Got a feeling: When we bought this house, we just went by karma. It seemed like a happy house.

Scaling back:
We got into this period of design when my husband and I moved into a
Federal Hill row house, and we couldn’t find furniture to fit, so we
started to look for mid-century modern pieces because the scale was
smaller. I got addicted at that point.

Please be seated: The first pieces we bought were these Arne Jacobsen chairs from a dealer in Chicago. The design is from the mid-’50s.

Table it:
The black marble table is a classic design made by Knoll, designed by
Eero Saarinen. We eat dinner as a family here every night and do craft
projects on it.

Feeling blue: Traditionally, red is a dining-room color, and I wanted to go in the opposite direction.

Sew nice: The curtain fabric is from IKEA. I got a sewing machine to make these. This was my first sewing project.

Dragon days:
I found the dragon at a local vintage shop (Denova in Hampden), which
is now closed. I liked the contrast of it against the blue wall and its
intricate silhouette adds interest to all the clean-lined furnishings.

Words to live by: Part of my rule before I buy something [for my store] is that I have to be willing to live with it in case it doesn’t sell.

Plain truth:
The biggest influence on my aesthetic is my father, who is an
architect. He is so modern and very minimal. We had no tchotchkes
growing up.

Let’s face it: For a least a century, Baltimore has had something of an inferiority complex. Maybe it’s because our location makes it too easy to compare us to those bigger places, like D.C., Philly, Beantown, and, of course, the Big Apple. And through the years, we’ve cooked up lots of catchy mottos to look a little better in their shadow: Charm City, The Land of Pleasant Living, The City That Reads (that seems to set the bar a little low), and the most eyebrow-raising park-bench claim ever, “Greatest City in America.”

But what’s the real story on America’s 20th largest metro area? If, for instance, San Diego is the sunniest city, New York the biggest, and St. Louis the most dangerous (we came in at a better-than-you-might-think No. 8 on the “most-dangerous-city” scale), then where does Charm City stand? We’ve paged through dozens of national rankings from as many sources to find out. So, drum roll, here it is: the good, the bad, and the ugly about Baltimore, from bedbugs to baseball stadiums.

View PDF of July 2012’s How We Rank feature.

QUALITY OF LIFE

How thin is your skin, Bawlmer? In this category, it’s a mixed bag of good and not-so-good news.

Baltimore is No. 2 of the Top Ten Towns For Working Toward a Home Purchase, behind Washington. [Move Inc.]

Best Cities for Recent College Graduates: No. 9

Rankings were based on average rents, the concentration of young adults, and inventory of jobs requiring less than one year of experience:

1. Hartford-New Haven
2. Cleveland
3. Boston
4. Denver
5. Minneapolis
6. San Francisco
7. Washington, D.C.
8. Philadelphia
9. Baltimore
10. St. Louis

Best Cities to Find Work: No.5 [careercast.com]

Best Cities to Find Tech and Biopharmaceutical jobs: No.2 [Forbes]

Top 10 cities for singles: No.4 [Kiplinger]

And in the “most attractive people” rankings? We didn’t do so well, at No. 34. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a good time here: The city ranked in the top 20 for wild weekends,” says Travel + Leisure.

Forget the car: Believe it or not, Baltimore has the 11th highest percentage of commuter walkers and bikers among major U.S. cities (Alliance for Biking and Walking). And Walk Score ranked Baltimore the ninth best city in the country for public transportation, based on frequency, type, and distance of transit routes.

The Baltimore area ranks No.17 on a list of top 50 cities for working mothers. Buffalo ranked No. 1 while Las Vegas was last. [Forbes]

Second worst city for wage growth: -0.1% [Payscale.com]

Maryland tops all millionaire rankings with a slightly higher percentage of millionaire households, 7.22 percent, than Hawaii. [Phoenix Marketing International]

Hold your nose: Baltimore is No. 5 on a list of cities with the most toxic air pollution from power plants. [National Resources Defense Council and Physicians for Social Responsibility]

Gibson Island is No.23 on Forbes magazine’s list of the most expensive ZIP codes in the country. (The median home price is nearly $2.8 million)

DOING BUSINESS

In most ways, the metro area’s business landscape looks pretty lush by national standards:

The taxman cometh: We’ve all heard lots of whining here about too much regulation and too many taxes. And some of it is justified: Out of 50 cities, we have the:
9th worst tax climate for doing business
5th worst individual income-tax rate
6th worst unemployment insurance tax rate
11th worst property-tax rate. [Tax Foundation]

Is my Rolls here yet? The Port of Baltimore is No.1 in the nation as an international auto-shipping hub for the first half of 2011, beating out New York. [U.S. Census]

We’re the Third Best Shopping City. Yes, we were a little surprised, too, but the only thing that matters is that we left New York in the dust: Baltimore, with its 9,536 retail locations and 21 shopping centers, ranks No. 3 on the best shopping cities list from Forbes magazine, behind Houston and Dallas.

Bon voyage, baby: Baltimore ranked No. 5 on the East Coast for cruise-ship passengers in 2010. Baltimore ranks 12th among all U.S. ports for its cruise passengers. [U.S. Department of Transportation]

Best City For Minority Entrepreneurs: No.2

SPORTS

We’ve always been unrecovered sports freaks, so it’s no surprise that Baltimore does well by this measurement:

Best arena of its size: 1st Mariner – No.1 [Billboard]

Local boys make good: On the National Football League’s rankings of greatest NFL players of all time, Johnny Unitas is No. 6 and Ray Lewis is No. 18.

The Baltimore Orioles’ value rose 12 percent to $460 million in the past year, but dropped one spot on Forbes magazine’s annual list of the most-valuable baseball franchises, going from 18 to 19.

The Ravens are worth $1.088 billion, which ranks them No. 10 most-valuable NFL team. [Forbes]

Baltimore ranks No. 29 for best sports cities, according to Sporting News.

STEPPING OUT

This is it: One of our strongest areas. Turns out we’re a great place to eat, drink, or make like a tourist. But we knew that already.

The South’s Tastiest Towns: No.9

When Southern Living magazine ran an online poll to determine the answer to this, more than 500,000 readers responded. Lafayette, LA. was No. 1 (where?), New Orleans was No. 3. Hey, with everything from crabs, rockfish, and barbecue to our high-brow Zagat-rated restaurants, it would have been a dumb list without us.

Baltimore’s Inner Harbor area ranked No. 21 for top Labor Day destinations. [Priceline.com]

Best city to see holiday lights: No.10 [Yahoo Travel]

50 Best Chocolatiers in America: Baltimore-based Glarus, No. 6:
1. Jacques Torres Chocolate Heaven, NYC
2. Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate, Empire, MI
3. Cero’s Candies, Wichita, KS
4. Christopher Elbow Artisanal Chocolates, San Francisco, CA
5. Leonidas Chocolates, Washington, D.C.
6. Glarus Chocolatier, Baltimore
(Online style guide for men, Complex)

Ladew Gardens is recipient of the “Top Five North American Gardens Worth Traveling For” award, presented by the Canadian Garden Tourism Council for 2012.

National Geographic ranks O.C.’s boardwalk as the fourth best in the country, and the water’s fine, too: Maryland beaches rank 16th and Delaware beaches are fifth, based on cleanliness of water samples, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Baltimore’s system of parks is rated 15th among the nation’s 40 largest cities. [Trust for Public Land]

ARTS

Biggest cities for art:No.9 [American Style]

We’re pretty happy with this score: A tip of the hat goes to The BMA, The Walters, the American Visionary Art Museum, and many other players.

We’re home of the “Most Influential Film of the Last 30 Years”: Diner [Vanity Fair] as well as “Best TV Drama”: The Wire [vulture]

HEALTH

Hey, we’re surrounded by great hospitals and 10,700 scolding doctors to remind us to eat an apple a day and not run with scissors. How could we not be healthy?

You want health care? It’s one of our strong points: Baltimore-area hospitals rank highest for patient care in the country. Nearly half of the area’s hospitals (nine out of 16) are in the top-five percent of all of the hospitals in the U.S. (HealthGrades). And The Johns Hopkins Hospital is routinely named the best in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, which also ranks the Hopkins medical school No. 3 in the nation behind Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Baltimore ranks 10th in the top 50 U.S. cities for bed bugs. [Pest control firm Orkin]

EDUCATION

Highly regarded public schools in both Howard and Baltimore counties helped move the needle in our favor on the smarts gauge: For the fourth year in a row, Maryland ranks No. 1 in the nation in the percentage of its graduating seniors who successfully passed the Advanced Placement (AP) exams, with 29 percent of last year’s graduating seniors having passed one AP exam by the time they graduated. [Advanced Placement for the College Board]

And that, of course, means we’re brainy: Ellicott City, Columbia, and Towson are among the smartest U.S. towns with populations between 50,000 and 99,999. Ellicott City ranked No. 15, Columbia No. 16, and Towson No. 21. [U.S. Census Bureau]

TRANSPORTATION

After reading this section, you might want to take Southwest Airlines to work instead of driving:

Maryland drivers are among the dumbest in the nation, according to a GMAC insurance study. Maryland drivers ranked 49th in the country for their driving knowledge. Insurer Allstate seconds that, ranking Baltimore drivers among the most dangerous in the country, second to last in the U.S. for safety. Only D.C. is worse.

BWI ranks No.1 (tied with Boston) for shortest security wait time, No.6 for on-time departures, and No.9 for tech travelers [farecompare.com; FAA; PCworld]

PERSONALITY

We all know we have some quirks in Charm City, and it turns out some of them are a tad annoying in the nation’s eyes:

Worst Dressed City: No.3 [Travel + Leisure]

Travel + Leisure named Baltimore the ninth rudest city in the country, saying it’s “not terribly safe” and “maybe it’s just a different sense of humor.”
1. New York City
2. Miami
3. Washington, D.C.
4. Los Angeles
5. Boston
6. Dallas
7. Atlanta
8. Phoenix
9. Baltimore
10. Orlando

We’re the 28th Manliest City. Maybe we’re just not man enough: In a survey by Combos (the pretzel company), Baltimore was ranked No. 28 on the third annual “America’s Manliest Cities” list, dropping 23 spots from last year (as measured by the number of home-improvement stores, steak houses, and motorcycles).

We don’t know whether to laugh or cry: When it comes to America’s happiest and saddest cities, Baltimore ranked 52 out of 100 (with No. 1 being the most cheerful and 100 being the most depressing). The happiest city is Honolulu. [Men’s Health magazine]

Fifth Most Tolerant City. We’ll take this as a compliment. [The Daily Beast]

PEANUT GALLERY

Some rankings just don’t fit into some neat little box. Here are a few of those:

Did you lock up the backhoe, hon? Maryland ranked No.8 for heavy equipment theft. The worst state was Texas. [National Insurance Crime Bureau]

Some of us did well at Forgery 101: Maryland has the third-highest number of fraud reports per capita in the country, including identity theft, employment-related fraud, and fraud in debt collection. [Federal Trade Commission]

Baltimore’s John F. Steadman fire station is the busiest in the nation. In 2010, Steadman’s nine vehicles made 21,921 runs—–3,000 more calls than any other firehouse. [Firehouse Magazine]

As you drive down West Baltimore’s Bentalou Street, passing boarded up houses and the brown grass of Easterwood Park, you probably wouldn’t notice the unnamed alley marked with signs for Emmanuel Tire and McDonald Salvage unless you were looking for it.

If you did turn down the alley, you’d see belching black smoke and endless rubber towers at the tire factory and the long lines of tractor trailers coming and going from the salvage yard. But if you happened to turn into an unmarked gate on the left, you’d see something else entirely.

“May Peace Prevail on Earth,” reads one side of a white post near the gate, surrounded by an herb garden. “May Peace Be in Our Homes and Communities,” reads another side.

Nearby is a garden where tomatoes, peppers, and sweet potatoes grow. There are endless fruit trees and, beyond a gate, a large cemetery patrolled by two donkeys, a llama, and two guinea fowl.

There is also a large house, built more than 15 years ago by members of Jonah House, a radical Catholic collective founded on the principles of non-violence, resistance, and community. The group lived in a rented row house on Park Avenue until the opportunity to act as caretakers of St. Peter’s Cemetery in exchange for living on the grounds came up in the early ’90s.

But Jonah House isn’t all about fruit trees and hippie slogans. In the fall, three of the house’s four permanent residents were in prison, serving terms for trespassing on Federal property during attempts to damage or destroy nuclear weapons—what Jonah House members call “plowshares actions” after the biblical verse, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” (Isaiah 2:4)

The group was founded in 1973 by famous anti-war activist Philip Berrigan, a former priest who led local protests against the Vietnam War as a member of the Baltimore Four (who poured animal blood on selective-service records at the Baltimore Customs House in 1967) and the Catonsville Nine (who set fire to several hundred draft files outside the selective-service office in Baltimore County).

Berrigan was at one time on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List and spent more than 10 years in prison. He died in 2002 and is the only person buried in St. Peter’s in at least the last 40 years. He and his wife, former nun Elizabeth McAlister, now 72, founded the house as a practical matter.

“We thought, ‘If we’re going to keep this up, some people are going to be going to prison, and some people have kids, and we can’t do this by ourselves,'” says McAlister, who has also spent several years in prison, has three grown children, and still lives in Jonah House. “If you have a community then you can make it through those times.”

Today, the permanent residents are in their 60s and 70s. Most non-residential community members who participate in its programs, including protests and vigils, distribution of food to the needy, and holding retreats for like-minded groups around the country, are in the same age range. It began to seem that Jonah House, a vestige of the 1960’s hippie counterculture, was heading into oblivion.

But a funny thing happened this past fall. The Occupy Baltimore movement brought hundreds of young activists together—many of them exploring political dissent for the first time—and to the great surprise and joy of Jonah House members, they looked to their activist forefathers for wisdom and support.

“We are absolutely kindred with Occupy Baltimore,” says McAlister. “We’re totally and completely supportive of their work.”

Members of the Occupy movement used a work shed at Jonah House to build both a mock schoolhouse that they erected at the site of a planned youth jail (to suggest funds should be used to build schools instead) and a mock recreation center that they erected outside City Hall to protest the privatization of seven local rec centers. McAlister and other Jonah House affiliates joined the protest at the youth-jail site and felt energized by the connection.

“We don’t know a lot of these Occupy folks, that’s the beauty of it,” says Willa Bickham, 69, a member of the extended Jonah House community and founder of Viva House, an affiliated group in Southwest Baltimore. “It’s not the same choir that we’re preaching to, it’s the young folks, and that gives us such energy and hope.”

It’s a miserable January evening, cold, with icy rain steadily pouring from a misty sky. Traffic backs up along Madison Street, as commuters rush to get to warm homes. As drivers pass Baltimore City Jail and turn to enter the Jones Falls Expressway, they encounter a half-dozen protesters, all over age 50, including McAlister, holding signs that read, among other things, “Abolish the Death Penalty: It’s Dead Wrong.”

This protest has been going on every Monday night for 18 years, when Maryland executed its first citizen after reinstating the death penalty in 1976. Some passersby honk, a few reach their thumbs up, but most just pass, inured to the weekly part of their commute.

“We got more comments and questions around the time of Troy Davis’s execution,” says one protestor, referring to the convicted murder executed in Georgia last year, despite concerns some had about his guilt.

The next morning at 5:00 a.m., McAlister drives to Panera to pick up donated bread to include in Jonah House’s weekly food distribution. Every week, Jonah House volunteers pack about 100 carefully balanced grocery bags, using donations, food purchased from food pantries for 18 cents a pound, and anything that they gather from their gardens and fruit trees. By 7:30 a.m., several dozen local people are lined up to pick up their food.

Among the volunteers doling out food is Ari Witkin, a Minnesota native and observant Jew who graduated from Goucher College two years ago with a degree in peace studies.

“I felt a real kinship with the people here,” says Witkin, who attends Jonah House’s Sunday services, in which people reflect on weekly experiences, take turns leading scripture reflections, and share a meal. “It’s not strictly Catholic. I’ve met Jews, atheists, agnostics, Hindus, and Christians of every stripe.”

After the distribution, Witkin unlatches the fence to the cemetery, where the animals are kept to keep vegetation down. There is a llama named Micah, a small donkey named Paz, and a big, friendly donkey named Vinnie. He’s named after Vinnie Quayle, the founder of St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center, who helped Jonah House find its current home.

“It’s an interesting story, how they ended up there,” says Quayle, a former priest who has long had a close relationship with the Archdiocese of Baltimore. The Archdiocese owned St. Peter’s Cemetery, which is filled primarily with the graves of Irish Catholics who mainly populated the neighborhood in the first half of the 20th century. As Catholics moved out, the cemetery fell into disrepair, with growth covering the gravestones and abandoned vehicles dotting the grounds.

“In the mid-’80s, Dan Rodricks wrote a column for The Sun blasting the Archdiocese for the neglect of this cemetery,” says Quayle. “Some Irishmen called me and said ‘Let’s go to this cemetery and clean it up,’ and I got involved in this group of Irish do-gooders.”

But the group, composed mostly of elderly men, after several years of weekend work, realized that they weren’t up to the task. “We were making little progress,” says Quayle. “We would clear ground and then, when the summer came, it was grown over again. You had folks in their 60s, and, after 10 years, they were in their 70s, and they started dying on us.”

At the same time, residents of Jonah House were feeling constrained in the row house they had been renting for almost 20 years—particularly its small backyard.

“I was bothered by the fact that you could never sit in a circle,” McAlister says of the place. “You get more than six people, you weren’t in a circle anymore. We wanted a place where there was more space.”

Quayle, who had known Berrigan and McAlister for years, worked out a deal in which Jonah House could lease the space adjacent to the cemetery for $1 a year, in exchange for clearing and maintaining the cemetery.

“My role was to keep things quiet with the Archdiocese,” says Quayle. “The thought was, ‘What’s gonna happen if the crazy Irish Catholic conservatives in town find out Jonah House—who are being arrested for pouring blood over nuclear weapons—are being allowed by the Archdiocese to live on their property?'”

