The City That Breeds » Links

Folie’s Map of Baltimore and Environs (1792)

Evan The Mayor — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 17:00:56 +0000

The Big Map Blog does it again, today posting a map of the Baltimore area in 1792 as illustrated by A.P. Folie. It’s huge, zoomable, browsable and downloadable, I highly recommend clicking through the link and taking a look.

Here’s some info from the Maryland Historical Society:

Comparison between this 1792 map of Baltimore and the 1780 map by Presbury shows that in a short twelve-year span a considerable development had taken place in Baltimore, especially along the waterfront. In 1780 none of the four wharves extended beyond 200 feet, but in 1792 several were stretching out halfway into the Basin. Ropewalks had been established near the shipbuilding centers east of Fells Point, and on the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River. Large stretches of land had been added to the town, especially Fen’s Prospect in the east and Howard’s Addition in the west.

I personally had fun taking a gander at some of the antiquated street names, a slew of which have been modified over the course of the past 220 years. Howard Street is listed as “Honard Street” while Light St., Charles (“Chales”) St. and Calvert ~~all seem to have been shifted one or more blocks to the west over time~~ (see comments). Interestingly, *most* of the street names have remained unchanged, even after 220 years or so.

GET YOUR NERD ON

Additionally it would appear the blogmaster from BMB will be in town for the SACRPH conference this weekend, more on that on their site.

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Drink Baltimore is Baltimore’s new happy hour website yall

Evan The Mayor — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 16:45:11 +0000

Joining the likes of gotime.com, 600block.com and probably a bunch of others I forgot, comes drinkbaltimore.com – a site dedicated to all things drinking in Baltimore. Today is the “soft launch” of the site – just in time for Baltimore Beer Week’s first day – preloaded with staff written reviews of local drinkeries, features on general drinking culture, that sort of thing. The official launch is October 20th at Alewife (21 N. Eutaw St, Downtown) with a bunch of raffles, discounted drink specials and swag!

Here’s the PR bit from the founder, who started out with drinkphilly.com:

With DrinkPhilly.com, we took a local industry that was relatively unorganized on the Internet and turned it into a simple and easy to use website. We’re doing the same thing in Baltimore, and the fact that the drinking scene here is so vibrant just makes our job easier.” said Adam Schmidt, President & Founder of The Drink Nation, adding, “The best part is, it’s all free, both for users and for bars.

The mobile version of site (will be when it launches) is location-based, so hopping onto your phone will display the closest happy hours and drink specials close by. Hopefully, with some highly diligent admins, the lists can remain current – a common problem with other similar services like gotime.com are reallllly outdated specials, sometimes listed at locations that aren’t in business anymore. But hey, if drinkphilly.com can do well enough to expand into drinkbaltimore.com and drinkDC.com – then maybe they’ve got something good going! Thoughts?

(Drink Baltimore is on The Twitter and The Facebook as well)

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Free Admission to Fright Fest with blood donation

Evan The Mayor — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 17:00:14 +0000

Everyone knows about Fright Fest, Six Flags America’s (13710 Central Ave, Upper Marlboro) annual month-long celebration of all things scary and Halloween-oriented, so why not get in for free and help out the Red Cross by donating some blood?

Saturday October 1st from 10:00am-4:00pm, donate on premises at Six Flags America and receive a free ticket for admission, usable any Saturday/Sunday until October 30th. Or if you’re a thrill seeker like me, donate blood and IMMEDIATELY get onto a roller coaster – SUPER HEAD RUSH!

Just don’t give them your phone number. They’ll never ever stop calling you.

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Local bloggers instruct public on frugal weekend activities

Evan The Mayor — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 14:36:58 +0000

Hey have you seen the Baltimore Sun’s Live! section today? You did pay the $0.75 for your copy of the Baltimore Sun in order to see this really awesome feature on how to have a cheap weekend in and around Baltimore, as put together by four local (and awesome, attractive) bloggers?

Well, if you haven’t yet – and you should – check out the collaborative goodness known as the Ultimate Cheap Weekend, a pretty much complete guide on how to have a weekend completely full of arts, eats, family activities – and of course, how to GET DRUNK AS HELL on the cheap. Yours truly covered the nightlife aspect (that’s me in the bottom right corner, not necessarily losing my religion), a respectable list to be sure. For the record, you’d be surprised at how hard it can be to come up with 7-10 ideas for nightlife options on the cheap that aren’t already immensely well known – especially with options outside of the city that aren’t tweeted about or discussed on The Facebook. At any rate, Baltimore, get out there and have yourself a cheap weekend, regardless of whether it’s full of art, food, family or booze (in that order)!

