Rafael Alvarez is a former Sun reporter, The Wire staff writer, and author of nearly a dozen books that he notes with a smile are “all about Baltimore.”

A prolific freelance journalist and occasional contributor to Baltimore, Alvarez is also one of the best profile writers in the city—and as far as complicated subjects go, he has met his match in Bruce White. The recovering drug addict at the center of Don’t Count Me Out: A Baltimore Dope Fiend’s Miraculous Recovery, White has an ugly and at times brutal past that includes violence and incarceration, which Alvarez handles with a reporter’s objectivity and eye for detail, and a novelist’s understanding of character and narrative.

Don’t Count Me Out is the story of a man almost everyone would have considered a hopeless addict and criminal, yet someone who eventually found grace. Or, as White would describe it, grace found him. Today, he runs a treatment center and several recovery houses, helping hundreds over the years to recover from addiction.

Recovery stories are inevitably both personal and universal, and it’s White’s willingness to share his early sexual assault, the deeper truths behind his middle-class upbringing, and his own insecurities—combined with Alvarez’s reporting and writing—that make this a book you’ll read in one or two sittings.

Reading Don’t Count Me Out, the book that popped to mind was The Night of the Gun by former New York Times reporter David Carr, in which Carr goes back and, with a reporter’s commitment to the facts, interrogates his own addiction and dark past. The difference obviously is you are reporting Bruce White’s story, but the rigor is similar. Did you ever read that?
No, I haven’t, but I know of the book and I’m somewhat familiar with David Carr’s story. Writing this book was a lot of old-fashioned, shoe-leather reporting, going through archives and court documents, and finding his reclusive and estranged older brother and bringing the two of them together.

You also tracked down old friends, classmates, and even his junior high school assistant principal, among others.
When a Baltimore County career educator now in his 80s, who must’ve had 250,000 students over the years, remembers you, it’s because you stood out. For better or worse. Bruce kept pushing me, “When’s the book going to be done?” But that’s why it took 10 years to finish.

How did you guys meet?
He was looking for someone to tell his story and a mutual Baltimore acquaintance told him I was a writer and suggested he should reach out to me. And they gave him my cell number. I was in Los Angeles, trying to hustle up work after the Writers Guild strike and Great Recession, when he called. So, you know, I said yes. The only promise that I made was that I would produce a professional manuscript.

The first chapter is remarkable—and unexpected, to say the least. White flatlines on the way to the hospital after being shot by a SWAT team. What he experiences after “dying” is not the cliché white-light rapture, however, but a descent into something akin to Dante’s Inferno.
The detail and vividness of it were kind of startling. It’s the only thing in the book that I couldn’t fact-check. Not without some sort of divine intervention. It’s his memory of what he experienced—and he wanted to die when he came to—that was the physical pain and mental state he was in. As a writer, I knew when he shared it, that’s where I wanted to start the book. It’s terrifying and it sets everything else up.

How would White, now in his 60s, explain his transformation? The man in his 1998 mugshot and the man in the current photos in the book are two different people.
Oh yeah, he looks like a maniac in that photo after he’s been arrested. He’d attribute it to prayer and meditation. That simple. He prays five times a day.

What do you hope readers take away?
He came from a middleclass, Leave It to Beaver home in Lutherville. His parents had their own issues, but they loved him. He did Cub Scouts, played baseball—had dance lessons in the first grade—went to Ocean City in the summer. Addiction doesn’t care. He still ended up in prison. That said, I wouldn’t have done this book if there wasn’t a redemption. Years later, when he was clean and running a treatment program, a woman told him that a male house manager had demanded sex in lieu of rent. It led to him establishing his first residential recovery house, which accepted only women.