The deal was struck in 1993 and Jonah House members went to work clearing the land, planting gardens and fruit trees, and building their two-story house from the ground up, all by themselves. And in the 19 years that they have been at the site, there has never been any tension with the Archdiocese.

“They have done exactly what they said they were going to do,” says Quayle. “They resanctified the damn place!”

The connection between Jonah House’s aging radicals and Occupy Baltimore’s younger ones might never have happened if it weren’t for the efforts of Mike McGuire, a 39-year-old organizer of the Occupy movement who provided a bridge between the groups.

In 1990, when McGuire was a senior at Mount St. Joe’s High School, the first Persian Gulf war was raging. Worried about being drafted, McGuire looked into applying for conscientious-objector status and was referred to Phil Berrigan.

“He said, ‘Well, if you’re looking for religious reasons in the Catholic Church to oppose war, I’m afraid you’re a little screwed,'” McGuire recalls with a laugh.

Berrigan advised McGuire—who never registered with the selective service—and remained in touch with Jonah House. When the Occupy Baltimore movement started up, he reached out to the community for guidance and support. “We wanted to have that inter-generational presence,” he says.

When McGuire and several volunteers went to Jonah House to build components for its demonstrations, the young activists were amazed that the community existed.

“None of the people I was working with were familiar with Jonah House,” says McGuire. “Everybody was thrilled to learn of this community, familiarizing themselves with a little bit of local radical history. A lot of folks don’t know about the Catonsville 9 stuff—that’s already an eternity ago.”

The Occupy Baltimore leaders invited McAlister to speak at the encampment, and she readily agreed, but, as McGuire says, “Our level disorganization didn’t make it happen.”

Still, the members of Jonah House and the younger activists are both eager to build on their connections.

“There’s a continuity there, a perseverance,” says Brian Barrett, a longtime Jonah House affiliate. “It gives an institutional memory and links the past with the future.”

At 72, McAlister has no intention of backing off her dedication to resistance. She recalls her prison stints with pride, including three years in Federal prison in Alderson, WV, for disarming a B-52 nuclear cruise missile launcher at Griffith’s Air Force Base in Rome, New York. She did a short stint in Howard County for actions against The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which, she says, did “90-some percent of its work for the Department of the Navy.”

“I think we will be doing actions at Hopkins again,” she says. “We backed off that for a period, but I think it’s looming at us again.”

Yes, we know it’s January—month of those dreaded resolutions—and
no, we’re not trying to guilt trip you. (Okay, maybe just a little.) But
seriously, there’s no excuse not to join a local gym at this point. You
say you have no time? There are plenty of 24-hour gyms in the region.
Afraid to be around the body-beautiful people? There are lots of gyms
that cater to an older, more laid-back, or even out-of-shape clientele.
Think you can’t afford the fees? At least two of our featured gyms are
$10 a month. Basically, whatever your particular version of a perfect
gym might be, it’s out there. Here are 18 great places to start.

Bare Hills Racquet and Fitness Club

1420 Clarkview Rd., 410-823-2500

The facilities: Owners Jack and Nancy Dwyer have
transformed a fitness center that once housed a ski slope made of carpet
into a modern facility equipped with six tennis courts, eight squash
courts, a steam room and sauna, cycling room, and yoga studio. There’s
also plenty of variety in a large upstairs cardio room. It was named the
2011 United States Tennis Association Facility of the Year.

Who goes there: “It’s definitely got a family feel,”
says director of member relations Melinda Capone of the gym’s friendly
vibe. Bare Hills also reaches out to the community, offering free
workouts for Baltimore City firefighters and police officers.

What’s hot: Bare Hills members have a wide range of
class options, from the popular Bosu (like a dome-shaped medicine ball)
to yoga fusion to Ladies Lunch League (tennis). Squash and tennis are
taught by the pros, including world-famous squash director Lefika
Ragontse. Thirty-minute classes offered mid-weekdays, give professionals
a quick workout.

Special features: Starting this month, Bare Hills
will offer Piloxing, a combination of Pilates, dance, and boxing. In
addition, Soul Body—a yoga studio—operates classes out of the same
building and offers some of its classes to Bare Hills members.

Meet a trainer: “Everybody fills their own niche,”
owner Nancy Dwyer says of her staff. Regina Roesner hosts about 20
Gravity training classes each week, using the same equipment Tiger Woods
trains on. Truet Purnell recently won a national bodybuilding
competition, and the Fitness Center has 14 personal trainers on staff.

Rates: $64-137/month; annual tennis membership fees are $99-41.

Brick Bodies

Several locations, including 212 W. Padonia Rd., Timonium, 410-252-5280

The facilities: The Padonia location started as a
racquetball club with a bar, hot tub, and cigarette machine. Since
owners Lynne and Victor Brick purchased the gym in 1985, the space has
been reconfigured to include a basketball half-court and several large
equipment rooms, featuring modern-day apparatus like ellipticals, cross
trainers, and Stairmasters on two floors. There’s a joie de vivre among
the exercise enthusiasts, and it’s not unusual to see Lynne Brick in
their midst.

Who goes there: The median age is around 41, with most members between ages 25 and 65, says Josh Gerber, the company’s marketing director.

What’s hot: TRX suspension training, Brick Boxing,
Baltimore Barre (“a cross between Joseph Pilates and Jane Fonda,” says
Brick), spinning (“Everyone knows how to ride a bike,” she explains of
its popularity), and a focus on 30-minute workouts for the
time-challenged. A sign outside the building reminds members, “Have you
had your quickie today?”

Special features: The club opens at 4:30 a.m. for
early birds on weekdays, has a Little Brick’s program with structured
child care, has group personal training, as well as individual sessions,
and hundreds of classes, including Zumba, body jam, and body jump.

Meet a trainer: Certified personal trainer and group
exercise instructor Pam Monacelli has been at Brick Bodies since 1993.
“What I truly enjoy is seeing someone finish something that they didn’t
think they could do,” she says. “I firmly believe that we all have it in
us to do things that we never imagined we could do.”

Rates: $40-50/month; $60 includes a trainer twice a week.

Canton Club

2780-D Lighthouse Point East, 410-276-5544

The facilities: The one-level layout, on the second
floor of a waterfront building in Canton, has all the amenities of a
state-of-the-art gym with a spectacular view of the harbor. “It’s like a
cruise ship that doesn’t move,” says Canton Club’s fitness director
Jacki Dalsimer. Clients can work out on treadmills and other gym
equipment while gazing at boats and Baltimore’s skyline. Another draw is
the “wow room,” as co-owner Amy Passen calls the area with silk purple
hammocks suspended from the ceiling for Air Yoga and the attached
FitWalls, where clients hold onto outcroppings on the “walls” to build
strength and flexibility.

Who goes there: The co-ed clients range from mid-20s
to mid-60s, with some members in their 70s. “[Empty] nesters are a
growing population,” says Passen, as well as young parents. (Canton Club
recently added a daycare program called Canton Cubs.)

What’s hot: In addition to Air Yoga and the FitWall
concept— Canton Club is the only gym on the East Coast to offer this
equipment, Passen says— the gym has TRX suspension training, basically
using suspended straps for whole-body fitness. There’s also boot camp,
yoga, weight-loss programs, spinning, kettlebells, and . . . tires (only
these big rubber rounds are used in group-fitness classes for flipping
over, pushing back and forth, and even hopping in the center).

Special features: The gym is open 24 hours a day in a
secure environment with parking, which eliminates most excuses not to
exercise. The gym prides itself on encouraging camaraderie among the
staff and its club members. “Without the alcohol, it’s a very
Cheers-like environment,” says Passen, who owns the gym with her husband
Marty, a physician.

Meet a trainer: Fitness director Jacki Dalsimer says
club members are her motivation. “The ‘thank you’s’ I get for changing
people’s lives are why I love my job,” she reports. “I am passionate
about not only helping my personal clients but all members at Canton
Club reach and exceed their goals.”

Rates: $64-89/month, plus extra for personal
training; Premium Coaching Option, $180/month, includes three monthly
one-on-one personal-training sessions.

Curves for Women

733 W. 40th St., #20, 410-467-8700

The facilities: In this no-boys-allowed gym, there
are a dozen or more exercise machines of different kinds to work
different parts of your body. Give them 30 minutes a day, three times a
week, and work a set number of minutes on each machine for cardio and
strength, and you’re done.

Who goes there: Curves has a unique clientele: Its
250-odd members are, obviously, women only. Many are a bit
self-conscious about the, er, unOlympic state of their physiques, some
just prefer working out without the distraction of guys. These ladies,
ages 10-87, for the most part aren’t training for a triathlon, but just
want to get fitter. Manager Apple Koekemoer and her four staffers train
newcomers on the circuit, do fitness assessments, and help members set
goals.

What’s hot: What’s cool about Curves is its honest
place in the fitness universe: Come in any physical shape and in any
clothes you want, girls, (we saw not one member in Spandex on a Monday
at midday) and get fitter in an environment where self-consciousness is a
non-issue.

Special features: Insurance will, in many cases, pay
for the Curves program, considered a wellness program by participating
carriers and employers.

Meet a trainer: “We’re not bodybuilders,” says
Koekemoer, “we’re just about fitness.” She’s a true believer, by the
way: Eight years ago, at age 35, the former bookkeeper needed this same
non-judgmental environment to get her strength back after breast-cancer
treatment. When the manager spot came open, she knew it was meant to be.

Rates: About $40/month, annually.

Downtown Athletic Club

210 E. Centre St. 410-332-0906

The facilities: Because it’s open 24 hours, this
100-year-old, 66,000-square-foot converted train depot is never overly
crowded. Along with the normal roster of free weights and exercise
equipment, look for free parking, racquet ball and squash courts, a
basketball court, an indoor pool with sauna and steam room, a rubber
track, and a boxing ring. The vibe is “chill,” says lifestyle consultant
Karen Codd. “It’s state-of-the-art, but not posh.”

Who goes there: The gyms boasts an eclectic mix of
clients—downtown dwellers, workers, and commuters. It’s a true “melting
pot,” Codd says. Both Gov. Martin O’Malley and former Mayor Sheila Dixon
are regulars.

What’s hot: TRX suspension training, which uses
cables to improve core strength and flexibility. “You can see an
85-year-old next to a bodybuilder,” says group fitness director Ron
Crognale.

Special features: The Freshfit bar and grill, where
you can go for a beer or a sandwich and watch the game after your
workout. Also, since the DAC is part of the Merritt Athletic Club
network, you get the six week results guarantee and can use your
membership to work out at any of Merritt’s nine regional locations.

Meet a trainer: Personal training manager Heidi
Shaneybrook, a former Division III soccer player at Salisbury
University, has a background in physiology and kinesiology and, with her
own history of a bad back and balky knees, knows how to maximize a
workout for those with sports injuries. “She makes the workout as
enjoyable as it is intense,” says Crognale.

Rates: $51-89/month.

Federal Hill Fitness

39 E. Cross St., 410-752-3004

The facilities: Located amongst the bars and
restaurants on Cross Street, Federal Hill Fitness has a modern, rehabbed
feel. There’s a second-floor loft, exposed brick, and Robert McClintock
paintings donning the walls. The main floor has an open area for
cardio, the downstairs is for core, and the second floor has kettlebells
and weights and a studio for classes.

Who goes there: Much like its sister gym, MV
Fitness, the club’s clientele comes straight from the neighborhood.
“Most members are younger, athletic, and look like people you’d
typically see in Federal Hill,” says owner Andrea Shelby. “Those of us
who live here walk everywhere, so it makes sense that we’d walk to our
gym, too.”

What’s hot: Federal Hill Fitness’s most popular
program is the outdoor boot camp. “It’s a seriously butt-kicking,
competitive class,” Shelby says. “There’s a lot of pain and a lot of
results.” The boot camp meets three times a week for four weeks at 6
a.m. on the top of Federal Hill. “There’s nothing quite like seeing the
sunrise over the Baltimore skyline and knowing that your day is off to a
great, healthy start,” she says.

Special features: Shelby explains that because the
gym is a smaller size (about 600 members), there is a more personal
connection. “We’ve been open for 10 years and have so many members that
have been here from the beginning,” she says. “We have a great retention
rate. People only leave if they move.”

Meet a trainer: Trainer Reese Ashe has a background
in mixed martial arts and wrestling, and he specializes in
group-training classes (like the hardcore, outdoor boot camp) and
kickboxing. (Plus, we named him “Best Personal Trainer” in 2010). “He
has the added glitter of being a part of the club from the beginning,”
Shelby says. “He’s truly an exceptional part of the team.”

Rates: $49-69/month; a personal training membership
is $299/month. (Federal Hill Fitness members can also use the MV Fitness
facility.)

LifeBridge Health & Fitness

1836 Greene Tree Rd., Pikesville, 410-484-6800

The facilities: We should probably tell you what
they don’t have here; that’d be a much shorter list. The gym has more
than 200 cardio machines, each with individual TVs; heated saltwater lap
pool, plus a therapy pool; three group-exercise studios; an indoor
walking track; rock-climbing wall; swanky locker rooms with hot tubs,
saunas, and steam rooms; free Wi-Fi; cafe; pro shop selling Lululemon
and Under Armour gear; and a LifeBridge Health physical therapy practice
on premises.

Who goes there: Because of the gym’s association
with LifeBridge Health (the parent organization of Sinai and Northwest
Hospitals) and its Pikesville location, you’ll see lots of suburban
boomers working up a sweat as part of their rehabilitation regimens. On
the other end of the spectrum, many elite athletes, including some
Ravens, stop by to partake in the Parisi Speed School, a conditioning
program designed to improve performance.

What’s hot: Zumba is by far the most popular class
on the schedule, but strength-training/body-sculpting classes like Body
by Barre and Pilates also attract a crowd.

Special features: The one-tenth of a mile indoor
track, which encircles the upstairs, provides an opportunity to release
oneself from the yoke of the treadmill and actually, you know, go
somewhere when you walk. The rock-climbing wall has beginner and
advanced sides. And the pool is always a toasty 83 degrees.

Meet a trainer: Word around the locker rooms is, if
you really want results STAT!, the person to see is former Towson
University-hockey-player-turned-personal-trainer Billy Wunderlich. It
won’t be easy, and you’ll have to work for it, but he’ll make sure you
do.

Rates: Standard memberships/$89 per month.

Lifetime Fitness

7220 Lee DeForest Dr., Columbia, 410-953-0022

The facilities: Inside this Columbia gym—possibly
the largest fitness facility in the state of Maryland—you’ll find three
pools, two indoor, including one with amusement-park style slides, and
one outdoor, also with slide, a zero-depth entry “beach” and a hot tub;
two full-length basketball courts; a 30-plus-foot-tall climbing wall;
400 pieces of cardio and Nautilus equipment; four class studios,
including dedicated yoga/Pilates and “cycle theater”; 26 full-time
personal trainers; a full-service restaurant plus an outdoor bistro in
summer; two squash courts; two racquetball courts; a full-service spa;
and a child-care center complete with a maze, eight computers, a
miniature basketball court, and a full playground. (Whew!)

Who goes there: Lifetime works hard to provide
something for everyone, from the babies in the child-care center to the
elderly clients in the gentle yoga class, but director Joel Schlossberg
says the biggest segment of members are family-oriented people in their
30s, who stop by on their commutes to Baltimore or D.C.

What’s hot: The Zumba classes are big, as are
classes in the spinning studio, with 52 stationary bikes and a giant
video screen that projects segments of the Tour de France.

Special features: This gym is open 24/7, 365 days a
year. There is also a full-service summer camp for kids. The adult
basketball league, Ultimate Hoops, keeps statistics for all players
online and sends the winning teams to a national tournament where they
play top teams from other Lifetime gyms around the country.

Meet a trainer: Marnice Sigur, 42, had an epiphany
two years ago when her mother was diagnosed with colorectal cancer,
diabetes, and hypertension. Concerned about her own health, she became a
fitness fanatic, losing 82 pounds in a year and studying to be a
personal trainer. Now, she works at Lifetime helping other overweight
and obese people change their lives.

Rates: $80.95/month for adults, up to $155/month for families.

Maryland Athletic Club, Harbor East

655 President St., 410-625-5000

The facilities: MAC Harbor East doesn’t feel like a
gym, but more of a spa smack in the middle of downtown. Along with
top-flight weights and machines, the 54,000-square-foot facility is
complete with individual steam showers, salt-water pools, and an
Internet cafe so that gym doesn’t feel like such a chore after all.

Who goes there: General manager Mike Hines estimates
that about two-thirds of MAC Harbor East’s members are under the age of
40. Most of the members are downtown professionals who like the
convenience of a gym near the office. “It’s like a Who’s Who of
Baltimore’s workforce,” Hines says.

What’s hot: Hines says that, without a doubt, the
most popular program is the MAC Blast, which is a boot-camp program that
also includes 10 consecutive days of intense workouts all over the
club. Hour-long classes include boxing, yoga, core training, and
swimming. “It’s really a jumpstart if you feel your workout program has
gotten stagnant,” Hines says.

Special features: The spa-like feel of MAC Harbor
East is certainly distinct among downtown gyms. The facility also has
three indoor pools for lap swimming, aquatic classes, and kids play.
There are also squash courts.

Meet a trainer: Jason Williams is one of Harbor
East’s most popular trainers. “He does every type of training possible,”
Hines says. “From stretching to running assessments and Pilates.” With a
degree in sports medicine, Williams also specializes in rehab and
sports-specific training for MAC’s more athletic members.

Rates: $79-99/month (MAC Harbor East members may also use the Timonium MAC facility.)

Maryland Athletic Club, Timonium

110 W. Timonium Rd., Timonium, 410-453-9111

The facilities: Owners Liz and Tim Rhode had a
vision in the mid-’90s that turned an old warehouse into today’s
gleaming 64,000-square-foot fitness center, complete with swimming pools
and a cafe. The MAC, as its familiarly called, recently celebrated its
15th year with a blowout party.

