annamccachren

[annamccachren]

New Year’s Day Brunch 2019 in Baltimore

I couldn’t find a roundup of places open for breakfast/brunch in Baltimore on New Year’s Day, so I decided to make my own. Tweet at me at @annamccachren if you know of a place that I’m missing.

Brewer’s Hill

Huck’s American Craft

Bottomless option available for $15

10 a.m.-3 p.m.

Canton

Cardinal Tavern

“In Your Pajamas Bottomless Brunch”

Starts at 10 a.m.

Lee’s Pint & Shell

10 a.m.-3 p.m.

Myth & Moonshine

$12 bottomless mimosas and bloodys

Starts at 10 a.m.

Nacho Mama’s

"Come in wearing your outfit from the night before or your PJ’s and receive 1 of our $2 Brunch Drinks FREE with entree”

10 a.m.-2 p.m.

Charles Village

Red Star

$13 bottomless mimosas, bloody marys and screwdrivers

10 a.m.-2 p.m.

Downtown

Chez Hugo Bistro

11 a.m.-4 p.m.

Fells Point

Alexander’s Tavern

“Bloodies, Mimosas, or Screwdrivers $3.50 each or $12 Pitchers” or “$15 all-you-can-drink (bar only)”

10 a.m.-3 p.m.

L’eau de Vie Brassiere

Reservations recommended

12-4 p.m.

Papi’s Tacos

$14 pitchers

10 a.m.-3 p.m.

Hamilton

Maggie’s Farm

10 a.m.-3 p.m.

Hampden

Five and Dime Ale House

11 a.m.-3 p.m.

Wicked Sisters

Starts at 10 a.m.

Federal Hill

The Charles Bar & Grille

Brunch is served noon-10 p.m.

Crossbar

$14 bottomless bloodys and mimosas

Served all day starting at 11 a.m.

Mother’s

9 a.m.-2 p.m.

Mount Vernon

Baby’s on Fire

9 a.m.-2 p.m.

Brewer’s Art

12-3 p.m.

Cafe Fili

9 a.m.-3 p.m.

City Cafe

10 a.m.-3 p.m.

Dooby’s

8 a.m.-3 p.m.

Square Meal

Usual hours

Mount Washington

Mt. Washington Tavern

Reservations suggested

12-3 p.m.

Patterson Park

Patterson Public House

Opens at 11 a.m.

Riverside

Southside Diner

7 a.m.-2:30 p.m.

Roland Park

Johnny’s

Brunch served 9 a.m.-9 p.m.

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Baltimore avocado toast

I’m a millennial and I don’t own a house, so therefore by the transitive property (I think), I am obligated to be obsessed with ordering avocado toast at restaurants. And because I also love brunch (again, millennial here), I recently took it upon myself, with the help of some Twitter friends, to make a list of all the places in Baltimore I could find that serve avocado toast for brunch/breakfast/lunch. You’re welcome. Let me know if I’m missing something and I’ll add it on.

Atwater’s, multiple locations

Canton

BoatHouse Canton, 2809 Boston St.

The Iron Rooster,  3721 Boston St.

Federal Hill

Encantada, 800 Key Highway

The Outpost American Tavern (on what looks like a lunch/dinner menu), 1032 Riverside Ave.

Regi’s American Bistro, 1002 Light St.

Hampden

Avenue Kitchen & Bar, 911 W. 36th St.

Five and Dime Ale House (on the brunch menu as South Cali Toast), 901 W. 36th St.

The Food Market, 1017 W. 36th St.

Mount Vernon

Cafe Andamiro, 241 W. Chase St.

Ceremony Coffee Roasters, 520 Park Ave. 

Dooby’s, 802 N. Charles St.

Poets (on the breakfast menu, served until 11 a.m.), 24 W. Franklin St. 

Turps, 1317 N. Charles St.

Mount Washington

Nickel Taphouse, 1604 Kelly Ave.

Remington

Ground & Griddled, 301 W. 29th St. 

#baltimore #baltimore dining #baltimore eats #avocado toast #dang millennials #public service tbh

[annamccachren]

#ACES2016: Responsible Writing and Editing on Sexual Violence

The American Copy Editors Society’s national conference happened last week in Portland. Last year was my first time attending, and I loved it--it was informative, it introduced me to plenty of great, intelligent people, and it generally affirmed my love for copy editing.

