Walk down the steps to the lower floor of downtown’s Lexington Market, the oldest public market in the country, past the seemingly permanent line for the house-made Berger cookies at a 50-year-old bakery, and you’ll find Stall 19, the 203-square-foot shop that houses Kofman’s Shoe Repair.

Nearby, a uniformed cop chats with locals by the tall windows looking out onto Eutaw Street. And inside the tiny cobbler’s shop, wearing his customary black canvas apron, stands Alex Kofman, 54: shaved head, goatee, kind eyes behind rimless glasses, sound protecting earmuffs around his neck like some sort of steampunk jewelry.

There’s been a shoe repair shop at Lexington Market for nearly 100 of its 240 years. In 1979, Kofman’s father, Boris, took over a small stall in the back of the old market from its previous tenant, also a shoe repairman, who’d been there since the 1930s. (In the early ’90s, Kofman’s Shoe Repair was awarded Best Shoe Repair Shop by this magazine.)

Boris retired, at 78, just a few years ago. Kofman’s current stall dates to the summer of 2022, when the storied public market got a $45-million renovation and redesign.

And though Kofman’s new shop is light-filled and freshly painted, the interior looks like a century-old mechanic’s garage, with repeating boxes of metal hardware, pliers and hammers of various sizes, bits and pieces of leather, spools of laces, old wooden shoe stretchers that look like fairy-tale prosthetics, and shoes—pairs and pairs of wing tips, men’s leather dress shoes, high heels, and work boots—filling shelves and cubbyholes in every part of the little shop

The Kofman family first came to America 45 years ago. Alex’s father, Boris, and mother, Frida, immigrated from Kiev, in what was then Russia and is now war-torn Ukraine, in the late 1970s and, a decade later, his grandparents came over, too.

“We were all supposed to leave together as a family, but they got held up at the last second due to some paperwork,” says Kofman. “Ten years later, they joined us.”

The Kofmans came to Baltimore because they needed a sponsor and had a relative already living here. (The other option was San Diego, where another cousin lived; it’s a decision the family still jokes about, especially when Baltimore gets hit with a snowstorm.) As soon as his parents got to Baltimore, Kofman’s father opened the stall in Lexington Market.

Kofman is part of a declining profession, a fourth-generation cobbler whose business likely stops when he does. He has a 10-year-old son, Kelly, but, Kofman says, “I’m pushing him in the direction of working more with his head than his hands.”

Training someone else to learn the craft, never a strong option in this country, isn’t in the cards either. “I used to see maybe 10 guys come by a year to apply for a job, but that’s dwindled to nothing,” Kofman says. “All the older guys are either retiring or passing away. And there’s no new ones picking up the hammer.”

Customer demand is still high, as shoes still need to be repaired, though increasingly people are replacing rather than repairing their shoes.

“We are the oldest recycling business in the world,” says Kofman of the craft, which he learned from his father, who learned from his father, who learned from his father. (Kofman’s maternal grandfather was also a cobbler.) Kofman never met his father’s grandfather, who owned a shoe repair shop in Kiev, “but I saw pictures of him holding the hammer.”

Jigsawed into his small shop are machines from the 1920s and ’30s that Kofman inherited from his father or had been in the previous shop. One machine is new, because the version from the old shop didn’t fit into the new space. Although people do still make shoe-repair machines, the older ones—made out of steel and able to last half a century—are better, Kofman says, even if you do have to find a specialized mechanic to fix them.

Kofman began working at his father’s shop in 1989, when he graduated from high school. “When I first started, I remember there was a [shoe repair] shop on pretty much every corner,” he says. “And now you’ll struggle to name three in the city.” He pauses, doing an inventory in his head: “There was one around the corner from here; the gentleman passed away. There was another one that closed down after COVID. After COVID so many people I know just retired.”

“WE ARE THE OLDEST RECYCLING BUSINESS IN THE WORLD.”

In the 1930s, there were maybe 100,000 cobblers in this country. At the turn of the 21st century, that number had fallen to 15,000 and today there are only about 3,500 left.

“World War II was kind of the peak of the shoe repair industry, because leather and rubber were rationed for the war effort and people had no choice but to get their shoes repaired,” says Mitch Lebovic of the Shoe Service Industry of America (SSIA), which was founded in 1904 and based in Baltimore for decades before moving to suburban Chicago. Of those 3,500, there are about 75 in the state of Maryland.

Lebovic says the profession is more prevalent along the eastern United States, where immigrants first settled and opened generational
family businesses. He says that one of the challenges facing the industry today is that there isn’t really anywhere to learn the craft, no training facilities or schools that teach shoe repair. There are a few programs in community colleges and the like, but hardly enough to fill the gap left by retiring cobblers.

“So if you want to get trained in shoe repair,” he says, “your best bet is to catch on with somebody who is looking to retire and spend a couple of years basically being an apprentice.” Lebovic confirms there’s definitely still a need. “Most of the shoe repairmen that I talked to, at least the ones that do good work, are four to six weeks out with their work, which means they’re a little bit overwhelmed.”

Kofman’s father was one of the many shoe repairmen who retired when the pandemic hit. Stanley Ewell, the cobbler who had worked with both Kofmans since Alex was a kid, and who learned the trade himself when it was taught in high school, passed away last year, working up until the end. Which is why Alex Kofman now helms his shop, six days a week, by himself.

Kofman, who arrives early by train from Owings Mills, where he lives with his family, and often heads home after sundown, says the new stall is a vast improvement over his shop’s previous location in the old Lexington Market.

“We were so deep inside of the market, hidden around different corners, that up until the last day there, somebody would come by say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know there was a shoe repair shop here,’” he says, smiling.

Where they were before, weeks would go by when he wouldn’t see sunlight—as there were no external windows, “just recirculated dust.”

The new shop not only has plenty of light, but an exhaust hood as well. And if it looks like a restaurant-kitchen hood, that’s because it is.

“A lot of shoe repairmen, their health falls by the wayside because they never wore masks,” says Kofman, who started wearing masks long before the pandemic. He says that when he was a teenager, a woman who was probably a nurse at one of the nearby hospitals told him to wear not just a regular mask but a N95 mask to protect his lungs from all the dust in the shop, something he’s still grateful for.

“You’d come in and there would be an inch of dust everywhere,” he says of the early days. He’s also worn ear protection since he started: “I consume more podcasts per day than a person should be allowed.”

As he talks, he’s hammering the sole of a black leather boot at a table that’s older than he is. Next to him, an inverted metal foot form is attached to the ledge—think Cinderella’s famous shoe-fit scene as envisioned by Terry Gilliam. Also wedged into the space is a big machine from the ’50s that trims the soles of the shoes and looks like the head of an iron dinosaur. (“It is a dinosaur,” says Kofman of the old machine.) There’s an auto-soler that’s about 100 years old and a ’30s-era Sutton Landis stitcher resembling an outsize sewing machine.

“Maybe one company in America makes them,” he says, studying the tool. “They cost about as much as a cheap car.”

Kofman didn’t learn shoe repair in high school, but he didn’t have to, as his father taught him the craft in the family shop. “I remember thinking about trying out different things,” he says. “But I’d done this for so long—my father would watch me in the shop during the summers, and you naturally play with what’s around you—and I thought, Why invest time learning something else when I already know this? And I enjoy it,” he adds.

Kofman worked with his father for a while, then went out on his own, opening a separate shop on St. Paul Street for about five years, then another shop in Mondawmin Mall in the late ’90s. Then he came back to work with his dad until Boris retired in 2021.

In addition to the Lexington shop, the Kofmans have always had other pick-up spots around the city, businesses where people can drop off shoes for repair—the dry cleaners and shoe stores that are the natural waystations for folks who need their shoes fixed—as well as a downtown men’s club, though “not that type of men’s club,” Kofman says.

Towson Bootery is one of those shoe stores. Alex Rudolph, 75, now owns and operates the store, which his father opened in 1948 on York Road before moving to Kenilworth Mall in 1996. When Rudolph relocated his store, he gave most of his father’s old shoe repair equipment away and began working first with Boris Kofman, then his son.

“He did every kind of thing you could ask for in the shoe repair business,” Rudolph says of Boris. “What’s better than offering shoe repair  in a shoe store? Shoe repairing is a dying art.”

The nostalgia of his profession is not lost on Kofman, especially having worked at Lexington Market for so many years. “Years ago, when the circus used to come to town, they brought in their shoes,” he says of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus that performed at the Civic Center for most of the last century.

Kofman says that the market employees would go up to the roof of the market to watch the spectacle. “They’d bring elephants to the parking lot.” And the entertainers would bring their shoes to Kofman’s shop to get fixed. “Clown shoes. The performers would bring sheets of rubber in different colors to give them height.”

And while the circus no longer comes to Baltimore, Kofman still gets shoes from the performers at nearby Hippodrome Theatre. “Wicked had toes that curled up; I had to redo the bottoms.”

While both Lexington Market and Kofman’s repair shop have gone through a reboot, it’s unlikely that Kofman’s centuries-old craft will suddenly begin attracting a new generation of cobblers. It is, however, going through a bit of a renaissance, thanks to a revived interest in artisans and their crafts, such as beer-making and bread-baking. This renaissance “is not so much from a need,” says Lebovic, “but from a standpoint that they’re interested in the craftsmanship that goes into it.”

Though this interest doesn’t translate into shoe-repair classes or apprenticeship programs, it is making ripples on social media. Lebovic points to several shoe repairmen who have developed unlikely followings on TikTok and Instagram, just by posting videos of what they do.

“I have a friend from Florida who has I think a million followers on TikTok,” he says. “I mean, just from minute-long videos of him fixing
a shoe.”

Kofman doesn’t have his own social media, much less one for his shop, but he keeps busy. He’ll have plenty of work, he says, “as long as people wear shoes.”

When Jeff Brown opened his first brick-and-mortar restaurant, JBees Jamaican Me Crazy, inside the newly reborn Lexington Market in November, he thought he was ready.

After all, he’d been parking his food truck (same name), outside the oldest public market in the country during its reboot, as his new stall and crew were being built. And he’d been running his truck—specializing in his jerk chicken, jerk fish sandwiches, and other dishes born, as he was, from Jamaican parentage—since 2015, so he’d had that mobile restaurant purring.