Who goes there: The average age is 50, with 20
percent of its 7,000 members age 70 plus, says Sharon Nevins, the MAC’s
marketing vice president.

What’s hot: TRX suspension training, small-group
personal training, boot camp, yoga, and classes like spinning, step, and
Zumba. “The buzz word is functional training,” says Nevins. “We want to
support what you do in everyday life.”

Special features: There are two personal-training
studios, a Kids Club for child care, a lap pool, two therapy pools, a
cardio area that is quieter and more private than the bustling main MAC,
which has its own array of machines on the first floor and two
mezzanines, and a partnership with an on-site physical-therapy company.

Meet a trainer: Billy Delorbe has been a trainer at
the MAC for more than seven years. “Helping people is one of my favorite
things to do,” he says. “I love working on new structures, different
exercises, and coming up with ways to keep my clients motivated. Trying
new exercise combinations keeps it interesting.”

Rates: $69-99/month (Timonium MAC members may also use the Harbor East MAC facility.)

Meadow Mill Athletic Club

8600 Clipper Mill Rd., 410-235-7000

The facilities: A meandering labyrinth of rooms
inside a renovated 19th-century mill complex, Meadow Mill has rooms of
cardio and Cybex resistance weight-training equipment, two
group-exercise rooms, a spinning studio, a Pilates studio, and 14 single
and two doubles squash courts.

Who goes there: Squash enthusiasts make up a sizable
portion of enrollment but young urbanites from nearby Hampden and
Clipper Mill are also represented.

What’s hot: Did we mention squash? It gets a lot of
play here. The club regularly hosts international, national, state, and
in-house tournaments. Free squash clinics are held weekly for members.

Special features: Though Meadow Mill is best known
for its squash, the gym also offers a full range of fitness classes,
including an aerial acrobatics studio. The high-ceilinged room is
outfitted with fabric drapery on which professional aerialist Robin
Miller will teach you the tricks of the acrobatics trade.

Meet a trainer: Miller has performed acrobatics in
Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe and offers instruction on aerial hoop, hammock,
and fabric routines.

Rates: With no annual contract required—— ever——
Meadow Mill is one of the more flexible places around. Regular
membership is $75 per month.

Merritt Athletic Club Canton

3401 Boston St., 410-563-0225 (and several other locations)

The facilities: The official club of the Baltimore
Ravens cheerleaders, this spotless 24-hour club has an eye-popping
spinning studio, an indoor/outdoor pool with a view of the harbor, a
basketball court, two squash courts, a full-service day spa,
state-of-the-art exercise equipment, plus 70 group fitness classes
offered each week.

Who goes there: Mostly business professionals in
their 20s, 30s, and 40s who are “all here for the same reason—— to get
fit,” says sales manager Doug Wood.

What’s hot: Group personal training classes (usually
4 to 8 people), a great way to get personalized training at lower price
points. The new focus is functional training, says Wood—— “training
that relates to everyday activity.”

Special features: The gym’s $30,000 light and sound
system can turn a spinning class into a uniquely entertaining and
energizing experience. Additionally, the gym’s indoor/outdoor pool is
the “place to be” on weekends. There is a cheerful day-care center.

Meet a trainer: Former wrestler Mark Frear is “not a
kid”—— he’s in his 40s—— and his experience shows. He’s “well-versed in
the anatomy of the body,” says Wood, and has an insatiable curiosity
about fitness and health. “If a client is on medication, he’ll do
research to find out how that affects the body,” says Wood. His workout
style is reportedly intense without being intimidating.

Rates: $51-89/month. (Membership can be used to work out at any of Merritt’s nine regional locations.)

MV Fitness Athletic Club

1016 N. Charles St., 410-878-2990

The facilities: The four-year-old gym is located in a
converted Mt. Vernon mansion catty-corner from The Belvedere Hotel.
Inside, there is original marble, hardwood floors, and fixtures, like a
beautiful chandelier in the front room. The bottom floor (the cellar) is
for weight training, the first floor uses the former living room for
cardio, the kitchen for the classes, the dining room for spin class, and
the smoking lounge (!) for Pilates.

Who goes there: Andrea Shelby, who also owns Federal
Hill Fitness, explains that both gyms specifically serve the
neighborhoods they’re in. “Mt. Vernon is the cultural center of the
city,” Shelby says. “So we get people from the symphony, we get art
students, we get the whole gamut.”

What’s hot: Reflective of a larger trend in the
industry, one of the most popular programs is Fit Club. This
group-training program is designed as a weight-loss clinic, where you
train in a small group setting three-times a week for six weeks. “Fit
Club is very results-driven,” Shelby says. “You keep a food journal, we
host seminars, all while you’re working out with one of our trainers.”

Special features: You’d be hard-pressed to find a
prettier gym out there, especially one with more sunlight pouring
through all the rooms. Plus, there are private, locked showers—each
stocked with toiletries paid for by the gym. The spinning bikes face a
giant window overlooking Charles Street.

Meet a trainer: Guy Cragwell has been training
clients for more than five years, and is also a certified nutritionist.
He specializes in achieving weight-loss goals through plyometrics and
functional movements. “He could take a piece of wood and make it into a
workout,” Shelby says.

Rates: $49-69/month; a personal training membership
is $299/month. (MV Fitness members can also use the Federal Hill Fitness
facility.)

Planet Fitness

11989-A Reisterstown Rd., Reisterstown, 410-702-4321 (and 14 other locations)

The facilities: Each location of this no-frills
24-hour franchise encompasses about 20,000 square feet of workout
equipment including, cardio and strength-training machines,
free-weights, a circuit area, tanning beds, and locker rooms. But Planet
Fitness is more notable for what it doesn’t have. In an effort to keep
prices affordable, it eschews cafes, saunas, group fitness classes, and
other optional accoutrements.

Who goes there: “It’s all ages, races, sizes, and shapes,” says Josh Gerber, the marketing director for Planet Fitness’s parent company.

What’s hot: Planet Fitness does not forsake all
comfort. The tanning beds get lots of use and are complimentary
depending on membership level. Relaxing leather massage chairs are
another perk.

Special features: There is a strict no-muscleheads
policy at Planet Fitness. The workout floor is a bona fide “no grunting
zone,” and an alarm will sound if someone slams weights around like a
Mr. Universe contestant.

Meet a trainer: Planet Fitness doesn’t have personal trainers, but they do have fitness staffers at each gym to offer explanation or guidance.

Rates: Standard membership is $10/month, with a $29 start-up fee.

PRO Fit Rx

15 W. Aylesbury Rd., Timonium, 410-828-7948

The facilities: New gym in a big commercial space
that has room after room of all the latest hardware, from cardio
machines, strength-building equipment, and weights to the usual parade
of flat-screen TVs. There are also group sessions, including Zumba,
kick-boxing, and boot-camp classes, as well as personal trainers.
Suffering from a touch of gym-germ-phobia? Then you’ll appreciate the
hygienic attractions of a spotless new locker and shower area.

Who goes there: This would be a good choice for
people who know exactly what they want out of a gym and don’t want to
pay higher fees for things they don’t want: The membership fees follow
the a là carte model, so you only pay for what you use.

What’s hot: Beginning this month, those who just want to take a lot of classes can pay a minimal fee to drop in on any class they like.

Special features: This place is truly for the person
who doesn’t want to be held hostage by their club: You pay month to
month, and several memberships require no contract.

Meet a trainer: “We pride ourselves on hiring
personal trainers who not only have years of experience, but hold the
most extensive certification in the personal- training industry,” says
co-owner Diane Baklor.

Rates: $30-60/month.

Spunk Fitness

1433 York Rd., Lutherville, 410-828-4653

The facilities: The place doesn’t look like much
from the outside, being on the backside of the oh-so-’80s shopping plaza
at York and Seminary, but the location (right off the Beltway) is easy
for the greater-Towson area, and it offers a good range of cardio and
strength equipment, plus personal and group training.

Who goes there: Sure, over in the weight area, it’s
mostly young males strutting their stuff, but we’re not talking about
the Mr. Universe type. (In fact, there’s a sign that says, “No grunting
or dropping of weights.”) More popular is the cardio side, with rows of
the latest high-tech treadmills and 50-inch flat screens, where you’ll
find folks ages 16 to 65, with a good number of professional types who
look like they came at midday to get a break from their office cubicles
(and who appreciate the full lockers and steam rooms).

What’s hot: There’s a reason that the Lutherville
and Ellicott City branches of this three-state chain have more than
20,000 members—— and we think it’s probably a price that’s hard to beat.

Special features: If you need to work out your frustrations at 3 a.m., this is the place for you: It’s open 24 hours on weekdays.

Meet a trainer: Spunks’s most popular trainer is
probably Katie Ferris, 25, who was pursuing a master’s in biology at
Towson University when she caught the fitness bug. Says Ferris: “I do
both basic training and conditioning with a wide range of clients, some
who want low-intensity programs, others, who might be training for
competition, high intensity” including rehab for clients who are
recovering from an illness or injury.

Rates: About $10-20/month.

Under Armour Combine Training Center

1010 Hull St., 410-752-0100

The facilities: Located on Under Armour’s Tide Point
campus, the Combine Training Center (CTC) is the 11,000-square-foot
brainchild of FX Studios and Under Armour. The space is very open with
hardwood floors and fire-engine red walls, with windows overlooking Tide
Point’s promenade and the harbor. There are rooms for cardio, strength
training, weight lifting, and various open spaces for classes and
suspension training.

Who goes there: The clientele is about 70 percent
Under Amour employees, but the facility has been available to the public
since it opened two years ago. “Your typical Under Armour employee is
pretty type A, competitive, and athletic,” says Nate Costa, trainer and
owner of FX Studios. “That energy inspires everyone.” The CTC has also
hosted professional athletes like Tom Brady, Brandon Jennings, and
Lindsey Vonn.

What’s hot: Besides the TRX suspension training and a
hardcore combine program, the CTC offers barre classes, which is the
core training class done at a ballet bar that is popular in bigger
cities and just starting to be introduced here. “It has the flow of a
yoga class, but you’re really working your muscles with various tension
exercises,” says Costa.

Special features: Many of the CTC’s classes are held
outside on the promenade so members can exercise while overlooking the
harbor and city skyline. Additionally, the gym has a “challenge wall,”
where members can record their best times, weight amounts, and distances
to try to best other members. “This is a really good motivational
tool,” says Costa. He also says that the CTC’s more than 600 members
feel like a community, as most of them come from Tide Point offices
(like Advertising.com and GKV) and already know each other.

Meet a trainer: Chris Sams is “probably the most
creative trainer we have,” says Costa. Sams has a large breadth of
expertise as he specializes in everything from marathon training to
pre/post-natal exercise. With more than seven years of experience, Sams
understands how to adapt exercise routines to fit any member. “Chris is
constantly challenging your body,” says Costa. “He’s really good at
keeping it fresh.”

Rates: $50/month. (Under Armour employees included.)

Weinberg Family Center Y

900 W. 33rd St., 410-889-9622

The facilities: The sprawling complex on the site of
the old Memorial Stadium incorporates a large fitness center with
dozens of cardio and Nautilus machines and free weights, an indoor pool,
a full-length basketball court, rooms for classes, a sports field with
stands, an early childhood learning center, a rock-climbing wall, the
massive playground, and locker rooms with dry saunas.

Who goes there: Conveniently located near lots of
North Baltimore neighborhoods, the Y draws young professionals for the
cardio equipment, rock wall, and adult basketball leagues; families for
the child learning center, youth leagues, and playground; and retirees
for its Silver Sneakers, Silver Splash, and Aqua Arthritis classes.

What’s hot: Zumba and boot-camp classes are among
the most popular, while the enormous open-to-the-public playground——
which has miniature versions of Baltimore landmarks like the Bromo
Seltzer Tower and the Hippodrome—— draws visitors from all over the
region.

Special features: Built on the site of Memorial
Stadium, the Y pays tribute to the Baltimore Orioles and Colts greats
who gained glory there. The Ring of Honor in the large gymnasium,
features large banners celebrating Earl Weaver, Brooks Robinson, Lenny
Moore, Art Donovan, Frank Robinson, and several others.

Meet a trainer: Fitness director Craig Collins has a
degree in cardiac rehab and works both with elderly and rehabilitating
clients, as well as runners and amateur athletes on bio-mechanics and
performance enhancement.

Rates: $49/month for adults; $68-78/month for families.

With its wicker baskets, comfy couches, and piles of pine cones, Donna Hamilton’s Dickeysville home is warm, homey, and casual—a real reflection of the WBAL-TV anchor herself. “I can’t afford ostentatious,” she says with a laugh.

In December 2010, when Hamilton got ready to renovate her 1954 kitchen (think faux brick linoleum, Formica cabinets, floral wallpaper), she wanted to modernize, but she also tried to stay true to the legacy of the cottage-style house. “I wanted the kitchen to feel calm and contemporary,” says Hamilton. “Something soothing—just a pleasant place to spend time.”

Mission accomplished. The new space is a study in contrasts: Warm maple cabinetry is a counterpoint to cool surfaces (granite countertops and white subway tiles); vintage accessories (a corner cabinet, a collection of antique print pattern blocks) offset state-of–the-art, stainless-steel appliances (Bosch dishwasher, Jenn-Air oven); and country-inspired kitchenware keeps company with minimalist modern lighting. “This is not a showcase kitchen,” says Hamilton. “It’s a pretty kitchen, but it doesn’t have the best of everything, and I didn’t need anyone to design it. I’d been thinking about it for 30 freakin’ years!”

Even before the picture-perfect renovation, Hamilton’s kitchen has always been the heart of the home she shares with her husband, David, and where her children, Cada and Jesse—now grown and gone—stop by for home-cooked meals. “I love cooking because it’s a very sane and necessary activity,” says Hamilton, whose specialties include paella and shrimp and grits. “There’s a reason you cook. There are a lot of things we do in our job or the world that are not all that necessary, and they are not all that sane, but cooking is a thing with a purpose.”

Growing up in Birmingham, AL, Hamilton soon found herself in the family kitchen. “I really started to cook when my mom went back to work as my older sister went to college,” explains Hamilton, the middle child of three girls. “As the next oldest child, it was my responsibility to get dinner started.” Her mother, Mary Grace, was a simple Southern cook, whose specialties included fried okra, squash casserole, and cornbread. “My mother wasn’t a fancy cook,” says Hamilton. “But she was a good cook who never followed a recipe—and I’m a little like that. I like to cook in a more freewheeling way.”

Out of the kitchen, Hamilton has been equally unpredictable. “Everything that has happened to me has just come to me. None of it was planned,” she says. On a lark, after a brief modeling stint, Hamilton auditioned for a long-running Birmingham TV program, The Tom York Morning Show, in the late ’70s. “I don’t even know where I got the courage,” she says. “When I was growing up, it was pretty is as pretty does.”

Initially, Hamilton didn’t get the job, but went to work for the show’s programming director, eventually becoming York’s co-host. She moved to Baltimore in 1981 to host Evening Magazine, a local news and entertainment show. When the program ended in 1990, she appeared on The Learning Channel’s Great Country Inns. “I was looking for other ways to make money,” says Hamilton, “and decided to do a cookbook—Donna Hamilton’s Gracious Country Inns and Favorite Recipes—in conjunction with the show.”

Both in the kitchen and behind the anchor desk, Hamilton has found her calling. “I love what I do,” she says, “and I guess journalism is a lot like cooking. A little bit of this and a little bit of that goes for both. When you put together a story, you have all these pictures and all these sound bites, and you have to make it into a recipe or a story. You have to start and finish it. It’s making something from nothing.”

This article was originally published in December 2011.

As if on cue at the sound of a knock, Molly Shattuck’s children appear at the front door of the palatial Roland Park 1926 brick home she shares with her husband, Mayo Shattuck III, chairman, president, and CEO of Constellation Energy.

“Hi, I’m Spencer,” says their 13-year-old son, greeting a visitor with his bright smile. “And I’m Lillian,” says her 8-year-old daughter, wearing a pink-and-green Lilly Pulitzer sheath.

“This is Lizzie Mae,” says Spencer, introducing the family Maltipoo. And within moments, the middle son, Wyatt, 10, emerges, and offers a handshake befitting the son of a Fortune 500 CEO. Then, with another touch of perfect stage timing, Shattuck herself, a diminutive dynamo with the most boffo body in Baltimore, stands bare foot in the dramatic brick-red foyer in a form-fitting periwinkle dress. “Hi, I’m Molly,” she says simply.

With her luggage ready to roll out the front door as the family prepares to leave within hours for the San Francisco wedding of Mayo’s oldest son (from his first marriage), Shattuck herself is on a roll these days. She’s juggling a new exercise DVD (in which she and her kids demonstrate waist twists and proper jump-rope technique) called The Vibrant Living Workout, as well as an eponymous website (mollyshattuck.com) offering fitness and nutrition tips, recipes, and thoughts on volunteer work.

“The reason I created ‘Vibrant Living’ is because, for years, people would say, ‘What is it you do?'” says the 5-foot, 4-inch, 110-pound Molly, who’s now curled up on a pink and white chair in her cheery sunroom, a blue Molly Shattuck-brand, BPA-free water bottle at her side.

“What’s the secret? I tell people you have to be well hydrated—I don’t drink coffee, tea, or soda,” she says. “You have to move your body every day and eat right, but deprivation is not realistic. You have to have a balance of vegetables, proteins, and carbohydrates.”

Though she loves being active, Shattuck is a homebody at heart. “I love to be home,” she says. “I love to cook, I love to bake, I love to do crafts, and I’d much rather have a dinner party at home than go to a restaurant.”

With her storybook home—okay, make that a storybook, five-bedroom, 5.5-bathroom manse with a pool and new exercise room—three kids straight out of central casting (all of whom profess to eat their vegetables!), a milestone career as the oldest cheerleader in NFL history (at the ripe old age of 38), a one-episode stint on Fox’s Secret Millionaire, and a husband who happens to be one of the wealthiest men in Baltimore (reported compensation of $15.7 million in 2010, according to The Sun), is it any wonder that everyone wants in on the secrets of the former homecoming queen?