Going back this year was a joy, in part because ACES gave me the opportunity to lead my own conference session, Responsible Writing and Editing on Sexual Violence. The people who attended were all great and engaged and asked thoughtful questions, which is exactly what I’d hoped for.

A few people have asked for the slides/notes to the presentation; you can see the slides here. The presentation is mostly geared toward copy editors but the ideas should prove useful for writers and other editors as well. The second-to-last slide links to an additional document of sources and recommended readings. I might add to that document if I find more links that I think are helpful or informative for editors.

#sexual assault #title ix #ACES2016 #copy editors #journalism

[annamccachren]

RIP Normandy.

One of my cats, Normandy, died very early this morning. We’re not sure what happened. He wouldn’t eat much of his dinner last night, and then maybe nine hours later we found him dying on the floor. He was a year and a half old.

My grief feels too big and unwieldy right now for such a tiny creature. But this is my main consolation: I keep thinking about the day we picked him out at the shelter. There was a room full of metal cages with kittens and he was the only one who was alone in a cage, no littermates to keep him company, like all the other kittens did. I pulled him out of the cage and held him in my arms and he immediately fell asleep, and I knew we were taking him home with us.

He was so, so scared when we brought him home--he hid under the couch or my bed for about a month before finally venturing out, and even then he was skittish and scared easily for probably the whole first year of his life. Winston, the other kitten we brought home that day, had to teach him how to play.

But now, he had transformed into a totally happy, loving cat who was more likely to flirt with whomever walked in the door than run away from them. He and Winston were best friends. Norm would talk to you all morning, vying for your attention, and then flop over for a belly rub. He would get a lot of belly rubs. I’m glad that by the end of his life he had been able to learn how to relax and be happy and show boundless affection. He gave and received a lot of love in his little life.

This picture is the last picture I took of him, yesterday afternoon. He used to hate cuddling with people but he was starting to warm up to it and every once in a while I would get him to curl up on my lap or against my side. Yesterday he came up on the couch with me, curled up, and settled his head on my leg to sleep, purring whenever I reached down to pet him. I’m glad that this is how I get to remember my little Worm.

#cats #rip #personal

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Top 10 things I read in 2015

We put out our top 10 issue at City Paper last week, and as part of compiling it, Brandon Soderberg asked the whole staff what new books we’d read in 2015. I realized that I hadn’t read many newly published books in 2015, but I had still read a lot of great writing this year. So here’s my personal top 10 list of things that I read in 2015, mostly decided by how much I continued to think about a piece of writing after reading it or how much its words shaped the way I perceive the world and my work.

1. “Between the World and Me” -Ta-Nehisi Coates

2. “Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?” -Jeanette Winterson

3. “‘Sea Slaves’: The Human Misery That Feeds Pets and Livestock” -Ian Urbina

4. “An Unbelievable Story of Rape” -T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong

5. “Edna Lewis and the Black Roots of American Cooking” -Francis Lam

6. “On Chicken Tenders” -Helen Rosner

7. “Where's Housing's Money? Tenants suffer while the Housing Authority sits on millions” -Jake Carlo

8. “On Gawker’s Problem With Women” -Dayna Evans

9. “Why didn’t anyone stop Doctor Hardy?” -Liz Kowalczyk and Patricia Wen

10. “On Pandering” -Claire Vaye Watkins

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Five Things: Nov. 10, 2015

1. I met Colette Shade a few weeks ago IRL for the first time after we’d interacted on Twitter for a few months, and at one point we talked about the struggles of what to share on social media. If Twitter’s the main way you connect with people, but your name/profession is attached to it, how honest or open can you be when shit gets bad? We talked about the struggle to balance your ~personal brand~ with being, you know, a human who sometimes feels bad or overwhelmed. @annfriedman​ touched on this a bit in a great article for the New Republic, “My Paradoxical Quest to Build a Personal Brand.” “Life is not always on-brand,” she writes. “In the best-case scenario, a brand keeps you focused in a world of unlimited options. In reality, though, it’s yet another source of professional pressure.”