But Stall 51 was a shiny new operation, with all its issues—plus the pent-up demand of hungry marketgoers—and he found himself in the weeds, as orders piled up faster than he and his crew could fill them. Plus, opening day in any venue can be tough. JBees’ jerk chicken, jerk fish, and jerk chicken bowls were on the roll-out menu; roll-out menus were also in play it at other stalls that were just opening, had already opened, or were soon to open.

Lexington Market, the flagship of Baltimore’s storied market system, had a soft reopening in October, unveiling the stalls and kiosks—the former mostly food, the latter all non-food vendors—in its own slow early days. When the market is finally completed next summer, there will be 48 vendors, comprising about half legacy, half new merchants.

Of the stalls that opened in the first weeks, a noticeable number sold chicken, mostly spiced or fried. The cumulative effect was that the entire market was perfumed a bit like the best imaginable state fair.

So Brown coached his staff, took calls about deliveries, then filled the bowls: generous portions of spiced, slow-cooked chicken atop rice and peas and a thatch of curried cabbage. Aioli went over the top, and a dose of (optional) Scotch-bonnet pepper sauce. It looked like home-style comfort food because that’s what it is, though in the hands of a master.

“I’ve been cooking since I was nine,” said Brown, who was born in New York and grew up in his father’s hometown of Mandeville, Jamaica. “Cooking Jamaican food for family, and then cooking for people. Ten dinners turned into 200.”

After coming back to the U.S. and to Maryland, where he spent 17 years in the Baltimore Police Department, Brown turned to food full time. Of the jerk chicken he says: “That’s my recipe. I mean, that’s my father’s recipe; that’s my grandmother’s recipe.”

Brookdale Farm Poultry, one of the legacy vendors, had opened before Brown’s stall, and was doing brisk business in chicken: whole birds, thighs, all manner of wings, drum- sticks, eggs, plus rabbit, turkey, duck, and (maybe best of all) smoked bits in hotel pans. Later, a crowd gathered and snaked around Super Fried Chicken, which has been at Lexington Market for nearly 40 years. The display case was loaded with different parts of the bird—fried chicken livers!—all burnished, crispy, deeply fragrant. And across the hallway from JBees was another paean to chicken, in the form of Connie’s Chicken and Waffles.

Thus, a day spent at the market can be a one-stop shop: uncooked birds for your soup pot, crispy birds for any reason—and a bowl of Brown’s pretty spectacular jerk chicken.

JBEES JAMAICAN ME CRAZY AT LEXINGTON MARKET: 400 W. Lexington St., Stall 51. HOURS: Mon.-Sat. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. PRICES: $3-24.

SHAN Wallace’s latest collage is full of life—people young and old, sitting, standing, eating, dancing, all amidst a colorful array of signs hawking everything from crab meat and oysters to lake trout and snowballs. And through it all, there is one main character, which serves as both the backdrop of many of these photographs and the artwork’s ultimate destination: Lexington Market.

“I’ve been going to Lexington Market for most of my life,” says Wallace, 31, an East Baltimore native who grew up visiting the historic downtown landmark, circa 1782, with family and friends. “As a photographer, I felt called to document its history.”

Last year, in partnership with market developer Seawall Development, the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts, and the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore City, Lexington Market chose four teams of local artists to decorate its new digs, which, after two years of construction, are slated to open this month between Paca and Eutaw streets near Fayette.

Created with the help of food historian and High on the Hog author Jessica B. Harris, Wallace’s collage, pictured behind the artist above, will serve as a sort of centerpiece for the new space. At 31 by 14 feet, it will be printed on fabric and installed above a sprawling central staircase, featuring images from both her Golden Time of the Hour and The Avenue series, both of which depict Black life in Baltimore with spirit and care.

“This is my offering to Lexington Market and to the people of Baltimore,” says Wallace of her work, which has yet to be named, noting that its creation required many visits to the market. “Because this is a piece that will be hanging for a really long time, and because of the pressure I put on myself, I didn’t want to [omit any aspects] of the market.”

“I’m hoping that this art helps us remember the old market of our lifetime.”

Other art will include murals envisioned by Ernest Shaw, sculptures by both of the mother-son duo Oletha DeVane and Christopher Kojzar, and metal artists Reed Bmore and Nick Ireys. For each, the mission was clear: to bridge the gap between the old Lexington and the new.

A painter and educator, Shaw was commissioned to curate four 16-foot murals on the market exterior, which, like Wallace’s installation, celebrate the Black Baltimoreans who frequented the market and the Black culture that proliferated there. He enlisted the help of his mentor, Morgan State University art professor Guy Jones, and fellow painter Christopher Batten.

“Sometimes, new facilities and new things change the ethos of a treasure—I hope that doesn’t happen here,” says Shaw. “Lexington Market is a full, complete, authentic depiction of Baltimore City. I want people to look at my work and feel that they’re a part of this shiny new building.”

At 53 years old, the West Baltimore native remembers childhood visits with his father and brother to Lexington Market, where they would purchase pound cake, Utz potato chips, and Polish sausages.

“When I was only three or four years old, I would walk with my dad from our apartment on Division Street to Lexington, downtown,” says Shaw, noting that it was also an afternoon hangout after high school with classmates. “As young adults, some of those same friends became jazz musicians and they would perform there.”

As for Wallace, she hopes her installation will help preserve the magic of that market of so many Baltimoreans’ memories.

“I’m hoping that this art helps us remember the old market of our lifetime—remember the people who made this market good, remember the old days, and celebrate them,” she says.

In early February, Thibault Manekin, sporting a mop of dirty blond hair, wearing a beaded shark tooth’s necklace and blue T-shirt, sits in a crowded family room in Brazil, trying to secure some semblance of privacy for this Zoom. Manekin, 43, and his wife, Lola, along with their young sons, Finley and Durban, have spent nearly the past year in his wife’s home country. When they had children, he promised Lola that they would spend a year there, so the kids could know her family and that part of their cultural heritage. It just happened to coincide with the coronavirus pandemic.

Every so often, the conversation is interrupted by the sounds of his boys, arguing in the other room. He then quietly and politely asks in Portuguese for a little help controlling the ruckus.

Not that the trip looks as if it has been hard on Manekin. Trading in the Baltimore winter for a Brazilian summer amid COVID-19 certainly has agreed with him. He’s chatty, relaxed, and appears infinitely more comfortable than when his typical days as a principal at one of the region’s most innovative real estate development firms, Seawall Development, thrust him into the limelight.

Despite the roughly 13-hour flight away, Manekin’s hometown of Baltimore is never fully out of mind. That’s due in large part to his company tackling its highest-profile project to date, leading the $40-million redevelopment of Baltimore’s hallowed Lexington Market.

“Everybody in Baltimore has a Lexington Market story, and everybody in Baltimore has a reason they do, or don’t, go there today, but they all have an opinion about why it’s important that Lexington get back to the place that it really once was for our city,” Manekin says.

It’s a daunting task, but one that Seawall Development, the firm that Manekin co-founded with his father, Donald, in 2007, has handled well so far.

Founded in 1792, Lexington Market served as a hub of Baltimore life for generations. It was the place to grab fresh fruits, vegetables, and specialty items like raccoon or muskrat. It was the place to stop for lunch after weekend day trips to one of the department stores in what’s now downtown Baltimore’s Westside.

First, Seawall forged plans for an affordable development after the initial cost swelled beyond what the city was willing to pay. Their proposal for a new market shed harkens back to what Lexington Market looked like in 1910—a modern take on the turn-of-the-last-century structure. Renderings depict barn-like architecture, flooded with natural light and constructed with materials such as brick and metal to reflect the surrounding neighborhood’s industrial-age aesthetics. Construction continues despite having broken ground in early 2020, shortly before the pandemic, and they’re still on track to open in early 2022.

As is his tendency, at least publicly, Manekin downplays the difficulty of the project. While he admits “the last year was really scary,” he is also adamant that he approaches challenges with an open mind, setting the company, and its projects, up for whatever the post-pandemic world holds.

“We’re on fire now, you know, there are projects that we can’t wait to talk about,” he says. “I really think that we are just beginning to hit our stride.”

What’s positioned Seawall to succeed, particularly with Lexington Market, is an emphasis on community inclusion in real estate development through hours spent engaging residents via various outreach efforts. Via surveys, town halls, and feedback sessions, they’ve worked to create a vision for the public market that features a diverse array of vendors and an environment that is welcoming to all. Both points were of particular concern to the many Black residents of surrounding neighborhoods, who feared they suddenly wouldn’t feel welcome in a market that’s become a piece of their cultural heritage.

This sensitivity to neighborhood concerns, evidenced in its earliest and highest-profile projects in the city’s Remington neighborhood, has furnished Seawall with a largely positive reputation as transparent and accommodating. That standing is rare in real estate development, an industry that many residents remain skeptical of for a variety of reasons, ranging from the impact of gentrification on long-time residents to developer’s outsized influence at City Hall.

Seeking out community engagement, however, is more than just sound business practice. It reflects the ideals that Manekin consciously pursued after graduating from Lehigh University with a degree in marketing in 2000. At the time, he and brothers Sean and Brendan Tuohey started the D.C.-based nonprofit PeacePlayers, where they traveled to countries ranging from Northern Ireland to South Africa, teaching kids to play basketball to promote conflict resolution.

When Manekin returned home, he was struck by the incongruity of healing wounds in other parts of the world while his hometown struggled with many of the same problems of poverty and trauma. On one visit, as he passed through West Baltimore, he began to realize how the real estate industry, which his family had deep ties to, could bridge divides in Baltimore.

“WE WANTED TO BE NEIGHBORS, NOT GUESTS IN THE COMMUNITY.”

“I remember coming back from South Africa, I was on North Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue,” Manekin says. “I had this epiphany—that real estate is the most powerful, connected industry on the planet, but it’s done more to divide us than actually bring us together as human beings.”

In 2007, he coaxed his father into joining him in launching Seawall Development. It was a natural fit, as Donald had spent decades at the helm of the family’s real estate development company, Manekin Corporation. After its sale in 2000, he also served as Baltimore City Schools interim chief operating officer.

When his son asked him to join the company, Donald says, he felt “an instant sense of gratification.” He had long believed that the Manekins were more than just landlords, but stakeholders in the community’s success. “This was a natural opportunity to be part of something larger than ourselves,” he says.