Though she is blonde and beautiful, the real secret behind Molly Shattuck (a ringer for actress Kristin Chenoweth) is that she’s not just another pretty face. Growing up in a modest house down the road from her grandparents’ farm in Kittanning, PA, she was far from being born with a silver spoon in her mouth. In fact, her parents, married at 18 and 19, probably didn’t even own one. “It was nothing fancy,” she says, laughing.

“My parents instilled the idea of hard work in us,” says the now-44-year-old Shattuck, who was the middle child of three girls. “My mother had a beauty shop for 40 years—it was like Steel Magnolias. I literally grew up in the beauty shop and played with ‘curlies’—that’s what I called curlers. When I was a newborn baby, my mom went back to work a week later. I grew up running the register at my Dad’s gas station and worked in my aunt and uncle’s restaurant as a waitress.”

Shattuck’s childhood was a happy and uncomplicated one. “We rode our bikes every day,” says Shattuck. “We played in the creek.” And she has always loved to exercise. “We couldn’t afford dance lessons,” she recalls, “but I taught myself to tap and, in grade school, because tennis and cheerleading were the only options for girls, I was a cheerleader.”

By high school, Shattuck had become captain of the cheerleading squad, but even more life-altering, while on a trip to the Grand Canyon in her senior year, she made a vow to herself that she still honors every year—she wrote a bucket list. “I came up with the idea of making a list of 10 things I wanted to do with my life,” says Shattuck, “and I still have that list and keep a list to this day. It’s like my road map.” Among her goals: “I wanted to get married and have a family” (she married Mayo in 1997 and gave birth to Spencer the following year); “I wanted to go to college” (she attended Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she majored in marketing and business administration); “I wanted to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro” (she completed her ascent in October 2007); “I wanted to be a Dallas Cowboy’s cheerleader” (she made the Ravens’ team in 2005—close enough).

“I had been pregnant or nursing, pregnant or nursing,” says Shattuck. “Right after I stopped nursing Lillian, I said, ‘I want to be a Ravens cheerleader.'” When Shattuck first heard about the auditions, she was in Florida. “Mayo called me and said, ‘The auditions are on Saturday.’ I flew back, but I needed photos, and I didn’t even own a bikini. Mayo took pictures of me in a bra and underwear. I was literally standing in our bathroom for them.”

After five cuts, Shattuck (she used the name “Molly S.” to audition) got her pom poms the old-fashioned way: by earning them. “I didn’t want to make it because of his influence,” says Shattuck. “I wanted to make it legitimately.”

Though she still coaches part-time, ultimately, she hung up her uniform for more time with her moppets. “There’s nothing better than looking out at 70,000 fans,” says Shattuck, “but it was an easy decision. My kids were 4, 6, and 8 at the time, and I needed to be there for them.”

Relics of Shattuck’s cheerleading glory days are still on view in her home: Until recently, the walls of Mayo’s first-floor bar area were adorned with publicity shots framed from the pages of Sports Illustrated, USA Today, and People. Years ago, when the bar was being built, Shattuck surprised her husband by having glass-topped drawers made to exhibit his collection of golf balls. “Mayo likes to golf,” says Shattuck. “He collects golf balls from every course he has ever played—from Augusta to Pebble Beach—and I had these drawers made to display them. He was thrilled when he saw them.”

The Shattuck home is a study in contrasts. A Lalique vase given as a weding present is displayed in the living room near her children’s teething rattles; precious oil paintings and heavy gold damask curtains are hung next to Wyatt’s Jackson Pollack-style abstract oil paintings in the music room; in the living room, a glass case displays a pair of hand-painted sand dollars from the couple’s wedding on Maine’s Chebeague Island.

Throughout the space, family heirlooms from both sides are also added to the mix. Shattuck’s beloved grandparents handed-down porcelain dishes are on display in the dining room, and an inherited settee is perched on the upstairs landing in the hallway. Heirlooms from Mayo’s childhood (spent in tony Hinghan and Cohasset, Massachusetts) are also there, including a coffee table and side tables.

Despite the prevalence of priceless antiques and formal furniture, no room is off limits to the Shattuck brood (“We sit everywhere,” offers Spencer), and, nearly every room is peppered with charitable projects and handmade goods, from cookies for a homeless shelter on the kitchen counter to handmade welcome bags for Mayo’s son’s wedding on the foyer floor.

The heart of the home is the charming, surprisingly old-fashioned kitchen that has undergone a few facelifts. “We renovated when we first moved in 1997,” recounts Molly, “and then nine years ago, we did an expansion so that we could all fit around the kitchen table. At the same time, we converted the garage into a family room. We really spend all of our time in these rooms.”

During the course of the kitchen updates, many elements of the old kitchen were retained, including the original, white flat-front cabinets. “The quality of the cabinets is better than anything you could get today,” says Shattuck. “And I love the character of the old. When we bought this, it wasn’t ‘cool’ to buy these old houses, but I love their charm. We wanted to preserve what we could. We love the history of the house.”

Shattuck and her husband tend to agree in their approach to decorating. “Our taste is so similar,” she says. “He’ll be in a store and say, ‘I saw this great piece,’ and I will have already taken a picture of it. I’ll say, ‘You mean this?'”

Shattuck, who met her husband as a marketing associate when she literally bumped into him at Alex. Brown & Sons while walking backwards out of a colleague’s office, fills her hours with charity work and volunteers with her children, whether building hoop houses at Real Food Farm or making sandwiches for local soup kitchens. One of her more recent projects: orchestrating a partnership between United Way of Central Maryland and Baltimore City and environs to focus on making affordable, fresh food available to underserved communities in Baltimore.

“It’s about raising awareness,” says Shattuck, who is donating part of the proceeds from her fitness video to the project. “There’s nothing more basic than healthy food, and it’s what people aren’t putting into their bodies that is making them sick.”

Though Shattuck could certainly be living a life of idle luxury, she instead contributes to the community nearly every waking hour, not just with money, but with her time, too. She and Mayo are co-chairs of the United Way of Central Maryland. She’s a member of the Board of Overseers at the Baltimore School for the Arts and is on the national advisory board for the The Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, to name just a couple of causes. In fact, her extensive involvement has earned her several awards for her charitable work.

Shattuck sees volunteer work as something that should be an integral part of raising a family. “You have to teach your kids to volunteer at a young age and make it part of their lives,” she believes. “It teaches them to be nice to everyone. It teaches them values in a real sense and not just the words.”

It’s a lesson the down-to-earth Shattuck learned firsthand from her own childhood. “I never would have dreamed any of this,” says Shattuck standing next to an exquisite inlaid buffet in the dining room. “Things make people temporarily happy, but it’s really all about who you are and how you live your life and doing things with a purpose.”

Frank Arthur doesn’t just tell stories—he acts them out. Between bites of a Reuben at an Arbutus diner, Arthur recalls creeping past the Pepsi building on a summer night in 1986 with Scrappy G, One Way, and a few other graffiti writers in tow. An assortment of construction equipment and trucks concealed them from cars whizzing past on I-83. The expressway was being widened, and Arthur and his crew had determined that an enormous pile of metal support beams would be their next urban canvas.

“We wrote our butts off,” recalls Arthur.

“All of a sudden, one of the guys hollered, ‘Yo!'” Arthur hollers it, too, startling a few diners across the room. “Sorry about that,” he says, turning in their direction with a sheepish smile. He continues at (pretty much) the same volume but more excitedly.

“Then, I saw these high beams and crouched behind a truck,” he says, going into a crouch next to the booth. “Four cop cars flew past me and started chasing my friends, so I ran across the highway”—he stands and runs in place—”and see that the cops had them bent over a car. I felt like I had to do something, so I figured I’d create a diversion, and maybe they could get away.

“Me being an idiot, I grabbed four or five big rocks and threw them at the cop cars. Bop! Bop! Bop! Bop! The cops jumped down and thought someone was shooting at them. They called in ‘shots fired’ on the radio, and, as I jumped over one of those Jersey walls, a helicopter came out of nowhere and was right on me, so I ran under the highway near the Jones Falls.”

Arthur slides back into the booth and continues eating his sandwich. “I felt like Harrison Ford in The Fugitive,” he says. “I was climbing and jumping off of things, and, at one point, I had to stop. My body was going into convulsions, and it was scary, a total adrenaline rush. I was shaken.”

He did, though, manage to get away—by plunging into the Jones Falls and wading his way toward Druid Hill Avenue—that’s how his signature tag originated, and “Shaken” started appearing all over the city. By the late-1980s/early-1990s, it was everywhere, and Arthur was Baltimore’s most prolific—and most wanted—street artist, drawing the ire of property owners, community associations, and law enforcement.

If you drove the Jones Falls Expressway, the Beltway, or I-97; rode the subway, Light Rail, or Amtrak; or walked along Pratt or Lombard Streets, you saw his work. His distinctive tags and large, colorful pieces of interlocking letters were emblazoned on warehouses, exit ramps, overpasses, water towers, tunnels, and even the Mechanic Theatre and National Aquarium. By his own estimate, he completed thousands of pieces.

It was a compulsion, an addiction stronger than any drug, he says. “If you put sex, drugs, and rock and roll into one pill and called it graffiti, I ate that pill,” says Arthur. “Then, I spent years painting at all hours of the night and running from the police.”

Although he got away that night in 1986, he notes ruefully, “Sometimes, I didn’t get away, and I got in a lot of trouble.”

Over the years, the Pigtown native certainly paid a steep price for his graffiti habit. Although Arthur credits graffiti with saving him from the hardscrabble streets of Southwest Baltimore, it also landed him in jail, facilitated a long cycle of drug abuse and criminal hijinks, and nearly killed him.

But for the first time in years, he’s sober and not caught up in the criminal justice system. Now 43, he’s trying to go straight, raise a family, and get an education. He even paints on canvasses now instead of walls.

Perhaps even more surprisingly, he’s also being celebrated for the same artwork that got him in so much trouble. Arthur’s work appears in two recent coffee table books, The History of American Graffiti and Tools of Criminal Mischief, and he flew to Los Angeles in April for the opening of the much-ballyhooed Art in the Streets exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, where he signed books in the gift shop for three-and-a-half hours.

“Everyday, I pinch myself, because I can’t believe everything that’s happened,” he says. “I open my eyes in the morning, look around the room, and think, ‘I can’t believe I’m alive.'”

Arthur lives at the Beltway Motel where Washington Boulevard crosses 695. It’s a small, two-room apartment: living room, bedroom, with small bath and tiny kitchen. Album covers of classic-rock records by the likes of Led Zeppelin and Boston line the wall behind the sofa, along with a Star Wars poster and a few Marvel comic-book covers. A half-dozen sketchbooks sit on a coffee table, with a stack of books—including 8,789 Words of Wisdom and a dog-eared copy of The Narcotics Anonymous Blue Book, which Arthur says he reads “constantly.”

Arthur doesn’t own a cell phone or car and says he’s grateful to have a bus pass, which gets him to classes at Catonsville Community College and to his girlfriend’s house. A social-services check gives him enough money to cover expenses and buy some art supplies—stretched canvases, pens and markers, brushes, and tubes of acrylic paints are stacked neatly around the room.

“Living here, I don’t bother anybody,” he says. “I come and go and do my artwork. That’s it. In fact, that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”

Growing up, he wasn’t encouraged to pursue art. “Everybody I knew had a hustle, and alcohol and drugs ran rampant,” he says. “If you didn’t do drugs, people looked at you like you had seven eyes and fifteen lips. It was like, ‘Stay back. You don’t do drugs.’ That was ingrained in me all my life.”

Although Arthur describes his family as “very dysfunctional,” he was particularly close to his father, who took him to the nearby B&O Railroad Museum and to movies at the Patterson and the Hollywood theaters. His father also bought him his first can of spray paint in 1984, after Arthur expressed an interest in graffiti. He even kept watch as Arthur wrote his first tags in a tunnel near the rail museum, figuring graffiti would be a passing fad like break-dancing and skateboarding had been for his 15-year-old son. “But he was wrong,” says Arthur. “It consumed me.”

Arthur had already noticed graffiti tags along Pratt Street and started photographing them with a cheap camera. “It was totally mysterious,” he recalls. “It fascinated me, and I wondered why these guys were going around writing their names.”

He explored other parts of the city and discovered more tags, as well as large, colorful pieces by the likes of Revolt and Dillinger emblazoned on walls. “Those big pieces really blew my mind,” he recalls, “and after seeing them, I knew I’d do graffiti for the rest of my life. I also knew I needed to get around town more.”

Which is how Arthur became the least likely member of the Southwestern High lacrosse team.

Arthur played lacrosse, so he could scout locations and check out graffiti in other neighborhoods. “Heading to games on the bus, I’d look for the best walls and map out spots I wanted to hit,” he says.

During a game at Northwestern, a massive wall within eyeshot of the playing field caught his attention. “All I could concentrate on was that wall, which was painted with a lot of nice graffiti,” says Arthur. “The coach was yelling, ‘Frank! Frank!’ The ball was whizzing past me, but I didn’t care. I was mesmerized by that wall.”

Arthur got kicked out of school for fighting in 1985. By that time, he was shoplifting paint and markers, smoking pot, and drinking. He got booted from his mother’s house for writing graffiti and went to live with his grandmother, who turned him out after finding cans of spray paint hidden in her laundry-detergent pail. Homeless, Arthur stole sheets off of clotheslines and slept in freight trains when he didn’t have anywhere else to go.

He also frequented Jules’ Loft, an underground club at the corner of Eutaw and Mulberry streets that booked hardcore bands and attracted skate punks and graffiti writers. One night, Arthur stood transfixed as legendary artist Cuba executed a large piece on one of the club’s walls. “It was basically a step-by-step graffiti lesson,” says Arthur. “‘Here’s the outline. Here’s the filler. Do the other outline. Clean up that outline.’ It was like watching Bob Ross, [host of The Joy of Painting] on PBS. It made complete sense to me.”

Over time, Arthur helped develop a lettering style that’s unique to Baltimore. In The History of American Graffiti, it’s described as “starting small and flaring out left to right, staying straight along the bottom, and finishing with a crazy flourish.”

“Each city has its own style,” says Arthur. “I’ll see these panel trucks from out of town that have been written on, and I’ll instantly say to myself, ‘That’s Philly. That’s New York. That’s Miami.'”

He opens old sketchbooks and flips past rough pencil drawings that eventually evolve into intricate outlines of interlocking letters and finally full-color sketches. There are hundreds of them. “This is Baltimore,” says Arthur. “We’re notorious for our hand styles, which are unique. When people worldwide see that style, they know, ‘Oh my god, that’s Baltimore.’ You can spot it immediately, because it’s distinctive. It’s like Name That Tune. You hear the first three notes of The Beatles, and you know it’s The Beatles. Seeing the Baltimore style is like that. You can identify it right away.”

But it’s fleeting, because graffiti, by its very nature, is so temporary. “Graffiti’s like a sand castle, because it isn’t permanent,” says Arthur. “It gets taken down or painted over, and I’ve lost so many pieces over the years. I’ve risked my freedom and been out there painting my butt off all night, and the very next day, they’ve painted over it.”

But Arthur maintains the impermanence is far outweighed by the adventure and exposure graffiti offers. As he describes it: “It’s three in the morning, the moon’s out, and you’re hearing gunshots—it’s kind of poetic doing artwork like that. You might be painting along the Light Rail, and you’re aware that a normal civilian will never experience the Light Rail between stations. You see things from subway tunnels, water towers, on top of buildings, and under freeway overpasses—things about the city that most people never see, because they just ride along in an air-conditioned car.

“And there’s no middleman when you’re out there painting like that. There’s no gallery involved, and you’re not begging anyone to accept you. When you’re out there on those trains and along those highways, you’re speaking to everybody. On a highway, thousands of people will see your work between seven and ten in the morning. You don’t have to put an ad in the paper or go around convincing people to see your art—you’re just out there.”

Arthur became especially fond of painting freight trains. He was fascinated by the notion that something he created could end up practically anywhere. “Once you do a train, it rolls, and it might go all the way to California,” he notes. “You will never see that train again, but that’s not important. What’s important is that a little piece of you escapes the quicksand of life in the ‘hood.”

Arthur escaped that life, barely. But it’s still a daily struggle. At noon, it’s nearly time for him to visit the drug counselor he’s been seeing for the past few years, a woman he credits with saving his life. Two years ago, she diagnosed him with bipolar disorder and explained that he’d been using drugs and alcohol to medicate himself.

By that time, Arthur had been in and out of jail for two decades. His brushes with the law were initially graffiti related, and, according to Arthur, began in 1988 when he got nabbed for painting 13 city subway trains. He was 20 years old and got sent to Hagerstown, a medium-security prison.

He got out a year later and continued writing graffiti with even greater determination.

By then, he was Public Enemy Number One to community groups like the Union Square Association whose members saw him as a vandal and nothing more. The Shaken tag was seemingly everywhere, so when Arthur got busted again, it made the papers, and the Union Square Association’s president told The Sun that she and her neighbors were “delighted, absolutely ecstatic.”

After another stint in Hagerstown, Arthur spiraled out of control, caught in what he calls “the modern day black plague of heroin and crack.” He dealt drugs, shoplifted, and battled addiction for 13 years, until a court finally ordered him to see his current counselor. “I wanted to change, because I knew I was gonna die,” says Arthur, who by then also had a young son, three-year-old Krylon (named after a brand of spray paint), to consider.

He says the counselor, who asked to not be identified in this article, not only diagnosed the bipolar disorder and prescribed medication, she also taught him morals and how to do the right thing. She paged through his sketchbooks and encouraged him to paint, on canvasses and walls that are legal. And she challenged him to get sober for a year. “She said, ‘You have a lot of talent and drive,'” recalls Arthur, “‘and if you just stop doing drugs for one year, there’s no telling what could happen.'”

