EAT

Jan. 4-6: Nick’s Inner Harbor Seafood Farewell Party

Cross Street Market, 1065 S. Charles St. Fri., 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sat. and Sun., 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Free.

After a string of high-profile restaurant closings last year, Baltimore is, sadly, adding another to the list as we bid farewell to Nick’s Inner Harbor Seafood. Raise a glass to this 50-year-old Federal Hill institution and celebrate the stall’s long run with one last pound of steamed shrimp and, of course, some freshly shucked oysters. Don’t worry if you’re a little late to the party—Nick’s plans to extend its normal hours if enough seafood lovers want to stay for another round.

DRINK

Jan. 6: The Baltimore Ravens vs. Los Angeles Chargers

Locations vary.

This Sunday, the Ravens, our newly crowned AFC North champs, will face off against the Los Angeles Chargers at M&T Bank Stadium, meaning the city will be in pregame mode all weekend long. If you want to be at the heart of the action, head to Pratt Street Ale House for can’t-miss drink deals or stop by the Bmore Around Town Purple Tailgate, where you can indulge in an open bar and the chance to snap a picture with Super Bowl champion Jamal Lewis. In Federal Hill, Mother’s Grille is offering a $35 all-you-can drink special on their infamous Purple Patio, and in Hampden, Frazier’s will serve up $2.50 cans of Boh and discounted appetizers all afternoon long. For more playoff specials and celebrations, check out our game-day roundup.

SEE

Jan. 4-Sept. 7: Press Press at the George Peabody Library

George Peabody Library, 17 E. Mount Vernon Pl. Fri., 10 a.m.-3 p.m.; Sat., 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Free.

Since its founding in 2014 by local artist and writer Kimi Hanauer, Press Press has been making waves in Baltimore and beyond for its grassroots approach to publishing that amplifies voices that often go unheard. Press Press is entering its fifth year as the George Peabody Library Research Residency’s artist-in-residence, which culminates with this exhibition of the initiative’s entire body of work, including pieces like 100% Yes Manifesto and Megaphone! Megaphone!, in the atrium of the historic Mt. Vernon library. The exhibit runs through September 7, so if you can’t make it this weekend, you have plenty of time to make the trip.

HEAR

Jan. 6: Neighbors Play Normal’s

Normal’s Books & Records, 425 E. 31st St. 7:30 p.m. Free.

Chances are you’ve been humming “Auld Lang Syne” under your breath since Tuesday. Wash away the last few traces of holiday music during Normal’s Books and Records first show of the year, featuring four of the bookseller’s favorite Abell acts. On the chill end, sway to ukulele covers by the John Street Genes and indie folk by James BonTempo & Truth Tables. On the other, post-punk outfit Silver Gulls and local rock supergroup In Love With the Weather Girl are guaranteed to bring up the energy—a perfect post-new year palate cleanser.

DO

Jan. 4-6: Ice Skating at the Four Seasons Hotel

Four Seasons, 200 International Dr. Fri., 4-8 p.m.; Sat. and Sun., 12-8 p.m. $15-25.

This weekend marks the final few days of rooftop ice skating at the Four Seasons Hotel in Harbor East, and whether it’s your first visit this winter or your 50th, it’s worth the trip. In between attempting triple axels on the 1,500-square-foot rink, take in the sights while listening to live music, sipping on hot cocoa, and snacking on roasted chestnuts. Afterwards, grab a drink or two at The Bygone, the hotel’s top-floor restaurant, to warm up and catch another glimpse of that breathtaking view.

Waverly regulars might have noticed a colorful new addition to the neighborhood. Turn a corner and you’re faced with a long blue wall, where a mural features deep purple paint dripping down as wax from a candle atop a lavender Planet Earth, which doubles as a Magic 8 Ball. This is the new Normal’s.

Ahead of its 28th birthday on E. 31st St., this beloved home of books, records, zines, and one very friendly dog named Max got an early present—a facelift. In 2017, the building’s landlord contacted Emilie Drasher of Waverly Main Street about available funds for local businesses. One year, a few months, some design changes, and a lot of hard work later, the storefront now has a new look and the structural integrity to last.

“They stripped it all the way down to the core,” says Rupert Wondolowski, who co-owns Normal’s with John Berndt and Walt Novash. “I don’t think anyone knew what was awaiting them beneath the stucco.” 

Local artist Greg Gannon of Signs of Intelligent Life merged past and present by enlarging the store emblem created in 1990 by Peter Pan (yes, you read that right), one of the store’s original nine owners, so that it could fit between the two front windows. The store’s name would also get added prominence thanks to a new font created by friend-of-the-shop Tim Hill. Once the plan was settled, Gannon teamed up with Spectrum Mural Studio to paint the whole building in less than two days, giving this beacon the update it needed to shine for the future explorers of its many wonders.