2. I recently read “Wolf in White Van” by John Darnielle and was pretty underwhelmed by it. I thought there were a few problems with it--the structure felt too stilted and laborious at times; there was no real tension or suspense that built past the first third of the book--but one of my biggest problems with it was that it felt way too interior, if that makes sense. The main character/narrator is isolated and caught up in the worlds he’s crafted in his mind. All other characters, even the narrator’s parents, are fleeting, one-dimensional sketches, glimpses of people that are never fleshed out because the narrator seems incapable of seeing them in multi-dimensional ways. But my frustration with the book made me realize that I’ve generally drifted away from reading stories that feel too interior--personal essays and poetry included. I think that’s part of the reason (in addition to Thing No. 1) why I’ve been struggling to complete these Five Things lately. While I do believe that there is almost always something universal to be found in first-person writing, inserting myself into my writing feels almost self-indulgent lately. I don’t know what that means for Five Things. We’ll see.

3. In my last Five Things, I wrote about wanting to get at more of the historical/political aspects of food. Since then, I’ve started an Eats & Drinks column: War & Peas. This first installation is mostly an introductory column, but I already have plenty of ideas mulling around in my head for future columns, many of which were inspired at least in part by a day of food history panel discussions I attended a few Fridays ago at the National Museum of American History. And there have been some amazing articles surrounding these issues that have come out lately: Stacia L. Brown wrote about “The Untold History of African American Cookbooks” for the New Republic, Francis Lam wrote a beautiful article about “Edna Lewis and the Black Roots of American Cooking” for New York Times Magazine, and Ferris Jabr also wrote about food for the New York Times Magazine, on the Bread Lab, a project that’s working to bring back regional grain farming through the creation of new strands of wheat. You should read them all--I know they certainly provided me with plenty of food for thought (sorry, couldn’t resist). I also wrote an article last month about women in the Baltimore homebrewing scene, and I managed to sneak in a few factoids about women and brewing history.

4. Speaking of things I’ve written for City Paper, a few weekends ago I went to see the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company’s production of “Titus Andronicus” and really deeply enjoyed it. From my review:

CSC's program says this production is set in America in the 1980s, but it feels more like a dystopic version of the contemporary world: Titus Andronicus, a renowned Roman general, and his sons all wear red and white camo-patterned outfits; the Goths with whom Titus has been at war are all decked out in sleek black; Saturninus and Bassianus, the sons of the late emperor of Rome, look just a little bit sleazy in their dark, slim-fitting suits. The main set piece is an impressive three-story facade of a crumbling, spooky gray manor, and the scenery and costuming is all complemented by the live rock band providing musical interludes and occasionally accompanying death scenes. I'm usually skeptical of Shakespeare productions that give the plays a contemporary setting, mostly because the change in time often feels more like a superficial attempt to connect with contemporary audiences than an artistic decision meant to enhance the play. But in this case, the change in setting, as well as some other directorial choices, actually heightened the audience's experience of the play and brought out some of the humor and sheer ridiculousness of "Titus Andronicus'" violence.

“Titus Andronicus” runs through Nov. 15, and if you’re in Baltimore, I highly recommend making sure you see it.

5. This weekend, I went to New York state for a wedding. The six-hour drive there included a long stretch up I-83, straight through York, Pennsylvania. As we drive past exit 14 for Leader Heights, I pointed across the highway to where my car had gotten totaled when I was merging onto the highway, back in my first week working at CP. (RIP Camry Saint-Saëns.) And I pointed out exit 15 and said that was where you’d get off to go to my old apartment, where I lived just 16 months ago, and although in my head I could still clearly picture the route you’d drive to get to my apartment--the stoplights, the turns, the potholes to look out for--it felt like I was remembering a different life entirely. In a way, I guess it was. It’s staggering to think about how much has changed since I left York, how much living in Baltimore has changed me. Baltimore, City Paper, the relationships I’ve formed here, they all push me and challenge me constantly, and I like to think I’ve risen to those challenges and am a better person for it now.

#five things

[annamccachren]

Flag House Projects OR Where my parents are from Reunion

“Flag House Courts was a public housing project located in Baltimore, Maryland. Comprising three 12-story buildings, and multiple low-rise units. Flag House was built in 1955. The project had recreational facilities with bingo and dances, a swimming pool, and a basketball court. However, the complex had problems from its opening. Elevators broke down often, trapping riders for hours. Residents were forced to run fans (even during winter) because a faulty heating system made the buildings unbearably hot. In addition, there were the problems of crime and drug dealing. By the late 1960s, gunshots were very common, elevators and the stairwells reeked of urine. Residents often threw objects out of windows including holiday Christmas trees. Vacant apartments were turned into drug hangouts, and stairwells became violent crime areas. In 1993, the projects were renovated slightly, but problems continued. They closed in 1998 and 1999 and were imploded in 2001.” - Wikipedia Entry

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Five Things: Aug. 9, 2015

1. I got to be a "groomslady" for one of my best friends, Josh, this weekend. He and Lauren, his wife, share an obvious bond of love and care and respect, and it was a privilege to bear witness to that and celebrate their relationship. The wedding was absolutely beautiful, and I managed to hold back the tears until they read their personal vows. Love and congratulations to the happy couple.