An attorney by day, Gary Altmeter is the author of two books—the 2019 memoir, The Emperor of Ice Cream, and the forthcoming novel, Kissing the Roadkill Back to Life—as well as a contributor to McSweeney’s. Along with former Sun reporter and writer/author Rafael Alvarez, Altmeter is also the co-editor of A Lovely Place, A Fighting Place, A Charmer: The Baltimore Anthology—three dozen essays from city writers, poets, and journalists (including myself) as well as stories from a reporter-turned-pastor and Congressman John Sarbanes.

The diverse collection features the saga of 19th-century Baltimore grave robbers and a history of the city morgue by Bruce Goldfarb, an award-winning writer and the executive assistant to the state’s Chief Medical Examiner, and a letter and plea to Baltimoreans from New York Times bestselling author D. Watkins. Overall, readers get personal explorations of family and local history, and a wide-ranging account of what the city feels like today—from growing up in a changing Park Heights to urban gardening in Bolton Hill—as well as reflections on life during COVID-19 and the legacy of Freddie Gray.

You taught school in New York City and then came here for law school. When did you become a writer?
A friend and I were talking about goals and his goals were all about bungee cords, airplanes, and continents, and I was like, “I want to be a partner at the firm and save money for college for the kids.” He just offhandedly says, “You need new goals.” I thought, I do need new goals. My favorite website is McSweeney’s [the daily humor site of McSweeney Publishing] and so I said, “Don’t laugh. I’ve always wanted to publish something there.” It isn’t The New Yorker, but there’s some gravitas. I don’t know your experience with rejection, but I became very familiar with it. When they finally accepted something, it was euphoria.

How did you and Rafael Alvarez get together on this project?
He and I were in Portland in 2019 for the Association of Writers and Poets Conference and hung out. Then when we got back, I asked him if there’d ever been a Baltimore Anthology. I’m from Buffalo originally and there’s a book called The Buffalo Anthology by Belt Publishing. So, I called or emailed Belt, I’ve forgotten which I did first, but they’re out of Cleveland and they have this whole thing called the Rust Belt Series that’s really cool. I said, “Look, I don’t know if Baltimore’s in the Rust Belt or not. If it’s not, it should be. Here’s what we’re thinking.”

Your piece, “The Proclaimers,” is built around the moment of catching someone listening to music you didn’t expect—an ’80s Scottish alternative rock band, for instance—and remembering not to prejudge people and remain open to the little surprises of city life.
I mentioned this in the essay, but that happened before, too, when I heard somebody whistling, “Running Up That Hill,” by Kate Bush. I turned around and it just wasn’t your typical Kate Bush listener, or so I thought, and yet these ideas of what music listeners should look like persist.

One thing that’s interesting is half the writers seem to be native Baltimoreans and the other half are transplants, who have fallen in love with this lovely, scrappy, charming city.
The collection is less about crabs and Ocean City and those things; it’s more about after the superficial uniqueness wears off. Some of the gems are from writers who grew up here, but I think outsiders also sometimes have more of an appreciation for the ordinary than a local would. Representation, in terms of geography of the city, was important, but I don’t think the insider-outsider perspective was conscious. It just happened.

What is a personal favorite?
There’s one called, “What I Miss About Baltimore.” I love that one because there’s that perfect balance between melancholy and funny. The writer lives in Boulder now and is not supposed to miss Baltimore but does. He misses snowballs and the squeegee kids. Misses Happy Hour, the pink and yellow pens from Big Boyz Bail Bonds, and Barry Glazer’s commercials. He catches himself feeling optimistic about the city and then trying to convince himself he’s wrong, which is something we probably all do.

The Ninth Hour 

 By Alice McDermott (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)  

It could be said that Alice McDermott has perfected her subject matter. The National Book Award  winner and Johns Hopkins University professor’s most celebrated works have been set in the world of Irish Catholics in New York as they struggle to build their lives and find an identity in early 20th-century America. That was true of her last book, Someone, and it is true  of her latest. This time,  she explores how one event—a man’s suicide—reverberates through the lives of those around him, from his grief-stricken widow to the nuns who care for his ravaged family in his stead. It is in these women of the cloth that McDermott finds some of her richest characters yet—strong women who steadfastedly fight for the poor and disadvantaged but who receive little notice or acclaim. McDermott has a way of transcending the day-to-day existence of her characters to bring us slices of human truths. We find ourselves drawn into a world that, though much different from our own, is made relevant and relatable through her marvelous prose.

