Every year the City of Baltimore throws about nine hundred different beer-and-funnel-cake street festivals. Some are ethnic (Polish, German, Italian); some are neighborhood-themed (Hampden, Little Italy, Hamilton); and some are rather more high-minded.
They’re still beer-and-funnel-cake parties, though. The Book Festival is amusing primarily because a couple of local publishing companies set up temporary shop. Also, like the Flower Mart (which is still a pretty high-toned affair and is run by Nice Ladies from the Social Register, rather than the city government) it happens in the cruciform front parlors of the city, Mount Vernon and Washington Places.
Artscape is in theory a celebration of the visual and performing arts in Baltimore. Give me a break. Baltimore just isn’t an artsy city and it never was. Granted, we do have the Maryland Institute College of Art. I understand that it’s thought of rather highly in the art world, but since I only like art that involves flowers and nekkid people, the Barbie heads suspended in Jell-O that art students like to produce leaves me colder than a dead polar bear on an iceberg.
Of some note: The Maryland Institute, whose building is one of my favorites in the City, once upon a time existed all the way downtown. In inception, it was to be a Great University. Unfortunately, Baltimoreans were even then much more interested in commerce, turning a buck and getting wildly drunk on rye-based cocktails than they were in building a Great University, so the Institute always languished on the city’s communal back burner. In any case most proper Maryland families sent their sons to Virginia for book-learnin’ anyway. Since proper people didn’t become artists, though, the Institute did manage to establish a College of Art, which is the only part of the original concept to survive.
Having digressed, I now return to Artscape. Bleah. It always manifests on one of these late July weekends and is therefore always miserably hot. It’s infested with college students — and not the nice kinds. There are no sweet Delta Gamma girls or lacrosse-ish Sig Eps here. These are the dreadlocked creepy kids that I avoided in college and continue to avoid now. And, of course, to keep the mix multicultural, Tyrone and Tyquisha from Gilmor street usually show up, too.
I could probably deal with the icky people and the grotesque heat if not for the simple fact that the freakin’ beer is $6 a pop. Where the hell do these people think they are, New York? Oh — that’s right — they’re in the pressure cooker that is midtown Baltimore in July. People will sell their firstborn spawn for a cold beer, given the right motivation.
Oh, and if the pissy Old Baltimore menu I posted last time was a little too Old Guard, try this website for size: this is the best restaurant in Tidewater Virginia and one to which I took countless dates before fraternity dances.
http://www.surreyhouserestaurant.com/entree.html
Normal food, normal place, and fair prices. If you don’t have a fine meal at the Surrey House you need mental help.
They’re still beer-and-funnel-cake parties, though. The Book Festival is amusing primarily because a couple of local publishing companies set up temporary shop. Also, like the Flower Mart (which is still a pretty high-toned affair and is run by Nice Ladies from the Social Register, rather than the city government) it happens in the cruciform front parlors of the city, Mount Vernon and Washington Places.
Artscape is in theory a celebration of the visual and performing arts in Baltimore. Give me a break. Baltimore just isn’t an artsy city and it never was. Granted, we do have the Maryland Institute College of Art. I understand that it’s thought of rather highly in the art world, but since I only like art that involves flowers and nekkid people, the Barbie heads suspended in Jell-O that art students like to produce leaves me colder than a dead polar bear on an iceberg.
Of some note: The Maryland Institute, whose building is one of my favorites in the City, once upon a time existed all the way downtown. In inception, it was to be a Great University. Unfortunately, Baltimoreans were even then much more interested in commerce, turning a buck and getting wildly drunk on rye-based cocktails than they were in building a Great University, so the Institute always languished on the city’s communal back burner. In any case most proper Maryland families sent their sons to Virginia for book-learnin’ anyway. Since proper people didn’t become artists, though, the Institute did manage to establish a College of Art, which is the only part of the original concept to survive.
Having digressed, I now return to Artscape. Bleah. It always manifests on one of these late July weekends and is therefore always miserably hot. It’s infested with college students — and not the nice kinds. There are no sweet Delta Gamma girls or lacrosse-ish Sig Eps here. These are the dreadlocked creepy kids that I avoided in college and continue to avoid now. And, of course, to keep the mix multicultural, Tyrone and Tyquisha from Gilmor street usually show up, too.
I could probably deal with the icky people and the grotesque heat if not for the simple fact that the freakin’ beer is $6 a pop. Where the hell do these people think they are, New York? Oh — that’s right — they’re in the pressure cooker that is midtown Baltimore in July. People will sell their firstborn spawn for a cold beer, given the right motivation.
Oh, and if the pissy Old Baltimore menu I posted last time was a little too Old Guard, try this website for size: this is the best restaurant in Tidewater Virginia and one to which I took countless dates before fraternity dances.
http://www.surreyhouserestaurant.com/entree.html
Normal food, normal place, and fair prices. If you don’t have a fine meal at the Surrey House you need mental help.
posted by Daniel | 2:39 AM
1 Comments:
Guess I don't need mental help, since I took you to the Surry House before my sorority dances! :)
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