2. I flew to and from Columbus to get to the wedding, which required a layover with one short flight in a small plane both ways. It occurred to me after I flew out of the Philadelphia airport to Columbus on Friday that I could've taken a bus or a train to an airport that had a direct flight to Columbus--which caused me a bit of angst, considering how environmentally destructive flying is. You could argue that the plane would have taken off even if I wasn't on it, but by choosing to fly I'm participating in a destructive system and creating demand for it. Damn, y'all, it's hard to remember to consider all the consequences of our actions as we move through the world.

Related: I bought a book today called "From Field to Fork," about the ethics of food consumption. I started the introduction and I'm really excited about it already. The economic and environmental consequences of the way we eat is already something I'm interested in, but I suspect this book will give me more insight into those consequences and make me grapple more with how, like choosing to fly, our seemingly inconsequential decisions about what to eat have ripple effects.

3. My parents came into town on Thursday to have dinner with me, and while we were at dinner they informed me that Dusty, our almost-13-years-old golden retriever, had died that morning. He'd gone deaf a little while ago and had been having a lot of problems with mobility and whatnot lately, so it wasn't a huge surprise, but I'm still pretty devastated. Dusty was without a doubt my dog. In sixth grade I started riding the bus home after school where I would spend a few hours by myself every day, so my parents got Dusty so that I would have a companion at the house. I'd hang out with him after school, walking around outside the house with him or cuddling with him in an armchair in our basement. (Even after he got far too big for cuddling, he always wanted to sit in your lap--he'd sidle up to the chair you were sitting in, put a leg up on the chair, eye your reaction, and before you knew it you'd have 95 pounds of dog in your face as he tried to make room on the chair to curl up in your lap.) A tree crashed through my house in a freak storm while I was home alone in seventh grade one day, and he was there for me to cling to as I freaked out. He was a happy, loving dog, and when I went off to college, he was always thrilled whenever I came home--we kept him and our other dog Pippin in the basement of the house, and when he would hear my voice he'd come to the top of the basement stairs, where you could hear his tail banging against the wall as he wagged it. Pets are so wonderful. Love them while they're here.

4. In case you haven't heard the news, Evan Serpick, CP's editor, announced this week that he's leaving the paper. CP has done some great things during his tenure, and Evan is a great guy--just on Thursday he drove me around to protect me/keep me company on a weird wild goose chase involving a stolen phone, though that's another story. He's really excited about his new job, so I'm happy for him that he's found what sounds like a great new adventure. Plus this means that CP has a pretty cool opportunity to think hard about what sort of paper we are and what we hope to accomplish with a new editor. It'll be a busy transition period, I'm sure, but it's one full of possibility and potential for the paper.

5. This is getting pretty long so I’ll just leave you with some recommended reading: “How Childhood Trauma Could be Mistaken for ADHD” in The Atlantic is fascinating and shows that more people, including health care professionals, should be aware of the possibilities and consequences of trauma. Also, one of CP’s interns wrote a news article this week about how EDM festivals and volunteer organizations are trying to implement better safety initiatives and harm-reduction techniques for attendees on drugs.

#five things

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Five Things: July 27, 2015

1. A few weeks back, my friend Izzy got to hear Ta-Nehisi Coates speak at a church in West Baltimore. He met up with me afterward and pulled a copy of Coates’ new book, “Between the World and Me,” out of his bag, then flipped it open to show me that Coates had signed it. I started swearing profusely at him out of jealousy until another friend sitting next to me finally nudged me and made me realize that Izzy had gotten it inscribed to me. Oops.

It’s not a particularly long read—I finished it in only a few hours—but it’s a crucial one, packed with plenty of points that you’ll be thinking about long after. It’s especially useful for white people to read it, to realize their role in perpetuating racism and racist systems. I agree a lot with Mark Gunnery’s review of the book that calls us as white people to become aware “the layers of power and history we carry with us through the spaces we occupy.”