Arthur’s been sober for more than 18 months. He regularly attends Narcotics Anonymous meetings and takes art classes, like Color Theory, at Community College of Baltimore, Catonsville. “As a graffiti artist, I thought I was Mr. Color, but I had no idea,” he says. He admits to being intimidated by all the technology students use these days, but he hopes to get past that and someday take classes at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).

On weekends, he sees Krylon and often finds himself, lying awake, watching his son sleep. “I’ll have to snap a rubber band against my arm to see if this is actually happening to me,” he says. “Then, I’ll get him up and make breakfast, and he’ll start singing Beatles songs. I’ll hear him in the other room singing ‘Magical Mystery Tour,’ and I’ll start tearing up.” Arthur tears up just talking about it.

He also has a two-year-old boy, Lykaios, with his current girlfriend, and likes taking the kids to Patapsco State Park whenever he can. “Kids just want your time,” says Arthur, “and nothing touches doing the father thing. It gave me a completely different perspective, by making me think of someone other than myself. It also made me try harder.”

He’s been beating the pavement, trying to catch a break as an artist. He paints bright and bold acrylics on canvas, mostly pop culture stuff like animated Beatles figures and Transformers characters with an occasional graffiti-inspired piece in the mix. When told they bring to mind Pop artists like Lichtenstein and Warhol, Arthur excitedly grabs a nearby sketchbook and turns to drawings of National Bohemian beer cans that were inspired by Warhol’s soup cans. He hopes to complete a series of Natty Boh paintings, as part of a larger series of iconic Baltimore images.

He hasn’t approached many galleries, opting instead for less traditional outlets like Body Mod, a tattoo parlor in Annapolis Mall; Pedal Pushers, a Severna Park bike shop; and Trax On Wax, a Catonsville record store. He also paints legal walls as opportunities arise and recently traveled to Braddock, PA, near Pittsburgh, where the mayor invited dozens of graffiti artists to paint an abandoned building as part of a neighborhood revitalization effort.

It’s emblematic of a shift in public opinion with regard to graffiti and whether it’s legitimate art or not. The debate goes on, but the Art in the Streets exhibit in Los Angeles certainly helped put the stamp of art-world approval on graffiti and street art. It’s been leaning in that direction for years, thanks to high-profile work by the likes of Shepard Fairey, who famously created the Obama “Hope” poster, and Banksy, who directed the acclaimed documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop.

“That show was a whirlwind of respect,” says Arthur, who was blown away by the reception he got. “A lot of people I met had the American Graffiti book open to the Baltimore section. Some people told me, ‘I’ve been following your work since the 1990s.’ I had no idea.”

Roger Gastman, who co-wrote the American Graffiti book and co-curated the L.A. show, calls Arthur “an icon of Baltimore graffiti.”

“Frank is more committed to his art than pretty much anyone I’ve ever met,” says Gastman, who’s worked on projects with both Fairey and Banksy.

Jeff Vespa, who used to write graffiti with Arthur, agrees. Vespa, who is now a celebrity photographer and editor-at-large for Life magazine, says that his old friend is extraordinarily dedicated. “In my business, I meet a lot of creative and motivated people,” says Vespa. “But I’ve never met anyone as motivated as Frank.”

Vespa, who’s based in Los Angeles, caught up with Arthur during his visit to the city. “It was good to seem him calmed down and focused,” he says. “It’s especially satisfying, because now people really respect what he does. People at the museum were freaking out about it and asking for his autograph, and it was great seeing him in that world. He should have many years ahead of him making art, if he can just keep doing the right thing.”

On his way to meet his drug counselor, Arthur stops at the Corner Florist in Lansdowne. He comes here to get her a bouquet, which always includes a sunflower, whenever he has an extra $10. “It’s not much,” he says, “but she fought a battle with me and pulled me from the dark side.”

On the way inside, he notices someone has tagged the shop’s wall—an indecipherable black scrawl on the white siding—and winces. It’s obvious he doesn’t approve. Arthur mentions the tag to the storeowner, a middle-aged woman with a no-nonsense demeanor. “It’s a shame what they did out there,” he says. “I’m an artist, and maybe I could help you out by painting some big, colorful flowers over it. I could really make that wall look great.”

The owner says she’ll consider it, but she’ll need approval from the neighborhood association. “I understand all about neighborhood associations,” Arthur tells her, with a grin.

Apparently, it’s not the first time the wall has been tagged. “It seems like these graffiti writers have some sort of need to do this,” she says. “It’s like it’s their life or something.”

“I know,” says Arthur. “I used to be one of those guys.”

He reaches across the counter for his flowers and leaves a $10 bill on the counter. “But I’m under new management now,” he says, heading toward the door, “and I’d be happy to help you out.”

Once outside, he stops abruptly and peers intently at the bouquet he’s holding. “Wow,” he says. “Look at the color of that sunflower.”

Sixteen-year-old Anna Hiser has been planning her costume for this month’s Otakon since last October. It’s only her second time attending the annual Japanese anime (or animation) conference, but the rising senior at Notre Dame Preparatory School has already become fully immersed in the Otaku culture.

Anna fell in love with manga (Japanese comics) five years ago, when her neighbor loaned her one of his books. Last year, she attended her first conference and was immediately hooked. She felt, for the first time, like she was surrounded by thousands of people who simply got her.

“The very idea of Otakon is that there is no judgment at all,” Anna explains. “You can show up in the most crazy, bizarre outfit and you would get a round of applause. It’s just great energy, and I have never met one unpleasant or unfriendly person there. The craziness just comes out of the walls!”

Costumes, or “cosplay,” are a major part of the conference. The main goal is to be able to enter into the character’s world and actually become that character for a weekend. Fellow conference goers take pictures, ask for autographs, and even call the attendee by the character’s proper name. This year, Anna has decided to dress as “Hungary” from the manga Hetalia Axis Powers. Her costume will consist of a white apron, a bow tie, an olive green dress, and a white kerchief fashioned into a hat.

Since much of her costume is homemade, Anna relies on her mother, architect Helen Hiser, for trips to fabric and craft stores. This resulted in an inevitable crash course in anime/manga for Helen. And while some parents might be freaked out by the outrageous and elaborate nature of the costumes, Helen is impressed by her daughter and her Otakon friends.

“Although there are a few [costumes] that aren’t especially appropriate, the vast majority are amazing,” she says. “They’re very creative; obviously, the wearers put a great deal of thought and work into them.”

Anna’s father, Fred, also an architect, echoes his wife’s sentiments: “The first time I saw Anna in her Otakon costume, I was very excited for her because I know that it is something that brings her great joy, and that she is having a lot of fun.”

Lisa and Michael Martin have also kept their hearts and minds open when it comes to their son Luke’s passion for all things anime. In fact, they took him to his first Otakon convention seven years ago, when he was just 10. When they were kids, they say, they were more into competitive sports and less into comic books and Star-Trek-convention-type stuff (which they see as the Otakon of their time). However, they have embraced the Otaku culture, for Luke’s sake.

“The first year was a little scary because I have never seen anything else like it—ever,” Lisa recalls. “My husband at first was like, ‘I don’t know.’ It was definitely a whole new world for us. But this will be his seventh year going, and it is nothing like you would expect. It is so much more about people expressing their creativity and artistic side.”

What’s more, the Martins are convinced that this is no mere phase for Luke, who will be a senior next year at Loyola Blakefield. He’s working hard on turning his passion into a career. This summer, he is taking a three-credit course at MICA in animation and hopes to build a future in the art and design world.

“It is one of the top things I look forward to out of the year,” Luke enthuses of Otakon. “It is three days of absolute paradise. I know of 20 or 30 other [kids] that would say the exact same thing.”

Anyone who has been around the Inner Harbor on the last weekend in July has already experienced the Otakon conference in some way. Numerous teens roam the streets, dressed up as unrecognizable (and sometimes scary) animated characters—as throngs of people photograph them. It is not uncommon to see swords, tails, 10-inch platform shoes, striped tights, and even stilts.

Baltimore hosts one of the largest Japanese anime/manga conventions in the country. And while the Otakon community is still small enough to remain shrouded in mystery, it’s large enough to attract 26,000 people every year and generate $15.3 million for Baltimore City businesses. (And according to Otakon officials, it’s not just kids who attend; the conference attracts enthusiasts ranging in age from 10 to 65 years old.)

Last year alone, 4,575 hotel rooms were booked for the Otakon weekend. All three days are jam-packed with concerts, karaoke, art galleries, video game rooms, panels with guest speakers on Japanese culture, and live action role playing (LARP) activities.

Luke’s friend Nick Anstett, also an incoming senior at Loyola Blakefield, attended his first Otakon convention last year. He dressed, somewhat conventionally, as Peter Parker from the Spiderman comic. But this year, he’s really getting into the spirit of things, dressing up as Nyan Cat, a Japanese Internet sensation with a pink coat and a rainbow tail.

“You are more a part of the community when you dress up,” he explains. “It is so neat to be a part of the experience.”

Nick’s father, Frank Anstett, takes a little credit for his son’s involvement in the anime community.

“I am maybe guilty of getting Nick started in it with my interest in ’50s and ’60s sci-fi movies,” he admits. “The Trekkie stuff was always centered around one common theme—but this brings out a lot of different expressions and story lines, which definitely fuels creative expression. I live vicariously through Nick and look forward to pictures of what he saw, what he did, and the panel discussions he attended.”

Counselors who focus on adolescent development emphasize that Otakon—and other conferences of its ilk—are a completely normal part of growing up.

“High school is hard,” says Dr. Arachchige Muthukuda, who specializes in children and adolescence at Sheppard Pratt. “The transition is difficult. College is in their head, the pressure from peers. There can be a lot of rejection and [teens] become highly sensitive to finding their own identity. It comes down to a matter of being accepted.”

And Dr. Linda Baker, the psychology chair at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, says that finding a simpatico peer group is almost always a healthy step. “Peers play a vital role in socialization at all periods of development,” she says. “[High school] is the time when children are actively seeking an identity, and their sense of self includes a social self. Adolescents define themselves, in large part, in terms of who their friends are. Children who are not accepted by their peers typically do not fare as well in school and in life as those who are accepted.”

As for Otakon’s over-the-top costumes, Baker says that parents shouldn’t be in the slightest bit alarmed.

“Teens learn important skills as they devote time and effort into creating the costumes,” she notes. “It is important that teens have a chance to find their passion, and to express it, even if that passion is not one that parents can readily appreciate.”

And more and more, the parents of Otakon kids do seem to appreciate the conference, and all its trappings—as long as their children take a few precautions.

For one, “the cell phone is a wonderful thing,” says Helen Hiser. In the past, a kid at such a convention would have no way of communicating with home. Now, if they need help, a ride, some money, even a safety pin to hold up a torn costume, mom and dad are just a speed-dial button away.

Also, there is safety in numbers. Most of these kids go with groups of friends (or make new friends the first time they attend) and, often, the parents become friends with each other. These relationships help ease the trepidation of dropping a child into an unfamiliar world.

“It’s a little unnerving to have your 15-year-old girl going to the convention where there are 26,000 people,” says Helen. “It was definitely a little bit of a leap of faith. But the kids were going to go in a group, and I knew the friends and their parents so there was a level of comfort in that.”

It helped that Anna’s Otakon friends are her “regular friends,” Helen says, the ones she brings home after school. “They are, without exception, smart, funny, highly imaginative, and a joy to have around. Very cool people.”

Ultimately, ghoulish or edgy as it may seem, the Otakon conference really has become something of a family affair. Whereas once popular role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons or Magic: The Gathering were played in locked basements or other “no-parents-allowed” zones, Otakon is out in the open. Families like the Martins, who live in Baltimore County, have gone so far as to reserve a downtown hotel room for the entire span of the event. (This year, Nick will be staying with them.) For out-of-town visitors, the July weekend in Baltimore is like a freaky trip to Walt Disney World.

Whether the parents actually participate in some of the conference events or just use it as an excuse to go sightseeing or shopping in Baltimore, it all speaks to the growing acceptance of the entire genre and lifestyle.

“If you’re a parent that’s worried,” Helen says, “probably the best way to sort of see what Otakon is all about is just to go.”

And Fred Hiser couldn’t be happier that his daughter is part of this eccentric and lively community. “[Anna and her friends] are able to be creative and imaginative through Otakon,” he says. “They read a lot and are really into theater and the arts, and this is just another outlet. Doing something where they aren’t taking drugs or drinking and are accepted by their friends? What more could I ask for?”

Ever since one of the male characters on Sex and the City nonchalantly told Miranda, “maybe he’s just not that into you,” women (and men) the world over have been using the phrase as a mantra for their dating life. The phrase inspired a best-selling book, and now a feature film of the same name—set in Baltimore, no less—comes out this month. Baltimore Coffee & Tea Co. provided props for the film so we thought there would be no better place to host our roundtable discussion. Our singles sat down for a no-holds-barred talk about when you should call, the best ways to communicate (hint: breaking up by text message, never cool), and, ultimately, how you know for sure when your date is just not that into you.

What are some warning signs your date is not into you?

Casey: When they run to the bathroom and never come back. Or the flowers you sent end up back at your door.

[Laughter]

Rachel: What about the set up? You know, where you have a friend call you half-an-hour into a blind date so if it’s going bad, you can say, “oh I have an emergency” and if it’s going well you can just ignore the call.

Casey: Now I’m trying to think, has a woman I’ve been with ever gotten a call in the middle of the date?

Marc: I think if a guy says, “I have to go home early because I have something to do in the morning,” you kind of think maybe he’s not that into you. Only because we will stay up late, even if we have to wake up early, if we really like you. We’ll stay up late for football, so we should stay up late for you.

Jonathan: Yeah, we’ll put stuff off if it’s worth it.

Casey: I usually just flat out tell them [if I’m not into them]. I mean I’m 40, I don’t have a whole lot of time to waste. And I’d expect the same thing from them. Most people are just pretty direct.

And how do you know when they are really into you?

Ron: When people are sincere and they genuinely like spending time with you and you can tell, it’s very natural. It’s not so much about deciding whether to call or not, or whether Tuesday or Wednesday is the night you go out, it’s almost effortless.

Jonathan: Also, little tactile cues, a girl touches your arm a little bit, there is some type of physicality.

Kellie: Body language.

Jonathan: Yeah, exactly. And if a girl starts talking about her family and her friends more, she’s kind of inviting you more into her world.

What is the appropriate time to wait before calling?

Kimberly: I really don’t think much time should pass, you want to keep it fresh.

Marc: You never leave a voicemail—you give them the chance to call back.

Rachel: What? No voicemail?

Marc: Yeah, you’re like, “uh, this is me, I met you yesterday.”

Rachel: But then I’m wondering, “why didn’t he leave me a voicemail? Is he expecting a call back?”

Jonathan: I don’t mind leaving the voicemail initially because it kind of puts the ball in her court. If she doesn’t call back, then you know.

Holly: No contact within a week, that’s my cut off.

Casey: What about if he calls on the eighth day?

Holly: I wouldn’t totally rule it out, but you do really want that call within the first couple of days, you don’t want to wait around.

Ron: What’s too soon for you girls?

Rachel: When you leave the bar that night.

[Laughter]

Casey: What about calling to make sure you made it home?

Kellie: That just happened to me last week actually. I ended the date early because I didn’t feel anything so I didn’t want to waste my time. And then he proceeded to call me three times that night.

The group: No!

Rachel: The worst is when you go out with someone on several dates and then you never hear from them again. I would rather have them say, “I’ve got stuff going on, I’m not ready for a relationship” than just dropping off.

Marc: I think the guy was thinking he was going to get some.

Rachel: Maybe, yeah.

Marc: I have some friends who are just jerks and they act like they’re into you to try and score with you and then they just drop off. I’m not saying I agree with it, it’s very unfair to the women, but it happens.

How many dates before you think it’s appropriate to have sex?

Rachel: Depends on how much I’ve had to drink…kidding!

Jonathan: I think it’s a legitimate question.

Marc: It could go both ways. It can happen quickly and it’s not a good thing, it’s a complicated thing. But then one of my best friends, he and his wife had sex within the first couple days they met, and now they’re married. If you’re really interested in being friends with them first, then you might want to wait.

Jonathan: It’s like not breaking out everything exciting too quickly.

Holly: Well it’s a proven fact that oxytocin, or whatever it’s called, is released more in women than men. The chemical released in your brain during sex is the same as when you fall in love.

Rachel: Depends on the relationship. If things aren’t that great to begin with, then you have sex, probably not a good idea.

Casey: Or it could do a 180!

Ron: If you don’t think it’s really going anywhere, but the sex is great and there’s enough physical attraction, that’s an option.

Holly: It’s a very rare occasion when that works.

Ron: I think what sex can do is it can take things and elevate the emotional level. If you’re interested in having sex with somebody and you have reservations, you just need to talk it out and understand that it gets more emotional.

Casey: You mean you talk to them before you have sex?

[Laughter]

Holly: You at least need to know their name!

Casey: And I wonder why I’m single.

Kellie: I don’t think dating has specific rules.

Holly: That’s what the game is, trying to figure out what the rules are. And seeing if a person has the same rules as you.

How do you feel about communicating via text messages?

Marc: I can’t stand text messages. My girl cousins always text and then you’ll call them, they won’t answer, and they’ll text you back, “what do you want?”

Holly: A simple text could mean a thousand different things. But if you know a person, and you’re really comfortable with them, texting is okay because you understand what’s behind it.

Rachel: You should never do any important conversation via text messages or e-mail. “Thinking of you?” Great. “Running five minutes late?” Fine. “It’s over?” I don’t think so.

[Laughter]

Rachel: I don’t know if men do this, but women read over an e-mail or text and think, “Well, what did he mean by that?” So you can overanalyze it.

Kimberly: Because there’s no inflection! Someone could be joking and you wouldn’t know it.

Holly: Yeah and if you’re on the phone and a joke falls flat, you can kind of back it up with a little explanation.

Ron: Even though texting may not be the most effective medium, it’s very telling if someone takes something the wrong way that you texted. If they can’t take something and roll with it, maybe they’re not for you.

