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This week’s news includes: Happy filthy 50 to Pink Flamingos, opposition to gun safety bill from gun dealers, Ernest Shaw podcast feature, Roland Park green space, and more reporting from Maryland Matters, WYPR, Baltimore Brew, and other local and independent news sources.

Released 50 Years Ago, John Waters’ ‘Pink Flamingos’ Flouted Tastes and Social Mores
by Ron Cassie
Published March 2 in Baltimore Magazine

Excerpt: John Waters was not of legal drinking age, which was 18 in Maryland, when he first ventured downtown to the now-legendary Martick’s Tyson Street Tavern. He was still in high school. “My mother would drive me from Lutherville to Martick’s and drop me off in the alley next door,” Waters says. “My mother was kind of amazing. She didn’t understand me, but she said, ‘Maybe you’ll meet people like you here.’ My parents were conservative, upper-middle class. How would she even know about a place like Martick’s?”

In mid-century Baltimore, a lunch-pail city no one yet described as quirky, charming, or artsy, Martick’s was one of few LGBTQ-friendly bars around. Although that term obviously wasn’t part of the vernacular of the early 1960s, when the crowd there included beatniks, cross-dressers, transgender individuals, and poets, artists, and musicians of all shapes and stripes.

His mother’s intuition proved spot on. Waters hung around outside and regulars snuck him drinks. When owner Morris Martick wasn’t around, they’d bring him inside. Waters not only met his tribe at Martick’s, but many of his future filmmaking co-conspirators. Among them: Emmy-winning casting director Pat Moran, who was then studying dance; actor, projectionist, and later Fells Point theater owner George Figgs; and bartender and model Maelcum Soul, who starred in two of Waters’ first films, Roman Candles and Eat Your Makeup and died at 27 of an overdose. “A true beatnik goddess,” says Waters, glancing at a framed photograph of Soul in his home office.

A bike plan revived: Adding a path to the Olmsted-designed 33rd Street greenspace
by Ethan McLeod
Published February 28 in Baltimore Fishbowl

Excerpt: Baltimore City is revisiting a plan to add a new cycling and pedestrian trail along North Baltimore’s arterial East 33rd Street in hopes of better connecting neighborhoods, colleges and Lake Montebello, and building a key spur of a larger envisioned citywide trail network.

Planners, advocates and city officials say options include building a new trail down the 40-foot-wide median, adding a cycle track on 33rd Street itself in place of existing street parking or a “hybrid approach” of the two that could involve expanding curbside parking lanes or the median itself. The community engagement process is paramount as the city revives a 2017 conversation that dissolved amid outcry from some neighbors who vigorously opposed the idea, particularly with worries about the mature trees lining the boulevard.

“Our options are open at this point,” said Matthew Hendrickson, a lead bike planner on the project for the Baltimore City Department of Transportation. “There are a lot of different types of concerns that we have to include in order to take this project forward.”

The city’s broader goals are to create a safe, well-used trail that makes the best use of the historic, picturesque median designed by the Olmsted Brothers (named a local landmark, along with the Gwynns Falls Parkway median, in 2015) and improves traffic and pedestrian safety at intersections. The public debate over a 33rd Street trail is resuming amid ongoing city efforts to create more complete streets and ameliorate the ills of generations of car-centric planning for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers alike.

What Impact Have Marilyn Mosby’s ‘Progressive’ Non-Prosecution Policies Had?
by Brandon Soderberg
Published February 28 in The Real News Network

Excerpt: Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby has kicked off each of the past few years with an announcement expanding the list of charges that her office will no longer prosecute, making a notable dent in rates of mass incarceration and demonstrating to the city that the sky won’t fall if police stop busting people for non-violent offenses such as drug possession.

In January 2019, Mosby announced that her office would no longer be prosecuting cannabis possession cases in Baltimore, regardless of the amount of cannabis involved or of a person’s past arrest record, building on the 2014 state-level decriminalization of weed.

In March 2020, Mosby’s office announced that due to the pandemic, in an attempt to reduce unnecessary police interaction and jailing, a number of non-violent offenses such as drug possession, sex work, open container, and more would also no longer be prosecuted by her office.

In March 2021, Mosby’s office made those temporary policies permanent.

Nick and Marilyn Mosby haven’t paid their water bill in a year
by Mark Reutter
Published February 28 in Maryland Matters

Excerpt: Following a December 2020 inspector generals report that showed Baltimore was losing millions of dollars in revenue from unpaid water bills, Nick Mosby vowed to find a solution.

The newly sworn-in City Council president promised to “eradicate these persistent and pervasive” billing problems through “data, research and analysis” so that the city “charged everyone – including Baltimore County residents and big business – their fair share.” (See his full statement below.)

But a year later, Mosby and his wife, Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, are part of the very problem he lamented, having stopped paying the water bill at their Reservoir Hill residence.

Online city records show the couple made their last payment in March 2021.

Despite a combined yearly income of $375,000, they owe $907.63 for water and sewage usage, according to records reviewed by The Brew.

Asked today about the delinquent bill, Marilyn Mosby emailed back, “It’s been paid.”