From the start, Seawall’s founders emphasized listening to local needs over forcing their vision on residents, working to connect neighbors and garner community support for projects.

“I’ve always been fascinated with this idea of reimagining industries where we take something that we know, flip it upside down, and insert our own kind of purpose into it,” says Manekin. “We had no idea what we were doing, but we were driven by this purpose of rewriting the script to see what that might look and feel like. That was 14 years ago, and we’ve been on this wild ride ever since.”

Seawall’s first high-profile undertaking was the overhaul of Remington’s 100-year-old American Can Company on Howard Street, which they turned into the mixed-use Miller’s Court in 2007. Two other developers had previously abandoned projects because they couldn’t get neighbors to buy in. In early meetings with Seawall, residents vocalized their desire for a locally owned coffee shop, which Manekin didn’t think would work at the time. But when Charmington’s opened as a worker-owned co-op in the building’s first-floor corner at West 26th Street, it quickly thrived. Five years later, President Barack Obama sat in the cafe, promoting guaranteed paid sick leave for American workers.

“Baltimore just hit the jackpot with that group at Charmington’s and how much love they put into that project, and that just propelled us forward,” says Manekin.

From there, Seawall also redeveloped Hampden’s Union Mill in 2011, where Artifact Coffee now stands, using a similar model as Miller’s Court. Drawing inspiration from Donald’s work with public schools, the company also redeveloped a block of rowhomes in Remington to help teachers achieve homeownership, all done with community feedback.

“We wanted to be neighbors and not guests in the community,” Donald says, before echoing a sentiment his son has also emphasized: “None of these ideas are our own.”

By 2015, the company took on the ambitious, $60-million, mixed-use Remington Row, seeing the neighborhood’s potential in its proximity to Johns Hopkins University and I-83. The overhaul would come to include the $12-million R. House food hall, which quickly became one of the city’s most popular gathering spaces. “Those [projects] were the neighborhood’s master plan,” says Manekin. “They wanted to create a walkable urban boulevard.”

It was the success of R. House that attracted the attention of Lexington Market Inc., which for years had been struggling to breathe new life into the fading landmark.

For much of the city’s nearly 300-year history, Lexington Market was a cultural linchpin, beginning as an open-air market bustling with horse-drawn wagons hawking local goods, before becoming the center of Baltimore’s thriving retail sector, just a stone’s throw from the theater district and a convergence point for the city’s transit system.

But after World War II, and particularly following the integration of city schools, many of the department stores followed affluent white residents to the suburbs. By the 1990s, most were closed, along with many of the other smaller retailers, leaving a wake of vacant or deteriorating buildings.

Through it all stood Lexington Market and its venerable vendors, such as Faidley’s Seafood, circa 1886. But business at the market precipitously declined as concerns about safety started to outweigh the allure of crab cakes. Decades of neighborhood disinvestment spurred a rise in crime that scared off customers, causing the number and quality of market vendors to plummet.

Serious efforts to revitalize the space began with Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake in 2010. In 2013, her administration hired urban planning group Market Ventures Inc. to conduct a study, which called for a complete overhaul of the market. Firms were then selected for architectural, engineering, and specialty consulting, and to serve as construction managers.

In late 2016, Baltimore City and Lexington Market Inc. unveiled their plans, but the proposed cost quickly escalated from about $35 million to as high as $60 million, which Lexington Market couldn’t afford. In desperate need to regain momentum, and shave millions off the price tag, the city sought a new company to steer the redevelopment. By the fall of 2018, Seawall was officially on board.

Over the next few years, Manekin and his team launched into community outreach efforts, similar to their previous projects, including multiple public meetings to gather input on a new Lexington Market. At these events, residents did not shy away from demanding that executives directly address issues of race and class in their plans, with many often bluntly sharing their concerns that the new market would not be welcoming to people of color, as has been expressed about other new developments in and around the Inner Harbor.

“It takes a long time to build trust, and we don’t have everyone’s trust yet,” Manekin admitted at the time, before vowing to deliver an inclusive space. More recently, he said he feels those conversations about inclusion served as “driving forces” behind plans for the market, ranging from aesthetics to the price point of the vendors.

The town halls continued, with community feedback incorporated into the design and development processes, as well as vendor recruitment, with the company aiming for a diverse lineup that resembles the demographics of the city. Two rounds of applications attracted 300 submissions for some 45 stalls. Seventy percent of applicants were Black, and more than half were women.

At the same time, Lexington Market isn’t the sole focus for Seawall, which also played a role in the development of Union Collective, a 138,000-square-foot former Sears warehouse near Hampden turned thriving retail-manufacturing complex. Seawall continues to consider new projects they are “spiritually aligned with,” in Baltimore and beyond.

But despite projects in other cities, and being on another continent for now—a pre-bedtime squabble between his two sons briefly requires his attention—Manekin stresses his continued passion for his hometown. After all, Baltimore is not just his home. It was his grandfather’s home. It’s where his father was born, raised, and still lives today.

Growing up, he remembers his grandfather and father both telling stories about weekend trips to Lexington Market. With construction on the new shed set to finish in under a year, Manekin hopes to be able to continue that tradition with his own sons. “It needs to be the heartbeat of the city,” he says.

Throughout the recent discussions surrounding the redevelopment of Lexington Market, led by Baltimore-based development firm Seawall, preserving its integrity and ensuring the safety of the community have been at the forefront. The longest continually running market in the United States has remained open—and will remain open during construction—in the midst of considerations about its next chapter.

That journey will officially begin with a groundbreaking ceremony featuring remarks by Governor Larry Hogan and Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young on Tuesday, February 18.

At the most recent in a series of public meetings in the market’s arcade building last week, city leaders and developers gave a status update on the project to 150 attendees. A panel featuring members of law enforcement and government officials, including councilman Eric Costello and City Council President Brandon Scott, addressed streetscape safety, environmental concerns, and stakeholders’ plans to tackle these issues.

“There’s fear and hope in the community,” says Pickett Slater Harrington, head of Seawall’s community engagement team who served as the meeting’s moderator. “There is this fear of things changing. Lexington Market has been around for 230 years, and it’s personal to people and part of the fabric of Baltimore.”

The transformation of Lexington Market is a $40 million dollar project funded by New Market Tax Credits, bank loans, city grants, and a $2 million contribution from the market itself. Plans call for a new market building constructed on the current south parking lot, the demolition of the arcade building to pave the way for a pedestrian plaza on Lexington Street, and the salvaging of the East Market in a phase two redevelopment. The current structure will remain open during renovations and the full revamp is slated to be completed by 2021.

At last week’s meeting, attendees submitted comment cards with pressing questions such as how to combat potential crime, create sustainable change in safety measures, and curb drug dealing in the area. The common thread of city leaders’ answers to these questions was a need for collaboration.

“Lexington Market is a Baltimore asset,” Slater Harrington says. “To have city leadership sit here and say that they’re invested in Lexington Market is huge symbolically. That’s important in developing a vision for an institutional icon.”

City leaders were also asked to share their vision for the market. Baltimore Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young harkened back to memories of visiting the market in its “glory days” with his grandmother. Major Daryl Gaines, Commanding Officer of the Baltimore Police Department’s Central District, evoked Disney World in describing the type of attraction the market could become for locals and outside visitors.

Creating this type of environment is a multifaceted process, but it will perhaps be most defined by the vendors that inhabit the space.

“This is one of the most diverse communities in Baltimore City,” says Kristen Mitchell, executive director of Market Center Merchants Association, a nonprofit that promotes commerce and works to attract businesses in a 27-block area around Lexington Market. “We want to make sure that the vendors reflect that diversity.”

The vendor selection process will begin in March with two rounds of applications to fill the 60 permanent slots available. Seawall has said that it will place an emphasis on highlighting businesses run by women and those from African American and immigrant communities. Slater Harrington adds there will be three different types of vendors, including those who offer fresh food and produce, prepared food stalls, and specialty retail. Applications are open to anyone interested, and current vendors still in operation will have the opportunity to opt-in.

“Existing vendors love the market, and they’re ready for us to invest in them,” Slater Harrington says. “They’ve been with the market in its ups and downs—everything that we’re creating for the new market, we’re creating as a support system for those existing businesses so they can transition and move into the market.”

From the merchants’ perspective, Robert Thomas, executive director for Baltimore Public Markets, says that vendors are most concerned about the timeline moving forward and whether or not they will be accepted into the new building once it’s complete.

“Change is not something that people look forward to,” Thomas says. “[Some merchants] have routines that they’ve been in for 15 or 20 or 30 years, and it’s worked for them. This is a different animal now. We’re really trying to manage the transition so that people land on their feet or at least know in which direction they’re headed.”

Thomas also says that the renovation and subsequent opening of the new market could be a natural marker for longtime vendors to step aside. “There is a natural attrition we expect to take place,” he says.

As for the immediate future, following the groundbreaking ceremony next week will be the next quarterly meeting centered around community programming and preserving the market’s history in three months.

“Baltimore as a city is at a decision point,” Slater Harrington says. “We’re deciding what type of city we’re going to be. Are we going to be a city with opportunity and access to some, or a city with opportunity and access for all? We’re thinking about that every day in every decision that we make with Lexington Market.”

EAT

Jan. 17: Lexington Market Celebration by The Night Brunch

Lexington Market, 400 W. Lexington St. 6-10 p.m. $5-10.

Lexington Market, one of the city’s landmark food and community hubs, is in the midst of a historic (and, in some circles, controversial) redevelopment that will transform the nearly 240-year-old property. To celebrate the market’s entrepreneurial and cultural spirit, The Night Brunch, a popular brunch-and-booze event series, is hosting an all-out party in the property’s ground-floor arcade. Get there early to snag eats from fan-favorite purveyors like Connie’s Chicken and Waffles, knock back a few specialty drinks, and dance the night away with beats by the Night Brunch’s own DJ Impulse.

DRINK

Jan. 18: Zay Day

Union Craft Brewing, 1700 W. 41st Street. 12-5 p.m. Free.

It’s official: Union Craft Brewing’s Henry “Zadie” Benesch is the world’s oldest brewery worker, clocking in at 100 years old this weekend. Spend Saturday afternoon raising a pint (or two) to the employee known around the brewery for his world-class box-folding skills and love for Blackwing Lager with cigars, $1 coffee from Vent Coffee Roasters, and even a “make your own Zadie mask” station. The first 100 people through the door will participate in a “100 Person Blackwing Shotgun,” before joining the rest of the day-drinking party for live music by dagm, slices of lemon meringue pie, and plenty of brew-filled revelry.

