Wanderlust: I’m drawn to objects that carry stories—the history major in me—pieces that have lived before and continue their journey in a new space. My style leans bohemian and maximalist, with carefully curated vignettes throughout. Think laid-back West Coast ease and Southwest desert warmth, layered with the richness, vibrancy, and old-world charm of far-flung places like Morocco and Paris, anchored by greenery that blurs the line between indoors and out. Family and friends have described it as warm and welcoming, a compliment that means everything—knowing they feel at home here.

The Country Mouse: My house dates back to 1904 and is in Plat 1 of Roland Park. Having grown up on a farm, I was drawn to a part of the city that still feels green and semi-rural. My childhood home was a historic farmhouse, so I’ve always loved houses with history—the details, the craftsmanship, and the character. I’ve embraced the historic bones of the house—original woodwork, moldings, and built-ins—while layering in objects, textiles, and furniture collected from travels and vintage finds.

Free Range: Growing up, we spent as much time outside as possible. My father always planted a large vegetable garden, and my mother’s flower beds sparked constant wonder. It’s no surprise where my love of plants comes from—or that green is my favorite color. That early connection to nature has shaped the way I approach my home. Plants are woven into my story just as much as vintage pieces, found objects, and collected treasures.

Green Thumb: I love the juxtaposition of city living layered with lush, intentional greenery, where natural elements coexist with pieces that carry history and meaning. Every plant has its own personality, which inspires me to create spaces with distinct moods and rhythms—much like curating a room with art and textiles. When I design spaces in my home, I think about composition and storytelling—how plants interact with light, color, texture, and patina, and how they can shift the feeling of a room.

Travels by Design: Some of my favorite pieces in my home are the ones that feel deeply personal, objects collected over time that carry memory, meaning, and a sense of place. I have held onto the vintage, mismatched china, glassware, and serving pieces that once belonged to my mom. I love using them for dinner parties, mixing  and matching depending on the mood and aesthetic I want to create. One piece I always reach for is the silver Champagne bucket my parents received as a wedding gift in 1968.

Eat, Pray, Love: My home reflects my interests in art, music, fashion, architecture, history, travel, and the natural world. Those influences show up in the layers of books, plants, art, and collected objects throughout the house. I love mixing contemporary and vintage pieces, found objects, and meaningful heirlooms, allowing a space to evolve naturally rather than feel overly designed or static.

Remarkable Rugs: Textiles and rugs from my travels are layered throughout the house, especially pieces from Morocco. I traveled along the coast, through the Atlas Mountains, into the Sahara Desert. The medinas and souks of Fes and Marrakesh were unforgettable—full of color, energy, and craftsmanship. I even brought an extra suitcase just for one-of-a-kind finds.

Art is Art: I’m fortunate to have incredible paintings from local artist friends. In the dining room, I feature “The New World” by Drury Bynum from his Arcana Obscura exhibition. Also in the dining room is a salvaged screen print from Housewerks—a man in a gas mask that makes a powerful statement about freedom of expression and free speech—that I’ve had for years. In the primary bedroom, there is a painting of bees by Julia Niederman, whose work has a dreamlike, narrative quality. Also, an organic wall piece by Kat Jacobs of Feathers and Fibers called “Kota.” One of my most sentimental pieces is a Victor Vasarely print I discovered years ago in a local antique shop. He was a Hungarian French artist and pioneer of the Op Art movement.

Sacred Space: For me, a home with personality feels soulful and welcoming. It invites curiosity, sparks conversation, and reflects a life well-lived. It’s not about perfection, but about intention—creating a space that feels deeply personal, layered with memory and meaning, and connected to the wider world and the quiet moments of everyday life.

It’s hard to miss Hilton Carter. Yes, the plant lover, author, and interior stylist is a big guy (6’5” to be exact) but he also just seems to be everywhere these days. On the Today show bantering with Craig Melvin and Al Roker; recording his podcast, Inside Hilton’s Head; and on Instagram (@hilton-carter) talking plant care, styling tips, and dad life to his 680,000 followers.

The fact that he has a few hours to spend at Artifact Coffee—looking fashion forward and fresh as usual in a philodendron-green terrycloth shirt, baseball cap with an embroidered H, and Birkenstock Boston clogs—almost seems impossible. There’s a calmness to him—and an ease that, yes, comes with age (he’s 45)—as well as a sense that he’s finally letting himself exhale.

This gigantic wave he’s been riding is, in fact, his career and not a passing fad about to crash ashore.

Unfurled: Designing a Living Home is Carter’s sixth book and his most personal one yet. “It’s like a diary,” says Carter. All 208 pages are filled with photos of his family—wife Fiona Vismans and daughters Holland and Vada—and delves into the rooms of their Roland Park house, which Carter has painstakingly renovated, styled, and photographed.

“Creating a home takes time. It can be slow and requires a lot of patience, planning, deliberation, and intentional decision-making. But eventually, given love and thought and care, that home will unfurl to reveal its true beauty,” Carter writes in the foreword, explaining his book title.

Although a majority of Carter’s fans probably don’t have a Baltimore ZIP code—he’s in the big league now—reading Unfurled through a local lens makes it an even cooler experience.

Carter was born at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1979 and grew up around drugs and violence. “I didn’t see much of an escape from that,” he says. His family moved to Essex when he was 10, which changed the trajectory of his life. Carter played football for the Middle River Renegades and made a lot of friends. The kids liked that he was different (read: artistic). He joined art clubs and took classes at the local community college before enrolling at Carver Center for Arts and Technology’s visual arts program.

He headed to Maryland Institute College of Art (graduating in 2002), then moved to California to attend graduate school at the ArtCenter College of Design for film—an art form he saw as the next natural step in visual storytelling. He learned all the different parts of filmmaking, but what really stuck out for him was production design. He loved the idea that the set was telling a bigger story—an idea that has stuck with him to this day.

In 2011, when work for a freelance film project took him to Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, someone suggested he check out Terrain, a shop and restaurant owned by Anthropologie that blurred the line between home and garden. It was a light-bulb moment for Carter.