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This whole “Complacent Reynolds” thing is pretty funny

Evan The Mayor — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 20:59:21 +0000

As it popped up the other day on Orioles Hangout, a delightful thread about a delightful photo of one Baltimore Oriole Mark Reynolds nonchalantly eating a bag of sunflower seeds as Red Sock David Ortiz baseruns his way past, seemingly complacent in the whole affair. The photo in and of itself is hilarious, and then the internet does what it does best, started Photoshopping the crap out of it and placing Complacent Reynolds in all kinds of zany situations, from Tiananmen Square to Washington Crossing the Delaware to the Moon Landing. So Zany! Way to go, internet!

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Urban Foraging in Baltimore: or, Hey this Superfundberry tastes great!

muke — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 18:30:14 +0000

What's this red thing? Dunno, let's eat it

Laura Vozzella ran a piece in the Baltimore Sun yesterday regarding the seemingly on-the-rise concept of Urban Foraging, which essentially amounts to picking things up off the ground and eating them:

By gathering food in a city public park, Stauss not only trims her grocery bill but also takes part in one of the more surprising offshoots of the local-foods movement: urban foraging. Even in Baltimore, where certain parks are better known as murder-victim dumping grounds than locavore playgrounds, wild edibles grow in abundance.

Look, people, I’m no fascist, hippy-killing, factory-farm loving capitalist, but I’ve seen the quasi-legal things Baltimoreans routinely throw on the ground. That stuff gets into the ground and stays there. Don’t we have a super-fund site in the city that corresponds roughly to the size of the city? (Evan: it’s the Superest!) But, you say, what if I still want home-grown roughage without all that home-grown chemical flavor? Instructables has a bunch of great garden projects for your windows and backyard. I’m pretty sure dandelions will grow in a modular hydroponic window garden. I’m planning on growing tomatoes upside down out of a five-gallon bucket. If mushrooms are your thing, there are home starter kits that recycle coffee grounds. The point is, we have options that exercise more control over the soil in which a plant grows. In short, the less chromium in your berry, the better.

-muke

(photo via JHU Gazette)

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The HONtroversy Zeta – the ultimater flame war

Evan The Mayor — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 17:27:43 +0000

In our last episode, City Paper had just published a feature-length interview with Cafe Hon owner Denise Whiting, the contents of which completely backfired and caused an upswell of renewed ire at her for the then-recent revelation that she had trademarked the colloquial term “Hon.” And here we are months later, when Baltimore Sun reports that Denise Whiting, in anticipation of next week’s HonFest, has distributed a list of restrictions on area businesses participating in the annual affair. “No politics. No religion. Nothing bearing the Honfest logo. Nothing that would infringe on the various Hon trademarks. And what chapped folks the most: no cat’s-eye glasses.”

Totally unshockingly, the backlash has been equally vitriolic and kind of hilarious and you should read it all:

DW has rewritten the definition of hon, it begins with C and ends with T

CHONT?

Oh Denise, your perpetually loaded aimed-at-your-foot-gun just keeps going off! Seriously though, next year I’m organizing NOH Fest somewhere, anyone want to come? There will be pie!

photo by City Paper, 8 bit flames by me

New Baltimore Blogosite – Ask Fuzz

Evan The Mayor — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 19:29:13 +0000

Ever wanted to ask a cop about cop stuff, anonymously? Well now you’ve got a resource for that: introducing Ask Fuzz, a Bmore-bred site dedicated to cop stories, theoretical situations contributed by the masses (Can you chug a bottle of booze after being stopped and beat a DUI?) and a bunch of other cop-related snizznozz – they’re currently looking for cops to lend and answering hand too, so if you’re a cop interested in being coply and answering cop questions by non-cops, cop your way over to their site and get a hold of them!

COPS

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Damn You, Chipotle!

Evan The Mayor — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 17:29:12 +0000

If there’s one thing for certain, Americans are total whores for Chipotle. Their streamlined ordering system, the pure deliciousness of their burritos, the …industrial styling? It’s all enough to send you into oblivion. Taste oblivion.

And like you, I’m a total whore for Chipotle and went right ahead and watched this video promo for “America’s Next Great Restaurant” on Facebook without hesitation and got myself a BOGO burrito at Chipotle. Damn you, Chipotle. Click on the image to whore yourselves out for free burritos!

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Gambling for booze!

wgatsum — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 15:22:16 +0000

Alright well not really – but this entry into a hacking competition by a NYC hacker gr0up for hacking could make ordering a drink a little more fun; it’s a decommissioned Japanese slot machine that takes tokens, the resulting combination of the spin determines your drink! Check out the full text at Popular Science.