SEE

Jan. 19: The Edgar Allan Poe House Literary Landmark Dedication

Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum, 203 N. Amity Street. 1-2 p.m. Free.

In conjunction with Edgar Allan Poe’s 211th birthday on Sunday, his former home on North Amity Street—now a three-story museum—will be named Maryland’s first Literary Landmark. Join the crowd of Poe fanatics outside the revered poet and author’s house for a dedication ceremony hosted by Poe Baltimore and United for Libraries. Then, take a tour through the museum to see original furniture pieces from the family’s home and the room where Poe (supposedly) slept. Before you leave, be sure to take home a Poe-inspired poster or a RavenBeer glass to commemorate the special day.

HEAR

Jan. 19: J Roddy Walston

Ottobar, 2549 N. Howard St. 9 p.m. $20.

If you did a double take when you saw the name J Roddy Walston without “and the Business” tacked onto it, you’re not alone. After a brief hiatus from the music industry, the rock-n’-roll singer will return to the Ottobar this Sunday, ready to add a single dose of strangeness and a few surprises to his homebase show. After a full solo set of Business songs (our bets are on “Take It As It Comes” and “Don’t Break the Needle”), prepare to hear a debut set by J Roddy’s new project, Palm Palm.

DO

Jan. 19: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: An Unequal Education

Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave. 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Free.

There are tons of local events happening around town this Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend to honor the reverend’s legacy of fighting for racial justice, but this program at Creative Alliance helps attendees apply his teachings to Baltimore’s own education system. This Sunday, gather at the Highlandtown arts center to watch Teach Us All, a 2017 documentary about educational inequality. Then, hear from local experts about the still-to-be-solved issues within Baltimore City Public Schools. To carry on the event’s purpose, join in to pack school supply kits, which include binders, highlighters, and lined paper, that will be donated to West Baltimore middle-school students.

The next project for Seawall Development—the team behind R. House, Union Collective, and other local community initiatives—is the long-awaited renovation of Lexington Market. Since beginning the process, and hosting the first in a series of town hall meetings to gain input from the neighborhood, the firm quickly recognized that the area surrounding the market is just as important as the Baltimore favorite itself.

With this in mind, Seawall has turned its eyes toward creating opportunities to engage with the community. And this Sunday, October 20, the new Market Center Trash Bash hosted in partnership with Everyman Theatre and the Market Center Merchants Association will do just that.

“The market can be this really important uniting force for the city,” says Katie Marshall, Seawall’s director of communications. “It has always been a hub for great food and community, and we see Trash Bash as part of a very large and broad community engagement process that we’ve been working on for the last year.”

The event will begin with a trash cleanup that extends around the Market Center area, in which participants will sweep up trash and help with weeding. Following the pickup will be a block party for volunteers in the Lexington Market parking lot with featured fare from stalwart vendor Faidley’s Seafood, which will serve up its signature crab soup, as well as Taco Town Baltimore located nearby.

“We want to show people that this is a community,” Kristen Mitchell, executive director of the Market Center Merchants Association. “We’re paying attention and we want to be part of it. If that means we’re doing our part to improve and reduce litter on our streets, then that is our part.”

An additional perk: all volunteers will have the opportunity to purchase $25 discounted tickets to a same-day, 7 p.m. performance of August Wilson’s Radio Golf at Everyman Theatre. The company has a history of shepherding activation within the community, and this particular instance is a natural fit given the play’s themes.

The show centers around main character Harmond Wilks, a candidate for mayor of a Pittsburgh district. Though the story takes place in 1997, Everyman’s artistic director Vincent M. Lancisi says the problems facing the town mirror many of those that Baltimore City grapples with today.

“Because of the timely and immediate connection of Radio Golf’s exploration of the complexities of urban renewal to Baltimore, we want to live our values both on and off stage,” Lancisi says. “Working together with our local organizations is an opportunity to show love to the neighborhood and welcome folks who might not otherwise come into the theater a chance to experience this play.”

As Lexington Market ushers in a new era—construction is expected to break ground in early 2020—it’s events like these that allow developers another opportunity to meet face-to-face with area residents. Lexington Market is a cherished part of the city’s fabric, so it’s understandable for those who frequent it to have questions and concerns.

“If we want to do this in the right way, we have to have community input along every step of the process,” Marshall says. “We need to build trust and make it something that is owned by the entire city. We know that people need to see concrete signs of what’s going on, and this is a great way to do that.”

COMING SOON

BRD: Back in February, we told you about R. House chicken sandwich stall BRD’s plans to expand to the heart of Federal Hill. After months of work setting up the eatery on the bottom floor of the Wheelhouse apartment building across from Cross Street Market, a grand opening date is finally in sight. Owner Alex Janian will debut his second BRD location to the public on Monday, October 7, offering an extended menu that will highlight new items like thick milkshakes and “BRD Bites”—his take on chicken nuggets.

Of course, diners can also expect the signature sandwiches (including the Katsu Sando and the Bmore Bird with Old Bay and dill pickles) hand-cut fries, dipping sauces, and fountain sodas that they have grown familiar with at the Remington flagship. The best part? The communal dining space designed by PI.KL Studio will be open until 3 a.m. on weekends so that revelers hanging around South Charles Street can still get their fix after last call. “We want to be there when people want it,” Janian told us. “We want to be there when the crowds are there, and we want to be enjoying the night right along with them.”

True Chesapeake Oyster Co.: Speaking of anticipated grand openings, this new Hampden spot will officially premiere to the public on Tuesday, October 8. As its name signifies, the collaborative project between former Wit & Wisdom chef Zack Mills, True Chesapeake oyster farmer Patrick Hudson, and The Local Oyster owner Nick Schauman will incorporate locally farmed bivalves into every aspect of the restaurant. Featured dishes will include oyster stew, semolina fried oysters, roasted half shells, and Mills’ take on a classic Rockefeller. Of course, there will also be other Maryland-inspired fare and an impressive bar lineup from beverage director and general manager Chelsea Gregoire.

OPEN

Red Pepper Sichuan Bistro: The former Allegheny Avenue home of La Cakerie in Towson has recently been transformed from a hot pink-painted bakery into this sleek dining destination specializing in authentic Sichuan cuisine. Fusing salty, sour, sweet, bitter, and floral flavors, the menu—written in both Chinese and English—goes beyond the traditional Kung Pao chicken and mapo tofu with everything from noodle soups to Sichuan street food. Highlights include spicy hot pots, fried pork with scallions, stir-fry Shanghai cabbage, and sweet-and-sour fish fillets. Diners are invited to snag a table in the renovated dining room—now equipped with wooden furniture and a grand piano—or order online for carryout.

NEWS

Lexington Market to Hold Second Community Meeting: The second in a series of quarterly meetings geared toward gathering community input for the Lexington Market revamp, slated to be completed mid-2021, is scheduled for Wednesday, October 9 from 6-7:30 p.m. The inaugural meeting at the end of June drew crowds that expressed a number of concerns, including increased food prices and a lack of employment opportunities. At the next installment, Seawall Development and Baltimore Public Markets plan to further discuss food access, affordable pricing options, and the recruitment process for new vendors inside the 237-year-old public market. In an effort to gain as much feedback as possible, organizers will be offering free childcare during the town hall.

“The project to transform Lexington Market represents an opportunity to prove that brought together in an inclusive way, a single building can unite a very divided city,” said Seawall co-founder Thibault Manekin, in a press release. “We look forward to sharing the progress we have made as a result of hundreds of hours of deep listening and inspiring conversations that we have had all over the city.”

EPICUREAN EVENTS

9/26: Origins: A Speaker Series

The latest iteration of this ongoing speaker series at Artifact Coffee—which we recently gave a Best of Baltimore award—aims to answer one pivotal question: Is it now or never for local farms? Listen in as a panel of female farmers—including Shelby Kalm of Fair Farms Maryland, Dena Leibman of Future Harvest CASA, and Anne Palmer of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future—discuss the state of agriculture across the mid-Atlantic. As always, the evening will begin with appetizers and cocktails and close out with a family-style meal inspired by the topic of conversation.

9/26-28: Saint Demetrios Greek Festival

The parishioners of Saint Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church in Parkville have been busy hand-making flaky baklava, stuffed dolmades (grape leaves), scrumptious spanakopita, and more tasty delicacies in preparation for their annual festival returning this weekend. Stop by to sample the flavors of Greece while enjoying folk dancing, live music, shopping, and a designated kids zone. If you still aren’t ready to turn in after all of the excitement, stay out for the Glendi on the Hill after party that will keep the music going until 3 a.m.

9/29: Bramble Bakes x Fat Tiger Bake Sale

Since opening inside Broadway Market in Fells Point last summer, sister concepts Old Boy, Fat Tiger, and El Tigre have already hosted tons of community pop-ups and events. And this weekend, all-day bar Fat Tiger is kicking off yet another initiative to support its fellow food businesses. In the first of many “bake sales” that will provide a temporary storefront to local pastry chefs, Allie Smith of Bramble Bakes will be setting up shop at the centerpiece bar to sell her sweet treats from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. this Sunday. Be on the lookout for potato and leek hand pies, dark chocolate babka knots, five-spice morning buns, and coffee cardamom shortbread all paired with espresso and drip drinks from the Fat Tiger team.

EAT

Aug. 3: The Charmery Turns Six

The Charmery in Hampden, Towson, & Ice Cream Factory. Hampden & Towson 12-11 p.m., Ice Cream Factory, 12-10p.m. Free.

One of Baltimore’s favorite sweet shops is celebrating its sixth anniversary the only way it knows how—by hosting a nostalgic-themed party with new ice cream flavors inspired by old-school sitcoms. Stop by any of The Charmery’s locations to sample TV show-inspired flavors such as Golden Girls cheesecake with Golden Grahams, a Cheers beer nuts flavor made with Union Craft Brewing Skipjack Caramel, and a Giligan’s Island take on a vegan coconut cream pie. To really treat your sweet tooth, visit all three locations on Saturday to win a limited-edition Charmery mug and enjoy a free baby scoop with every purchase.

