There may be a certain body type that comes to mind when you think of CrossFit: big muscles, zero-percent body fat, and, of course, rock hard abs. But Dr. Jeanelle Spencer of ZEHBRAS wants to change that perception.

Spencer, who has her Ph.D. in molecular biology from Johns Hopkins University, is working to make health and wellness more inclusive and accessible to all.

After years of working in the medical field, she saw firsthand how many chronic diseases could be avoided by incorporating functional fitness into a person’s life, but she also noticed how many people didn’t have access to it.

So in April of 2024, she opened ZEHBRAS—the name comes from a Trevor Noah stand-up special—on Greenmount Avenue in the Waverly neighborhood where she has lived in for 20 years.

“It was important for me to reduce the barriers and give people not living in the ‘White L’ access to CrossFit,” says Spencer.

Another barrier Spencer wanted to remove? The financial one. Gym memberships cost a lot, which is why ZEHBRAS offers a free class every Saturday morning.

“Even if you can’t afford a monthly membership, you can come in, work out, be coached, and engage with the community,” says Spencer. “And hopefully one good habit leads to another and that person is encouraged to walk somewhere throughout the week, do some other physical activity, or practice something at home that they learned at the gym.”

While the stereotype of CrossFit can be intimidating, just one look at ZEHBRAS’ social media account should put you at ease. Featured are real people of all ages, shapes, and sizes exercising together and sharing their goals and achievements.

“I want to tell those stories of real people using CrossFit to build their fitness and improve their health and longevity,” says Spencer. The gym also offers monthly QueerFit classes—also free—to give members of the LGBTQ+ community a safe space and entry point into CrossFit.

“Our classes are meant for beginners and people who don’t think they belong in a gym,” says Spencer. “I sort of feel like I’m fighting against societal culture because it’s so easy to be sedentary and binge Netflix shows. I’m guilty of it too, but I want people to know they have support in improving their health outcome no matter where they are in life and that they belong here.”

If you head to Waverly’s 32nd Street Farmers Market on Saturday mornings, in addition to the tables filled with local peaches, sweet potatoes, and chard, you’ll find one presenting five silver tureens—gorgeous, elaborate serving vessels seemingly misplaced from a baroque dinner party—under an Ethiopian flag fluttering from a white tent.

This is Korarima, a pop-up restaurant stall from husband-and-wife team Daniel and Helen Wassé, featuring their vegan Ethiopian cuisine.

Early on weekend mornings, the tureens are filled with deeply aromatic dishes, classic fare from the couple’s native Ethiopia: the stewed red lentils called messir; shiro, a thick sauce painted deep orange by the spice mixture berbere; a yellow split pea stew called kik alicha; shimbra asa, which Wassé describes as “a chickpea version of doro wat,” the famed berbere-spiked chicken stew; and, depending on the season, the spiced cabbage called tikil gomen, collards or green beans. Nearby tubs house tightly rolled spools of injera, the traditional spongy flatbread made with fermented teff flour, flown in directly from Ethiopia.

Wassé, whose family came to the U.S. from Addis Ababa when he was a baby, is a pianist and a grade-school teacher at the nonprofit Village Learning Place. He and his wife moved from D.C. to Baltimore six years ago and, when their initial hope of opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant was put on hold with the pandemic, they found the farmers market for Korarima.

They’re now again scouting restaurant locations with Helen’s brother, Ezana Ferede, who is also a chef, and they’ve recently partnered with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra to bring their food to the Meyerhoff before concerts.

You aren’t yourself vegans, so why do you focus on specifically vegan dishes?
Because there’s a vegan movement here. Ethiopia probably has the biggest if not one of the biggest vegan menus in Africa. If you’re really religiously observant, you’re fasting half the year. So you go where there’s a need, not to mention the dollars and cents. Ethiopian vegan is sufficiently unique, with the spices, and there aren’t too many restaurants here we’re competing with.

Have you always cooked?
We both have. I was born in Ethiopia, where food is a big part of the culture. Growing up here, how do you stay  connected to the culture? It’s through food. Something that always sticks in my memory is going to a restaurant where the injera was actually sticky, still “leet,” [meaning] half-cooked. It’s a metaphor for when anything is left undone. My father, Dr. Alula Wassé, is a historian and food’s important, so I started cooking. [Now] it’s my wife who handles the food. I do the prep work and she’s brought me up to speed with the subtlety of the spices—we make our own berbere the traditional way. The chiles are warmed by the sun; the chemistry is different, slower.