She did not reply when asked when a payment was made. Online records show that – as of this afternoon – there has been no recent payment.

Can data bring ‘community-based empowerment’ to Baltimore neighborhoods?
by Ethan McLeod
Published February 24 in Technical.ly Baltimore

Excerpt: While sifting through the latest US Census data in 2015, Seema Iyer and her colleagues at the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliancespotted an ironic trend afoot in several dispersed city neighborhoods.

Belair-Edison in Northeast Baltimore, McElderry Park over east and Pigtown in the city’s southwest section had the three highest proportions of residents using Housing Choice Vouchers, a federal program that heavily subsidizes rental costs for very low-income families. But those same three locales had among the largest concentrations of rent-burdened households — those that spend 30% or more of their monthly income to foot the rent — as well as recent declines in homeowner occupancy.

The nexus soon became clear to Iyer, who heads the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance (BNIA) within the University of Baltimore’s Jacob France Institute: Owners in each distressed neighborhood were opting not to sell in a housing market still reeling from its late-2000s crash, and instead renting out their dwellings to an ample market of voucher users.

But did community leaders know that this took place in their own neighborhoods, let alone in others across town?

Gun Dealers Oppose Speaker’s Bill to Require Theft Deterrents
by Hannah Gaskill
Published March 2 in Maryland Matters

Excerpt: Gun advocates blasted firearm safety legislation on Wednesday, saying it seeks to criminalize and penalize licensed firearms dealers.

Sponsored by House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones (D-Baltimore County), House Bill 1021 would implement minimum security requirements for licensed firearms dealers to prevent stolen guns from reaching the streets by installing video surveillance and alarm systems, putting metal bars on doors and windows and placing barriers on the outside of their stores so cars can’t break down their walls.

The legislation would also require store owners to remove their inventory from display cases and place them in secured vaults or safes.

If dealers operate out of the bounds of the law, they could face a maximum civil penalty of $1,000. Second offenses would result in a misdemeanor charge punishable by a $10,000 fine or up to three years imprisonment.

In 2021, more than 100 guns were stolen across 13 robberies in Maryland.

Jones said that the intent of the bill is to keep “firearms out of the hands of criminals.”

“The measures have proven to be a success,” she said, pointing to a Baltimore County policy introduced after a spate of gun thefts in 2019.

Ernest Shaw
by Rob Lee
Aired February 25 on The Truth in This Art Podcast

Excerpt: Being a native of West Baltimore has taught Artist Ernest Shaw the meaning of perseverance, community and integrity. As a product of Baltimore City Public Schools, Baltimore School for the Arts, Morgan State University and Howard University Shaw recognizes the importance of using his skills and talents for the betterment of others, not simply for his own self-aggrandizement. For Ernest, teaching is also an artistic medium.

Bill would bar public access to some body cam footage
by Callan Tansill-Suddath
Published March 2 in WYPR

Excerpt: A bill that would alter how police body camera footage can be viewed by the public is nearing passage in the Maryland Senate.

The bill, sponsored by Baltimore County Democrat Sen. Charles Sydnor, would prevent the public from viewing tape that depicts a victim of domestic violence, rape, or sexual assault, or depicts the death of a law enforcement officer in the line of duty.

Sydnor recalled during a hearing on the bill in January how upset he was as a child to hear a recording of the death of his uncle, a law enforcement officer killed in the line of duty.

In Druid Hill Park, a home for orphaned gloves in the ‘Library of Lost Gloves & Lost Loves’
by Laura Stewart
Published March 2 in Baltimore Fishbowl

Excerpt: Dozens of gloves sit atop a segment of rusted fence around Druid Lake; some are open as if waving to passersby, others have their fingers contorted into awkward positions. But each has a story.

The display is the “Library of Lost Gloves & Lost Loves,” the creation of artist Bruce Willen.

Willen, a multidisciplinary artist and founder of Public Mechanics, an experiential design studio, lives in Baltimore’s Old Goucher neighborhood, nestled between Mount Vernon and Charles Village.

During the winter of 2020, Willen, like many people, started taking more walks around his neighborhood.

As he roamed, Willen began to notice a proliferation of missing gloves scattered throughout the streets.

“It felt like I was encountering a lot more orphan gloves than normal,” he said.

Hillside Park Will Be the Largest New Green Space Baltimore Has Seen in Years
by Cody Boteler
Published March 1 in Baltimore Magazine

Excerpt: After a successful bid from a community group, a new, 20-acre park is coming to Baltimore.

Dubbed Hillside Park, the public green space is planned for the historic site of the Baltimore Country Club on Falls Road near Western High School.

In late December, The Roland Park Community Foundation (RPCF) announced that their $9 million bid to purchase the land had been accepted.

“Parks have never been more important [because of the pandemic],” says RPCF chair Mary Page Michel. “All of us were outside more, we appreciated the outdoors and open spaces more.”

Michel says visitors will be able to enjoy the park in 2023, at the earliest. The land, currently owned by the Baltimore Country Club, has to be subdivided, which is a formal process that is handled through the city government.