“If I ever have the means, I’m going to start bringing plants in,” he thought.

Three years later, when Carter moved to New Orleans for work and his apartment in the French Quarter offered a big, sun-soaked space, he purchased a five-foot-tall fiddle leaf fig tree he named Frank. Carter’s plant knowledge came about gradually over time. He visited greenhouses, asked lots of questions, and, most importantly: He listened. A friend’s mom taught him about propagation—the process of growing new plants from the cuttings of other plant parts. He was hooked.

When Carter moved back to Baltimore in 2015, he schlepped Frank with him. (He now resides in Carter’s Parkdale studio in Woodberry.) Three years later, Carter married Vismans, whom he famously met when she knocked on his door to tell him his loud music was making her next-door apartment vibrate. He apologized with a snake plant.

In the seven years since, they’ve become parents twice and bought their forever dream home. And while working on another book (shelved for now) he and his publishers noticed how much his followers reacted, commented, and “liked” his posts about home-styling.

“Would you ever consider making a styling book?” they asked. He couldn’t say yes fast enough.

For Carter it felt a bit like coming back to his roots of storytelling through design. Each section of the book—broken up by room—is about not just making an area stylish but the “why,” from concept and mood board to plan and layout to furniture and plants (yes, there are still plants, of course).

“We chose this home because we were ready to start a family, so when the time came to design and style it, I thought about how family life might evolve over time,” Carter writes. “That vision has guided many of my decisions, because, for me, the first step in designing a living home is to ensure that the choices made are practical ones, rooted in everyday life.”

This is what makes the book so relatable. Yes, Carter’s home is a designer’s dream—warm, modern, and chic—but it’s also clear that two little girls live there. Carter spends two chapters writing about Vada’s calm nursey and Holland’s toddler room, with its Technicolor mural painted by Carter, with input from his daughter. He’s a big believer in getting kids “involved in the creation and styling” of their rooms, while still being the ultimate decision-maker.

In between dreamy photographs of his kitchen, sunroom, and guest room (swoon) he also talks about the less sexy rooms, like a closet—but with an I-Can’t-Believe-This-Is-My-Life aura that keeps the book from becoming boastful and arrogant.

“I never thought much about the closet, other than its use for storing my clothing or hiding a mess when I was quickly trying to tidy my room,” he says. “But I can’t say the same for my mother. When I was a child, I would often hear her fantasize out loud about having a large closet. Not just one where you could hang your winter coats like those big, puffy winter coats. No, more like a closet that you could walk right into, pirouette, then walk back out. That, my friends, is what my mother would call Special, with a capital ‘S.’ Many people would just call it a walk-in closet, but in her eyes, it epitomized status and success,” he writes in the book.

“I’m very lucky to have the life that I have,” says Carter over coffee. “Look at my house—this is the piece of paradise that I wanted to carve out for myself, and I now have it.”

That’s the message he wants this new book to convey. Home is just about creating a space that makes you feel your best. Carter says it’s more important than ever to create your own paradise at home.

“The chaos that is outside you can’t control. But inside the walls where you live, you can control that space, right? So, all the things that you’re having in there, they should be things that you absolutely love.”

And because this is Carter, he can’t resist a good plant metaphor.

“I always talk about the joys of seeing a new leaf growing. It’s like, ‘Oh shit, this plant is thriving, it’s pushing out, and growing.’” But there’s always that moment when you don’t know how it’s going to unfurl, he says. “You have no idea what you’re about to get when it comes to, like, a Monstera. You never know how many splits you might get. You might get none. You might get a few. You might get holes. You have to just wait and see what’s going to happen.”

This isn’t just a story about his book title, but about putting himself (home and family) out there with his first truly vulnerable book.

“There might be something that disrupts the unfurl, which then alters the shape of that leaf. I’ve had that many times, where I had a leaf get stuck as it’s unfurling,” he says. Sometimes it just needs a little tug or redirecting, he believes. “So, the idea of a home being unfurled just means it’s slowly showing its beauty and its full potential.”

Sounds like he’s talking about his own journey, too.

According to family legend, even before Fallon Goodman was born, she was a fan of Baltimore’s Young Victorian Theatre Company, the Roland Park-based summer musical theater group known to many as the “Young Vic.”

Her dad, Brian Goodman, has served as the company’s general manager for nearly five decades and, as he recalls it, “My wife was pregnant, and she told me that as soon as the overture music started, Fallon started kicking in her stomach.”

From that day on, Fallon was always in the theater—and it wasn’t long until she joined the cast. “I was eight,” says Fallon, now 31, of her first production. “That’s about the age when you start to cement real memories, so really, for as long as I can remember, I have always been enmeshed in the world of Young Vic.”

And what a world it is. Each summer, accomplished professional singers, accompanied by a full orchestra, join a troupe of amateur chorus members to create a fully staged and costumed production by Gilbert and Sullivan—the revered 19th-century duo whose comic operas are packed with satire, hijinks, and gorgeous musical moments.

Young Vic’s origin story stretches all the way back to the 1970s, when a group of Gilman School theater kids thought it might be fun to keep the good times going over the summer. And over the past half-century, Brian Goodman, one of the earliest members, has nurtured the company’s growth from a student organization to the independent company it is today.

“I thought, how hard could it be?” chuckles Brian about those early days. “But it’s time to turn the reins over.”

And poised to grab them is, of course, his daughter, Fallon. This month’s production of Ruddigore on July 14-21 marks her fourth season as assistant general manager. As the leader-designate, she will face some challenges her dad did not, such as—to borrow an industry term—the “graying of audiences.” As loyal fans get older, attracting new audiences requires additional resources and strategic creativity.

Fortunately, the latter is a strong suit for this plucky company and its rising leader, whose vision includes new marketing tactics and even rethinking its repertoire.

“With the sheer amount of what people can consume now on the internet and social media, you have to be dynamic and interesting to keep people’s attention,” says Fallon. “G&S was really the bridge from opera to musical theater. For me, that was really a democratization of this higher-brow art form, to make it more accessible to the masses. I think eventually we could expand beyond performing just G&S to do shows that are still relatable for everyone, as long as our focus always remains engaging with our audience and society.”