Read our full interview with writer Alice McDermott.

Basilio Boullosa Stars In The Fountain of Highlandtown

By Rafael Alvarez  (CityLit Press)

Twenty years ago, a city desk reporter for The Sun debuted his first work of fiction—a short story collection called The Fountain of Highlandtown, which captured the heartache, yearning, and disenchantment of growing up in blue-collar East Baltimore. Much has changed since then: that reporter, Rafael Alvarez, has added several books and a stint writing for the acclaimed TV show The Wire to his resume, subsequently establishing himself as a key voice in capturing Baltimore’s story. (He also occasionally contributes to Baltimore.) Now, he has returned to this familiar territory to bring us another collection, which, like its predecessor, revolves around his alter ego, Basilio Boullosa, an artist who is haunted by the relics of Baltimore’s past. We follow Alvarez’s path, which is ripe with nostalgia and brimming with the in-between feelings that come with understanding that we want to leave our hometown, while not knowing how. Ultimately, Alvarez’s stories serve as a reminder that we can move away, but we’re never really far from where we’ve come from. 

Star Fighters

December 11, 2016
Lloyd Street

“How many people know who Benny Leonard was?” Mike Silver asks the crowd gathered at the Jewish Museum of Maryland. “Benny Leonard was the most famous Jewish person in America in the 1920s. Not Albert Einstein. Not Justice Louis Brandeis.”

Leonard, explains Silver, author of Stars in the Ring: Jewish Champions in the Golden Age of Boxing, fought his way out of Manhattan’s East Side ghetto to become one of the great boxers of all time during the Roaring ’20s, holding the lightweight title for nearly seven years. “He quit to take care of his sick mother. How Jewish is that?”

In his book, Silver chronicles 29 Jewish world champion boxers and more than 160 contenders from the 1890s-1950s, including a half-dozen Baltimore brawlers—welterweights Jacob “Jack” Portney and Benny Goldstein, flyweight Benny Schwartz, middleweight Sylvan Bass, and lightweights Charley Gomer and Isadore “Izzy” Rainess. Silver also gives a shout-out to legendary trainer Heine Blaustein. “Baltimore was a great fight town,” Silver says.

It wasn’t unusual in those days, Silver continues, for Jewish boxers to change their name. Not because of anti-Semitism, but family (read: mother’s) disapproval of the sport. Leonard was really Leiner, for example. Often, Jewish fighters switched ethnic identities altogether, killing two birds with one stone by trying to appeal to the sport’s huge Irish fan base.

“My uncle was Baltimore welterweight Patsy Lewis—that’s pretty Irish. His real name was Julius Rosenbloom,” volunteers Jerry Russ, 81, who went to the fights with his father at the old Baltimore Coliseum. Carlin’s Park was another popular venue.

At a time when boxing and baseball were the country’s biggest draws, fighting wasn’t just a means to make money for working-class immigrants—a four-round bout could pull in the same pay as a week in a sweatshop—it was also a means of assimilation and pride for Jews.

“Einstein, brilliant scientist, but who understands the theory of relativity? Brandeis, brilliant justice, but how many people read Supreme Court decisions?” Silver asks. “A punch in the nose? That, everybody understands.”

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Beer Run

December 3, 2016
North Belnord Avenue

Former University of Maryland, Baltimore County cross country star Eric Shuler won this morning’s 5K through Patterson Park in convincing fashion, posting a time of 16:39—more than two minutes faster than his closest rival. But now the real competition is underway as more than 400 runners quench their thirst in the schoolyard behind Patterson Park Public Charter School. Here, 21 home-brewers are chatting about hops and recipes, pitting their kitchen, basement, and garage-brewed ales against one another while vying for today’s biggest title: Best Homebrew.