Can you tell me about your name?
Our name is Korarima, which is false cardamom. African cardamom is radically different than the cardamom here. The smell of fresh korarima is so pungent, and it’s at the root of Ethiopian food. So if you don’t have fresh korarima, you’re faking it. It’s so fundamental. We live in Baltimore; it’s not too far from Dulles, and there’s a flight every day from Ethiopian Airlines. We know people; they send it. The curator at The Walters had to go to Ethiopia [for the art museum’s recent Ethiopia at the Crossroads exhibition], so we twisted her arm a little to bring some back.

In the five years since launching Bottoms Up Bagels, founders Michelle Bond and Joan Kanner have gotten the hang of serving their boiled beauties from the confines of a 10-by-10 tent at outdoor farmers markets.

“We have a menu of 10 to 12 sandwiches that we make from a bunch of coolers and a camp stove,” Bond says. “It’s been a crazy learning experience, but it’s still the best part of our week.”

As much as they love connecting with the community at pop-up events, Bond and Kanner are excited to now serve diners in a space that is all their own.

Last week, the duo debuted their cleverly named “BUB Hub” at 2731 Greenmount Avenue in the Harwood area of North Baltimore. Boasting colorful, mid-century modern exterior murals designed by The Bizarre and painted by local artist Bobby Coleman, the can’t-miss shop is currently offering carryout service for breakfast and lunch on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. The team is also making deliveries on Thursday and Sunday mornings.

In the wake of COVID-19, Bond and Kanner are being intentional about their slow rollout. Instead of immediately offering up half of their 17 indoor seats and adjacent outdoor patio, they’re taking some time to get up to speed in the kitchen.

With the new setup—an open kitchen features plenty of prep space and a new Hobart mixer—the team of 10 can now ramp up continuous production on a daily basis.

“What we were doing before wasn’t sustainable for the amount of work that goes into our product,” says Bond, who adds that the business previously shared commissary space at Bmore Kitchen. “We were baking 500 to 600 bagels at 2 a.m. to then take to the markets. All of that is so integral to who we are, but it’s just physically so hard to maintain.”

After nearly three years of searching for a permanent home, they found the old 1940s commercial building through a connection with Central Baltimore Partnership. Aside from falling in love with the physical space and its location along a major thoroughfare, Bond and Kanner were thrilled that it was in Harwood—just down the road from their home in Waverly and the 32nd Street Farmers Market, where they were longtime vendors.

“We’re committed to this area,” Bond says. “It’s really important to us to be somewhere where there isn’t everything already.” Adds Kanner: “Harwood deserves it.”

The spirit of the shop is inspired by both of the owners’ upbringings in New Jersey. The transplants, who have lived in Baltimore for more than a decade, want to evoke the “steam-on-the-windows” type spots that they visited with their families.

“Growing up, my grandparents and I would go and get bagel dinners on Saturday nights and come home to watch The Golden Girls,” Kanner shares. “These were places that were open 24-7 and you would go and get a hot sack of bagels any time. Sometimes I would even get the chance to hold it on the way home.”

Highlighting hand-rolled bagels that come in varieties such as everything, pumpernickel, cinnamon-raisin, and Old Bay, the Bottoms Up menu offers sandwiches like the “Jersey Brekkie,” with fried egg and Taylor ham, and the “Loxed Up,” topped with house-cured gravlax. The team also serves local Dear Globe coffee blends and has added patty melts and vegan black bean burgers into the mix during opening week.

As much as the bagels are an homage to their native New Jersey, Bond and Kanner also see them as a vehicle for promoting inclusivity. As a woman-owned and queer-owned business, that mission has always been at the forefront for them.

“It’s an every man’s food, so it’s unifying in that way,” Bond says. “This vision is so clear to me of going to the bagel shop and having the cop, the guy in the business suit, the construction worker, the teacher, the nurse, all just having their own customized version of this one thing. We’re trying to cater to people who like really dense, chewy, old-school bagels, while also catering to people who want a bacon, egg, and cheese when they’re hungover, or someone who only has $3 to spend and wants to be full. We’re trying not to be everything to everybody, but to really maintain recognition that all of those people are finding something in what we do.”

Adds Kanner: “We’re forcing the issue that people can come together over this.”

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.”

This is a story about loving something so much you dedicate your life to it—about doing something not for the acclaim, but because it’s the right thing to do. Like all of life, it’s also a story about growth and loss, success and pain, and, perhaps most importantly, it’s about how, even when everything you’ve strived for goes up in flames, if you’ve done good work, you might find a community of people there to raise it up again. 

This is the story of The Book Thing, a place that is a little difficult to describe. It’s not a bookstore, because you can’t buy the thousands of titles it offers, and it’s not an exchange, because you don’t have to give books away to take them. It’s a place where, mind-bogglingly, you can take donated books for free, as many as you like, with no catch. And like many ventures in Baltimore that run largely on commitment and heart, it seems like it should have run out of steam—but miraculously, it hasn’t. Not even when a fire reduced it to a smoldering heap in March 2016. 