In 2022, when artist Caroline Hearn moved from New York City back to her hometown of Baltimore, she and her interior designer mom, Karin Chriss, thought about combining their talents to open a gift shop. When they noticed an empty storefront in the same historic “mall” that houses Petit Louis Bistro, they leapt at the chance to move into the nation’s oldest strip center.

The result of their vision is The Pig & the Parrot, which opened its doors last October.

The designing duo have quite the pedigree: Chriss did design work for boutique hotels across the country, and then had a longtime wholesale handbag business; Hearn, a graduate of New York City’s famed Parsons School of Design, created showroom design for the Ralph Lauren store in Manhattan. She also does watercolor portraits and landscapes for the furnishings décor platform Serena & Lily. The partnership is an idea made in creative heaven.

“My mom is very good at putting home décor things together and curating beautiful vignettes,” says Hearn. “And I’m an artist and wanted a place to showcase my artwork in a space that wasn’t a gallery, where my art could be approachable and play with the interior space. We came up with this idea of the store to use as an avenue to showcase my artwork.”

Beginning with the logo—a parrot balancing on the tip of a pig’s nose—the shop couldn’t be cuter. Here, you’ll find a unique mix of curated home goods, accessories, antiques, and jewelry including Freya Rose earrings from London (Kate Middleton is a fan).

Of course, The Pig & the Parrot also features a collection of Hearn’s lush landscapes and seascapes on the walls.

“My husband and I have collected pigs for 45 years,” says Chriss, explaining the inspiration behind the store’s moniker. “I’ve always given him a pig Christmas tree ornament, so I knew I wanted to use an animal in the name. When Caroline was designing the logo, I said, ‘Why don’t we do something whimsical with the pig?’”

Hearn loved the idea and was further inspired by the mechanical parrot her grandmother had in her house. In fact, the logo sums up the shop. Says Chriss, “It’s kind of like our store, an unlikely combination of fun and fanciful and whimsical.”

In addition to getting to spend more time with each other, the mother-daughter team gets to see Chriss’ son, who works right next door at Eddie Jacobs, the men’s clothing shop.

“He’s worked there every Saturday for the past 12 years,” says Hearn with a laugh. “On Saturdays, I feel like we own the block.”

It was after the walls had been restored, the floors refinished, the plumbing mended, and the heat replaced at their Roland Park fixer-upper that the fun began.

The house, on Woodlawn, had been abandoned for years when Sarah Sachs and Christopher Davis saw it. The two had met in March 2018 and quickly found themselves planning a life together.

“We did what any couple does after dating for a mere six months,” jokes Sachs, who lived in a tiny Hampden home at the time. “We bought a 125-year-old house with no plumbing, no working heat, 18 cracked radiators, and a basement that would fill up with two feet of water at the slightest rain shower.”

Davis, senior director of tax compliance at Johns Hopkins Health System, came into the relationship with three children and building a home for his kids was a top priority.

And while the 3,600-square-foot home had potential, it was more of a “thunderstorm situation than a real estate fairytale,” says Sachs, who teaches digital and darkroom photography, sculpture, and woodworking at Gilman School.

“Letitia VanSant’s ‘Gut It to the Studs’ comes to mind—and that was definitely part of our ‘Transform this Foreclosure into a Home’ renovation playlist.”

She also references the 1986 movie The Money Pit. “Every day a new pipe would burst, and water would shoot through the walls—it was fun.”

It took about six months for the Roland Park house to be livable and clean. “I burned a lot of sage when we moved in,” she says.

Once the place was empty, Sachs was suddenly overwhelmed by just how many walls there were, so she went safe and painted everything greige—a color somewhere between beige and gray.

But the artist in her knew that this was just the foundation. When she was growing up in Roanoke, Virginia, “I remember my dad was never thrilled about my desire to add art to my bedroom walls. It was a point of contention. No paint, no nails,” she laughs. “I don’t want to be too hard on him. He’s going to read this—but he knows.”

Instead, she would constantly rearrange her room. “Since I was six, I’ve been moving all the furniture around. I’ve always been hardcore weird nesting.”

She also spent time in her basement, carving stones, so it was no surprise no surprise that she studied sculpture in undergrad. After that, she moved to Baltimore, where she got both a digital art and photography master’s at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

The house presented Sachs with a chance to do everything she’d always dreamed of doing as a kid. She could paint and put nails in the walls, create pieces including cutting boards and candlesticks, and nest to her heart’s content. It’s her biggest canvas to date.

The first thing Sachs did was replicate a mural she had painted in her Hampden home—depicting the front yard of a cabin her dad built in West Virginia. It’s a place that represents peace and happiness to her. The mural, in muted blues and grays, spans the entire dining room and is all horizons and trees and birds. “It really helped me bond with the house,” she says.

The kitchen—which includes two separate but connecting kitchens built for a previous owner who kept kosher—was dark and somber. There was a huge empty wall, and Sachs decided the opposite of gloom was sunflowers, so she painted the floor-to-ceiling flowers in yellows and grays.

“I did the sunflowers in the kitchen, but I hate them,” she admits with a laugh. But for Sachs it’s no big deal. To her, it’s part of a bigger lesson of homeowners being afraid to try things. As an art teacher, she often sees that with he students—a hesitation. “They are scared to fail. Or try something and not be great at it. I’m like, if the sunflowers are lame, it’s okay, I’ll just paint over them. And I think that’s important for my own kids to see.”

This past summer, Sachs and Davis wanted to investigate what was in the thick wall between the stairwell and the kitchen—so they took a hammer to it. Turns out, there was nothing there (other than the hole they had now created). “So, we just covered it up with a painting,” she recounts.

She wanted to take the entire wall down, but it was load-bearing, so instead they built a wall niche that allows for more natural light in the stairway and creates a focal point that is functional and artistic. The vertical rectangular nook has a curvy wood frame around it—made by Sachs—and is next to a tiny mural that teases what’s to come upstairs. “I love it,” she says.