The Patterson Park 5K, Fun Run, and Homebrew Tasting—this is the beer-making competition’s third year—supports the school’s effort to send students to Spanish-speaking countries where they can practice the language they’ve been studying.

Most of the beer makers acknowledge their brewing evolved pretty quickly from hobby to near-obsession. “I liked to drink beer, that’s how I got started,” laughs (the aptly named) Stephen Porr, who eventually opened The Grain Bill, a family-run, home-brew supply store in Red Lion, Pennsylvania. “It went downhill from there.”

In the end, Darren Stimpfle, a surgical physician’s assistant by profession, sweeps both the Crowd Favorite and Brewer’s Choice awards with his dry-hopped, golden sour ale with apricot. Stimpfle, who spends eight hours each Friday brewing at home, is developing a business plan to sell his beer commercially. “I’m the runner and he’s the brewer and I support him—I really do,” says his wife, Shannon Gibbons, who took third place in the 5K’s 30-34 age group. “We went to Belgium on vacation and visited the Cantillon Brewery in Brussels three times. Naturally, I wanted to go to Paris and we did,” she adds with wry cheerfulness. “For two days.”

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Christmas Stories

December 17, 2016
Eastern Avenue

“The year after my grandmother died I went looking for the spirit of Christmas on Eastern Avenue,” Rafael Alvarez says, reciting the first sentence from his 1999 book, Hometown Boy, at the 10th Annual Highlandtown Literary Extravaganza at the Enoch Pratt Southeast Anchor Library.

“Eastern Avenue,” Alvarez, an occasional contributor to Baltimore, explains, “was where you bought your first communion clothes before the Eastpoint Mall. It was where you shopped for everything.”

Alvarez launched his holiday storytelling, music, deviled egg, and pizelle festival after returning from Hollywood, where he wrote for TV following a stint penning episodes of The Wire. The crowd over the years has been a mix of friends, family, musicians, writers—including Afaa Michael Weaver, a former Procter and Gamble factory worker who has become one of the country’s foremost poets—and Highlandtowners who come to hear “real Baltimore” tales. Before intermission, Alvarez asks audience members to share their own Christmas stories, which mostly yields sagas of sibling rivalry and poor decisions.

David Ettlin, a retired Baltimore Sun editor, jokes his parents never bothered with a Christmas tree during the holidays while he was growing up. “We’re Jewish,” Ettlin deadpans. Determined to get a tree after marrying a Methodist, but not wanting to shell out big bucks, Ettlin hatched a plan with his wife—against the advice of their teenage daughter—to sneak into the woods together and cut down a live pine.

“All of a sudden, there’s a patch of mud and Bonnie does a flip and fractures her wrist horribly,” Ettlin continues. At the emergency room, he learns there will be a $50 copay for the orthopedic surgeon and then an additional $10 for a generic painkiller, or $35 for the brand name. “I feel guilty and go with the brand name,” Ettlin says. “But what I’m thinking is, ‘I’m out $85 and still don’t have a damn tree.’”

The Baltimore Love Project

Rafael Alvarez, with photographs by Sean Scheidt (self-published)

It’s likely you’ve encountered at least one, with its painted black fingers gesturing to you, spreading a message everyone understands. Since 2008, murals depicting hands that spell “LOVE” have sprung up on 20 walls around Baltimore, thanks to the creativity of mural artist Michael Owen and the strategic negotiating of his partner in the project, Scott Burkholder. This book chronicles their journey in finding walls to paint and obtaining approval from property owners. But it also takes the reader beyond descriptions of the murals’ locations and explores what their effect has been—from altering lives to physically changing the surrounding communities, and even affecting Burkholder and Owen’s relationship. Alvarez’s poignant, intimate prose also highlights the history of murals in Baltimore, including the 1970s-era Beautiful Walls project and the more recent Open Walls. And Scheidt’s stunning photographs strike the right tone, showcasing people and neighborhoods authentically. This piece of Baltimore spreads the love, just as Owen and Burkholder intended.

