AltWeeklies Wire
Conference Brings Together People Working Toward Redefining the Urban Spacenew
For activists who long struggled to fight developers and speculators, the recent halt in economic activity has been an opportunity to rethink what the city means and can become, and this weekend's radical conference in Baltimore, The City From Below, addresses those concerns.
Baltimore City Paper |
Martin L. Johnson |
03-31-2009 |
Housing & Development
A Baltimore Businessman Wants to Start the Electric Revolutionnew
In China, where gasoline scooters have been banned in some major cities, electric scooters have become a popular way of providing cheap worker transportation without the pollution. It's an idea Ray Carrier is hoping will take hold here, and last week he opened the doors of his electric scooter shop in Baltimore.
Baltimore City Paper |
Christopher Myers |
03-31-2009 |
Transportation
Tags: electric scooters, Ray Carrier
State Budget Cuts Could Change Baltimore's Cultural Landscape Forevernew

Development directors at orchestras, museums, and theaters across Baltimore are worried that in a year of tough choices, Maryland may be making a $6 million choice it can never take back.
Baltimore City Paper |
John Barry |
03-31-2009 |
Economy
Baltimore Hip-Hop Vets Offer a Way Forward For The Scene--Looking Backnew

If you follow hip-hop journalism, you've heard this story before: Once there was a grassroots movement that established criteria for what made hip-hop matter. Now it's just people repeating the same old nonsense about big-screen TVs, money, and bitches.
Baltimore City Paper |
Bret McCabe |
02-24-2009 |
Music
Group Show Presents and Examines Women's Voice and Identitynew
In what is the largest project to date undertaken by the current curator of Baltimore's Park School, Rick Delaney, If I Didn't Care: Multigenerational Artists Discuss Cultural Histories is an exhibition that adds up to more than the sum of its numerous and diverse parts.
Baltimore City Paper |
Alex Ebstein |
02-24-2009 |
Art
The Finer Points of Outstaying Your Welcome, Starring Scott Weiland and The Gamenew
Rock 'n' roll wraith Scott Weiland and embattled gangsta rapper The Game have one thing in common: Each has overstayed his welcome but continues to enjoy mainstream success by luck, or by the grace of God. In terms of both studio alchemy and tabloid foibles, neither brings anything especially crucial to the cultural table.
Baltimore City Paper |
Raymond Cummings |
01-27-2009 |
Music
Considering a Radical Education Strategy's Potential in Baltimorenew
The model of the Harlem Children's Zone represents a growing social scientific consensus on the nature and seeming perpetuity of urban poverty. The "Zone" is a 97-block area in Harlem that has been turned into a European-style social democracy, a cradle-to-college conveyor belt to the American middle-class for Harlem kids.
Baltimore City Paper |
Michael Corbin |
01-27-2009 |
Education
Some People Are Born Freaks; Jim Hall Turned Himself Into Onenew

Retired city planner Jim Hall is no less shocking on the streets of Baltimore than what the Romans encountered during their first failed invasion of the British Isles in the 1st century A.D. The Picts merely painted themselves blue for battle. Hall has inked himself blue for life.
Baltimore City Paper |
Charles Cohen |
01-27-2009 |
Culture
The Long Term Method-Acting Project Known as Mickey Rourke Goes For The Goldnew
The Wrestler is a bleak, strangely inspiring tale of a lonely man struggling with advancing age and a desperate dedication to the brutal grind of professional wrestling.
Baltimore City Paper |
Joe MacLeod |
01-15-2009 |
Reviews
Sam Mendes Takes Aim at the Suburbs Again and Gratingly Misses the Marknew
Screenwriter Justin Haythe and director Sam Mendes are so intent on hammering home the bleak message of Richard Yates' source novel about an unhappy couple caught in the conformist suburbs that they make even Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet blank, bland, and blobby.
Baltimore City Paper |
Geoffrey Himes |
01-13-2009 |
Reviews
In Defense of Tuna Casserolenew

I really love tuna casserole, not just as a food but as a concept, and that apparently relegates me to a very cozy minority. The stigma attached to it still puzzles me, especially considering most people I know don't remember what it tastes like, or have ever actually eaten it. With recipe for Salmon Casserole.
Baltimore City Paper |
Henry Hong |
01-13-2009 |
Food+Drink
With Domestic Violence on the Rise, Baltimore Finds New Ways to Help its Victimsnew
This year, a new Family Crimes Unit was created in the Baltimore Police Department to investigate domestic-violence cases. And Mercy Medical Center has new technology that is helping to document abuse. Both aim to help women (and men) get out of abusive relationships before they become deadly. It's not an easy goal to meet.
Baltimore City Paper |
Anna Ditkoff |
01-13-2009 |
Crime & Justice
People Who Died: Our Annual Alt-Obitsnew
Death took its usual toll this year, and seemingly then some. Genocide, war, terrorist attacks, disease -- yikes. But for the purposes of City Paper's annual tribute to influential cultural notables whose deaths deserve a little extra note, it was a terrible harvest.
Baltimore City Paper |
Staff |
01-06-2009 |
Commentary
Country Music Rediscovers Its Whiskied Small-Town Rootsnew

Taylor Swift's recent album, Fearless, is such a triumph, both artistically and commercially, that you'd think it would be the answer to all of country music's problems. But it's not -- because it's not really a country record.
Baltimore City Paper |
Geoffrey Himes |
01-06-2009 |
Music
Ami Dang Bridges Classical Sitar and Voice with Western Avant-Garde Musicnew
It's abrupt when you hear Indian classical music as meditative and spiritual -- that is, as it is intended to be. And it's even more abrupt when it's heard woven into Western avant-garde music, each element working to develop/unshroud the other. This act is a large part of the sublime art of Ami Dang.
Baltimore City Paper |
Michael Byrne |
01-06-2009 |
Profiles & Interviews