But she’s also aware that her creativity can sometimes present in utter contrast to the look and historical context of the house, built in 1896.

“We both wanted an old house with history,” she says, noting that Roland Park’s history included a binding legal covenant that barred Black and Jewish families, which was particularly meaningful to her as a Jewish woman. Now, “I want my house to feel like it’s my house.”

To that end, a plaque outside greets guests: SHALOM, Y’ALL. And while they’ve preserved a lot of the original details—the original hardwood floors are spectacular, as is the fish-scaled glass that flanks the front door—the house feels like it belongs to a modern-day family. From the outside, it appears like unopened geode—large and imposing and traditional. But split it open and inside is a space that is lived-in and well-loved, filled with wonderful light and colors and patterns.

Some might call the interior eccentric. “We joke that we took the resale of the house—because house value up and now we’re bringing it back down,” she says. “The things we’re doing…my realtor always comments on my IG posts, ‘That’s really fun—but are you crazy?’” She looks around, as the family’s new puppy, Goose, pulls at a thread on a rug, and laughs, “We are making it a forever home because no one will ever buy it.”

The pièce de résistance is on the second level of the six-bedroom house. Shortly after they bought the house, Davis was standing upstairs when the entire ceiling fell on him. Luckily, they were just big Styrofoam tiles. The whole thing was replaced, leaving them with a big empty “greige space,” remembers Sachs. When all eight doors were shut it just felt quiet. Too quiet.

So, Sachs took it upon herself to build a massive hand-woven chandelier, a skill she had picked up at a workshop at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. It’s now just a part of the house.

“You can get used to greige and you can get used to huge baskets that are bigger than you,” says Sachs.

The fixture has a few nicknames—her mom calls it a “dino submarine,” Sachs and her family refer to it as Flo, after the “creative flow state” one can immerse oneself in while working on a project, and others are reminded of the blue whale suspended from the ceiling at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Then Sachs decided Flo needed a buddy and created a mural that mimicked her shape across all those doors. “I wanted to give her a friend, she was so lonely,” she says. Sachs was off that summer from school, and while brand-new baby Iris napped, she would pick up her paintbrush. The shapes—in beautiful, not oversaturated jewel tones—were interesting but felt flat. “How can I make it look like a weaving?” she wondered, and came up with a texture. “And I just kept going.” In two months, the space felt complete. “It was colorful, but calming,” she says.

There is a joy, not sadness, that comes with completing a project. For Sachs, it opens an opportunity to move on to the next thing. So far, she’s also gotten married in the backyard and muraled the baby’s room with Dutch tulips and a pattern of a quilt she had as a child.

Says Sachs, “I haven’t made a lot of my own art since buying this house—because this house is my art.”

Pickleball is having a moment right now. If you’ve recently passed by a public park, country-club tennis court, or suburban driveway, you might have spotted people swinging what look like oversized Ping-Pong paddles at yellow wiffleballs and wondered what the heck they’re playing. The answer is pickleball—considered one of the fastest-growing sports in America.

“Pickleball is booming,” says Lynne Coburn, pickleball director at Coppermine, which offers the sport at its Roland Park and Pikesville fitness centers. “It’s awesome to see the growth here in Baltimore, and also around the country and around the world.”

While participation exploded during the pandemic—growing more than 21 percent in 2020, according to the U.S.A. Pickleball Association—the sport is not new. Just ask Coburn. A retired physical education teacher, she was drawing chalk lines on tennis courts 30 years ago to teach her middle-school students how to play the game, which is said to have been invented in 1965 by Seattle dads to entertain their bored kids. (Legend also has it that one had a dog named Pickles who kept running off with the balls.)

Today, Coburn runs Coppermine’s pickleball programs, teaches clinics at multiple Baltimore country clubs, and lobbies the local recreation departments for more courts. There are some 70 lined pickleball courts in Baltimore County—four pickleball courts can fit on one tennis court—while in the city, examples exist from Riverside Park to Druid Hill Park. Buy a portable net on Amazon and you can play on any hard surface.

The rules are unique. Players serve underhand and points can only be scored by the serving team. Using a variety of shots, the first person (or team, as you can also play doubles) to 11 points wins. There are rules about when the ball must bounce and where you can step, generally outside of “the kitchen,” a non-volley zone on either side of the net. What’s the appeal of this fast-paced sport that some still dismiss as a leisure pursuit for retired people? Coburn chalks it up to word-of-mouth: “People hear about how fun and social pickleball is,” she says. “It’s a game for everyone.”

Indoors and outdoors year-round, skill level can vary widely from casual to professional, with Major League Pickleball launching last year. At Coppermine, open-play times are divided into competitive and non-competitive. But be forewarned: Pickleball is addictive, says Coburn.

“You don’t even know that you’re exercising because you’re having so much fun.”

On a normally busy Saturday, things are unusually calm at The Turnover Shop, an upscale consignment store located in the 3800 block of Roland Avenue, on the border between Hampden and Roland Park.

It’s an overcast day, and around mid-afternoon, the elegant shop with its hard-to-miss cerulean storefront is devoid of routine foot traffic. But give it just a couple of minutes, says co-owner Alice Ann Martin.

Patrons, family, and friends begin to float through the store’s entryway, lingering a little to exchange a few greetings and laughs with Martin before dispersing to browse. And across from the register, over which myriad antique light fixtures hang from an ornate ceiling, two men prepare to lift a wooden table onto the nearby curb for pickup. Martin, 59, rolls and neatly wraps an oriental rug that was in the front room. Living up to the store’s name, a near-identical red one then takes its place, covering the Georgian tile that dates to the building’s origins in 1892.

Warmly lit, thoughtfully curated, and whimsical, with each quaint nook and cranny named for its purpose (the bathroom, for example, has long been dubbed “The Necessary Room”), the shop dates to 1943, when it was owned by members of St. Mary’s Church in Hampden.

“They named it The Turnover Shop. I didn’t,” says Alice Ann Finnerty, 83, Martin’s mother and business partner, who acquired the shop in 1978.”The idea was to have a quick turnover of product—that being the clothing and antiques are consigned—and that theme has continued today.”