DRINK

Aug. 3: Guinness Open Gate Brewery Anniversary Party

Guinness Open Gate Brewery, 5001 Washington Blvd, Halethorpe. 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Free-$75

Somehow, it’s already been a year since the only Guinness brewery in America opened in Halethorpe, and local fans of the iconic Irish stout are more than ready to toast the brewery’s big birthday. On Saturday, start the day off with beer-inspired treats by Charm City Cakes (think tart hibiscus wheat and tangerine cream ale flavors), down some signature brews, and then party all night with a performance by country music superstar Frankie Ballard. And don’t miss the tapping of the new, small-batch anniversary brew called Grand Cru—a bourbon barrel aged stout blended with a rum barrel-aged golden ale.

SEE

Aug. 3: Solange Knowles’ When I Get Home

Lexington Market, 400 W Lexington St. 11-11:45 a.m. & 12-12:45 p.m. Free.

If you haven’t stopped by the Baltimore Museum of Art’s Lexington Market branch yet, this exclusive, free screening of singer-songwriter Solange Knowles’ art film is the perfect opportunity. The 41-minute piece is an accompaniment to Knowles’ latest album “When I Get Home.” It features futurist rodeo nods to the singer’s Houston lineage, and explores the concepts of origin and evolution. Catch one of the two screenings on Saturday afternoon to see new scenes and hear musical arrangements in this exclusive director’s-cut showing.

HEAR

Aug. 3: Micah E. Wood

Ottobar, 2549 N Howard St. 9p.m. $10.

Baltimore producer, photographer, and recording artist Micah E. Wood is bringing his unapologetically heartfelt sound to Remington this weekend. Hear this singer-songwriter gets into his feelings with tunes like “The Truth” before getting the crowd going with “Summertime,” and don’t miss out on performances by other rising local acts including Romantic States, DYYO, Eyas, and Station North Sadboi. If that isn’t convincing enough, there will also be ice pops by CM POPS for sale during this can’t-miss show.

DO

Aug. 1-4: BronyCon

Baltimore Convention Center, 1 W Pratt St. Thurs. 9a.m. – Sun. 5p.m. Free-$2,000.

Friendship will turn into magic at this weekend-long extravaganza that brings more than 9,000 My Little Pony fans together from every corner of the globe. Since this weekend’s convention marks BronyCon’s swan song, don’t miss the final chance to experience screenings, a talent show, more than 20 musical acts (including HollowPoint, Eurobeat Brony, and StrachAttack) and tons of special guests during the four-day cosplay utopia

Baltimore’s landmark Lexington Market, the longest continually running public market in America, currently sees more than one million visitors each year. The food hall has fed the city for nine generations, and now, it’s added art to the menu.

Today marked the official opening of the Baltimore Museum of Art’s (BMA) branch location at Lexington Market. The new gallery space welcomed nearly 120 people to a public opening reception last night, which showcased images from a youth photography program at the Greenmount West Community Center. From photos of flowers to selfies of smiling teenagers, the exhibit showed the community in a whole new light.

In addition, a workshop for young adults was led by New Orleans-based artists Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick. The two have worked together for more than 30 years photographing Louisiana and its people.

“We felt extremely strongly that it is not enough to change our public programs and expect people to descend on us,” says Chris Bedford, executive director at the BMA. “Rather we found it important to extend ourselves into the city to engage different communities.”

But this is not the first extension of the museum. Two branch locations were established during World War II and saw more than 55,000 visitors between 1943 and 1948. The Lexington Market space continues to add to that legacy.

“The activation of a stall that had previously sat vacant for a few years with art and programming does wonderful things for the market,” says Stacey Pack, Lexington Market project manager. “Equally exciting is the energy and discussions that take place within this area. This also gives people another reason to either visit the market or linger longer.”

There are a lot of issues to consider with the redevelopment of an institution like Lexington Market. With a lot of residents relying on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), locals are concerned about gentrification and price increases.

According to Dave Eassa, manager of community engagement for the BMA, rotating themes will inspire future programs and activities. In honor of the market where the branch resides, the first topic is food, and it will touch on aspects such as nutrition, access, and local foodways.

“Food was the most prevalent issue when talking with merchants and users of the market,” Eassa says. “Many merchants are losing SNAP and as Seawall is trying to redevelop, everyone is worried about access to fresh, affordable food that they have relied on the market to provide for over 200 years.”

A redevelopment project, Transform Lexington, is currently being planned to include a new market structure and urban plaza. The East Market will remain open throughout the revamp and regular hours at the BMA branch will be from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday through Saturday with free admission.

“This location is very unique because it truly is a public space where people from all backgrounds and walks of life gather and visit,” Pack says. “Lexington Market has always been a hub for Baltimore City so this location really is perfect.”

Although the market is going through a transformative period, the BMA branch is expected to remain a part of the space. The inspiration came from another program the museum has run previously called the Outpost, which was essentially a nomadic museum that roamed across Baltimore.

“Those communities were not satisfied with a fleeting engagement, but instead wanted a far more sustained conversation with the BMA,” Bedford says. “[We want to make] it clear that we are the specific museum for the city, that our doors are open to all, that our fundamental mandate is relevant, and that we are willing to go to any lengths to achieve that.”

OPEN

Ouzo Beach: Ouzo Bay in Harbor East is furthering its Mediterranean mission with this new outdoor venue, which is now up and running just across Lancaster Street. Decorated with palm trees, blue stone, a wooden trellis, and tons of tropical plants, the new spot is meant to give off major villa vibes. The menu includes summer snacks such as salmon poke, Maine lobster ceviche, grilled lamb sliders, and date and goat cheese spread. Sample the dishes while sipping wines by the glass, bottled and canned beers, and signature cocktails like the Shot Tower-infused “Gin and Juice” and a “Cold Fashioned” slushie.

Polar Roll Creamery: The rolled ice cream trend is finding its footing throughout the city. Two summers ago, we welcomed Roll Ice Cream & Coffee to Highlandtown, and now, another spot serving the cold-slabbed dessert has arrived in the Inner Harbor. Located inside the America’s Best Wings storefront on the corner of East Pratt Street and Market Place, the shop freezes its liquid cream at -25 degrees before mixing in special toppings and scraping it into rolls. The Instagram-worthy treats come in signature varieties including “Stylish Strawberry” (strawberry ice cream with Pocky and condensed milk), “Oreo and Juliet” (cookies and cream with crushed Oreos and shaved white chocolate), and “Matcha Made in Heaven,” which tops green tea ice cream with grass jelly and whipped cream.

Hive Baltimore Bistro: This new Perry Hall hangout is serious about supporting local. Not only does the restaurant offer an impressive list of Maryland beer and wine—think Calvert Brewing, Manor Hill, RAR, and Boordy Vineyards—but its food menu also pays homage to our homegrown traditions. (It even features clever subheads like “Before Supper, Hon” and “Really Lil’ Ittly.”) Start off with a “Hampden Negroni” or “Canton Sunrise” before digging into eats like shrimp salad sandwiches, crab toast, and “Bawlmer” mussels sauteed in Old Bay butter sauce.

CH-CH CHANGES

Ropewalk Tavern: A night out in Federal Hill certainly won’t be the same without the strong drinks and popping piano bar at this South Charles Street staple, which is closing for renovations from July 1 through September or October. On the bright side, when it opens back up in time for its 24th anniversary this fall (a grand reopening soiree is scheduled for October 18), the revitalized spot will boast games, a new tavern menu, and its own four-lane bowling alley upstairs. Though the Ropewalk flagship will be sorely missed this summer, it’s a great time to visit the bar’s sister locations in Ocean City, Fenwick Island, and Bethany Beach if you’re heading “downee ocean.”

NEWS

Lexington Market Town Hall Meeting: For nearly 240 years, Lexington Market has been a landmark for food and community to intersect in the heart of Baltimore City. As Seawall Development and Baltimore Public Markets take steps to redevelop the property, the team is hosting a series of town hall meetings to give the community a voice throughout the process. The first will take place at the market on Wednesday, June 26 from 6-7:30 p.m. (Organizers are even offering childcare throughout the meeting in order to make it more convenient for families.) Items to address during the inaugural gathering will include vendor recruitment, community programming, the legacy of the market, and the design and format of the new building—which is slated to be complete by mid-2021.

EPICUREAN EVENTS

6/22: The Market at Montebello
After the success of the inaugural Market at Montebello, the monthly community get-together returns this weekend with composting demos, yoga on the lake, eats and drinks, and plenty of handmade wares for sale by local artisans. This time around, look out for gifts from Orange Scissor Art, vintage pieces from A Day N June, local greens from farmer Dominic Nell of City Weeds, and, of course, dairy-free sundaes from organizers Nicole Foster and Dwight Campbell of Cajou Cream.

6/22: Papi’s Falls Road Fiesta
Throw a lawn chair over your shoulder and head to Papi’s in Hampden for this parking lot party to benefit BARCS and the Maryland SPCA. The $5 price of admission includes your first drink, live music, contests, and tons of giveaways. There will also be margaritas, cervezas, sangrias, and tons of food specials for purchase throughout the day.

6/22: Maryland Foodie Fest
The Restaurant Association of Maryland is bringing eateries from all over the state together for this epic food event at Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen, which will feature samplings, craft beer and wine, cooking competitions, and a fun zone for kids. Arrive hungry to enjoy dishes from local favorites like Jimmy’s Famous Seafood, Kooper’s and Waffie, as well as county destinations like Omma’s Korean Barbecue from Frederick and Uncle’s Hawaiian Grindz from Fallston.

SHUT

Della Rose’s Avenue Tavern: It’s been a sad couple of months for the Della Rose family. Back in April, owner Tony Della Rose shuttered Della Rose’s Local Tavern in Bel Air. And last week, Tony’s brother, Joe, announced that the family’s sister-spot in White Marsh would be closing on June 24. “While this chapter has closed, we take comfort in knowing that only these four walls will be left behind,” reads a heartfelt message posted to Facebook. “The true spirit of Della Rose’s will always exist because of the people within those walls. From our incredibly loyal staff, to our patrons who have helped us forge a community that has brought us two decades of happiness. You are what truly makes Della Rose’s.” After 20 years of happy hours, fundraisers, and Orioles and Ravens watch parties, the owners are throwing one final farewell bash this Saturday. Luckily, the newest addition to the Della Rose restaurant family in Perry Hall is still going strong.