But, as they say, it’s what’s on the inside that counts. Normal’s began as an attempt at a “normal” 9-to-5 gig for some artsy kids in the early ’90s, and at one time stocked clothing and bikes (they sold one to John Waters) alongside the current inventory of books and music. It has attracted burgeoning musicians, aging artists, and autodidacts looking to expand their understanding of the metaphysical, all brought together by the shop’s vast collections.

Beyond the fresh signage, you’ll find the same winding haven of bound pages and vinyl that locals have come to know and love. Kitsch still covers the walls, and something good always spins on the turntable. For those uninitiated, expect to wander for a while between the record bins, stacked shelves, and various nooks and crannies full of new and used finds ranging from the mainstream to the avant-garde.

“The investment of the community in our space feels like a bright new phase is ahead,” says Wondolowski. “Speaking as someone who’s not normally an optimist, I feel like there’s a movement back to appreciating simplicity and beauty, time machines without wires.”

Found Art

East 31st Street
October 14, 2017

“There’s no such thing as a bad home movie.”—John Waters.

The home movies screened at Normal’s Books & Records tonight include the expected clips of a 1950s-era Ocean City vacation and an Irish-Catholic wedding reception of the same vintage. There’s footage of a crammed 1983 East Baltimore rowhouse Christmas, a swinging sermon from a local black church, and shots of a sister and brother playing in their Rogders Forge backyard, which begins in rather pedestrian fashion until the boy dons a Fidel Castro-inspired beard and Cuban military-style cap, picks up a toy rifle and chases after his sister. 

Some of the footage screened is from professionally archived sources, others are found on eBay and the like, and some are courtesy of audience members who have brought along their own home movies.

“Hey, it was 1959,” the grown-up would-be revolutionary explains from the back of the crowd amid raucous laughter. “Castro was a hero in the U.S.”

Hosted locally by the Mid-Atlantic Regional Moving Image Archive (MARMIA), Home Movie Day is an annual event that’s been held around the world since 2002. Among other efforts, the preservation nonprofit recently began digitizing historic footage from WJZ-TV.

Also on hand is Jasmyn Castro (no relation to Fidel, needless to say), media conservation and digitalization specialist with the National Museum of African American History & Culture, who is screening home movies shot by black families in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. Those films, mostly from the 1960s and  1970s, capture everyday African-American family life—at home, at their local schools, at wedding receptions-—that simply was not represented on television or by Hollywood at the time.

“Home movies hold all kinds of finds and provide context that documents life in the region the way it was lived by everyday people,” says MARMIA president Siobhan Hagan, before a lively crab feast/day camping adventure on the Chesapeake Bay from the early 1960s appears on screen.

“You can practically smell the Natty Boh, cigarettes, and hairspray,” someone quips.

Not all home movies are fun. There is also amatuer footage shot during the 1968 Baltimore riot.

One of the truly gorgeous films is 16mm color footage from The Johns Hopkins University Medical Archive of a physician’s fishing expedition on the Chesapeake in the early 1940s. The wooden boats and crisp white sails—not to mention the well-attired men sporting fedoras as they cast their lines—appear to be from another epoch altogether, as does the sterling blue Bay, with its then-plentiful rockfish seemingly jumping into the boat. “Otherwise,” deadpans JHU visual projects archivist Tim Wisniewski of the school’s medical film archive, “our footage is mostly surgeries.”

One of the first home movies of the evening includes upper-deck footage from the last Opening Day at Memorial Stadium in 1991, a potentially auspicious afternoon that proved anything but. One-term vice president Dan Quayle threw out the first pitch that afternoon before the O’s lost 9-1—the first of 95 defeats that season.

“My mom had two rules when we went to Memorial Stadium,” Hagan says, narrating the clip as her 6-year-old self eyes a trayful of pink cotton candy passing on screen. “You can’t go to the bathroom while the Orioles are at bat and no cotton candy. Ever.”

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Homeland

Broadway
October 9, 2017

Inside the Baltimore American Indian Center, a sign touts the cultural classes held every Tuesday night, while noting the remarkable resiliency of the native people of the Americas.

We are still here

We are not going away

We have pow wows

We have parts of our culture

It is still here

We still make our jewelry

We still make our leather

Tonight, however, the center, which has served the metro area’s indigenous population—more than 8,300, according to the last census—since the late 1960s, is filled for a rally and petition-signing drive in support of renaming Christopher Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day. 

Last year, notes organizer Rebecca Nagle (whose family includes Cherokee ancestors), City Councilman Brandon Scott introduced legislation that would’ve placed Baltimore among other cities, including Los Angeles, Denver, Seattle, and Albuquerque, which have renamed the holiday. But the “Indigenous Peoples’/Italian Americans Day” bill did not pass.

Jennifer Hunt, a Baltimore County mother of two, starts the evening with an emotional reading of Columbus and his men’s well-documented cruelty against native peoples, including execution, rape, dismemberment, forced work, and sale into European slavery.

“I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to get through it,” says Hunt, who is Choctaw, referring to her text, which includes entries from Columbus’ own journal and testimony from a contemporary Spanish witness to the atrocities. “I knew children would be here. But my husband, who is African American, said people need to know the truth. All I learned in school was same thing as everyone else: ‘In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.’”