Clothing sales have since gone by the wayside. Nonetheless, the store’s guiding ethos of quick turnover remains the same. And over the years, a kind of natural selection has occurred—people know to bring only their finest goods to the store for consignment. Items that come through the door are quickly approved, listed, and priced.

As pieces sell, consignors are sent checks for each one sold. Which means what we see today in the shop—from Westminster clocks and throw pillows to Royal Worcester ramekins—is fleeting. Some goods remaining at the end of a 90-day period return to their original owners. Others are donated to thrift stores, including The Wise Penny on York Road.

A few things have changed over the store’s history. In the 43 years since Finnerty bought it, the shop—which recently made the decision to close its doors on Sundays—has undergone renovations. And under the influence of Martin, who started working here with her mother 37 years ago, bookkeeping has gone digital.

But much remains the same since the ’70s. Finnerty still rents out the store’s upstairs apartment. And per her mother’s secret recipe, the much-anticipated “magic eggnog,” is made in the kitchen at Christmastime.

“It’s a family that’s incorporated into a business. That’s really what it is,” Finnerty says, adding that the working relationship she has with Martin—like any mother-daughter dynamic—can be tricky. “But we’re gifted in that we’re able to understand each other.”

Finnerty, who’s recently begun to slow down (today is her first time visiting the shop in quite a while—not that anyone would know it) hopes that its magic will continue on.

“I love The Turnover Shop. And I love the people that are here,” the grandmother of 19 says. “I think looking into the future, Hampden is going to continue to grow,” she adds. “And I think that our presence here will help to establish that.”

The market turns 75 this year. What does that mean to you?
It’s actually incredibly emotional. My father started this in Roland Park 75 years ago and I am so sorry that he’s not here today to see both of his two grandsons [Michael and Andrew Schaffer] become part of the business. It’s wonderful and exciting, and I feel so fortunate.

How has Eddie’s evolved from what your father began?
We just keep on going up. In 1992, I opened a store on North Charles Street. That was a really big deal, because we had always been in Roland Park, since 1944. So that’s why I kept the name the same, so it could be understood that it was the same company. It’s very important to us that we are able to meet the needs of our customers. For example, I realized when I got pregnant with my first son, Michael, I didn’t want to cook. I didn’t want to see a stove. I didn’t want to stand there and smell the food while I was cooking. So, I brought in chefs and we opened the Gourmet To-Go in 1986. And we’ve just evolved since then. We respond to what our customers’ needs are.

What do you think makes Eddie’s different from other businesses?
Basically, it’s tradition. We still have house accounts, and we’ve had them since probably the fifties or sixties. This is a family-run business and we are fiercely independent. So along with the house accounts, we do things like, if you are having a company at your house and you bring your platter, we will use your platters to set up whatever food you wanted. If you have special recipes that you would like to go on these platters or even in our containers, we will make those for you. I have a picture from the 1960s of an Eddie’s van delivering in a snowstorm, and we still do that. But the interesting thing to me is that because we have a phenomenal staff, customers develop relationships with the people that are here and have been here. And they continue to shop here partially because of those relationships.

What advice would you give to others running family businesses today?
Family businesses are incredible, and they also can be incredibly challenging. I feel it’s really important that everybody recognizes everybody’s strengths, because we all have different strengths. I also think that open and honest communication is crucial. You have to realize that we all have the same goal. For me, it’s that this was my father’s legacy. It was crucial for me to maintain, grow, and continue that legacy. And I know that my boys feel just as strongly about that. The business is a reflection on them, as well as on me. To see them working here and to see their involvement and their love and their pride for this business—it means everything to me.

After 75 years, what do you want the community to know?
When my father opened up, he made a decision to provide what he felt that the community needed. And we still do that. We are here, we are happy to be here. We are proud to be local. We believe in local, we believe in supporting local, and we are a part of this community and we believe in supporting it.

This is a story of a stomach bug, a house fire, and a couple of guinea pigs.

It was 2017, an unbearably hot August day, and homeowner Julie Phillips was having work done on her Roland Park home. The rubber roof had been leaking, and a crew—recommended by a friend—was there replacing it. Her daughter Chloe, 7 at the time, had a bad stomach bug, and the two escaped the noise of the work for a nearby friend’s house and pool. Her 4-year-old daughter, Ruby, was off with other friends. That’s when Phillips’ phone suddenly began vibrating with smoke notifications from her alarm company. She called the roofer to make sure everything was okay. He was off-site, and his truck had broken down. “Let me call my guys,” he told her.

Phillips, a counselor at Loyola University, was less than a mile away from home and getting in her car when the alarm company’s central monitoring called to say 911 had been dispatched. “I rounded the corner with Chloe, and there were three fire trucks in the front of the house and smoke billowing out of our third-floor window,” remembers Phillips. She was in shock. The firemen had already broken in through the side door and the left side of the house appeared to be engulfed. Julie suddenly remembered the guinea pigs that belonged to her girls. A firefighter successfully retrieved the cage but accidentally dropped it as he came outside, allowing its inhabitants, Sugar and Cream, to make their break for freedom. Chloe, shivering and feverish in the neighbor’s yard, watched her house burn and her mom run after the guinea pigs. (Both were caught and returned to the safety of their cage.)

After that, Phillips called her husband, David, vice provost for admissions and financial aid at The Johns Hopkins University. “I said, ‘The house is on fire. Please come home.’ And then I guess I just hung up,” she says. It was 3 p.m.

The next few hours were pretty terrible. “You’re in a state of shock,” says Phillips. What wasn’t destroyed by fire was damaged by water and smoke. It turned out the roofing company had been torch-sealing the roof, a standard but risky practice. A combination of a very hot day and 100-year old wood allowed a spark to quickly slither up and down the walls like a snake looking for prey. “Our neighbors said they saw them trying to put out the fire with water bottles.”

Insurance was called, and once the fire was out, Julie and David were led through the house by a firefighter. There was water everywhere. And there was the smell: It instantly burned their nostrils and eyes. From that point on, fire itself took on a new meaning: “We were in Wisconsin a week later for my cousin’s wedding,” recalls Phillips, “and my dad made a big bonfire. David and I were just like, ‘Oh, my god.’”