OPEN

Écho Frezco: It’s been nearly three years since plans to open this cocina inside the Hunt Valley Town Centre were officially announced. After much anticipation, the sister-spot to the popular La Tolteca chain finally celebrated its grand opening earlier this week. Swing by to sample the massive plates ranging from cheesy quesadillas and chicken flautas to steak nachos and a fried taco bowl with all of the fixins’. Of course, there is also a fully-stocked bar that turns out classic margaritas, palomas, and Mexican draft beers. The spot adds even more dining diversity to the development, which houses other eateries including Iron Rooster, Coal Fire Pizza, Barrett’s Grill, and Bar Louie. 100 Shawan Rd. 410-891-8281

COMING SOON

Chatime: Bubble tea can be hard to come by within city limits. Devotees were on cloud nine when QQ Boba debuted on the Avenue in Hampden a few years back, and next month, fans will be able to get their fix at this new shop in Federal Hill. The global tea franchise will soon open its second Maryland location (the first debuted in White Marsh in 2017) in the vacant space sandwiched between Lucky Fortune and Knockout Fitness on Light Street. Though boba—the trendy Taiwanese milk tea enhanced with flavored jellies and chewy tapioca balls—will be the focus, the menu will also offer fruit smoothies, fresh-brewed coffees, and lattes topped with a savory mousse. 1114 Light St.

NEWS

Lexington Market: It’s an exciting time for the city’s public market presence. The renovated Broadway Market in Fells Point partially reopened this week, and the brand new Cross Street Market is expected to follow suit in Federal Hill this spring. The next redevelopment coming down the pike is the landmark Lexington Market downtown. After a year of research and collaboration with vendors and business leaders, local developers Seawall and BCT Architects recently unveiled plans to construct a new market in the parking lot just south of the current space. Though the split-level structure will be smaller, the plans allow for all of Lexington’s vendors—including fan-favorites like Faidley’s and Connie’s Chicken & Waffles—to remain open throughout construction.

“Our Connie’s team is excited about the new feel that it is in line with what many of our customers have asked for,” Connie’s co-owner Khari Parker said in a statement. “Specifically, a design that brings a fresh feel through a new building, while preserving elements of the historic charm that tourists and local Baltimoreans alike have come to love at Lexington Market.”

Expected to break ground in 2020, the new building will span the block between Paca and Eutaw Streets and include an interactive plaza for farmers’ markets and other community events. Once the project is complete, a second phase will focus on the adaptive reuse and reprogramming of the existing Lexington Market. 400 W. Lexington St.

Towson Station: In other development news, Mission BBQ, MOD Pizza, Tropical Smoothie Cafe, and The Habit Burger Grill are among the fast-casual eateries that have inked deals to open at this forthcoming strip mall at the corner of York Road and Bosley Avenue in Towson. Spearheaded by Caves Valley Partners and H&R Retail, the new destination was met with some opposition from neighbors who were concerned about tree removal during demolition. But, ultimately, a Baltimore County judge ruled to move the project forward. Construction is slated to begin this summer, and tenants could start making their debut by later this year. 800 York Rd.

EPICUREAN EVENTS

3/24-25: Maryland Day Bagels at THB Bagels + Deli
You can always count on THB to fry up colorful bagels in honor of special events. We’ve seen everything from purple bagels for Ravens season to green ones to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Now, the cafe chain is showing off its local pride with yellow, black, red, and white circles for Maryland Day. All locations will be offering the tie-dye bagels on Sunday and Monday as an homage to our state’s big anniversary. (Perfect timing, as we cheer on the Terps in the NCAA Tournament.) Multiple locations including 3301 Boston St. 410-732-9090

3/28: Origins: A Speaker Series
It’s hard to believe that there have been nearly 30 installments of this sustainable speaker series since it debuted at Artifact Coffee in 2015. This time around, settle in for a panel discussion about food security in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Chef Spike Gjerde will moderate the talk with Baltimore City food policy director Holly Freishtat, Rev. Dr. Heber Brown III of the Black Church Food Security Network, and Oasis Community Partners executive director Phillip Sambol. As always, attendees will be able to expand the discussion with the speakers over a family-style meal prepared by Artifact. 1500 Union Ave. $60 443-873-3900

SHUT

Edible Favors: Throughout the end of the month, sweet tooth fiends will be flocking to this dessert stall inside Mount Vernon Marketplace to stock up on festive cupcakes and the signature “Everything” cookies packed with chocolate, caramel, and salty pretzel pieces. Owner and pastry chef Denise Dingle, a Baltimore International College grad, recently decided to move on to other ventures after three years in Mt. Vernon. “It’s with heavy hearts that we soon say bon voyage to Edible Favors here at the marketplace,” reads a message posted to the food hall’s Facebook page earlier this week. “Denise and her goodies will be moving on and leaving at the end of March, but we can’t thank her enough for years of smiles and tasty treats.” 520 Park Ave.

Peace & A Cup of Joe: For more than a decade, Pigtown and Ridgely’s Delight locals have made stopping by this Pratt Street staple an important part of their morning routine. But last week, owner Themar Long sold the cafe’s last cup of coffee. “You’re never told the strains on family, friends, and life owning a business will put upon you,” Long said in an announcement posted to Facebook. “But it’s been an exciting ride, which I wouldn’t change for all the world.” Not only will the shop be remembered for its striking orange exterior with a hand-painted mural of hands picking coffee beans, but also for its menu of weekly coffee specials, colorful salads, and grilled sandwiches. 713 W. Pratt St.

OPEN

Peter’s Inn: We’ve been waiting to move this one into the “open” category for a while now. Nearly one year after a trash fire severely damaged the Fells Point staple, husband-and-wife owners Bud and Karin Tiffany quietly reopened their rowhouse restaurant Tuesday. In the months since the fire, the owners—who live in the apartment above the space—have worked tirelessly to get back on their feet. But roadblocks with insurance, permitting, and reconstruction delayed the reopening date several times.

Now, we’re happy to report that the 23-year-old spot is officially back at it, serving Karin’s signature dishes like burrata with roasted peaches, pan-seared scallops served over lentils, filet mignon with green beans, and, of course, the classic herby garlic bread. The owners are appreciative of the support from the neighborhood, which raised more than $20,000 for the rebuild via GoFundMe last summer. “It’s humbling,” Bud recently told us. “When you’re doing the day-to-day tasks of running the business, sometimes you don’t realize how many people you’ve come in contact with over the years. The outpouring of support has been tremendous.” 504 S. Ann St. 410-675-7313

Red Emma’s: The city’s favorite worker-owned bookstore/cafe has officially settled in its new Midtown digs. Red Emma’s originated in a cozy shop on St. Paul Street in 2004, and moved to a larger space on North Avenue in 2013. Now, the collective has relocated to the two-level building that formerly housed Spike & Charlie’s on Cathedral Street across from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. The new spot will allow Red Emma’s to double the size of its bookstore and offer seated dining, while still providing space for its readings, film screenings, panel discussions, and spoken word performances. The shop will soft open this Thursday-Saturday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., before debuting regular hours later this month. 1225 Cathedral St.

Zuzu’s Gourmet Donuts: Federal Hill locals have most likely caught a glimpse of this purple- and orange-painted storefront situated next to 101 on South Charles Street. Though Zuzu’s signage has been on display for a while now, the donut shop officially opened its doors for the first time last week. Named after owner Hak Zubar, the carry-out spot offers ice cream, sandwiches, smoothies, and fresh-pressed juices, but the real highlights on the menu are the house-made donuts. Creative flavors include strawberry delight, pineapple upside-down, honey double dip, and a savory “Oriole” donut garnished with lump crab and Old Bay. 1136 S. Charles St.

COMING SOON

New Cross Street Market Vendors: Just across the street from the new donut shop, Cross Street Market—which remains open during construction—recently announced a partial lineup of vendors that will occupy the space once it is fully renovated this spring. In 2019, the market will house legacy purveyors Fenwick’s Choice Meats, Nunnally Bros., Steve’s Lunch, and The Sweet Shoppe, while also welcoming an array of new producers. Among them are Annapolis-based Ceremony Coffee Roasters, a burger concept from the owners of Southside Diner, Vietnamese pho and banh mi pop-up Phubs, rice bowl maker Rice Crook, Haitian-Caribbean purveyor SoBeachy, and Cockeysville-based barbecue joint Smoke. The multi-million dollar revitalization is expected to yield floor-to-ceiling windows, indoor and outdoor seating for 500, and a retro aesthetic that harkens back to the 1950s—when the historic market was first reborn in its current configuration after a fire burned down the original facility. 1065 S. Charles St.

NEWS

Seawall Redeveloping Lexington Market: Speaking of public markets, the city’s oldest recently announced that it has chosen Seawall Development to lead its $40 million proposed renovation. While architectural designs are still in the works, goals for the overhaul include right-sizing the market, incorporating clean energy features, and remaining faithful to the history of the building. Seawall, well known for its design of R. House and Union Collective, plans to gather community input before officially breaking ground in late 2019. “Lexington Market is the city’s market and every stakeholder—vendors, patrons, and neighbors—matters,” said Seawall partner Thibault Manekin in a press release. “We are beyond honored to have been selected and we look forward to working with the entire city to help transform the market.” 400 W. Lexington St.

John Shields Scholarship Fund Established: At Gertrude’s 20th anniversary celebration earlier this week, friends of the Chesapeake-inspired restaurant collectively donated nearly $10,000 to the newly established John Shields Culinary Arts Internship and Scholarship Fund. The money will support paid internships for junior and senior high school students, while also providing scholarships for local graduates hoping to pursue a degree in culinary arts. Founded in honor of Gertrude’s beloved chef/owner Shields, the program hopes to raise $100,000 in the coming year to support as many aspiring young chefs as possible.

EPICUREAN EVENTS

10/4: Free Tacos at Taco Noche
In honor of National Taco Day, this brand new food stand at The Rotunda in Hampden is giving away free tacos with any carry-out purchase. Stroll up to the eatery to sample chef Audiel Vera’s Northern Mexican-style snacks including brisket nachos with sour cream and queso fresco, barbacoa mac and cheese, and the “Red Eye” burrito filled with pico de gallo and refried beans. 711 W. 40th St.