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Adnan’s Story

Rabia Chaudry (St. Martin’s Press)

This confusing, enveloping, and at times infuriating murder case had listeners of the podcast Serial wondering for weeks, “Who killed Hae Min Lee?” And even almost two years after the start of Serial, we still don’t know, as the man convicted of the crime—Lee’s ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed—was granted a new trial on June 30. This book takes us beyond Serial to examine what this case has done to Syed’s life and the lives of those close to him who maintain his innocence. (If you felt Serial left Lee out of the narrative, this isn’t the place to find her story.) Family friend Chaudry—who has her own podcast devoted to investigating what she believes are wrongful convictions—takes us through the events leading up to the disappearance on Jan. 13, 1999, presenting the evidence of the case, how Serial got involved, and the Syed family’s mission to overturn the verdict. Chaudry’s words make room for passages penned by Syed, and together they draw back the curtain on what life is like for Muslim residents of Northwest Baltimore and what it is like to be part of a high-profile murder case. It’s a riveting read that will draw you deep into its depths.

See our full interview with writer Rabia Chaudry.

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John Barth: A Body of Words

Edited by Gabrielle Dean and Charles B. Harris (Dalkey Archive Press)

It’s no secret that John Barth is a giant of the literary world. One of the best writers “we’ve ever had,” according to The New York Times Book Review, he’s a two-time finalist and 1973 winner of The National Book Award, and author of the brilliantly experimental The Sot-Weed Factor and Chimera. We get to claim Barth as one of our own, as he is a Cambridge resident (and native) and was a professor in The Writing Seminars at The Johns Hopkins University from 1973 until his retirement in 1995. And as this anthology of essays describes, behind the guise of literary genius was a kind, thoughtful, inspiring professor who encouraged students to call him “Jack” and looked after them “beyond anything expected of him,” writes former student John Balaban. That anecdote illustrates what this collection of essays (including one by our own John Lewis, Baltimore editor at large) does best—it takes us from the publishing house to the classroom, illuminating a treasured literary mind and showing his grace and brilliance in intimate detail.

Crabtown, USA
Rafael Alvarez (Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing)

It’s obvious from the start of Crabtown, USA that Alvarez lost his heart to Baltimore years ago—in fact, the title of his first chapter is “My Beloved,” and he’s not talking about a woman. Encased in these 441 pages is a love letter to his home city, though it’s far from a typical one. Alvarez—who has authored several books about his native neighborhood of Highlandtown, and made a national name for himself as a writer for The Wire—doesn’t just wax nostalgic in these essays about Charm City’s majesty, but finds poetry in her flaws and shortcomings. He writes about street drunks and the outcome of Bethlehem Steel’s departure with the same pen that he uses to offer odes to Joseph Conrad and Edgar Allan Poe. He transforms the seemingly ordinary into historical relics to be relished—the Baltimore hon, narrow alleys, even the humble deviled egg. And throughout, he sprinkles his experiences with characters who embody the true spirit of the city, from former rewrite colleagues at The Sun to a woman who played piano at neighborhood watering holes for most of her 86 years. Alvarez’s enthusiasm is contagious, and by the end, you’ll want to walk the harbor, or stroll the streets of Fells, just to soak up the essence of Charm City.