As the fire trucks pulled away, the restoration services showed up. “They are like ambulance chasers. Five companies trying to talk to you after your house was just destroyed,” she says. At the recommendation of their insurance company, they selected ServPro. “They came in and started suctioning the water. This was two hours after the fire and we already had a crew there, putting in fans and a generator. It’s pretty amazing how quickly people mobilize.” Phillips managed to pack up clothes for her, David, and the girls. She did 25 loads of laundry over the next several days. They stayed with friends while looking for temporary housing. Each day, Julie and David would return to the house and see what they could take out and salvage. Then insurance came in and inventoried everything that had been lost.

As luck would have it, a home had been sitting empty nearby and within walking distance of school and Julie’s work. It was for sale, but they reached out and pleaded their case for a rental. The owner told Phillips he had lived through a house fire when his kids were little and agreed to a year-long lease. “It was a godsend,” says Phillips. “I’m not a religious person, but the universe was absolutely on our side.” They moved in that weekend with a few items, but by Monday, both Julie and David had Chloe’s stomach bug.

Insurance had sent them a generous lump sum to buy temporary furniture, clothing, and bedding, but since Phillips couldn’t leave the house, a friend took her credit card, went to Target, and bought blankets, pillows, sheets, and towels. “And we were lucky the house had kitchen stuff. We had a place to stay. People brought us stuff, took the kids. But the logistics are just time-consuming.”

But then what? Phillips’ knee-jerk reaction was to sell the house. “I want nothing to do with it,” she thought. But she owed it to her family to at least go through the motions of a renovation. Part of the house would need to be completely rebuilt, so they needed an architect to design the space. But Julie and David also realized this was the time to renovate rooms they had been talking about upgrading since they bought the house five years earlier. Insurance would pay for the fire-damaged portions—including the living room and family room—while the Phillipses would pay for the kitchen and a new master bedroom. They hired Ziger/Snead Architects that fall, and they, in turn, recommended Smithouse Construction.

Work started that January—five months after the fire. Every Friday, they would meet in the dining room of the damaged house with a temporary table and a space heater. “It was breakfast with the Phillipses,” says Michael Westrate, a designer at Ziger/Snead. The weekly get-togethers meant they were able to make decisions quickly, but also to “check in on everyone’s mental health,” he says. That was as important as choosing the right fixture. “Julie was very distressed, as one might imagine,” says Doug Bothner, a partner at the architecture firm. The damage was beyond what just the eyes could see. The fire had crawled through the house and affected a lot of the house’s structure. The goal was twofold: Justifying the amount of work that needed to be done through their insurance company and “turning this tragedy and pain into a real opportunity for change,” says Bothner.

“David and I don’t know house design,” admits Phillips. “I knew nothing about what my style was.” Her research included following Instagram accounts of favorite designers. Her criteria: lots of white, family-friendly but chic, and comfortable. Before the fire, the home had been overrun with toys. “When we redesigned, I wanted our first floor to be an adult floor,” she says. The family room, tucked away in the back of the house, has a comfy sectional for watching movies and is now home to two happy guinea pigs. “Our living room is more formal now,” says Phillips. “We never used to hang out in there. And now it’s the place we really love to be.” But the kitchen is another new favorite place. The old kitchen had last been renovated in the ’50s, but now is fully transformed, the true heart of the home with an oversized island the family eats at every night, white cabinets, gold hardware, and open shelving.

They moved back into the house almost a year after the fire—in August 2018—and lived for an additional month with some construction as crews finished the work. And then, one day, there was silence. The workers were gone. And it felt good. And the “fire house” just felt like home again.

“The fact that they could come home and actually feel like they are home and feel safe—I think that’s a huge part of the process,” says Bothner. Mostly, says Phillips, the entire experience is like childbirth. “Looking back, you say, ‘It wasn’t so bad. It’s fine.’” She sighs, “We’re so happy to be back.”

A piece of Baltimore history will close next week when Tuxedo Pharmacy ends its 83-year-history of serving the tony neighborhood with everything from cosmetics and greeting cards to prescription medicines.

Brothers Harold, 79, and Arnold Davidov, 82, who grew up in the apartments located above the storefront, announced the neighborhood pharmacy would merge with the CVS Pharmacy on Falls Road, with Tuxedo staff expected to make the move to CVS, as well.

Among the reasons for calling it quits was falling reimbursements from insurance companies, which have hit independent pharmacies particularly hard. “It’s been terrible,” Harold said. “It basically makes your pharmacy department unprofitable. Independent pharmacies are in just so much trouble. They just can’t do the volume.”

Harold says his staff took it hard. “They were very upset. They’re all going to give CVS a try, but they enjoyed it here as much as I did—the customer interaction here has always been very good.”

Some of his oldest customers remember coming to Tuxedo as kids, as soon as it opened in 1936, for the soda fountain. Since then, four generations of Davidovs have worked there.

“I can’t tell you how many people have come into the store since the announcement to share childhood memories of coming in here, going back so many years,” he said.

After the merger with CVS, customers’ prescription records will be confidentially transferred to the pharmaceutical giant, starting on January 9. The Davidovs don’t yet know what will become of the space on Roland Avenue.

So what’s next for the brothers?

“We’re old enough to retire, but I don’t know what the next chapter is—it’s a journey.” Harold said. “I might do charity work or take some courses. But I think the one in trouble is my wife. I’m going to be home more and she’s going to have to put up with me.”

On a chilly Thursday morning, hairstylist Danny Elder greets his first client of the day. After the two catch up and make a game plan for today’s appointment, Elder goes to mix the client’s color, but not before calling over his wife, business partner, and fellow stylist Katie Elder to get a second opinion on the shade.

This is typical of the collaborative spirit inside the new Soul Love Salon in Roland Park. The Elders, married since 2001, have been in the hair business for more than 20 years, having worked at several salons in the Baltimore area.

“We really love our industry,” says Danny. “It’s allowed us to fall into this place where we can truly be ourselves.”