10/5: Big Softy Pop-Up at Ground & Griddled
We’ve seen Big Softy owner Craig Falk sling soft shells at R. House before, but this week, he is planning a special brunch menu in collaboration Ground & Griddled inside the food hall. Swing by from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. to sample Falk’s crabby spin on G&G’s classic pancakes, bacon, and egg sandwiches. 301 W. 29th St.

10/11: Taste of Hampden
This annual foodie fundraiser benefiting the Hampden Family Center returns next week at its new venue, Union Collective. Stroll around to sample bites from eateries on the Avenue and beyond including Luigi’s Italian Deli, Dylan’s Oyster Cellar, Five & Dime Ale House, Frazier’s, Holy Frijoles, Wicked Sisters, Ma Petite Shoe, Rocket to Venus, Common Ground, The Food Market, The Charmery, and Blue Pit BBQ. Of course, there will also be plenty of Union brews to go around. All ticket proceeds will benefit the center’s numerous classes, programs, and support services for residents of all ages. 1700 W. 41st St. 6-9 p.m. $50

It’s no secret that Baltimore City has had its issues with rats. (We even have an acclaimed documentary and the satirical bumper stickers to prove it.) But when the rodents invade our dining spaces, the ironic affection turns to serious health concerns.

Last week, a video of a rat scurrying over pastries in a bakery showcase at Lexington Market went viral, eclipsing more than 800,000 views on Facebook in 48 hours. Four days later, another video showing a pair of furry creatures frolicking down the aisles at Northeast Market was posted on social media. Both markets, which are operated by the Baltimore Public Markets Corporation (BPMC), shut down voluntarily to evaluate the premises after the incidents occurred, and have since reopened.

“Sometimes doing business in downtown Baltimore can be tricky,” says Stacey Pack, marketing and communications manager for the BPMC. “We have active construction going on around Lexington Market at the moment. And anytime you have roads being dug up within a few blocks radius of a property, especially a food property, you’re going to attract things.”

Now, officials are coming together to improve the inspection system so that these issues become less frequent. Pack says that the BPMC works with a third-party pest control company that conducts preventative inspections weekly. But, in light of the recent infestations, the operations team plans to make that protocol even more aggressive.

She adds that the open communication between merchants and the community (both markets posted frequent updates to Facebook during the inspections) has been “key” throughout the past few days.

Transparency is something that Councilman Brandon Scott has been advocating for in the Baltimore City Health Department for years. In 2012, he introduced a bill to assign letter grades to food service facilities based on their inspection reports—a system enforced in many big cities including New York.

Though that original piece of legislation has since died, he is hopeful that a new bill requiring restaurants to post their latest inspection reports (which could potentially include the letter grades pending further amendments) visibly in their establishments will pass in some form by the end of this year.

“Folks are clamoring for that information to be more readily available,” says Scott, who was a major player in getting closure notices posted for the public to view online. “On a legislative side, we have to push progressive and bold policy to bring Baltimore in alignment with other major cities so that our citizens feel like they’re valued.”

Giving diners the freedom to choose where they eat based on visible health code reports has become a controversial issue among lawmakers and restaurant owners alike. Helmand Karzai, who owns four city eateries including The Helmand in Mt. Vernon and Tapas Teatro in Station North, admittedly has mixed feelings on the subject. While he supports posting reports for diners, he questions the need for a letter-grading system.

“I feel like it should be a pass-fail type of thing,” Karzai says. “Why would a restaurant even be open if it’s getting a ‘C’ or a ‘D’ and it didn’t fit the necessary guidelines? If it isn’t safe enough for the public, it should be closed.”

But Scott says that many of his constituents appreciate the autonomy that the visible grades have provided them while visiting other cities.

“The letter grades make the choice really easy for them,” he says. “And they feel like they should have the same thing at home. Things shouldn’t be in a cloud of secrecy like they have been for so long.”

Above all, Karzai—who says his restaurants receive unannounced inspections up to three times per year—stresses the importance of staff training and working together with Health Department officials to ensure better experiences for diners across the board.

“I wish there wasn’t so much animosity,” he says.“We’re all in this for the sake of food safety. If you talk to any restaurateur out there, they will tell you that food safety for your guests is always the top priority.”

That is certainly the case for Pack of Baltimore Public Markets, who says they have been “working around the clock” to address the health and sanitation issues.

“Public markets are so important when you think of community hubs and food access,” she says. “When it comes to food and public safety, you don’t mess around.”

Black & White Party
Jan. 27. The Assembly Room, 316-318 Guilford Ave. 8 p.m. $150. 410-396-5430. The Pratt Contemporaries’ annual Black and White Party always falls in the dead of winter, but this year, enjoy a brief reprieve from the cold weather with a night in Old Havana. With a fresh Cuban theme and a nod to the 1950s paradise heralded by Ernest Hemingway, this library benefit will feature live music, local eats, and a hefty dose of handmade cocktails (daiquiri, anyone?). Tickets go fast, as this do-good party has become a can’t-miss event of the year.

Cyrus Chestnut Meets Warren Wolf
Jan. 12-13. An Die Musik, 409 N. Charles St., 8 p.m., 9:30 p.m. $10-27. 410-385-2638. Baltimore sons Cyrus Chestnut and Warren Wolf have not let the light fade on the city’s rich jazz scene. The pianist and vibraphonist, respectively, have brought their homegrown talents into the national spotlight, with the former being dubbed “the best jazz pianist of his generation” by Time magazine, and the latter touring and recording with the likes of New York City’s Wynton Marsalis. The two musicians will team up and return home, bringing their swinging sound to the intimate, 90-seat venue of An die Musik. At one or all four shows in Mt. Vernon, fall under the spell of Chestnut’s blues-tinged keys and Wolf’s swift, skilled vibes. 

Lexington Market Catacombs
Jan. 13. Lexington Market, 400 W. Lexington St. 10:30 a.m. Free. 410-332-9992. They say Baltimore is a city built on tunnels, both heavily used and long-abandoned. The latter gets a little less mysterious this January with Baltimore Heritage’s guided tour of Lexington Market. Swing through the centuries-old marketplace and stop by its famous vendors, such as crab cake king Faidley’s Seafood and sweet-treat titan Berger Cookies, before journeying beneath the bustle for one of the city’s best-kept secrets. With the help of local historians, prepare to be awed by the city’s age-old catacombs, rumored to even have housed Prohibition-era distilleries.

Martin Luther King Day Celebration
Jan. 15. Reginald F. Lewis Museum, 830 E. Pratt St. 12 p.m. $5. 443-263-1800. Celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 89th birthday with live performances, community talks, and arts and crafts at the African-American history and culture museum, including a step salute and freedom-square quilting party.

LaxCon 
Jan. 19-21. Baltimore Convention Center, 1 W. Pratt St. Fri. 7 a.m.-7 p.m., Sat. 7 a.m.-5 p.m., Sun. 9 a.m.-12 p.m. $10-200. It’s no secret that Maryland’s favorite sport is lacrosse, with grown-ups still rocking their high-school pinnies and local universities coming out on top in the NCAAs. For the fourth consecutive year, whether you’re an active athlete or retired benchsitter, join your fellow laxers for this all-lax-everything event, where you can grab some gear, network with players, or hone your skills at one of the weekend’s many workshops.

Baltimore Restaurant Week
Jan. 12-21. Locations & times vary. $20-35. 410-244-1030. As Baltimore’s food scene continues to boom, it’s hard to keep up with the ever-growing array of dining options around town. This month, make it your resolution to sample your way through the city, with more than 100 old favorites (Gertrude’s) and trendy newbies (Gunther & Co., pictured) offering discounted brunch, lunch, and dinner for 10 days.

Polar Bear Plunge
Jan. 25-27. Sandy Point State Park, 1100 E. College Pkwy., Annapolis. Thu. 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m., Fri. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Sat. 11 a.m.-3 p.m. $75. 410-242-1515. At the end of each January, thousands of shivering souls brave the Chesapeake Bay’s frigid waters to benefit the Special Olympics of Maryland. Muster the courage to dip your toes in the icy waves, and warm your heart thinking about the 7,549 local athletes that your chilly dunk will benefit. 

Shen Yun
Jan. 26-28. Hippodrome Theatre at the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center, 12 N. Eutaw St. Fri. 7:30 p.m., Sat. 2 & 7:30 p.m., Sun. 1 p.m. $91-194. 410-837-7400. For one weekend, the hallowed Hippodrome stage will transform into Ancient China, also known as the Land of the Divine, as Shen Yun brings some 5,000 years of Chinese culture to life in modern-day Baltimore. Be sure to see this world-famous performance troupe, whose ancient dances, bright costumes, and mesmerizing movements have grown into a global phenomenon.

Orioles FanFest
Jan. 27. Baltimore Convention Center, 1 W. Pratt St. Times & prices vary. 410-649-7008. mlb.com. Baseball has always been America’s great uniter—even in crazy and turbulent times—and this year proves no different. Thousands of fans will crowd the convention center for the annual Orioles FanFest. Bring the kids to chat with players, snag coveted signatures, and play games for prizes. It might be a few months until we’re back in Camden Yards, but this beloved event should hold you over until the spring. 

Five things to eat, drink, see, hear, and do with your Charm City weekend.

 EAT

June 30: Sac and Pizza

Paulie Gee’s, 3535 Chestnut Ave. 9 p.m. Free.

When you think of New Orleans, you don’t necessarily think of pizza, but this Friday, head to the back bar of Paulie Gee’s in Hampden for slices of pie alongside the Big Easy sound of Sac Au Lait. The quirky six-piece is known around Charm City for their energy and humor, and has performed everywhere from bars and restaurants to parades and Mardi Gras festivals for more than 10 years. Just don’t miss the “Stinger Bell,” named after Idris Elba’s infamous character from The Wire, and covered with mozzarella, lemon slices, and fresh basil. 

 DRINK

July 1-2: Hysteria Brewing Company Grand Opening

Hysteria Brewing Company, 9570 Berger Road, Columbia. Sat. 12-11 p.m., Sun. 8-11 p.m. Free. 

Just as Maryland’s beer scene seems like its about to burst, along comes Hysteria Brewing Company, ready to join the ranks in Columbia. During their grand opening weekend, test their new brews in a pop-up beer garden, with local food trucks, lawn games, and live music. Check out the new digs with group tours and come back a week later when they open for full service. The weekend’s festivities are family friendly—just leave your four-legged friends at home.