Casey: I think with all this texting and everything, we’ve lost the ability to communicate. Old man talking here, but we don’t know how to communicate anymore. I’ll never forget this one lady who would text me all the time and I told her I don’t like it. Then she tells me we don’t communicate enough.

Kimberly: I really miss the art of letter writing.

Marc: Oh wow, you took it way back.

Kimberly: I just love letters, but then again I’m an English major. Being able to say whatever you want at any time, it’s too much.

Jonathan: I agree with that. Talking on the phone and writing a letter is a superior form of communication. But I think in certain instances, there are certain days, the best you can muster is sending a text. It’s better than nothing.

Casey: I’ve been putting out a meal for 20, saute pans going, and this is true, I’ll have my Bluetooth in my ear. And I’ll just check in with someone, “Hey, how’s it going? good. I’ll talk to you later. Bye. Pick up!” You can always call.

Can women make the first move?

Ron: When a girl called me first, it took me by surprise.

Holly: Good surprise or bad?

Ron: A really good surprise because I thought it was very non-traditional, but this girl and I had a mutual friend so she asked about me and then she called. I thought it was wonderful that someone was straightforward.

Holly: Sometimes guys don’t know you’re interested in them, so it can be helpful. But I definitely don’t think it should be a rule.

Marc: As a guy, when a woman calls me first, it’s definitely really exciting. It’s happened to me maybe twice. If you want a guy to notice you, that would be a good way to do it.

As you’ve gotten older, do you think your priorities have changed?

Holly: They’ve changed since last week!

Casey: It used to be looks, now I still want somebody I’m attracted to, but I want somebody I can settle down with and someone I have a good time with. It used to be “oh, she’s gorgeous.” Nowadays, it’s not all about that.

Marc: One thing I don’t need is negativity. There’s so much negativity in the world, period, especially because I work for city government, I get it all the time. I need to be with a happy person, who’s genuinely positive.

Kellie: I think as you get older, you can figure out what you like and what you don’t like, it kind of narrows down your type for you. Like Casey said, you’ve figured stuff out now because of your past experiences.

Do you think it’s true that nice guys finish last?

Marc: Oh yeah.

Jonathan: In college I apparently didn’t get that memo. I was that nice guy, but I guess girls were into the bad guys. But now I think girls appreciate a nicer personality and the essential things.

Casey: Woman now are looking for security at this point. We can have nice kids together, a big house, a nice car.

The ladies: No!

Holly: I feel pretty well established that I could do anything on my own, but I would like to do it with somebody else. It’s more fun with somebody else.

Sure, Baltimore has always been a great place for people, but lately it’s really gone to the dogs—and cats, and ferrets, and finches, too. Witness the boom in first-rate dog obedience schools, self-serve dog washes, doggie day care centers, bustling dog parks, and AKC-worthy groomeries. With that in mind, our pet primer aims to help you find everything you and your little buddy need—from organic oat grass for your tabby, to the perfect playdate spot for your pug, to a first-rate obedience class for your (mischievous) malamute. Read on, and happy tails!

GROOMERS & SPAS

Bark ‘n Bean, 130 Hillsmere Dr., 410-268-7387. We’d be hard pressed to find a cuter concept than the one behind Bark ‘n Bean—a coffee bar and dog wash all in one. This dog wash is both self-serve and full-serve, and no appointment is necessary. You can do-it-yourself with one of four easy-to-use wash systems or leave the washing, drying, combing, and ear cleaning to one of the pros and sit back and enjoy a Café Cubano (as well as free Wi-Fi access) under this Annapolis shop’s private label in the coffee bar or adjacent lounge, where you can also shop for unique pet products.

Fells Point Pet Center, 1916 Fleet St., 410-276-2433. The best human stylists have a way of connecting with their clients—and that’s true of dog groomers as well. At Fells Point Pet Center, groomer Diane Wallace (who has groomed several first-place American Kennel Club and Eukanuba champions) understands that getting beautified can be a stressful experience for your pet. To ensure the experience is a pleasant one, a single session can take up to six hours with plenty of naptime, walking breaks, and TLC in between bathing, shearing, and blow-drying sessions. 

The Groomery, 1619 Sulgrave Ave., 410-367-3647. Human hair salons have come and gone in the village of Mt. Washington, but The Groomery—open for grooming since 1986—has stood the test of time. Owner Kathy Phillips runs her shop like an old-fashioned business. She doesn’t have a website, she doesn’t take credit cards, and she doesn’t use any of the new-fangled equipment you see at more frou-frou shops, but she works wonders with hand scissors, a blow dryer, and the knowledge that a Portuguese water dog has different needs than a Lhasa apso. Phillips’s fans include Nest magazine editor/former Baltimore resident Joseph Holtzman, who commuted from Manhattan for years so Phillips could groom his standard poodle, Guido.

Pampered Paws Salon, 203 Old Padonia Rd., 410-628-7055.  Donna Weiner’s groomery is set inside a charming old, yellow clapboard house with pink and white zinnias spilling out of window boxes. Everyone feels at home here, and dog owners (including WBAL-TV anchorwoman Marianne Banister with her King Charles Cavalier, Kelsey) linger to catch up on their canines or eat a Hershey’s Kiss out of the crystal candy dish. Groomers Beth Bachran and Kelly Ingman—who have nearly 50 years of experience between them—hand fluff and hand dry every dog, and treat every furry customer like their own.

Scrub-a-Dub Dog, 5909 Falls Rd., 443-919-7909. Giving a dog a bath can be a full contact sport, but the days of wrestling your bull mastiff into the kitchen sink are behind you with this newly opened dog wash in Mt. Washington. Self-serve washing and blow-drying stations, plus stacks of towels and disposable aprons, help make washing your dog hassle free. Scrub-a-Dub also sells a unique line of Uppity Puppy spa shampoos, Revitalize doggie vitamin waters, William Wegman-designed dog beds, and a doggie treadmill for those down days when Rover wants exercise, and you don’t. Send in a photo of your grubby dog for the dubious honor of winning the monthly “Dirty Dog” contest. (The winner gets a free makeover!)

Wash the Wag, 3508-3510 Harford Rd., 410-366-PAWS. At Wash the Wag, you can stop by for a self-serve pet wash, a lion cut for your cat, or a cutting edge ‘do for your poodle from one of several experienced groomers. But the experts at this year-old Lauraville-area shop also aim to shower you with useful information on what to do when your tabby has itchy skin or which holistic supplements add luster to your dog’s coat. This dog wash is also one of the few we’ve found with a special hydrotherapy bathing unit for thick-coated dogs or dogs with skin conditions.

KENNELS/DOGGIE DAY CARE

Best Friends Fur Ever, 1009 Philadelphia Rd., 410-671-7529. With an acre-and-a-half area for swimming, sunning, and sniffing; large indoor areas with radiant heated floors; and a caring, dedicated staff, Best Friends Fur Ever is the kind of day care center and boarding facility your dog will never want to leave. With a 24/7 on-site manager, Best Friends is also one of the few outlets in the area that boards geriatric dogs, many of whom are often turned away by other kennels because of their special needs (be it incontinence issues or requiring middle-of-the-night medication). It’s nice to know that when it says forever—er, furever—it means it.

Camp Bow Wow, 7165 Oakland Mills Rd., 410-964-BARK. Just opened in August, this day care and overnight boarding facility in Columbia is one of 90 Camp Bow Wows across the country (and the first in Maryland). Playtime prevails in spacious indoor and outdoor play areas supervised by one of Camp Bow Wow’s certified camp “counselors” trained in dog behavior, pet first aid, and CPR. Overnight accommodations include comfy, cozy cabins with sleeping cots and a fleece blanket, a frozen peanut-butter-filled Kong campfire treat, and classical music to lull your lovey to sleep. Joys of modern technology alert: A high-speed webcam allows you to check up on your little guy anytime, day or night.

Cat Hospital of Towson (CHAT), 6701 York Rd., 410-377-7900. At CHAT, one of the few feline exclusive veterinary and boarding facilities in the Baltimore area (and the U.S. as a whole), staffers understand that cats are not small dogs but their own unique furry beings. “Cats have different needs and different personalities, and that’s what we focus on and celebrate,” says Dr. Jane Brunt, owner of CHAT. Located inside a 1920s colonial home, the bark-free atmosphere is so cozy, your cats will be purring in no time as they enjoy a sleepover filled with plenty of playtime (think catnip pillows, mylar sparkler teaser toys), brushing, and healthy treats. Other options include medically supervised boarding and nutritional and behavioral counseling.

Charm City Dogs, 401 N. Gay St., 410-637-3647. Charm City Dogs operates more like a preschool than a pet day care center. There are two cage-free playground areas filled with brightly colored Little Tykes toys, a time-out area for those in need of a little downtime, and a dry erase board with every dog’s name to help keep all the details (medicine, snacks, bathroom times) straight. Owner David Crowther greets his furry charges by name, and thanks to a focus on socializing, your canine will be as dog-tired as you are at the end of each day. Don’t expect to receive that annual goofy preschool picture, though. Instead, three webcams enable you to get your Fluffy fix in real time as you procrastinate over that pile of paperwork.

Good Doggie Day Care, 3500 Ash St., 410-889-3031. What is it about Good Doggie Day Care that makes clients so happy? Is it the ultra-professional staff? (Owner Jo Anne Garrett, a former accountant and Peabody classical ballet teacher, favors hiring women 40-plus who have raised children.) Is it the playtime periods with loads of great toys in more than 9,600 square feet of space? Is it the ridiculously inexpensive pick-up and drop-off van service ($4 from Hampden to Federal Hill, for instance)? Is it because the center is so spotless it could double as the Board of Health headquarters? All of the above, no doubt, but we think it’s the puppy love that exudes from every corner of this cheerful, wonderful place.

Reisterstown Boarding Kennel Pet Resort and Spa, 14454 Hanover Rd., 410-833-2090. Feeling guilty about that upcoming vacation to Tahiti while your furry friend stays home? At Reisterstown Boarding Kennel (RBK) your cat or dog can enjoy a little R and R time, too. The choices are endless, from visiting the indoor heated pool (for aquatic conditioning or therapeutic swimming) and great grooming services (coat conditioning, a facial and paw scrub) for your dog, to playtime with toy mice, scratching posts, and bird watching for your cat. “Room” upgrades are also available. (The Taj Mapaw suite is our personal favorite with a color television and plush bed for your pooch or a four-level “townhouse” with a handmade oak bed from Maine for your feline.) But whatever your wallet, every RBK guest is treated like a V.I.P. (That’s Very Important Pet!)

PET STORES & SPECIALTY SHOPS

Bark, 5805 Clarksville Square Dr., 443-535-0200. Lots of pet food stores say they carry natural or organic products, but at Bark, all products—including humanely sourced, free-range meats; high-quality natural skincare products (homeopathic flea and bug bite ointment); and non-toxic toys—are carefully screened to exacting standards. There’s something for all the pets in your household, too, from natural wheat cat litter and farm-fresh oat grass to preservative-free finch food to organic chinchilla chow. Another reason to celebrate: Bark is situated on one of the healthiest blocks in Clarksville—aptly known as the “Conscious Corner”—where owners Jeff Kaufman and Jody Cutler also own an organic market (Roots), a natural green cuisine restaurant (Sage), and an earth-friendly clothing store (Nest).

dogma—life, with your pet, 3600 Boston St., 410-276-3410. Thanks to this Brewer’s Hill boutique, becoming a pet owner doesn’t have to mean your sense of style has gone to the dogs. Owners Scott Stanton and Virginia Byrnes carefully select every product on their shelves, including “Who’s your doggie?” onesies, handmade snowflake sweaters, natural dye chew toys, collars and leashes from preppy (pink-and-green polka dot) to punk (leather and spikes), and more than 200 upholstery fabrics so that Fido’s boudoir bed can coordinate with yours. Finally, your dog can be as fabulous as you are. (Bonus: Dogma groomer Linda Burton is one of the best in the biz!) 

Howl, 3531 Chestnut Ave., 410-235-2469. Recent FDA recalls on tainted pet-food products remind us that pet owners need to be more informed than ever these days. At Hampden’s Howl, owner Robin McDonald and her expert staff of animal lovers will guide you through the well-stocked aisles of affordable, organic, grain-free dog foods and healthy, high-quality, filler-free cat foods. It feels good to be an educated consumer.

Lucky Lucy’s Canine Cafe, 1126 S. Charles St., 410-837-2121. Don’t go to Lucky Lucy’s Canine Café on an empty stomach or you’ll be tempted to try one of their home-baked, peanut-butter crabs and cats, chicken-and-cheese squirrels, mini chicken fire-hydrant treats, or bone-shaped banana bread birthday cakes. (For the record, they’re for your dog, not you.) Truth be told, owner Nancy Dixon, who was in the human food business for 15 years, bakes most goodies on the premises of her Federal Hill shop, and, with human-grade ingredients—including unsalted butter, nonfat milk, cheddar cheese, peanut butter, and chicken stock—there’s no reason you can’t have a nibble. Just no begging at the table.

Paws Pet Boutique, 64 State Cir., 410-263-8683. Located in the heart of Annapolis, this Best of Annapolis 2007 winner has it all—Go Navy dog collars, breast-cancer-awareness leashes, organic crab-shaped catnip toys, and animal-themed apparel, jewelry, and gift items such as baseball caps embroidered with basset hounds. But the best part of this shop (which was featured in the Sarah Jessica Parker movie Failure to Launch) is that husband-and-wife owners Michelle and Larry Ullrich-Kownacki are extremely community minded and support numerous canine causes including the Animal Legal Defense Fund and the Emergency Guide Dog Fund. High paws all around.

Pet Depot, 2151 Greenspring Dr., 410-561-0931. In a business distinguished by chi-chi boutiques with items that are borderline ridiculous (does Rover really need a gold lamé, monogrammed carrying case?) and mega-warehouses long on volume and short on quality (how many squirrel-shaped plastic chew toys can you throw out in one year?), Pet Depot strikes the perfect balance. The place is big, but not too big, and its merchandise is both fanciful and functional. In addition to a full line of quality products for cats and dogs (and first-rate obedience classes), Pet Depot has a huge selection for every conceivable kind of creature—alfalfa nibble sticks for rabbits, birdseed for cockatiels, and skin and coat supplements for the family ferret. Also, check out the hydrotherapy pool for Fido—the perfect recreation for your four-legged Michael Phelps.

Pretentious Pooch, 1017 Cathedral St., 443-524-7777. When nothing but the best is good enough for your BFF (best furry friend), head to Pretentious Pooch for exclusive, one-of-a-kind splurges you just won’t find anywhere else. (In fact, if you do, owners Christopher Lee Woodside and Tom Berger are apt to stop carrying it.) Swarovski crystal collars, 24-karat gold-rimmed monogrammed doggie dishes, Italian cashmere coats, a full line of Isle of Dog spa products, and an assortment of other over-the-top accessories (amassed from more than 200 outlets) will make your dog the most pampered pooch on the block. What recession?

PARKS

Gunpowder State Park, 877-620-8DNR. Spanning about 18,000 acres across Baltimore and Harford counties and with many miles of trails, the hiking opportunities are limitless inside Gunpowder State Park. Enjoy a moderate hike with sloping hills and valleys along the Jerusalem Village trail if you have a small dog or, if you really want to take a hike, cross the border with your Border collie into Pennsylvania on the Northern Central Railroad Trail (now known as the Torrey C. Brown Rail Trail).

Hannah More Park, 12035 Reisterstown Rd., 410-887-1142. A cautionary “tail”: Hannah More’s new Baltimore Animal Recreation Center (B.A.R.C.) is the only sanctioned off-leash park in Baltimore County, so unless you want to risk heavy fines, this is your only chance to let Rover roam free. The B.A.R.C. Park includes a one-and-a-half-acre park for large dogs and a three-quarter-acre park for small dogs with water fountains as well as plenty of wide-open grassy spaces to play games of fetch and tug-of-war. Annual dues are $25.

Meadowood Regional Park, Falls and Greenspring Valley Rds., 410-887-3678. This Baltimore County Park is an ideal place to strut your mutt if you like knowing exactly how far you’ve walked without using a pedometer. Each well-paved loop is about a quarter-mile long, with clean bathrooms, vending machines and water fountains to slake your thirst, a fresh supply of pooper-scooper bags, and a small tributary to the Gywnns Falls just deep enough for cooling those tired dogs (yours and the four-legged variety).

Oregon Ridge, 13555 Beaver Dam Rd., 410-887-1815. For a wide range of trails and bucolic beauty, it’s hard to beat the 10 trails of Oregon Ridge Park winding through 1,100 acres. Not much in the way of paved paths here. Think rugged beauty, white-tailed deer, red fox, and some hills so steep, hearty Baltimore denizens have been known to ski here in the winter. Need something short for your Shih Tzu or more substantial for your shepherd? All trails are connected, so you can go under a mile or as many as you like on the site of this old iron-ore mining village.

Quiet Waters Dog Park, 600 Quiet Waters Park Rd., 410-222-1777. This Anne Arundel County Park, nestled between the South River and Harness Creek, has something for everyone, including 340 acres of open woodland space, six miles of paved hiking trails, two enclosed dog parks, and a designated dog beach for the doggie paddler in your family. The park, which sponsors dog-friendly seasonal events such as the annual Howl-O-Ween Barkin’ Bash, also has all the amenities that can make an outing more pleasant—an abundance of poop bags, trash cans, water fountains, pet rinsing stations, and clean bathrooms for when you’re the one whose gotta go. Closed in the winter (Nov. to March) and on Tuesdays.

TRAINERS

4 Paws Pet Services, 410-321-PUPS. When it comes to dog trainers, Joy Freedman is as pedigreed as they come. A dog behaviorist and obedience instructor for 12 years, she studied at the National Institute of Dog Training and, last year, when Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan came to the Hippodrome, Freedman was the only area trainer personally selected by Millan to assist on stage. Freedman—who writes the “Ask the Trainer” column for Baltimore Dog Magazine and makes expert appearances on local radio and television—is a behavioral specialist who recognizes the different learning styles of dogs. “If I’m trying to treat a jumping issue, I’m not going to treat a husky in the same way I’m going to treat a chihuahua,” she says. Makes sense to us.