2. Another book I recently read: “Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?” by Jeanette Winterson. It’s been sitting on my bookshelf for the past year or so, and after finishing it I sorely regret not having read it sooner. It’s a memoir, but it’s also an ode to the role that books and libraries have played in her life, a portrait of mid-century working-class Manchester, and a beautiful rumination on what love is and how to learn to give and receive it after being deprived of it and abused as a child.

In some ways I’m still learning what it means to love someone, and how, and Winterson’s book felt like a comfort and a guide. One passage in particular that stuck with me:

Listen, we are human beings. Listen, we are inclined to love. Love is there, but we need to be taught how. We want to stand upright, we want to walk, but someone needs to hold our hand and balance us a bit, and guide us a bit, and scoop us up when we fall.

Listen, we fall. Love is there but we have to learn it - and its shapes and possibilities. I taught myself to stand on my own two feet, but I could not teach myself how to love.

We have a capacity for language. We have a capacity for love. We need other people to release those capacities.

3. I wrote a few restaurant reviews last month (La Cuchara, La Tolteca, plus some Cheap Eats), plus an essay on international barbecue with some food history mixed in. I feel like I’m finally finding a groove with food writing, though I’ve found that, as I write more restaurant reviews, it’s increasingly difficult for me to do any cooking. It’s hard to come home from work after thinking about food all and then feel motivated to think creatively about making food. Helen Rosner wrote about this feeling in her essay “On Chicken Tenders”: “on my own time, ordering delivery or cooking dinner or out with friends, I reverted to the palate of a suburban six-year-old. All I ever wanted was toast with butter, pasta with the thinnest-possible coating of red sauce, or—my salvation, my obsession, the only thing I ever reliably wanted to eat—chicken tenders.”

I’m not quite to toast-and-butter levels yet, but I have been eating a lot of chicken tenders lately, and thinking of things to cook has become a major struggle. I didn’t realize quite how bad this had gotten until I went to Whole Foods last weekend and felt utterly paralyzed by the number of options. So many ingredients! So many ways to combine them! How are you supposed to choose!? My boyfriend asked me if I wanted to get anything, and all I could do was stare at everything, though I eventually managed to pull a box of plain-ish cereal off the shelf.

But I woke up early this morning and walked down to the farmers market while it was still a little cool out, and ended up doing laps around and around the produce stands, admiring all the goods and feeling at ease with the crowd. Eventually I bought a few ingredients, went home, and improvised a pesto pasta dish with vegetables. At least I haven’t entirely succumbed yet to chicken tenders territory.

4. This news is a bit old at this point, but Baynard Woods’ Conflicts of Interest column won first place in the AAN awards in the columns category. If you somehow haven’t read his column, you can read it here. I’d recommend “A blue Beattirakis monster” and the classics “Pussy Riot hates me” and “Stephanie and me.”

5. A few weeks ago I took a long weekend trip up to Pittsburgh to visit a bunch of friends. I had a companion with me who’d never really spent time in Pittsburgh before, so we did some sightseeing, which allowed me to view the city with fresh eyes on everything from its diversity (way more white than Baltimore) to its walkability. It also gave me an intense appreciation for the free admission at Baltimore’s two major art museums--admission to the Carnegie Museum of Art is $20, as is admission to the Mattress Factory, a contemporary art museum. One of my friends told me, “You know, Pittsburgh doesn’t seem like your city anymore. Baltimore is.” She was right. By Sunday, I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to my friends, but I did find myself ready to go back home, to Baltimore. When we got back, the area outside the Greyhound station reeked of garbage, and our Uber driver, who had a hardcore Bawlmer accent, chattered away at us about his other job at a crab house in Essex. Ah, home sweet home.

#five things

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Five Things: July 5, 2015

1. My roommate, Alaina, moved out of our apartment at the beginning of June to move to Boston. She was one of my first Baltimore friends—we’d met in the city about nine months before I started working at City Paper, when a mutual friend brought me along to Alaina’s birthday party. We immediately became friends. When I told her that I’d gotten a job offer at City Paper, her first question was, “Does this mean we can be roommates?!” She was one of the best roommates I’ve ever had and is a wonderful friend/cat co-parent. I miss her, but I’m proud of her for getting a job straight out of college and taking the plunge and moving to Boston. The kitties and I send our love, Alaina.

2. Last weekend was my turn to move out of my and Alaina’s apartment. I loathe moving, and I do it far too often. I’ve been saying for the past few years that I would throw a party once I stayed in an apartment for 13 months, but I still haven’t been able to throw that party—I lived in the apartment that I just moved out of for just under 12 months, and lived in York for ~10 months before that. Here’s hoping I’ll finally get to stay in one place long enough for that 13-month anniversary rager.