 SEE

July 1 through 2018: Reverend Albert Lee Wagner’s Miracle at Midnight

American Visionary Art Museum, 800 Key Hwy. Tue.-Sun. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Free-$15.95.

One small moment in time was all it took for Albert Lee Wagner to have an epiphany that would completely alter the course of his life. On the eve of his 50th birthday, the Cleveland moving-company owner was struck by the inspiration to start marking art. His hobby progressed into a movement, and Wagner (who went onto become a reverend) became one of America’s most prominent visionary artists with his plethora of bold and colorful paintings and sculptures. Commemorating that pivotal eureka moment and the man himself, this new exhibit will include more than 50 of his recently donated masterpieces, including the featured Red Sea.

 HEAR

June 30: Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

Merriweather Post Pavilion, 10475 Little Patuxent Pkwy., Columbia.7:30 p.m. $40-55. 

Okay, so we’re suggesting you go to Columbia a lot this weekend, but with summer concert season officially upon us, it’s time to shake out that old camping blanket and head over to Merriweather for some quality lawn time. This Friday, hear the acclaimed musical sounds of former Drive-By Truckers frontman Jason Isbell and his four-piece band. Since his departure from the group in 2007, the singer-songwriter has pursued a successful solo career, and his blues-riddled Southern sound is perfect for a warm summer night beneath the stars. 

 DO

June 30: Baltimore Bike Party: 2000s

Ride starts at St. Mary’s Park, 600 N. Paca St. Party starts at Lexington Market, 400 W. Lexington St.  6:30 p.m. Free.

Throw it back to the days of Avril Lavigne, MySpace, and trucker hats with this month’s Baltimore Bike Party. In a celebration of the early aughts, the monthly bike ride will end with an outdoor party at Lexington market, complete with DJs, food vendors, and Heavy Seas beers. After avoiding potholes and obeying traffic signals, flaunt your best “Hey Ya” dance moves in your low-rise, boot-cut jeans. 

Winds of Change

East Baltimore Street
February 5, 2017

On the Sunday morning of Feb. 7, 1904, a fire was reported at the John E. Hurst Building, across the street from where Royal Farms Arena now sits. It’s suspected, historian Wayne Schaumburg tells a Fire Museum of Maryland-organized tour gathered at that location this afternoon, that a cigarette butt or cigar, discarded by a Saturday night reveler, fell by chance through a tiny broken glass opening in the sidewalk into the building’s basement.

First responders initially missed the smoldering in the cellar, however, and by the time they returned an hour later, the blaze had raced upward, soon exploding through the six-story building’s ceiling. Embers quickly began blowing “rooftop to rooftop,” Schaumburg notes. “Like a forest fire. It’s not the base of trees that catch and burn first, but the highest branches. Seven buildings were suddenly on fire in the next 10 to 15 minutes.”

By the next morning, The Sun, with its offices in the path of the blaze, hurried to Washington, D.C., to produce an extra edition and reported, “To all appearance, Baltimore’s business section is doomed.” Which it was. The Great Baltimore Fire would turn 140 acres of the downtown district to ash, including 1,526 buildings.

“The fire missed City Hall by the width of Fayette Street as it headed east, turning south at St. Paul Street because of a quirky shift of the wind,” Schaumburg says, retracing the fire’s route by foot. Essentially, everything north of Fayette Street survived; everything south of Fayette burned—other than a handful of structures, including the Alex. Brown & Sons Company Building on East Baltimore Street. That iconic building’s domed, stained-glass ceiling, which attracts visitors to this day, didn’t catch because of its small stature—flames literally flew over the top of its roof. 

“The heat was an estimated 2,000 degrees at this corner and it cracked the brownstone facade around the Brown building steps,” Schaumburg says, pointing. “That’s the only remaining visible damage from the fire.”

On a positive note, Thomas O’Neill, owner of the once giant O’Neill & Co. department store on Charles Street and a devout, Irish immigrant, bequeathed $7 million to the Archdiocese of Baltimore after his business was spared by the same shift of wind that saved City Hall. O’Neill’s generosity helped build the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen and Good Samaritan Hospital.

“He believed a miracle, the work of God, saved his store,” Schaumburg explains.

“Which also means, I guess,” chimes in a tourgoer, “that there weren’t any devout Catholics south of Fayette Street.”

Of Muskrats and Men

North Paca Street
January 21, 2017

“It looks pretty much like it did in 1988 when it closed,” says Stacey Pack, leading a tour through Tubbs, the once popular but now long abandoned nightclub beneath Lexington Market, as visitors snap pictures of cocktail tables and faded red faux-leather booths. The bar itself is actually just a stopping point on the way to the deeper catacombs here, which are believed to date back to the early 1800s and were rediscovered in 1951. “What was it like?” muses La Verne Gray, a former state planner along for the tour this morning and someone who danced and partied at Tubbs back in the day. “All I remember is they had good food. I was young, drunk, and foolish then.”

The origins of the massive stone vaults farther below Tubbs remain even more mysterious. It’s believed they were used for cold storage before refrigeration. There are also unconfirmed reports that they housed distilleries during Prohibition. Either way, the action today is upstairs, where the market dubbed “the gastronomic capital of the world” by Ralph Waldo Emerson is beginning to percolate. The nuts at Konstant’s, founded in 1896, are roasting in an original iron roaster, and oysters at Faidley Seafood, founded a decade earlier, are being shucked.

Also for sale at Faidley are skinned muskrat and raccoon, although they’re out of raccoon at the moment and taking names for the waiting list. Muskrat and raccoon, longtime employee Lou Fleming explains, remain dinner-table favorites for older West Baltimoreans with rural roots.

“Oh, raccoon is good with cayenne pepper and yams. Sweet and hot,” says Fleming, a Dundalk native. “Tastes like wild rabbit.”

Portrait in Courage

East Pratt Street
February 4, 2017

“Frederick Douglass was the most photographed American figure in the 19th century,” Harvard professor John Stauffer tells the audience in the packed auditorium at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum. “It wasn’t Lincoln, Grant, or even Walt Whitman. It was a black man. Douglass understood how photography could be used to shape public opinion—not unlike the way the Black Lives Matter movement has utilized cellphone videos.”

Born into slavery in Talbot County, Douglass learned to read in Baltimore as a child and worked as a ship’s caulker only a few blocks from the museum. He later returned to Fells Point after the Civil War to build a block of rowhouses on nearby Dallas Street.

Part of the museum’s Black History Month series of events, Stauffer’s presentation, based on his book, Picturing Frederick Douglass, is almost as much about the early, silver-nitrate photographic technology as it is about Douglass. The exposure times required long sits for portraits, during which, Stauffer says, the abolitionist actively participated in the artistry of his photographs, perfecting the image of “majestic wrath” that he wanted to project, hoping to stir viewers from their moral slumber.

Pointing to Douglass’ significance as a historical figure—but also to how ill-informed many people are about him—Stauffer notes that Douglass has been in the headlines again recently with President Donald Trump’s remarks that seemed to imply Douglass is alive. One compelling photo in the presentation is of Douglass during President Lincoln’s overflowing second inauguration (with John Wilkes Booth also in attendance) at the Capitol.

“The next time Trump claims the crowd at his inauguration was as big as the crowd at President Obama’s inauguration, please post that photo,” a museum visitor suggests during the Q&A. “Remind him Lincoln drew a bigger crowd than he did, too.”

Just before lunchtime, as foot traffic outside of Lexington Market reaches its peak, regulars are raising their eyebrows—stopping to stare at a massive gold shipping container that has been positioned outside of the main entrance.

After conversing with Rachael London, who welcomes visitors in front of the container’s metallic-gold doors, they learn that the mysterious box is actually a room equipped with audio-visual technology that allows you to have face-to-face conversations with strangers from around the world.

“Some people are intimidated by it being such a small space” says London, a local artist who serves as the exhibit’s curator. “But once they see that they’re connecting to people who are energetic and welcoming, it’s not so scary.”

The immersive installation is called Portals, an initiative started by D.C.-based art collective Shared Studios. A giant screen inside the container streams live conversations with people visiting identical portals throughout the U.S., as well as countries like Mexico, Honduras, Rwanda, and Iraq. The goal, says London, is to create personal experiences that surpass boundaries, both geographic and otherwise.

“It kills stereotypes,” says Lewis Lee, a curator from Milwaukee who we connected with via the portal’s video chat technology on Monday. “We’re always stereotyping, but there’s nothing like getting the real information from the ground. It’s the ultimate tool to learn about different cultures and the way things work in different parts of the world.”

Specifically in Baltimore, the portal will be used as a mechanism to delve deeper into criminal justice issues. In addition to international calls, it will focus on connecting locals with strangers in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, and Milwaukee to share their thoughts and suggestions regarding police reform. Curators help to moderate the conversation, starting participants with prompts such as “What would make today a good day for you?”

“Since we started a year ago, crime went down in our neighborhood by 21 percent,” says Lee, who mentions that the portal was place of reflection after last summer’s riots in Milwaukee, which bore strong similarities to the Baltimore Uprising. “The portal gave our community a sense of something to call their own—something to feel proud of. It brought the residents back, and gave us something to rally around.”

Organizers say that, after scouting multiple locations, they knew that Lexington Market would be an ideal home for the installation, which was brought to Baltimore by Downtown Partnership.

“Lexington Market is perfect because it’s bustling, and there’s no shortage of enthusiastic people,” says Michelle Moghtader, co-founder of Shared Studios. “There are two ways of doing outreach. You can either send an email, or plop a thing down in a crowded area and see who wants to come in and participate.”

Moghtader, an international journalist who launched the project in 2014, says that she has seen the portal evoke a number of impactful experiences, especially in the wake of President Trump’s recent immigration ban. She shares stories of Americans connecting with refugees in the Middle East, New Yorkers holding beat-boxing classes with people in Afghanistan, and an Iranian dancer performing for family in his home country.

“He said, ‘I feel like I’m breathing the same air as them,’” Moghtader recalls.

The installation will remain outside Lexington Market until Light City (March 31-April 8), when it will move to the intersection of Calvert and Water streets throughout the duration of the festival. Depending on funding, organizers hope to keep the portal downtown on a long-term basis.

“We’ve been overcoming trying times, and making a lot of progress because of the communication through the portals,” Lee says. “I’m scared to fly, so this is like my own virtual airplane.”