We’ve been watching the progress for months now, and finally it’s official: Townhouse restaurant will open its doors on May 24.

The Baltimore Business Journal is reporting that the new Harbor East restaurant will feature an Asian and Mediterranean menu and will have 40 local beers on tap. It will also have draft beer at individual tables so you can serve yourself.

High-end Japanese restaurant PABU opened last week in the Four Seasons hotel. Its menu features modern Japanese cuisine “with global influences” including “jet-fresh” fish from around the world.

At the Waterfront Marriott dinner last night to celebrate the installation of Archbishop William Lori, he told the crowd that he’s going to the Preakness.

“I was raised in Louisville and never went to the Derby, but I have a ticket to the Preakness in two days,” he said.

Hope he avoids the infield.

Photo by Anne Stuzin

Every year, Pimlico opens its gates to the public for Sunrise at Old Hilltop, when the staff gives 20 minute tours from 6 – 9 a.m., Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of Preakness Week. It is billed by Pimlico as, “ an insider’s perspective on racing during an escorted tour of the Preakness Stakes Barn.” For the last 15 years, former jockey and current horse owner Charlie Fenwick, who knows the track so well, has invited friends for a guided tour with his personal touch. This year, I joined him. (more…)

Tyler Bloom helps out with the coin toss at a Towson football game. Photo by Brendan Cavanaugh.

Tyler Bloom doesn’t necessarily have the physique you’d expect from a football player. He stands less than 4 feet tall and weighs less than 50 pounds. Also, he’s five years old.

Tyler’s involvement with the team begins in one of the scariest ways possible. After his parents noticed that Tyler was acting oddly clumsy and walking strangely, they took him to Johns Hopkins Hospital. A CAT scan showed that a tumor was encroaching on the right side of his brain. Bloom was rushed into surgery, where surgeons successfully removed the tumor — but a stroke during the surgery left Tyler paralyzed on the right side of his body. The travails didn’t end there; his particularly aggressive form of brain cancer required 33 doses of radiation in six weeks.

Tyler got involved with the Tigers through an organization called Friends of Jaclyn, which works to improve the lives of children with pediatric brain tumors. Through connecting children and their families with local teams, FOJ hopes to foster new support networks — and also help the team’s members to see the world with new eyes. Towson is one of 100 teams nationwide that’s adopted an honorary team member through the organization.

Even better news:  Tyler’s cancer treatments concluded in August, 2011 — and all his scans have come back negative since then.

The Maryland Department of Transportation’s State Highway Administration (SHA) is urging motorists to share the road and be on the lookout for cyclists, particularly Friday, May 18 which is “National Bike to Work Day.”  With local groups, counties and municipalities around the State sponsoring Bike to Work activities, more bicycle traffic is expected along key routes and local roadways.  Bicycle safety is a two-way street, and cyclists are reminded to follow the rules of the road, to stay visible and wear a helmet.

Partnering with the Baltimore Metropolitan Council, the City of Baltimore and the Downtown Athletic Center, SHA will host a Bike to Work stop on Friday morning, May 18 between 7 and 9 a.m. at the corner of Guilford and Monument streets near SHA Headquarters.  Twenty-20 Cycle is providing bike tune-ups, and the Merritt Downtown Athletic Center is partnering in logistics and will provide a demonstration of proper stretching technique for cycling warm-ups and cool-downs.

“Bike to Work Day encourages those who might usually ride for recreation and exercise to try an alternate means of commuting. We certainly expect more bicycle traffic than usual Friday, so we’re urging drivers to stay alert, focus and share the road,” said SHA Administrator Melinda B. Peters.  “Cycling instead of driving is not only better for your health, it is better for the health of the environmental as well.”  Ms. Peters and Planning and Preliminary Engineering Director Gregory Slater will bike from the Meadowbrook Regional Park in Brooklandville to SHA Headquarters on North Calvert Street. (more…)

A scene from last year's croquet match between St. John's and the Naval Academy. (The nerds almost always win.)

As far as Maryland universities go, St. John’s has always been a bit of an outlier. They learn science from Galileo and Newton, read ancient Greek, and have a mean croquet team. And now they have perhaps the least fight-y college fight song we’ve ever heard.

It wasn’t always this way. While it may be known now as a bastion of bookish eccentrics, the school started out as a “quasi-military academy” with varsity football and lacrosse teams, according to alumnus Adrian Trevisan. The former fight song, “St. John’s College March,” dates from 1911 and featured some of the usual fight song rhetoric:  “St. John’s forever,” “Fight for her colors,” “United we as brothers stand,” etc. But things have changed a lot over the past century. These days, St. John’s only varsity teams are in crew, croquet, sailing, and fencing. Not to mention that this is a crowd that doesn’t appreciate androcentric language. So last year the call went out for a new fight song, which was unveiled at its 30th annual croquet match against the U.S. Naval Academy.

The new song, penned by current student Charles Branan (with a musical arrangement by Baltimore resident John Bonn, who teaches at Friends School), is notable for talking about books and wisdom and freedom, and not really mentioning fighting or winning. True to form. The lyrics to the new song are below:
(more…)

The 9th Annual Transmodern Performance Festival, the weekend-long “cultural phenomenon” celebrating the outré and experimental across multiple Baltimore venues, opens today. According to the official website, Transmodern presents “radical, experimental, expectation-defying work,” but I would add “delightful” (or some less lame equivalent) in there somewhere. Because though the festival features a fair amount of out-of-town and international artists, it’s very Baltimore, which is to say as experimental and conceptually severe as Transmodern may get, it never loses its joyful, celebratory vibe – at least not that I’ve ever witnessed. Take, for example, tonight’s opening event at Current Space: F.E.A.S.T., a “culinary performance” providing an “aural, visual, and palatable experience;” or tomorrow night’s The Body X-tended at 14K Cabaret, “an evening of uncanny garments;” or Sunday morning’s Love Parade (by Fluid Movement) at the Baltimore Farmer’s Market. You get the idea, right?

Transmodern features an equal portion of artists doing their regular schtick and others getting outside of their comfortable format. The band Weekends will be doing the normal, everyday, sublime thing that they do, while rapper Mickey Free will be mixing it up, collaborating with local dance group Effervescent Collective. So it’s an opportunity to catch up on Baltimore’s creative scene if you’ve been out of the loop as well as to see some this-is-never-going-to-happen-again performances.

For a full schedule of performances, visit transmodernfestival.com

Preakness Stakes: Racing needs commissioner, trainers say – Chicago Tribune
Most Marylanders support bringing elk back, survey finds – Baltimore Sun
Whites Account for Under Half of Births in U.S. – New York Times

It was only last year that John Waters championed hitchhiking as “a great way to meet people, and to have sex” and claimed that he’d stuck out his thumb everywhere from Baltimore to San Francisco. And apparently now… Eastern Ohio. The famed film director was spotted by indie rock band Here We Go Magic.  They told the story to DCist:

“Getting back on the highway this morning, there was a man at the side of the on-ramp with a sign that read ‘to the end of Rte 70.’ Jen wanted to pick him up, but we drove past him. As we passed by, our sound guy said ‘John Waters’ Luke said, ‘Yep, definitely John Waters.’ We got off at the next exit and circled back. He was still there. We pulled up, opened the door and asked where he was coming from. ‘Baltimore,’ he said. And we said ‘Get in, sir.’ ”

Read the rest of the story here.