3. Remember that story on sexual assault I’d mentioned before? That came out a few weeks ago. It’s a #longread, so set aside some time if you want to read about sexual assault and gender discrimination on Johns Hopkins’ campus.

4. Brandon Soderberg sent this article, “On Chicken Tenders,” out to the CP staff a while back, and it ended up inspiring a pretty involved conversation in the office about childhood foods and the foods that inspire nostalgia or aversion. One of the things that originally drew me to being a food editor was the complicated a role food plays in our lives, both personally and politically, and our office conversation re-inspired me to start thinking about the way we ascribe memories or emotions to particular foods. So, I’ve been on the hunt the past week for interesting essays on food and memory. Eater has a fascinating essay series called Life in Chains, “where writers share the essential roles played in their lives by chain restaurants—great and grim, wonderful and terrible.” One of the essays in the series, “Searching for Forgiveness at Friendly’s,” is particularly excellent and moving. I highly recommend reading it. (And in the meantime, I’m accepting any and all links to stories navigating through similar themes, tweet ‘em at me.) 

5. Baynard Woods wrote a piece for City Paper’s Big Music Issue on the results of his challenge to listen to only Baltimore music for a year. It’s a funny and insightful article (much as Baynard is a funny and insightful dude). This part in particular really stuck with me: 

. . . no matter how much I listened to these records and no matter how local they were or how much I loved them, I didn’t have the decades-long connection with them that I have with artists such as Bob Dylan or the New York Dolls or Run-DMC. Honestly, I’m really embarrassed at how much I missed Bob Dylan. I would hope that my tastes were more original—but I’d been listening to Bob for so much of my life that when I hear a record like “Blood on the Tracks” I’m actually connecting with many former versions of myself when I hear it. . . . listening only to local music really meant I was listening only to contemporary music (I listened to Lungfish, but, I mean, in the scheme of things that is really recent) and listening only to contemporary music alienates you from your own past and the past of the world. I might bump into the musician on the street, but I felt like I wasn’t bumping into my former selves nearly as often.

A current past self that I’ve been running into lately: Two of my friends and I went to see Christian Löffler DJ in D.C. last month. We found the D.C. crowd on U Street to be thoroughly insufferable (before Löffler’s set, we were only having fun when we stumbled upon Velvet Lounge, where Baltimore DJ James Nasty was playing that night—proof our tastes are 100 percent Baltimore, I suppose), but my night got infinitely better once Löffler started playing. And after his set, my friends and I bonded by wandering through a nearly-empty Union Station, marveling at the weird quiet of it. I listened to Löffler’s music every day this past week, and every time I listen to this song, I’m transported back to that night, sitting against the wall, watching the lights flash across the ceiling and walls, feeling the bass line reverb around me, feeling euphoric. 

#five things #Baltimore #music #food

[annamccachren]

Come check out our bright and shiny new galleries. They’re big. 

[annamccachren]

This week’s issue of City Paper has an interview with street muralist Nether; a Q&A with local photographer Devin Allen; a review of “Evidence: Identity Through Fiber Art,” an exhibit that uses quilts as political statements; and a great essay by no-trivia on the politics of Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly.”

Also, we’ve made some changes to the masthead this week. Brandon Soderberg and I are now both managing editors, Rebekah Kirkman, is now visual arts editor, and Maura Callahan is the performing arts editor. Super excited to start a new chapter in City Paper leadership and see what we can do with this great publication.

#CITY PAPER #Freddie Gray #devin allen

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A few of these ran in print in City Paper’s Sizzlin’ Summer issue, which hit stands today.

Graphic journalist Dan Archer recently spoke with several community members in Baltimore about the unrest there since Freddie Gray’s death. All drawings were done live while people told their stories and shared their thoughts. Archer visited Gray’s neighborhood of Sandtown and nearby areas, retracing Gray’s final steps before being taken into custody.

More from this series on fusion.net

#CITY PAPER #freddie gray #Baltimore

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As the six officers involved in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray remain suspended with pay, the people of Baltimore refuse to let the police continue their ways. Wednesday evening, the Western District police station resembled a military bunker, with police closing access to the streets surrounding the building. Officers lined the barricades like troops prepared for war. That didn’t stop protesters from being heard loud and clear. Thursday was no different. After a large gathering at City Hall, protesters took to the streets downtown, bringing the fight to the other side of town so no one could possibly ignore the situation. Marching back to the Western District station, the group confronted officers and continuously asked for answers with absolutely no response from police.