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Wild Women of Maryland
Lauren R. Silberman (The History Press)

One was known as the “limping lady,” a spy who stole secrets, despite having lost her lower left leg. Another led the movement for civil rights in Cambridge, enduring arrests and rioting in her quest for equality. And still another was among the first women to visit Antarctica, where she lived for a year in the 1940s during a research expedition. These are some of Silberman’s wild women of Maryland, dames who bucked the status quo to live lives of adventure, danger, and trailblazing. You’ve heard of some—Harriet Tubman, for instance, or Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor—but Silberman also shares stories of women who are missing from the often-male-dominated history books. These are women tried as witches during the 17th century, for example, as well as suffragettes and World War II-era female aviators. (Divine even makes an appearance.) Silberman, an author who is also deputy director for Historic London Town and Gardens in Edgewater, showcases their stories in well-researched detail. During Women’s History Month, this book is a good reminder for all of us, regardless of gender, that anything is possible when you stand out from the pack and live life on your own terms.

See our interview with writer Lauren B. Silberman.

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Knocking the Hustle
Lester K. Spence (Punctum Books)

You don’t have to look far in hip hop culture to find references to the “hustle”—the constant grind that is necessary to find success on the street, and in the music industry. But in Spence’s eyes, that mentality demonstrates an unfortunate turn in pop culture and politics. Instead of highlighting power and control, it shows “black men who are forced to work incessantly with no way out,” he writes. In his well-researched and enlightening book, Spence, an associate professor of political science and Africana studies at The Johns Hopkins University, argues that’s a consequence of a shift toward the neoliberal, which favors free-market capitalism. He says the move away from the structure and protection of unions and other workers rights groups, for example, is responsible for vast wage inequality, and has contributed to widening gaps in education and opportunities for blacks. Spence turns his microscope on Baltimore, as well as other urban areas, and his thought-provoking opinion is a welcome change in a debate where the arguments are tried and true.

Tales from the Holy Land

Rafael Alvarez (Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing)

If
Baltimore is the Holy Land, Alvarez is its Pope of pulp. These 19 short
stories exude hardboiled fortitude and an aversion to pretension of all
types. Populated with anti-heroes and set mostly between Fells Point
and Highlandtown, they pull the vigorous specificity of Mencken’s Happy
Days through The Wire (a show he helped write) with so many details
intact that they feel utterly real. But Alvarez’s fiction also traffics
in the mysteries of human kindness and cruelty, and his soulful
rendering of characters such as Basilio Ballousa, Pio Talle, and Gibby
Lukowski makes these stories true. His people are from the streets, but
they believe in something bigger——be it a familial bond, Catholic
mysticism, or the music of Johnny Winter——and that’s what ultimately
makes these tales transcendent.

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Unruly Catholic Women Writers

Edited by Jeana DelRosso, Leigh Eicke & Ana Kothe (Excelsior Editions)

Put
together by DelRosso, an English professor at Notre Dame of Maryland
University, and two co-editors, this literary anthology seems especially
timely with Pope Francis shaking up things at the Vatican. It
spotlights writers who are, indeed, unruly. But they’re also thoughtful,
witty, and sensitive, and their irreverence is part of a two-sided coin
in the air. Here, their personal essays, monologues, short stories,
plays, and poems are grouped in three sections: “The Joyful Mysteries,”
“The Sorrowful Mysteries,” and “The Glorious Mysteries.” Mystery, not
dogma, infuses the pieces, as these women grapple with the inspiration
and indignation Catholicism has produced. Many of them continue
contemplating the silences and empty spaces that religion fills for many
people.

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Gentlemen of the Harbor

Captain Bill Eggert (self-published)

The
opening story in Rafael Alvarez’s Tales from the Holy Land involves a
teenager losing his virginity aboard a tugboat. Eggert’s tugboat history
includes nothing as racy as that——though, coincidentally, its cover and
the Alvarez cover are nearly identical——as its captains and crews
generally live up to the book’s title. Superbly illustrated with
photographs by famed Sun photographer Hans Marx and others, it depicts a
way of life that is hidden in plain view. Tugboats have been a common
sight around the harbor for generations, but most people aren’t privy to
the culture arising from these decks and docks. Eggert remedies that
with a pithy mix of maritime history and local legend, augmented by old
newspaper stories and even an occasional poem.

Besides the fact that it’s your hometown, what makes Baltimore so appealing as a setting for fiction?

