Yesterday, when Baltimore web developer and Ignite Baltimore co-founder Mike Subelsky tweeted that he was about to witness Nik Wallenda’s tightrope walk across the Inner Harbor, my ears perked up. Pix to come, Subelsky promised. Oooh, send them along I said! Recognizing his citizen journalist moment, Subelsky kindly agreed and sent along some great photos. [...]
At last night’s annual City Council ritual (a.k.a., Taxpayers’ Night), dozens of Baltimore citizens came to the podium and spoke their piece about school tutoring, taxes, rec centers, police and the upcoming budget (nobody liked it). One speaker chose to share her thoughts in tune. Crystal Santiful launched into a soaring rendition of Sam [...]
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ When I got back from Wednesday’s Upton Edible Garden dedication and sat down to look at my photos, I figured I’d lead with the best one showing Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake planting seedlings with school kids. That might make the most meaningful, iconic and potentially candid photo from an otherwise staged event aimed at kicking [...]
When an email with the rousing subject line, “The Real Grand Prix VIP,” fluttered into my inbox yesterday, my first thought was: “Hey, Downforce Racing has gotten its act together and is finally selling tickets!” But seeing the image of a Gucci store rising up behind a blurry red motorcar brought me down to earth [...]
AMC’s hit series “Mad Men” opens Season Five on an ugly note: jerky ad execs at rival agency Young & Rubicam throw water-filled bags out the window onto the black poverty marchers below, drenching some of the picketers – including a little boy – and laughing their heads off. It rang a bell over at [...]
OK, the call didn’t come from Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake herself. The caller was conducting a survey for “the city of Baltimore” that “will be used by the Mayor as part of the budget process.” (Turns out it was the annual Baltimore Citizen Survey that they’ve been doing since 2009. You can take a separate [...]
While Fern was out today deconstructing a giant spray-painted pigeon on the facade of a North Avenue building, I was in Fells Point, where I encountered the old-fashioned three-dimensional kind that coos and leaves droppings on statues. I saw two of them, actually, positioned in an open window, keeping a watchful eye on the 600 [...]
When people ask about dealing with comments on The Brew, I usually say, “It’s a moderated site, but luckily our readers are pretty civilized and intelligent and we don’t have to do too much moderating. In fact, they kind of moderate themselves.” Recently, I was boasting in this space about our nifty readers and their [...]
Checking through and approving the comments on The Brew every hour or two is an odd daily routine, sort of like seining in Chesapeake Bay – you never know what you’re going to come up with. Lately, I thought, our net has been bringing up some particularly cool specimens – intentional and “found” poems and [...]
Brew senior reporter Mark Reutter was on Maryland Morning with Sheilah Kast today to discuss Monday’s “State of the City” address by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. Here’s the podcast of the segment. Along with Adam Bednar, of North Baltimore Patch, they dissected what the mayor’s speech covered (city school construction, the Charm City Circulator, tax relief) [...]
A daily news website that gets behind development deals, tracks campaign cash, features outsider artists and offers gazpacho recipes with equal verve. We’ve become a municipal must-read.
Since former Washington Post reporter Fern Shen launched the Brew a few years ago, the site has won plaudits from publications ranging from the Baltimore City Paper, which named it the best local on-line news site three years in a row, to the New York Times, which calls it “a reason for cheer.”
We take a hard look at the city’s contract with Race On LLC, set to be approved today by the Board of Estimates, and at the untested investors and untried marketing plan behind the race, which is rolling into Baltimore just 109 days from now.