Bennett, a vendor with two tables full of vintage 1980s and early 1990s NBA shoes—plus a rack of Bulls and Celtics warm-up jackets—is selling his gear at the packed, third annual Baltimore Sneaker Show. “This is what I do,” Bennett says, explaining that he tracks down sales of vintage and limited-edition sneakers online and through his network of connections. “Basically, it’s hustling.”
More than 1,200 people have turned to the Shake & Bake Family Fun Center, paying $30 to peruse the best sneaker collections in the city and beyond, mingle, eat, and dance. With the disco lights and local hip hop artist Greenspan pushing a thumping beat, it feels more like a night at a club than an afternoon inside an old gym.
Cameron Wecker, a 22-year-old Elkridge Furnace Inn manager, ultimately wins the $500 prize for the best collection. Wecker first began collecting sneakers when he stopped growing for several years as a child—his feet remaining the same size for a long period. Then, following successful treatment for his rare genetic condition, the 5-foot-5 inch winner began collecting again after he and his feet (size 8) stopped growing naturally.
His prize shoe? An autographed left foot, size-23 game sneaker, worn and sent to him by Shaquille O’Neal when the future Hall-of-Famer played for the Miami Heat.
“You can’t really understand how big it is until you see it,” Wecker says. “It’s nearly two feet long. It’s wider than my chest.”
Milton-Montford
East Biddle Street
May 11, 2013
27. Poor People’s March
“We’re coming together today to stand up for a working class agenda,” says Rev. Cortly “C.D.” Witherspoon, leaning into a microphone in a light drizzle on a trash-strewn vacant lot. About 150 people, some from out of state and all in comfortable shoes—including union members, Occupy protestors, immigrant, peace, and civil rights activists—gather around the Baltimore chapter president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Some are here to highlight specific claims of police brutality—46-year-old Anthony Anderson died from injuries suffered during an arrest in his lot last fall—and others protest attacks on voting rights. Everyone wants more jobs, more investment in public education, and better pay for low-wage workers.
They’re preparing to walk to Washington, D.C. in commemoration of the original Poor People’s March 45 years ago this weekend. Their route will take them past City Hall, across Martin Luther King Boulevard, and down Route 1. They’ll sleep in College Park before arriving in D.C. Sunday.
Civil rights attorney Faya Touré, founder of the National Voting Rights Museum in Selma, AL., follows Witherspoon to the mic. “My brothers and sisters . . . we cannot be single focused. Some of us just want to fight for welfare rights, employment rights, jobs, environmental rights, but there is . . . one struggle.”
Witherspoon leads the marchers, holding signs that read, “JOBS NOT JAIL,” and “WORKER + IMMIGRANT RIGHTS NOW,” through East Baltimore. He alternates between call and response chants (“What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!”), and speaking directly to curious residents, either passing by or looking out their windows toward the commotion.
“Hard-working people of East Baltimore,” Witherspoon says, glancing up past Tench Tilghman Elementary/Middle School and a block of rowhouses—both of which have seen better days. “We give tax breaks to developers and corporations to build their headquarters, but where is the investment in our neighborhoods? In our community? In our schools?”
“Amen,” says a woman leaning out of her rowhouse front door.
Parkville
Putty Hill Avenue
May 11, 2013
28. Alcohol Free
Channeling Jerry Garcia with his gray beard and sunglasses, Scott W. strums, “A Friend of the Devil.” Next, Romana S., a young woman with long ginger hair, steps to the stage and delivers a passionate (if ironic) rendition of the traditional Irish drinking song, “Johnny Jump Up.”
“Oh never, oh never, oh never again.
If I live to a hundred or a hundred and ten,
For I fell to the ground and I couldn’t get up
After drinking a quart of the Johnny Jump Up.”
More than 400 people fill Tall Cedars Hall in the Putty Hill Shopping Center for the 54th Annual Sobriety Show, organized by the Baltimore Intergroup Council of Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s a low budget affair—$1 admission—pizza, hot dogs, meatball subs, soda, and homemade cakes. Kids dance and run around the edges of the hall while the crowd, clearly enjoying a good time, banters at intermission and generously applauds favorite performers. The amateur acts—following months of rehearsals—vary from earnest to cool, including a killer cover of The Chantays’ surf guitar classic “Pipeline”—to over-the-top. In a towering blue Marge Simpson wig, Shelley C. croons Patsy Cline’s iconic “Crazy.”
“Look at everyone laughing and smiling,” says Joe P., an old-timer, sober 33 years since following a former drinking buddy into AA. “Now imagine if there was an open bar here, with these people drinking. They’d need the National Guard to break up the place.”
Pigtown
Carroll Park
June 9, 2013
29. Tour Dem Parks, Hon!
“You just rode under the oldest railroad bridge in North America,” says Ed Orser, who literally wrote the book on the Gwynns Falls, to two-dozen bicyclists touring Charm City’s parks, mill valleys, and streams. Pedaling past the granite B&O bridge, listening to the “falling” stream, Orser stops at Winan Meadows, named after Thomas Winans, who made a fortune building Russia’s first railroad and put his estate here.
“Where you’re standing right now would’ve been a four or six-lane highway if people hadn’t fought to preserve this area,” Orser says. “Route 70 ends not far from here. It’s 2,000 miles the other way to Utah and plans called for it to go downtown and meet I-95.”
Approaching a picturesque small dam in historic Dickeyville, several riders get off their bikes for photos, shocked they’re still within city limits. “I’m flabbergasted,” a young woman tells two friends.
The 25-mile tour, organized by Eli Pousson, Baltimore Heritage’s director of preservation and outreach, is a sub-event of the annual Tour Dem Parks, Hon! ride, which has attracted a record 1,300 participants this morning. The ride loops through 745-acre Druid Hill Park and the Jones Falls Trail, later heading towards Federal Hill.
Of course, it isn’t all parks and streams in Charm City.
Stopped at a traffic light on East Baltimore’s once notorious and now simply downtrodden red light district, Pousson notes that nearby St. Vincent de Paul’s once held a regular 2:30 a.m. Mass for the printers and strippers who both pulled late shifts in the neighborhood.
“I’ve wanted to organize a vaudeville and burlesque bike tour for a year and a half,” Pousson says, glancing dejectedly around “The Block.” “But sometimes those things look better on paper than they do in reality.”
Mount Vernon
North Charles Street
June 15, 2013
30. Pump It Up
Crowds cram Charles Street’s sidewalk in Mount Vernon, straining for a better vantage. The 2013 Baltimore Pride Parade just ended and now Segway-driving city police are clearing the street for annual High Heel race. At stake: a two-foot trophy, $1,100 in prizes, gift certificates, and Champagne.
“Payless,” says Greg Mazzeo, explaining where he found size-11 black heels. “I’m wearing ugly black socks so they’re snug and I can run.” Chuck Stanley jokes his pumps came from “Sal-vay”—aka the Salvation Army. “Painted them red to match my shorts.”