The Book Thing has been nurturing readers since 1999, when Russell Wattenberg, who arrived in Baltimore somewhat by accident, turned his hobby of collecting books and giving them away into a full-time thing—“Russell’s book thing,” as the patrons at the former Mt. Vernon mainstay Dougherty’s, where he used to tend bar, called it. The name stuck. The old warehouse near Waverly that Wattenberg used as The Book Thing headquarters—where books lined the walls, stacked along bookshelves that turned the rooms into a veritable literary maze—became a haven for bibliophiles who carried their finds by the armful. And Wattenberg could always count on more books, handed over in shopping bags, milk crates, or cardboard boxes tinged green with mold from years in dark, dank basements. 

His mission won national acclaim—The New York Times ran a story in 2002 called “Where Even the Dime Novel Doesn’t Cost a Cent,” declaring The Book Thing “one of this city’s grand treasure troves.” People magazine ran a feature. C-SPAN came to do a segment.

“I like when I can give a book to a person and tell them, ‘I think you’ll enjoy this.ʼ”

But it all came to a grinding halt in the early morning of March 2, 2016, when Wattenberg was roused from sleep by a pounding at his door. A neighbor told him that The Book Thing was on fire, and by the time Wattenberg threw on clothes and ran a few blocks over to Vineyard Lane, all that was left was smoke-stained shelves full of charred, soggy books. 

“I was just totally numb. That whole day was such a blur,” says Wattenberg. “It was amazing the number of people who were crying, men and women. It’s like you don’t realize how good something is until it’s gone, how important it was to these folks. There were a lot of people there who, before the fire, I saw every weekend or one or two days a week for 15 years. I have no idea what their names are, if they’re homeless or rich. That’s the beauty of The Book Thing.”

But The Book Thing wasn’t really gone—in fact, the very people who surrounded Wattenberg that day were there to resurrect it. 

To fully understand The Book Thing, you have to understand Russell Wattenberg. This burly, teddy bear of an unlikely hero prefers, for the most part, to stay out of the spotlight. But if you do catch him, say at the row of Formstone buildings on Vineyard Lane that has become The Book Thing’s temporary sorting headquarters, or at the neighboring brewery Peabody Heights, where he hangs out on Friday evenings, it’s clear how much he loves what he does.

“I like when I can give a book to a person and tell them, ‘I think you’ll really enjoy this,’ and they’ll come back later and say that they did,” Wattenberg says. “And then there are times, like when someone once brought in a class of fifth graders and one of them refused to look through the kids’ books and was off in a corner and ended up grabbing an oceanography college textbook off the shelf. He probably couldn’t read three-quarters of it, but he wanted that book. And he sat there and looked at it and flipped the pages for an hour. That made me feel good, you know what I mean?”

The Book Thing’s creation came about through equal parts chance and instinct, and Wattenberg shares the story as if what transpired still surprises him. “I never actually got the idea—it just kind of happened,” he says. “If I’d had the idea, I wouldn’t have done it. I really never even thought I’d be in Baltimore.”

Some 20 years ago, he was straight out of college, all of his belongings loaded into his van, on his way to visit his mother in Florida, when he stopped in Baltimore to get gas. To ease his travel-induced weariness, he phoned a friend and asked to stay at her place for the night. In exchange, he would help her boyfriend with some work at a house he was renovating. One thing led to another, and Wattenberg ended up staying long term and working at Dougherty’s. That’s when his hobby really took off. 

Wattenberg had always collected books, but not in the way you might think. He wasn’t in it for rare books or first editions—instead, he’d grab a dog-eared copy of To Kill a Mockingbird at a garage sale for 25 cents, or keep his eyes peeled at sidewalk sales for his childhood favorites like Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. When he heard some patrons, who happened to be teachers, complaining about needing books, “I said, ‘Just go out to the van and grab whatever you want.’ So the word spread, and people started bringing me books they didn’t want anymore and leaving them at the bar. And it just kind of grew and grew and grew.”

In 1999, those same teachers put together the paperwork for The Book Thing to become a nonprofit, and Wattenberg quit his job (“Give books away; sell alcohol to drunks—it was a real moral dilemma there,” he says with a wink) and moved the operation to the 950-square-foot basement of a commercial Charles Village rowhome. It moved to a bigger home in 2005, when Wattenberg bought a former warehouse and darkroom near Waverly. 