Later, she notes that it was her Choctaw grandfather who came to Baltimore after joining the Coast Guard. She says that despite brutal federal policies that removed Native Americans from their land and pushed them onto reservations, “joining the military is often how you try to get out of poverty.” In fact, Hunt adds, a higher proportion of Native Americans serve in the U.S. military than any other ethnic group.

She also adds that she certainly doesn’t hold any animosity toward Italian Americans, particularly those in nearby Little Italy—she just takes issue with the veneration of Columbus.

“I love Sabitino’s and their Bookmaker Salad,” Hunt says with a smile. “We go there all the time.”

Land of the Free

June 25, 2015
Koppers Street

“Brazil, Burma, Cameroon . . . ,” Greg Collett, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services district director, calls out 26 countries in alphabetical order until 39 would-be citizens are on their feet. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has already made some opening remarks, noting the difficult time Baltimore has been through recently, informing those about to become Americans that the strength and resiliency they’ve already demonstrated will be needed. After a brief history of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” those standing are asked to place their right hands over their hearts and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

Following a videotaped welcome from President Barack Obama, the newly naturalized U.S. citizens—surrounded by family and dressed in their holiday best—burst into spontaneous cheers, waving the tiny flags they’ve been given over their heads. A few are moved to tears. “I’m very happy after all these years,” says Maria Suarez, a Peruvian immigrant and mother, who was separated for years from her husband. “Triste [sad],” she says of that time, breaking into Spanish and smiling while wiping the corners of her eyes. “Many difficult nights.” Nearby, in a camouflage uniform, Mexican-born Haroldo Palma receives high-fives from U.S. Army buddies.

Upfront, Oyindamola Ikujuni, a vivacious Nigerian-born mother of three, is celebrating both her citizenship and her 36th birthday today. Asked what she likes most about America, she beams. “The freedom,” she says. “And the roads.”

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Signs of Life

June 18, 2015
Key Highway

“I run a lot, and the first time I turned down Bond Street and saw the Bond Street Wharf sign, I was blown away by the scale and color,” says Samantha Redles, at the Baltimore Museum of Industry, explaining the inspiration for her pop-up exhibition, Not Yet Lost! The Art of Maryland Sign Painters. “I knew there was a person who did that, who was behind that sign.”

The three-story, BOND STREET WHARF lettering—integrated into the former warehouse’s architecture and reappointed brick—was painted in 2008 by Brendon Brandon, whose efforts over the past half-century include other historic renovations, like the E.J. Codd building, also in Fells Point. As part of the exhibit here, organized by Redles for her Maryland Institute College of Art Curatorial Practice thesis, there’s also a screening tonight of the 2013 documentary Sign Painters, which recounts the craft’s heyday and unsung mid-century practitioners before the mass adoption of vinyl lettering.

“It’s definitely viewed as blue-collar, but it offered the chance to be creative and work with your hands,” says Redles, whose show highlights six Maryland painters, including Clifford Olson. His best-known work included the whimsical Cloud Mattress mural on the company’s former Guilford Avenue factory, since gone condo. Restored and visible from I-83, the painting depicts a woman lying alone in bed in a negligee and curlers, levitating above the city at night.

As a 14-year-old in 1934, armed with his paintbrushes, Olson had hopped a freight train out of his Nebraska hometown, ultimately landing in Baltimore. “Dad didn’t quit until he was 76, after a stroke,” his son Ole says later. “Worked all those years on swinging scaffolding without a safety line, shoveling snow off in the winter. I helped him sometimes in high school. He’d tell me, ‘You’ll be fine. Hold onto the brush.’”

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Business as Usual

July 11, 2015
East 31st Street

Like the ephemera sitting in the front windows—the papier-mâché bunny and evil clown dolls, the used hardcover on tiny surrealism and ’80s vinyl from Afrika Bambaataa—Normal’s Books & Records wasn’t expected to survive the digital revolution, let alone celebrate its silver anniversary. But crowded among the teetering stacks of books and bric-a-brac this afternoon, a real clown named Norma plays a kazoo as a young dad with dreadlocks tries to corral his son and two men peruse albums and recall Left Bank Jazz Society shows at Baltimore’s old Famous Ballroom. At the same time, in the store’s backroom performance space, called the Red Room—which is blue, of course—an a cappella Sacred Harp choir is following a raucous noise band to the floor.

The shop’s motto, co-owner Rupert Wondolowski notes, has always been “everything from the obscure to the indispensable.” Its name comes from paid study work several of the early store founders did with the Baltimore Psychiatric Research Center—where control subjects in schizophrenia investigations were referred to as “normals.”

“We started two doors down in a smaller space, but not a lot else has changed,” Wondolowski says. “We did sell vintage bikes and clothes, but ran out of room for that. The first year, it’s true, John Waters bought a bike here. This was before iPhones, so I don’t have a picture, but in my mind, I can still see him wobbling off down the street in ragged glory.”