The Roland Park salon, which previously housed Balance Salon (before it moved to Remington), opened in October and not only showcases the couple’s hairstyling skills, but also their love for music, with an extensive record collection and a turntable by the front door.

The pair have been DJing at local venues for the past nine years, spinning at places like the Paradox and Red Maple—both now closed. Their most recent musical venture has been hosting a pop-up seasonal party—also called Soul Love—which they debuted at Ten Tigers Parlour in D.C. and plan to host at various venues throughout the year.

“We grew up on the dance floor,” says Katie. “We realized that the feeling you get on the dance floor, when you release and let go, is similar to when you walk out from a great haircut and you feel your best—like you’ve been lifted.”

So why not combine the two? As you get your hair cut and colored, an expertly curated playlist blasts from the speakers, and a disco ball that once dangled at Paradox spins above the hair stations. There is even a shelf displaying what record is currently playing and what music is yet to come, in case customers want to add something they hear to their personal playlists.

Soul Love specializes in cuts, color, highlights, fantasy color, and specialty styles, but it’s really all about lifestyle.

“We want to share our love of music and love of beauty but also have a safe space for all types of people,” says Katie. “We are a bunch of really creative people. Our motto is, ‘You dream it, we make it.’”

111 Places in Baltimore That You Must Not Miss 

Allison Robicelli (Emons Publishers)

Can a newcomer write an insider’s account of Baltimore? Although she’s known for her irreverent (and James Beard Award-nominated) food writing, Allison Robicelli has only lived in Charm City for a couple of years. But, even for lifelong Baltimoreans, there are still new delights to experience in her bucket-list tribute to the city, made all the more enticing by striking photography from local shutterbug John Dean. Packed with 111 unconventional local surprises—including both hidden gems, like the American Visionary Art Museum’s Magic Farting Post, and familiar classics, like the Rawlings Conservatory and Bengies Drive-In—the book works for both the Baltimore nerd and the Baltimore newbie.

Kill Me Now 

Timmy Reed (Counterpoint Press)

In a series of journal entries written in the voice of Miles Lover—a 14-year-old kid from Roland Park with an unfortunate nickname that we can’t repeat here—CCBC professor Timmy Reed captures the angst of a teenage boy during his parents’ divorce. What’s most impressive about Reed’s work is his attention to detail. From his elaborate descriptions of Baltimore neighborhoods to evocative scenes of Miles smoking weed with his eccentric, old neighbor (whom his sisters suspect is a serial killer), Reed meticulously takes readers on a summer-long journey that is as viscerally awkward as our own teenage years. 

When Enoch Pratt Free Library CEO Carla Hayden first walked into the three-bedroom condominium on the 14th floor of Cross Keys’ Harper House in Roland Park, she was struck by the stunning views of leafy north Baltimore. But something else stood out, too.

“Everything was wallpapered. Evvvvery-thing,” Hayden says, drawing out the word for emphasis. Not only was it wallpapered, but the Asian-themed design was all over: Think pagodas and peacocks with purple accents. On the walls were mirrors, the better to capture that wallpapered glory from every angle. And on the floors? “Let’s just say the wallpaper matched the pink carpet,” she says.

Hayden had already considered flashier, updated condos for sale in the building, one with a sleek new kitchen, another with an entire bedroom converted to a closet that Hayden admits she found “gorgeous.”

But a gourmet kitchen was overkill for Hayden, who isn’t a big cook, and, as for the closet, well, “that’s not practical,” she says. “I don’t have that many clothes.” What the 62-year-old library executive does have is—no surprise—books, and lots of them.

“Finding a space for the books became very important,” she says. So, too, was finding a home that could offer quiet respite after busy days at work.

Looking past the outdated décor, Hayden, a fan of renovation TV shows like Property Brothers, focused on the free-flowing layout, spacious second floor, and, yes, those views.

“The thing about watching a lot of those shows, or just being involved even professionally with renovations, is you do look at the potential,” she says. “It had good bones.”

The building itself also offered a certain appeal: Hayden’s mother, Colleen, who is in her 80s, has been living there since 2004, in a condo Hayden initially bought for herself when she moved from Chicago to Baltimore in 1993 to take Enoch Pratt’s top job.

Hayden had long since moved out to a Homeland townhouse, but she almost always stopped by her mother’s place after work. With the demands of a library system that serves 1.3 million visitors a year, days were long and tiring and, as she visited with her mom, Hayden found herself winding down “only to have to get back in the car and go home.” In bad weather, she would sometimes stay the night.

She reasoned that a condo in the same building would simplify things: There’d be just one drive, then a quick trip in the elevator after dinner with her mother. From her balcony, she could sip her morning coffee and see her mother circling the gated community on her morning walk. “So that’s kinda cool, just being that close to her,” says Hayden.

Still, when she closed on the purchase in December 2014, Hayden knew she had a good bit of cosmetic work to complete before moving in. For help, she turned to contractor Brian Schmincke of Accent Specialist Marine, who’d done work for her and for the library in the past.

The problem wasn’t the pink carpeting, which came up easily and revealed pristine parquet floors. Instead, it was the wallpaper, which “was 20 or 30 years old and it was really hard to get off,” says Hayden, who pulls out her phone to display “before” pictures of Schmincke in a silly pose with the wallpaper behind him. “It helped to laugh about it a little.”

Schmincke may have had a sense of humor about the job, but “it was definitely a nightmare,” he says. “I’ve never seen people put wallpaper on the ceiling before. There was wallpaper on the closet doors. There was wallpaper inside the closets. Layers and layers of it.” Still, Hayden’s calm demeanor and good humor helped the job flow smoothly, says Schmincke, who found himself staying late to help move boxes or tackle other tasks. “She’s just that type of person that you don’t mind doing that for her.”

Though she had a new home, Hayden didn’t feel the need for a shopping spree to fill it. “It’s not for entertaining. It’s just a place to come into and go ‘phew,’” she says, exhaling dramatically and letting her arms float down onto the couch. “It’s a refuge and a place to just enjoy the things I’ve collected.”

