach an even bigger audience. It was one of those moments that started my career and got me excited about really making this into a vocation for life.

How has the response been to the new album?
We’ve shipped records all across the world—to Japan and Australia and UAE. That’s crazy to me! That’s a metric of how I know I’m reaching people, and it’s beautiful. It speaks to the testament of music as a universal language—that one person who is making music in Maryland is touching someone in Kyoto. Stuff like that really encourages me and keeps me going.

There’s an interlude on Shades of Blue when you interview your grandmother about your family’s potential connection to Lightnin’ Hopkins. Did she know it would be on the record?
She was so excited and so shocked. I used it as an introduction to “Catfish Blues.” I care a lot about legacy, and I think her interlude shows my place in the legacy of my family but also the greater legacy of Black history, blues history. That was really powerful for me to have her on there, and it will exist forever.

You also give a shout out to the Baltimore Blues Society. What was that organization’s role in producing the album?
Oh, they were very helpful to me. Part of my record was funded from a grant from Mid-Atlantic Arts, and the Baltimore Blues Alliance partnered with me in order to allow me to apply for that grant. And that made all the difference. I really appreciate their help and support; otherwise, the record may not have even existed.