He raised $60,000 in 60 days for the down payment and closing costs—“no bank would touch me for a mortgage, surprise, surprise,” he says. Someone also loaned him a good chunk of their retirement savings, and Wattenberg worked to pay off the benefactor in seven years, mostly through the sale of rare books, which is still the main way that The Book Thing funds itself. “I always say I can sell a first-edition Hemingway, which enables us to give away hundreds of Hemingways,” he says.

The Book Thing attracted readers by the thousands, as well as a corps of volunteers who kept the place running. Wattenberg isn’t good on exact numbers, but he can safely say “hundreds of thousands” of books have been given out and “hundreds” of people have volunteered their time, many on a weekly basis. For Diane Schaefer, who is retired from the health care field and has shelved books for the past three years, “the enthusiasm of the people who visit is why I volunteer. You absolutely never know who will show up or what books will show up, and I love being able to help people find what they are looking for.”

And it became everything to Wattenberg. His future wife was a volunteer, and the pair pined for one another for years before finally sharing their first kiss at The Book Thing over an old National Geographic issue on sequoias. One year later, they tied the knot at the annual anniversary party. “April 1 is our anniversary, and April 2 is our annikissery. We’re cheesy,” he says, grinning.

“You absolutely never know who . . . or what books will show up.”

So it makes sense that he was crushed to see his life reduced to a pile of smoldering embers. It still makes him emotional thinking about it. “I’ve been doing The Book Thing seven days a week, 80 to 100 hours every week for so long, and then just to see it all . . .” his voice trails off. “Shocked isn’t the right word. It’s almost as if I was seeing my own funeral.”

Immediately, on March 2, the day of the fire, people flocked to the scene. There were volunteers like Schaefer, who was supposed to work a shift sorting books and instead arrived to the smell of ash in the air. “It was devastating to see just the charred remains,” she says. “But there was also a lot of hope, which was wonderful. The volunteers immediately started to clean up, moving the remaining bookcases, taking out anything that was left.

Edward O’Keefe, the event coordinator at Peabody Heights Brewery, walked over with some beer and introduced himself to Wattenberg. Instantly, a friendship formed. “Russell is 100-percent genuine. He’s one of the few people in this world who has no ulterior motives,” O’Keefe says. He quickly knew he had to help however he could. 

Soon, the fundraisers started. Peabody Heights hosted a trivia night that people lined Greenmount Avenue for blocks to get in, with all 600 of them packing the brewery and raising thousands for the recovery. Peabody Heights also became The Book Thing’s satellite location, a tradition that will likely continue, O’Keefe says. “People sometimes look at us strangely that there’s a bookcase in a brewery,” he says. “And when we tell them to take [the books], some people ask, ‘Is there a catch? Do we have to buy a bunch of beer?’” Baltimore independent rock label Friends Records put on an epic concert with more than a dozen acts, including rapper Eze Jackson and up-and-coming rockers Sun Club, that pulled in $8,000. Hip Remington taqueria Clavel donated a portion of its sales one night. So did brewery institution The Brewer’s Art, as did Whole Foods. Even Baltimore Ghost Tours pitched in.

Others honored the loss in other ways. “The heart of this city thrums with a faintly anarchic spirit. We don’t do too well with authority, preferring to conduct our transactions unmediated by regulation and restraint,” writer Patricia Schultheis editorialized in The Sun a week after the fire. “Mr. Wattenberg understood Baltimoreans well enough to know they’d respond to his notion of free books by endlessly replenishing his supply.” 

Finally, this fall, all 7,000 boxes of books will move across the street.

All of this caught Wattenberg off guard. “People were raising money that we didn’t even know about. It got to be so much that I started telling people to give it to homeless shelters or someone who really needed it.” 

Before long, book donations started coming again, so Wattenberg rented temporary space across the street from The Book Thing’s shell. Wattenberg knew he wanted to rebuild on the same spot near Waverly, and aimed to be back up and running within a year. But then he was hit with construction, permit, and design delays that pushed back the re-opening. Still, he persevered, forging through dealings with the insurance company, firing and hiring architects and construction firms, never giving up. Now, finally, this fall, all 7,000 boxes of books, plus Eleanor, a tabby cat who is the nonprofit’s unofficial mascot, will move across the street, and The Book Thing will be home again once more.

One morning in July, Wattenberg leads a tour of the renovations, showing off the freshly painted walls, new offices, and yet-to-be-installed windows like a proud papa. “This is what’s going to be here for the next 20, 30 years,” he says, as buzz saws whir in the background.  

Wattenberg asked the construction company to save him a piece of one of the burnt joists. “I had them cut out a section, and I’m going to throw some shellac on it and hang it up here,” he says. “It’s not so much sentimental—it’s a reminder of what we’ve been through. And now we’re stronger.”