All Star Canine at The Maryland SPCA, 3300 Falls Rd., 410-235-8826. No one understands the need for a well-trained pet better than the Maryland SPCA, which receives about 2,000 unwanted dogs a year. “Our training focuses on how to live with your pet,” says executive director Aileen Gabbey. “The goal is, ‘How can we keep you from driving us crazy so we don’t end up giving you away?'” The SPCA has a number of classes taught by expert professionals, including puppy play groups, a six-week doggie basics class, and a free Saturday morning Positive Pooch class for owners who adopt a dog from the SPCA.

Angela Mowry, 16511 St. Mary’s Church Rd., 301-928-6686. Traveling professional dog trainer and behaviorist Angela Mowry, who serves all of Maryland (including the Eastern Shore) and Virginia, has trained police dogs and worked in high-end competitions. She has taken on the hardest cases out there: obedience school dropouts and shelter dogs that were scheduled to be euthanized for aggression. So, needless to say, she’ll have no problem taking on your little guy, whether he’s an excessive barker, furniture chewer, or fence jumper.

B-More Charming School for Dogs, 443-825-1414. Like electrical appliances, a new dog should come with an operating manual, but the next best thing (and maybe even easier to understand) is the B-More Charming School at Howl in Hampden. Co-owners Lauren Bond (whose experience includes therapy dog training, and aggressive behavior issues) and Carolyn Stromer (a former professional dolphin trainer at the National Aquarium in Baltimore) are up on the latest scientific methods to teach new behaviors and break bad habits. Classes and seminars include: Puppy Kindergarten, Basic and Advanced Obedience, and for those who really want to impress their friends, Parlor Tricks.

Rachel Lachow, Positively Obedient, 410-833-4844. Dogs don’t just go fetch for certified pet and dog trainer Rachel Lachow. They ring bells to signal they want to go outside or swim to the steps of a swimming pool instead of flailing in the shallow end. In fact, dogs are so obedient around the soft-spoken Lachow that conspiracy theorists believe she wears meat-scented perfume. The truth? After 28 years as a dog trainer, Lachow is just doggone good at her job. She sees the potential in every pet and helps train us to be better pet owners.

PET WALKERS

Canine to Five, 410-375-9202. The motto for this pet-sitting service, serving Harford County, Baltimore City, and Baltimore County, is “We sit, we walk, we fetch for you.” Canine to Five does all that and so much more. Services include pet sitting (includes walking, feeding, playing, paw cleaning), pet walking, veterinary visits, home delivery of pet supplies, and even housesitting. Owner Chrissy Wohltmann has a loyal customer base of retirees, corporate types, and young moms who need a pinch hitter to lead their pack.

Dog House Girls, 410-276-1284. Entrusting your dog (or cat, or bird) not to mention your house keys and alarm code to a stranger can be tricky. Dog House Girls takes all the worry out of going to work or on vacation. Rates are reasonable ($12 for a 30-minute walk), the staff is dedicated and friendly, and the hours are incredibly flexible (7 a.m. to 11 p.m., 365 days a year). Dog House founder Pauline Houliaras is a true pet lover with a great resume: She has a graduate degree in clinical psychology from Loyola (comes in handy for discerning the difference between tail wags and ones tucked between the legs) and is vice president of the Canton Dog Park, which she also helped found.

Gotta Go Pet Sitting, 410-483-4853. With eight pet children of her own (five dogs, two cats, and a horse), we’re amazed that Gotta Go’s Jenny Hildebrand has time for sleeping, let alone time to own and operate a first-rate pet-sitting service on top of her work as a part-time veterinary technician with Stevenson Village Vets. Hildebrand, who primarily services Baltimore County, lovingly tends to your dog or cat, writes a detailed daily diary, and offers personalized service, whether it’s canine car service to the groomer or a rousing game of Frisbee with your Lab.

Luv My Pet, 410-685-6939. The last thing you want at the end of your work day is to find that your flokati living-room rug has been soiled beyond repair, or, even worse, to look into the excitable eyes of your raring-to-go puppy and feel guilty that you weren’t around to play tug of war all day. For dependable dog walking or pet sitting 365 days a year, call Luv My Pet, covering Owings Mills to Federal Hill. Luv My Pet owner Jeff Rothschild is a former Morgan Stanley financial adviser who turned in his briefcase for biodegradable poop bags. Rothschild will do one-on-one walks or match your pup to a play group. He comes highly recommended by local day care centers, vets, and high-end condo concierges.

Walk the Dog, 410-366-0400. When Walk the Dog co-owner Molly Doherty walks a city street, it’s not uncommon for her to bump into one of her many satisfied customers. “The dogs will wag their tails at me,” says Doherty, “and then I have to introduce myself to their owners!” While Doherty and her cohorts—including co-owners Julie Benoit and Kelly Zimmerman—walk up to 200 dogs a day, Walk the Dog maintains a customized approach to pet sitting, whether you need a slower-paced walk for an older animal or someone to look after your cat while you’re away. Walk the Dog is one of the premiere go-to pet-sitting services in the city and is known for its reliable staff and philosophy of taking care of all members of the family. (Doherty has even been known to unplug that curling iron left in the “on” position.)

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Extreme Puppy Love
Can You Dote on Your Pet Too Much?

When Evan Feinberg, a veterinarian for Pikeville’s Stevenson Village Veterinary Hospital, was a graduate student, he treated a dachshund that arrived in a baby stroller because it was too fat to walk.
“She was a sweet lady, and I’m sure she meant well,” says Feinberg of the dog’s owner. “But especially when it comes to obesity, it’s always so much about the owner. This is definitely an area where you can love your dog too much. More food does not necessarily equal love.”
Dogs have long been known as man’s best friend, but can that love go too far? Is all that puppy love really what’s best for your dog?
“Dogs are babied way too much,” says Adam Goldfarb, an issues specialist with The Humane Society of the United States. “They are pushed in strollers and carried in purses. This is reflective of a larger problem of people treating their dogs not as dogs, but as fashion accessories.”
The ironic part is, dogs actually prefer a little discipline and structure, say experts. “You’ve got to have the dog work for things,” advises Allison Nozemack, a training and behavior manager for the Maryland SPCA. “Nothing in life is free. You have to make them sit for a treat or sit for attention. They need to learn to defer to you, and if they don’t, they have lost their place in the family. You have to instill that you are the leader, and if all you do is lavish them with attention, you are doing the dog a huge disservice. It’s just like having a spoiled child.”
Trainer Joy Freedman of 4 PAWS Pet Services concurs. “People discipline their children,” says Freedman, “yet they treat their dogs like stuffed animals, letting the dog run all over them. Something you would never put up with from your kids, you put up with from your dog. People will say, ‘My dog jumps all the time,’ but you either want it to jump or not. If you don’t, it has to be taught that sitting on someone’s lap is by invitation only.”
Freedman believes that extreme indulgence can actually be harmful to your pet’s health. “A dog’s total dependence on you can actually be bad for them,” says Freedman. “There are people who take their dogs everywhere. I know people who don’t go on trips because they don’t want to leave their dog in the house or with a pet sitter. The more the dog depends on you, the less healthy and capable it is.”
What are some of the warning signs to look out for? “If your dog is growling at your husband when you’re in bed, that’s ridiculous,” says Nozemack. “Put the dog in the dog bed. The problems are often human driven—we create these little monsters by what we do.” —JM

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Pit Crew 
More and more shelters are filling up with pit bulls. But are they safe to adopt?

Last spring, Baltimore County speech therapist Dana Schnepf fell in love with Taos, a seven-year-old pit bull up for adoption at the Maryland SPCA. Unlike many pits who end up in shelters because they have been abandoned or who have become too much for their owners to handle, Taos came from a good home and was known for his sweet temperament. Schnepf, who lives with her mother in Owings Mills, was all set to adopt Taos and brought her mother to meet the dog before completing the adoption process.
“Everyone got along fine,” recalls Schnepf, “but my mom is a tiny person, and she was intimidated by his size and how big his head and mouth were. She said if I wanted to get him I could, but she’d never feel comfortable with him in the house. I couldn’t do that to her.”
Schnepf found an Australian cattle dog at The Baltimore Humane Society that she thought she could learn to love, but it just wasn’t the same. “After we left the shelter,” recalls Schnepf, “my mother told me that if I thought Taos was the right fit for our family then she would not stop me from adopting him. She was willing to give him a try.”
A few days later, Schnepf brought Taos home. It didn’t take long before Taos ingratiated himself with the whole family. “Now my mom loves him!” says Schepf. “I catch her giving him little pieces of steak and cutting the fat off for him. I had the same stereotypical view of pits, and now my friends who know Taos say, ‘I could see getting a pit bull.’ I’m glad to think Taos has helped change that perception.”

Revere them or fear them, there is no breed of dog that evokes a stronger reaction than the pit bull. The fear is understandable, given the history of these dogs. Historically, pit bulls were bred for the Elizabethan blood sports of bull and bear baiting. Modern-day versions of that—pit-to-pit combat—occur clandestinely in basements and backyards across the country. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released a report stating that pit bulls were responsible for more dog
bite-related attacks than any other breed during a 20-year period.
Having been banned from some area counties (including Prince George’s County), and left to languish in shelters, pit bulls have become the ultimate underdog. “We had one potential adopter who came to meet one of our dogs,” says Bonnie Hurwitz, founder of the Baltimore-based Adopt a Homeless Animal Rescue, a group dedicated to helping pit bull terriers and mixed breeds find  “forever homes.” “She was kissing him and everything and really seemed to connect, and then when a friend said something about the dog being a pit bull, she left almost indignant that we were trying to adopt out this dog.”
The plight of the pit is often a sad one, although it wasn’t always so. “If you go back in history, Anne Frank’s dog was a pit,” says trainer Joy Freedman. “Petey from Little Rascals was a pit bull. Through history, they have been known as extraordinarily good dogs. They are easy to train, but if they are fearful, they become aggressive. They are one of the sweetest, smartest breeds, but with all the inbreeding, they have become so foreign to who they really are.”
At Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter (BARCS), the majority of dogs are pit bulls and pit bull mixes. “Pit bulls are what’s left sitting in our shelter,” says Mead, BARCS’s executive director. “The other dogs get adopted out.” At BARCS, where they get 12,000 animals a year, pits are the most frequently euthanized breed. “It’s a shame because they are absolutely wonderful animals and we’ve had great success in adopting them out,” says Mead. “We call them our ‘wiggle butts.'”
City Paper managing editor Erin Sullivan helped found her own awareness group, B-More Dog, as a reaction to Baltimore County legislation in the fall of 2007, which would have required pits to be muzzled in public at all times and crated in concrete kennels even when in the owner’s backyard. Although the legislation did not pass, “We thought, ‘Why stop the momentum?'” says Sullivan, who has owned pits for six years. “Let’s start promoting better ownership practices: Keep your dogs leashed in the parks, be careful around small children, get the dogs the exercise they need. Physiologically, they are no different than any other dog. There’s no locking jaw, no brain that outgrows their skull—these are myths.”
At the Maryland SPCA, the adoption process for pits and pit mixes is more stringent than for other dogs. The application is a two-day process during which the potential owner receives information about the breed as well as training tips and background information on a particular dog. “We have to correct the myth that these dogs are unfriendly with people,” says Kat Knauff, an admissions counselor for the Maryland SPCA. “but people do need to know they are a high-maintenance breed.”
Experts say that the key to pit bull ownership—as well as ownership of any dog—is knowing their needs. Sums up Sullivan, “I’d like to see the entire universe of dog owners up their game and be more responsible so that no one has to be the pariah in the dog park.”  —JM

Six months ago, a woman in her late 40’s walked into Dr. Navin Singh’s office requesting a thigh lift. The plastic surgeon, director of breast reconstruction and assistant professor of plastic surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, had already performed a breast augmentation with lift and a tummy tuck on the patient—and Singh’s partner had performed a facelift, eyelid surgery, and rhinoplasty on her, as well—but she wanted more.

The procedure would leave a sizeable scar, Singh warned her, but she remained eager to pursue it. The surgeon got the feeling that the woman was “seeking the thrill” of the procedure, and “just didn’t have a reasonable expectation of what a thigh lift involved.” She was the classic plastic surgery addict, out for body-altering surgery for all the wrong reasons, he explains. So he turned her down.
“She became irate,” he recalls. “Typically the answers we provide are, ‘I don’t think I’m the right surgeon for you.’ It’s the classic ‘It’s not you, it’s me.'”
Another patient, a young man in his late 20’s who was “well into the double digits” of facial procedures, approached Singh for eyelid surgery. Reconstructive rhinoplasty earlier in his life was his “gateway” procedure—a hallmark for those dependent on plastic surgery—to an alarming roster of aesthetic surgeries that, one by one, wouldn’t signify an issue, but “in aggregate, symbolized to me a problem,” he says.
“It starts with [the gateway procedure] and creeps onto the rest of their body,” he says. “They’re insatiable.”
Again, Singh refused to do the surgery.
“I told him honestly that I thought he was starting to look too synthetic and that I thought he needed to be evaluated by a mental health professional,” he says. “Oftentimes, a young plastic surgeon will just do it and validate it to themselves by saying, ‘If I don’t do it, someone else will.’ But you never want to be the last person to have operated on a person like that.”
But sometimes, “no” just doesn’t cut it, and patients will try to convince a plastic surgeon to perform the operation anyway—something that confounds Singh.
“Imagine you’ve got a car and the mechanic says, ‘I’m not really the right guy for this.’ Would you really leave him your car?” he asks. “But yet, when it’s your body . . . it’s amazing how much they’ll negotiate with you to get you to do something.”

Cosmetic surgeon Dr. Hema Sundaram has also seen her share of “over-enhanced” patients, but the 46-year-old woman who recently walked into her office definitely took her by surprise.
The woman had already had a laundry list of facial procedures—various implants, lifts, and fillers—but it was her lips that shocked the doctor.
“They were grossly over-enhanced,” Sundaram recounts. “She came to me because she wanted more.”
“I just want them totally pumped up,” the woman told her. “As big as they can be.”
Sundaram, who has offices in Rockville and Fairfax, Virginia and is the author of the book Face Value: The Truth About Beauty—and a Guilt-Free Guide to Finding It, explained to the prospective patient that her look had surpassed natural—and that she refused to inject her lips with anything else until they went down to a normal size.
“To me, the best cosmetic surgery is undetectable, and her lips absolutely walked in the room before she did,” the surgeon says. “Chances are, she went to another cosmetic surgeon and got what she wanted.”

The experience of turning someone away who has gone overboard with plastic and cosmetic surgery is a familiar one to doctors like Singh and Sundaram. With faster recovery times and a seemingly endless array of procedures to modify just about any body part that needs “fixing,” plastic surgery is more popular than ever in America. According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS), there were nearly 11.5 million surgical and nonsurgical procedures in the United States in 2006 alone, including 4.1 million injections of Botox—a neurotoxin used to temporarily smooth facial lines that can even be available at some certified day spas, or “medi-spas.” All that nipping, tucking, and injecting equals big business; Americans shelled out nearly $12.2 billion on cosmetic surgery last year, ASAPS reports. Of course, our celebrity culture is driving this phenomenon. More and more celebs are being “outed” as plastic surgery indulgers—and we want to look as great, as young, as nipped and tucked, as they do.
It’s not only women going under the knife, either. Since 1997, nonsurgical cosmetic procedures among men have increased a whopping 722 percent, and men accounted for nearly 1 million cosmetic procedures in 2006 (liposuction was the most popular procedure for men, followed by rhinoplasty, eyelid surgery, breast reduction to treat enlarged male breasts, and facelift).
As lips and breasts continue to swell, faces mysteriously tighten, and celebrities quietly remodel their entire bodies, it doesn’t come as a surprise that people often go overboard with plastic surgery. When it comes to a plastic surgery “addiction,” though, one’s friends and neighbors don’t usually come to mind. Instead, we think of the freakish Michael Jackson, or “Lion Queen” socialite Jocelyn Wildenstein, or self-proclaimed plastic-surgery expert Cindy Jackson (commonly known as the “Human Barbie”), not the person standing behind you at the supermarket.
But everyday people addicted to plastic surgery? The answer is yes, according to area plastic and cosmetic surgeons.

Although he admits it is truly rare, Dr. Adam Basner—division head of plastic surgery at Sinai Hospital with a private practice in Lutherville—does turn patients away who seem like candidates for plastic surgery addiction.
“In a very, very small percentage of patients I’ll say, ‘I don’t think I can help you,'” he explains of a surgery-seeker who has unrealistic expectations of what cosmetic procedures can achieve, a warning sign of an addiction to—or at least a dependence on—plastic surgery. If Basner is unsure about a cosmetic surgery candidate, he may recommend that a psychologist be involved to determine whether the patient has reasonable expectations.
A person who can’t be convinced that surgery might be futile, or who comes in requesting to look like someone else, definitely rings a warning bell in the minds of most plastic surgeons.
“As a plastic surgeon, you have to be able to recognize what can be fixed,” adds Dr. Michael Cohen of the Towson-based Cosmetic Surgery Center of Maryland. As for turning away a patient? “It’s a service that you owe to the patient. It doesn’t do you any good, it doesn’t do the patient any good, and it’s not worth the money.”
But what about Hollywood’s portrayal (perpetuated through shows like Nip/Tuck) that plastic surgeons are strictly in it for the narcissism and the money?

“I do believe that most plastic surgeons actually have a great deal of care and concern for their patients,” Basner says.
Singh agrees, but admits that true “addicts” find ways to manipulate some surgeons into performing procedures they’re hesitant about. “They will play into our own narcissism,” by showering them with compliments about their work and reputation, he says. “Females will also play the ‘damsel in distress,'” role, Singh continues. “‘I’ve been butchered,'” the women will say. “‘I should have come to you in the first place.'”
“As men, we’re trained to jump at that,” Singh admits. “Patients themselves can be very good psychological manipulators.”