With the wallpaper gone, Hayden happily got to work setting up. “It’s fun,” she says, “decorating again with your own things and rediscovering them.”

Those things included hand-me-downs from her grandmother, with whom Hayden shared a similar love of knickknacks, and African art that she picked up here and on a 2003 trip to Africa as president of the American Library Association. Her collectibles from the continent favor the practical, like bowls and baskets, “things that are used every day in those cultures,” says Hayden.

There are a host of awards, too, tucked away on an upstairs bookcase, including a Woman of the Year honor from Ms. magazine and one of her favorites, a brightly colored, personalized name tag from the Girl Scouts of Central Maryland.

And, of course, there are the books—there were about 90 boxes that moved with her. They are loosely organized by theme—Hayden seems content to buck the librarian’s tendency to “obsess about book placements.” The topics range from entertainment to cooking to self-improvement, and even books about books.

By May of this year, Hayden was still in the process of settling in to her new home and was also in the midst of a busy stretch at work, with an ambitious three-and-a-half-year renovation of Enoch Pratt’s central branch set to start in December, and smaller renovations at the Canton and Waverly branches wrapping up. That’s in addition to ongoing efforts to modernize the library system technology. It’s now the largest provider of public-access computers in the state and boasts an impressive ebook collection, as well as ereaders it loans to library patrons.

Those efforts haven’t left her much time to putter around her new home and discover its secrets (like figuring out the optimal setting for the electronic bedroom drapes that shelter a master-bedroom atrium). “Everyone keeps telling me to take a staycation and take a week to just live in it,” says Hayden, who envisions lingering over coffee on the balcony, cuddling up in front of the TV to catch one of her favorite British programs, or catching up on the latest from two of her favorite mystery writers, Laura Lippman and Sujata Massey.

“I have to do it,” she says, adding resolutely, “I will do it. I’m looking forward to it.”

BALANCING ACT: I love antiques, however I also have an appreciation for modern art and décor. In all of my rooms, the goal has been to find a good balance between the two, and I think we have done this in the dining room as well.

CHANGE IS GOOD: We love hosting dinner for family and friends so we started the room redo with a larger dining room table and went from there.

TIPS FROM THE PROS: Liz [Dickson of Millbrook Circle Interior Design] has been a family friend and has helped me decorate almost every room in the house. She encouraged me to try something new and told me that lightening the walls would make the room feel much larger. We started with wallpapers and found the gray textured paper that I thought was so modern and fun.

A PERFECT PAIRING: The old chandelier and sconces were brass and so obviously were not going to work with décor that was a bit more modern or our new color scheme. We thought chrome looked modern with the gray fabrics and wallpaper, and we liked the contrast of the shiny chrome with the matte of the paper.

SOFT SURROUNDINGS: The table came from Cornerstone Antiques, as did the six Federal-style side chairs. The end chairs are custom upholstered Parsons chairs. I wanted a more substantial chair to anchor the ends of the table and something upholstered to add softness in the room.

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW: The pewter on the shelves was my grandmother’s—she collected pewter and clocks. The china is very new. I waited until much later in life to buy china and now have something I will like for many years.

Leah Eskin—a Pulitzer-Prize nominated author of the Chicago Tribune’s food column “Home on the Range” (and a Baltimore transplant!)—released
her memoir Slices of Life: A Food Writer Cooks through Many a Conundrum on March 25. 

The book blends her essays and recipes into a delicious collection that’s as sweet as her honey apple tart. Eskin, who lives in Roland Park with her husband Bob Blau and her two chidren, ages 16 and 14, spoke to us about her new book, which will be available at amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

What’s a recipe in the book that people have consistently told you they loved/were surprised by?

Everyone loves the pot roast. When I was little, my mom made it. Hers was best the second day, after the noodles and sauce had gotten friendly in the fridge. My approach encourages noodle/sauce canoodling right up front.

What are three things everyone should have in their kitchen? 

A cast-iron skillet, a sharp chef’s knife, a good attitude.

What’s your favorite Maryland recipe? 

Love crab cakes. Love Southsides [the cocktail]. Love oysters. I’ve got recipes for all three in the book, though natives might find them suspect. 

Is there any dish you simply cannot master, no matter how many times you try?

Steak scares me. I keep hoping my husband will take up the cause.

What is your favorite recipe in the book? 

Chocolate-chip cookies. It’s my favorite recipe in life. And my version, while only slightly different from the standard, is easier [melt the butter], more convenient [freeze the dough], and better [it guarantees soft, pliant cookies]. What’s not to like?

The essays are written in a variety of styles and tenses. What’s your most natural voice when you write?

 I like that “essay” means “try.” I’ve tried first, second, and third person; past, present, and future. For an essay on gnocchi, I tried using every word that begins with “gn.” The challenge with the book was weaving them together into a narrative, a memoir of adulthood. Over the course of 200 recipes, I raise two children, endure one dog, tend one marriage, and sigh through many a goodbye. I puzzle over my usual preoccupations: odd words, dark chocolate, and the ideal kitchen plan.

What’s something you really hope the reader will come away knowing about you and the food you make? 

I’m not one for complicated. I like simple ingredients and simple tools and simple recipes. I think cooking is more about pleasure than about showing off.

Whose cookbooks and recipes do you like to use?
Love Dorie Greenspan, Rick Bayless, Patricia Wells, Alice Waters, Gale Gand. I also consult the classics: Pierre Franey, Julia Child, the Joy of Cooking. They inspire confidence.

One theme of the book is that food is something you can make no matter how busy you are or what problems you’re facing. How would you encourage someone who wants to start cooking but thinks they’re too busy?

Well, I’m certainly not advocating cooking, or anything else. The book can be read simply as a memoir. For people who want to cook, I’d say start simple. Noodles with butter is delicious and, as my kids have discovered, tastes deliciously self-sufficient.

When you write your column, do you think of a recipe first and match it with a memory or story, or vice versa?

Usually the story comes first, then the recipe. Sometimes it’s the other way around, especially if I’ve already turned in the recipe. A deadline is a potent motivational tool.