The
question that is asked a thousand times of artists mining the plentiful
but seemingly worthless ore of Baltimore (it’s not gold, it’s iron and
slag and we try to spin into something that glitters, if only when the
sun hits it just right.) For me it’s the age of the place—as old as just
about anything in the area that eventually became the United States—and
its also the romance of sailing ships and the sea and the true polyglot
of people and their faiths. No matter what they put up in this town, it
was built upon something that makes for a better story: Burke’s beneath
the chicken fat of a Royal Farm at Light and Lombard; orthodox
synagogues and the bones of organ grinder monkeys beneath the new
restaurants of little italy, heavy metals deep in the soil beneath
Harbor East. I make sure I find someone who still remembers and launch
them onto the canvas of my fiction, which is really one very long
story—a mural—being written one panel at a time.

You’ve
also lived in Los Angeles, a city that attracts lots of aspiring
writers, actors, musicians, etc. As a devoted Baltimore, what was it
like living there?

I tried, but I never really liked it. I
arrived too late in life (mid 40s) Tried to enjoy Dodger Stadium but it
only reminded me of where I wasn’t (Camden Yards); became good friends
with a guy from Pigtown, John Elliott IV, who photographed red carpet
events and when we were at PINK’S (the famous LA hot dog joint) we
talked about the old Polack Johnny’s on the Block … went to Mass at
the futuristic LA Cathedral (shot part of my rosary documentary there)
but wished I was at St. Leo’s on Exeter Street.

How has your work as a journalist informed your short stories?

The
two cannot be separated. Baltimore is the great subject of my work – I
still recall trying to figure out at about the age of 20 two seemingly
crucial aspects of becoming a fiction writer: whether to create a truly
fictional world (re-naming everything, inventing new streets, etc.) or
choosing some exotic locale (or a series of them for my stories) and the
real answer for why I chose Baltimore (one of my better decisions) was
it just made a very difficult craft much easier.

The
characters in your stories come from the streets, but they tend to
believe in something bigger (be it Catholicism or the music of Johnny
Winter). Do such things offer more than solace from reality?

O’Malley
took a lot of shit for the BELIEVE campaign. It was one of his ideas I
supported. I believe that mysticism and faith can change things,
particularly in a charming city like Baltimore where the average
person—and in Baltimore it’s a pretty tough ‘average’—is just trying to
survive. We all need something bigger than ourselves— whether it’s the
Ravens or Transubstantiation—whether we believe it or not.

Music
plays a major role in some of these stories. What is it about the music
of Johnny Winter, Frank Zappa, and Dion that resonates with you?

Of
all people, Mr. Lewis—you, who once wore Ike Turner’s pajamas—you know
this is a question that must be discussed over a long evening of good
food and drink only to declare that we didn’t even scratch the surface. I
was 6 years old in 1964. On February 8—my namesake grandfather’s 60th
birthday—I was one kind of kid. After Sunday, February 9 (when The
Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show), I was another.

Gibby
Lukowski loses his virginity on a tugboat, and his family worked the
waterfront for generations. Wasn’t your dad a tugboat captain?

My
father was a chief engineer for the Baker-Whiteley towing at the City
Pier on Thames Street from 1957 until the company—then known as
McAllister—replaced the seafarer’s union workers with scabs. I have a
long chapter in The Wire: Truth Be Told about the great baltimore tugboat strike of 1966.

What are your favorite “Baltimore” books?

I don’t really read Baltimore books. My favorite Baltimore movie is Barry’s Avalon. I was re-watching it in 1995 when my former father in law—Ralph Rudacille, father of Deborah, author of Roots of Steel—was
struggling to beat cancer. Somehow the combo of a Baltimore that was
gone (Avalon) and this proud former steelworker from Dundalk fighting
for his life unexpectedly brought me to tears. Mr. Rudacille—as Pop
Pop—makes a cameo in the story “Nine Innings in Baltimore.”