Thousands are projected to gather today, Saturday April 25th, to bring the fight down to City Hall. If the thought of standing in unity with the protests has even briefly crossed your mind, today is the day to be heard.

All Photos by Josh Sinn

To see more: http://joshsinn.com/blog/2015/4/25/tjgo3x7ej4torpci0ljkrfd1yr90rc

City Paper: http://www.citypaper.com/news/bcpnews-freddie-gray-protests-day-6-in-photos-part-2-20150424,0,6462448.photogallery

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We said “fuck the curfew media corral” and caught police arresting lawyers and street medics. http://bit.ly/1ORZGPD

#baltimore #freddie gray #photojournalism #city paper

[annamccachren]

Five Things: March 29, 2015

1. There are very few days that I regret not having a car. Today was one of them. I was in Pittsburgh for the weekend, and the Greyhound bus that was supposed to leave at 4 p.m. ended up not leaving the station until 7:30 p.m., with no explanation or apology from Greyhound until the bus pulled out of the station and the driver told us the bus had broken down earlier in the route. It's rather infuriating to be stuck in a bus station with no knowledge of what's going on or any control of the situation. But that made me realize that this is the first time in the past few months, as far as I can recall, that I've wished I had my own car. Of course, it'll be even easier to get around Baltimore without a car if the Red Line gets built and the bus routes get updated. Maybe those would persuade more people to go without a car, or to at least not use it in the city. (As for the Greyhound, it seems that, for now, I am sadly stuck using it to get to Pittsburgh. I'll be making two round trips in April, but those, thankfully, will be my last Greyhound experiences for the foreseeable future.)

2. I was in Pittsburgh for the American Copy Editors Society conference, which was just as nerdy and delightful as it sounds. The theme of the conference this year was "getting it right," which meant there were as many panels on fact-checking, diversity, and ethical language usage as there were sessions on grammatical particulars and AP style. I filled up pages of my reporters notebook with notes on grammar (hortatory subjunctive, anyone?) and headline writing, and was delighted to learn more about the English language at both a talk on American English and at Ben Zimmer's keynote speech, but the main takeaway for me is something ACES President Teresa Schmedding tweeted on Friday: "We need to be ethical filters, not just guardians of punctuation and grammar." Yes. This conference, and all the fascinating, intelligent people I met at it, reconfirmed my love for copy editing.

3. The conference also reconfirmed, unexpectedly, my love for academic research. One of the panels I went to was "The Latest Research on Editing," and it was thrilling to get to hear about quantitative research into the value readers place (or don't) on editing. I was particularly interested in Steve Bien-Aime's research, which focuses on gender disparities in sports journalism and the ways women athletes are treated in the media. I got to talk to him a bit about his research and about existing scholarship, and it got the wheels in my head turning a bit with ideas for research into alt-weeklies. I still have a few more things I want to accomplish in journalism first, but one day, academia, one day . . .

4. Going back to Pittsburgh always makes for an interesting exercise in introspection. So much of who I am now is because of events and relationships that happened in Pittsburgh, and I inevitably always find myself thinking back to those whenever I visit the city. Yet I didn't feel the strong pull of memory as much this time as I have in past visits. Yesterday I got a ride past the apartment, the Loft, I lived in my sophomore year, and the sight of it didn't inspire as much negative emotion anymore. I went to an after-hours dance party and didn't run into anyone I knew from CMU. By today I found myself ready to go home--that is, Baltimore. Pittsburgh isn't my home anymore, in large part because I am no longer the person I was when I lived there. And that's a good thing.

5. I bought Saeed Jones' poetry collection "Prelude to Bruise" a few weeks ago at my friend Matt's insistence, but I didn't set aside the time to immediately read it. When I went to the Strand with him in NYC two weekends ago, I picked a copy of "Prelude to Bruise" off the shelf to read a few pages and was gobsmacked by how powerful the first few poems were. I finally read the whole collection on my bus ride up to Pittsburgh on Wednesday, and I only wish I had read it sooner. It's an astonishing collection--Saeed has a magnificent ear for sound and rhythm in his poetry, and confronts issues such as race, gender, familial strains, and sexuality with magnificent grace. Go get a copy.

#five things