For some patients, no amount of surgery will ever satiate their needs. Fifteen percent of patients seeking plastic surgery have what is called body dismorphic disorder (BDD), Sundaram says, an obsessive-compulsive disorder that creates a distorted self image, usually when there’s nothing noticeably wrong to outsiders.
“By and large, [those with BDD] don’t feel better when they get the surgeries . . . or if they do, they pretty much switch to another part of the body,” explains Dr. Christopher Welsh, addiction psychiatrist and assistant professor at the University of Maryland Medical Center. He is careful to distinguish between people with BDD and those simply obsessed with plastic surgery. “Body dismorphic disorder is deeper-rooted psychologically. It’s a fixed feeling that something is wrong,” versus someone who is preoccupied with looking younger, Welsh says. “With body dismorphic disorder, you act like there’s something wrong with you. . . . Because your nose is ‘too big,’ it just destroys your life. It’s qualitatively different than someone who just wants to look younger.”
In the case of BDD, “it’s a need, not a choice,” Sundaram says. Similar to an alcohol or drug addiction, “your whole life revolves around it,” and those suffering from BDD may go far into debt to finance their extensive procedures.
BDD aside, the need to look younger—or have bigger breasts, smaller thighs, a streamlined nose, or more enhanced muscles (for men)—can indeed take over someone’s life if they have the means for the often costly procedures.

This is not only a danger for adults, but for children, too, says Dr. Shreya Patel Hessler, a Bel Air psychologist specializing in children and adolescents. She is now seeing girls as young as 7 with body image issues, already mapping out future plastic surgery procedures and counting calories. She sees teenagers who request cosmetic surgery as graduation gifts. Hessler has also counseled three young male patients with eating disorders within the past year, one of whom wanted pectoral implants to make his chest more defined. “Without appropriate intervention, [their self-esteem issues] could get worse,” she warns.
The psychologist recommends that parents listen closely to what their children are saying about their appearance, making special note of whom their children are comparing themselves to, how they respond to compliments on their physical appearance, and if they make self-deprecating statements.
But parents are often to blame themselves, she states, giving in to their children’s desires to have plastic surgery because they are so desperate for them to feel not only good about themselves, but accepted amongst their peers. Sometimes a procedure such as rhinoplasty can truly boost an adolescent’s self-esteem, Hessler says, but if your child has a “laundry list” of cosmetic procedures he or she wants to have done, it’s time to worry.

Even with these concerns, plastic surgery still has its cheerleaders. Christine Schwab, a California-based fashion reporter and author of The Grown-Up Girl’s Guide to Style: A Maintenance Bible for Fashion, Beauty and More, isn’t shy about her love of plastic surgery and cosmetic dermatology. She’s had her share of both and is quick to admit how easy it is to become addicted to something that, in her opinion, isn’t all that painful and has such immediate payoff.
“It just turns back the clock so rapidly,” she says. “If you have the money and looks are important to you, it’s a very good investment. There’s not a lot of pain. It’s almost like a little vacation. [Often] the results are so good that you get greedy. I think the problem and the important thing is to have some restraint and not to get greedy.”
After one successful procedure, “you start noticing other areas of your face and body that might not match,” she explains. “It’s very easy [to get addicted]. I really had to put the brakes on myself.”
But even a dyed-in-the-wool cosmetic surgery fan like Schwab knows the dangers.
“I always look the best I can without looking foolish, and that’s a very fine line to cross,” she says. “I don’t want to look like Joan Rivers.”
She also notes Melanie Griffith’s “duck lips.” “I’m sure when Melanie Griffith looks in the mirror, she thinks her lips look like Angelina Jolie’s. But she doesn’t look like Angelia Jolie. Angelina Jolie’s are natural. Nobody close to a celebrity tells them the truth.”
A veteran of the fashion industry, Schwab, who is in her 50’s, is all too familiar with the pressure to look perfect in today’s beauty-obsessed world, and finds celebrities who deny having had plastic surgery to be woefully irresponsible. She recalls watching former supermodel Christie Brinkley on a recent talk show. When asked how she stays so young looking, she responded with “‘Oh, I drink a lot of water. I exercise and get enough sleep,'” Schwab recounts. “And I’m thinking, ‘how dishonest!’ They’re doing everything that’s available to them. They set the bar really high for the average person.”
As for people denying that they had cosmetic surgery? Dr. Basner isn’t surprised. “It’s the one thing nobody talks about,” the surgeon says. “We still condemn women who have cosmetic surgery. We’re scared of our own mortality. As a society, we don’t have the social mores that we’re mortal and are going to die.”

Terry Goodwin, for one, isn’t ashamed to talk about the cosmetic surgery she’s had, but her post-op agony will prevent her from getting any other procedures—and leaves the 34-year-old wondering how people can get addicted at all. The Westminster native had a breast augmentation in 1998, going from an A cup to a C. She’s thrilled with the results—”I never felt proportionate,” she says. “I never felt I could wear clothes that fit well”—but had to go back under the knife just days after her surgery because one breast implant was higher than the other.
“It was extremely painful,” Goodwin says of the ordeal. “It wasn’t anything like [the surgeon] said it was going to be. He said it would feel like I had done 100 push-ups. I felt like I’d been beaten. I could not sit up or get out of bed by myself. I was miserable. It was definitely more uncomfortable than he had prepared me for.”
The worst part? Her implants, like all others, will eventually need to be replaced.
“I’m absolutely dreading it,” she says with a sigh. “I don’t want to ever go through that again.”
Goodwin feels the media coverage of plastic surgery didn’t sufficiently prepare her for her ordeal. Many doctors agree. Plastic-surgery-themed television shows, such as Dr. 90210 and Extreme Makeover, “glorify and glamorize” cosmetic surgery, Dr. Cohen says. “I don’t think they’re terribly realistic or informative,” he states. “They’re more glamorized. People don’t realize it takes a lot of recuperation—ups, downs, hills, and valleys. The transition isn’t really overnight. It can take quite a long time.”
Just ask Terry Goodwin.
“Whenever I see something on TV about how people are addicted to [plastic surgery], I don’t know how they can be,” Goodwin sighs. “For some reason, it must be like having a baby because you forget the pain and the misery and you’re ready for that next round.”

When J. Michael Flanigan’s relatives visit his 1880’s antiques-filled Bolton Hill residence, finding a place to sit among his treasure trove of museum-quality antiques can be a daunting task. “I have an uncle who’s a priest, and every time he comes over he’s afraid to sit down,” laughs the 52-year-old Flanigan. “On Christmas Eve he came over, and I had this rocker I was going to take out of the room because I didn’t want anything to happen to it, but my uncle sat on it. Then he looked at me and said, ‘Wait, don’t tell me. I shouldn’t have sat here.’ I said, ‘Well, it only belonged to President Kennedy and came from his private bedroom!'”

Anyone else might seem off their rocker for making such a claim to furniture fame, but for Flanigan, it’s just another day at the office. The Baltimore-born antiques collector and dealer has appeared as an appraiser on PBS’s Antiques Roadshow for every one of the series’ 11 seasons. And in between Road trips, he’s carefully assembled an impressive collection of rare and interesting pieces, including a handsome 18th-century walnut and white pine Highboy, a pair of early 19th century Liberty of London “Thebes” stools, and photographs by world-renowned Baltimore Sun photographer A. Aubrey Bodine.

Flanigan actually fell into the antiques business serendipitously. “It was all a woman’s fault,” he says. “I was dating someone, and her family was interested in antiques. I didn’t know what to do one summer, so I just started knocking on doors looking for work in antique shops. And here I am 30 years later.”

After briefly working for a small shop along Antiques Row in Cockeysville in his early 20’s, Flanigan landed an informal apprenticeship at the venerable J.W. Berry & Sons which did conservation work for The Walters Art Museum, The Baltimore Museum of Art, and The Maryland Historical Society. He paid his dues by sweeping floors and driving the owner around town, and in return, was allowed to get his hands dirty by taking pieces apart. “And I don’t mean you just took out a drawer,” he says. “You really took it apart, and if you had to fix something, you had to see how it was made. I loved that. If you went to a museum you could only see something from a distance, but there I got to touch everything. It was a great education.”

Thanks to that education—as well as his made-for-TV appearance, resonant voice, and penchant for storytelling—Flanigan will preside over the furniture table when Antiques Roadshow rolls into the Baltimore Convention Center on June 16. And if this show is like any of the others, he’ll see “a couple hundred” objects in his 12 hours on the floor. It’s hard work, but it’s a role he relishes.

“Quite simply, Michael is brilliant,” says Roadshow Executive Producer Marsha Bemko. “He’s a very knowledgeable guy. The secret to knowing antiques is so many years of looking and touching—there’s no substitute for experience. Michael was a cabinetmaker in his journey through life, and all that experience adds up to being able to recognize different objects at a glance. Michael is also a great storyteller who is really comfortable on camera. He’s comfortable with what he’s talking about, and he really adores what he’s doing.”

It shows through, as when Flanigan discusses his favorite part of working on the show: the stories he’s heard. “I was once talking to a policeman, and I asked him, ‘Why do you stay a policeman?’ He said, ‘It’s a delicate balance between the horror and the comedy. You see people at their worst, and you see people at their best.’ While working on Roadshow is not as noble as all that, people tell stories that will make you laugh and will break your heart. The objects are the focus of the human drama.”

And everyone, Flanigan has learned in his time on the air, has a different motivation for showing up. “If someone comes to Roadshow, and they want me to tell them how smart they are for owning a particular piece, it’s probably not going to be a good experience for them,” says Flanigan matter-of-factly. “Ninety percent of the objects we see on the show are worth less than a hundred dollars. On the other hand, if they come in and they want to learn something, chances are I’m going to be able to help them. I can tell them everything they want to know.”

Not to mention a few things they’d probably prefer not to hear. “People come with these stories like ‘This came in on the Mayflower,'” he says. “You think, ‘This never saw the centennial of the Mayflower let alone the bicentennial of the Mayflower!’ But it doesn’t even take a generation for these stories to become conflated. And they all follow Flanigan’s Law, which is: Objects gravitate to the most famous person they can find in their history.”

For Flanigan, though, it’s the pieces themselves that deserve the fame. “A great piece stands out to me like a movie star does in a room of extras,” he says. “It has presence and, one hopes, with thirty years of experience, I can recognize that. The Roadshow is just American Idol for objects. My job is mostly to play Simon and say, ‘No.’ But then a star walks in, and I just applaud.”

If you think your neighbors are bad, with their loud music and sloppy trashcan-lid replacement, consider the tales told by the still-jittery people who lived near a Mt. Washington family we’ll call The Smiths.

The tales told and recounted by neighbors (who almost all requested anonymity) are many, and include harassing calls to the police (to report neighbors as burglars when they were entering their own homes) and vehicular taunting (one family member used to gun the engine of his car—sans tailpipe—throughout the dinner hour in the summer).

The Smiths did love their cars. After two family members broke the windshield of another car during a fight, they replaced the glass with an ill-fitting plastic sheet that the driver had to peer over. Yet that wasn’t the car’s main problem: All four tires were flat, recalls Michael Gold, 43, who moved in across the street from the Smiths in 1998.

But neither the lack of windshield nor working tires stopped the Smiths from using the car as their regular transportation. “They were screaming around the neighborhood in this car on the rims—looking over this piece of plastic,” says Gold, a scientist who moved to Pittsburgh in October 2006. “Sparks [from the wheel rims] were flying everywhere.”

Many family members irritated neighbors, but some residents fondly remembered the Smiths’ 80-something grandmother, who had lived on the street for half a century. “[Mrs. Smith] was a nice woman, very kind,” says neighbor Diane Sheckells, 47, who moved into her in-laws’ house around the time the Smith house burned down.

Yes, burned down. The family’s ample Victorian in western Mt. Washington was destroyed by fire in early 2005, ending the active problems with the family—but the charred pile of rubble lingered for more than a year, visible amid high grass and vine-covered bushes.

“It was such an eyesore,” says Julia Pearson, 39, a four-year resident on the block of compact two-story bungalows. “They never really came back to deal with the property. They never came back to mow the lawn. Except the day the house was taken down—they came to get a rose bush and a lilac bush.”

Days before a showdown in court about the destroyed home—where four generations of Smiths once lived—a demolition crew tore the house down to the ground.

“Everyone is very happy about it being an empty lot,” says Pearson.

The rubble was removed, but the lot is still unkempt, said Sheckells, a city schools employee. “It’s becoming such a doggone eyesore again, because of all of the weeds that are growing,” she adds.

Nightmare neighbors: They steal your parking spot, harass you about noisy renovations, let their dogs use your lawn as a toilet, and make obscene gestures. Heck, they may even use their front yard as a helicopter landing pad.

What can you do to stop them? Mediation groups can help work it out, and they offer several tips toward solving neighborly disputes. But squabbles sometimes end up in the hands of lawyers or police, who may not always help much.

Baltimore County fields mostly noise complaints, police spokesman Corp. Mike Hill said. Police there don’t mind enforcing the law, which slaps up to a $500 fine or up to 90 days in jail for noise that “unreasonably disturbs the peace, quiet, and comfort of the neighboring inhabitants.”

Hill’s best advice? “Try to get along,” he says. “Sometimes just talking to the neighbor and coming to an understanding is all that needs to happen.”

In Howard County, an even worse feud rages on among two men in the Village of River Hill, in Columbia. Neighbors Timothy Cerny and David Elliott are due in court this month, capping off two civil suits, 13 criminal cases, 13 peace orders and nearly 100 visits from Howard County police since 1999. The dispute began, The Sun reported, over a proposed pool in Cerny’s backyard. In the current court case, Cerny, 47, faces a second-degree assault charge for allegedly spitting on Elliott, also 47, during an April screaming match that Elliott caught on videotape, the paper reported.

The Baltimore City rowhouse is a breeding ground for neighborly disputes, said Caroline Harmon, director of the Community Mediation Center on Greenmount Avenue in Baltimore. The private, nonprofit center intervenes in more than 1,000 conflicts a year from across the region.

Many people who come for mediation have called the police more than 30 times. Preventing that number of calls, Harmon said, translates into savings for both police and taxpayers.

“We offer people a way out, rather than going to police” with disputes over yards, porches, parking, trash, music, noise, and animals, Harmon says. “A lot of the issues have to do with Baltimore as a city of rowhouses, and that people are living 10 feet away from each other.”

Harmon has three simple tips to try to repair (and prevent) damage: Speak directly. Many disputes involve messages through family members or other neighbors. Said Harmon, “If people talk things out face to face, they can make it better.”

Spend time listening as well as talking. Talk about how the situation affects you, rather than how horrible the other person is.

And avoid saying “always” or “never,” or other phrases that escalate disputes.

For the people of Baltimore County’s Greenspring Valley, Nightmare Neighbor Number One was Martin Grass, the former chief executive of the Rite Aid drugstore chain.

Starting in the late 90’s, Grass commuted via helicopter from his gated home to work at Rite Aid headquarters in Camp Hill, Pa. Neighbors contested Grass’s landing the chopper in an area zoned for agricultural use.

“When it would come in, the whole house would shake, and it would wake up my kids,” says Deirdre Smith, 46, whose 1820’s farmhouse has been in her husband’s family for five generations. The chopper would come and go at all hours, and Smith blamed it for making her chickens curtail their laying. “It was very frightening and upsetting.”

Smith and her husband tried to solve the problem with a neighborly approach, but they received an unexpected response.

“He took my husband up in the helicopter to try to show him how cool it was,” recalls Smith, whose 70-acre farm is across the street from the disgraced executive’s former home. “He had a definite attitude that he had the right to do whatever he darn well felt like.”

The chopper use stopped in 2004, when Grass was sentenced to eight years in federal prison for accounting fraud.

Some neighbors get so worked up that they hire a lawyer to scare the other guy.

“People feel more strongly about their property than their kids or their other possessions,” says Stephen J. Kleeman, a Towson lawyer representing a rowhouse resident whose neighbor’s dogs allegedly urinated and defecated on his house. “When they get worked up about it, it’s just impossible to derail,” Kleeman says.

But not all attorneys like to take this kind of case. Hampden lawyer Alan F. Deanehan won’t handle criminal cases or family law, and he says he won’t do residential disputes, either. “The neighbors from hell is not my purview,” he says. “I try not to do anything I can die from.”

While nightmare neighbors might seem humorous to someone who has never had them, what’s really funny is how far people will go to catch each other in the act, Ellicott City attorney Mike Henderson says.

“They yell at each other, and they chase each other around with video cameras,” Henderson says. “I’d rather have a divorce case than a property line dispute because people are much more likely to agree on something.”

Realtors don’t like to touch these conflicts, either.

“It really does go against our code of ethics to talk about stuff like this,” says Ilene Kessler, president of the Maryland Association of Realtors. She hesitated even to offer advice on how to avoid ending up with nightmare neighbors.

“I know it sounds ridiculous, but I can’t tell you how to act,” Kessler says. “I can’t even tell my children how to act.”

One woman’s bad neighbors aren’t humans but rats, both dead and alive. Rats in the kitchen. Rats in the garbage. Rats in the attic. Rats running along a brick fence extending the length of the group of rowhouses.

“I’ve seen pictures, and it’s not mice, it’s rats,” says the woman’s lawyer, Shauntese Curry Trye, who has a case pending against the management company that owns the group of rowhouses the client lives in. The company blames the next-door neighbor.

Sometimes family ties complicate neighborly disputes. Attorney David Jacobson—a Roland Park resident whose neighbors once had a battle of abandoned junky convertibles—handled a case where land was passed down from grandparents. Hostile grandchildren subdivided the lots and built homes, which they separated with fences. One grandchild allegedly jumped the fence around his visually impaired cousin’s house and dug holes along it so his relative would fall during his walks, Jacobson says.

Jacobson says there’s an old adage among real estate lawyers, but this time it didn’t hold up: “Big fences make good neighbors.”