Every day will bring a different view by a different photographer, documenting life in and around Camden Yards during the 2010 baseball season.

August 31, 2010

Photo: Joe Tropea

Photographer’s Moment: “Some of the 18,247 baseball fans at the Yards as the O’s kick some Red Sox ass.”

If you like what you see and want to participate, contact Rafael Alvarez at camden@welcometobaltimorehon.com. Dates are filling up fast and we want to include as many faithful readers as possible. Look here for more information.

The Daily Camden Gallery

August 1, 2010 Photo: Kenneth Stukes Photographer’s Moment: “Workers manicure the field while the Orioles lose 3 of 4 in Kansas City.”	August 2, 2010 Photo: Wayne Countryman Photographer’s Moment: “The Bromo Tower as seen through Babe’s sculpted ankles … couldn’t get into Showalter press conference. Thanks to Tim Flach for helping out with the assignment.”	August 3, 2010 Photo: Caryn Coyle Photographer’s Moment: “Frederick native Keith Milburn and Santa Monica, California, girl Tanzy Noorda before the Orioles’ game against the Angels of Anaheim. New Birds’ manager Buck Showalter led the home team to a 6 to 3 win.”
August 4, 2010 Photo: Dean Bartoli Smith Photographer’s Moment: “When the day comes, this yard is where I want my ashes spread.”	August 5, 2010 Photo: Tony Shore Photographer’s Moment: “View of the Yard from a Pigtown rooftop … I like the how the night sky and stadium glow feels like a black velvet painting.”	August 6, 2010 Photo: M.S. Sanders Photographer’s Moment: “A sepia Babe meditates upon Crabtown before the Orioles win their fourth game in a row in the Showalter era.”
August 7, 2010 Photographer: Bruce Goldfarb Photographer’s Moment: “A drive-by shooting…of Camden Yards.”	August 8, 2010 Photo: Caryn Coyle Photographer’s Moment: “Dean Bartoli Smith, poet of the National Pastime and author of “Bleeding Orange,” Sons of Crabtown, 2009, Macon Street Books.”	August 9, 2010 Photo: Nick DiMarco Photographer’s Moment: “A part-time bartender and full-time sign waving superstar, entices O’s fans with $2 Natty Boh’s and other inexpensive libations in front of The Bullpen, a relatively new bar added to Washington Boulevard at the start of the 2010 Orioles season.”
August 10, 2010 Photo: public domain Photographer’s Moment: “For the second time in 126 days, a “Daily Camden” volunteer failed to post for the assignment. As is custom on these rare occurrences, we give you Memorial Stadium, R.I.P.”	August 11, 2010 Photo: Emma Remsberg Photographer’s Moment: “I like this picture because of the shape of the water. Also, I’m interested in studying graphic design and have been experimenting with Photoshop a lot, hence the unrealistically green grass.”	August 12, 2010 Photo: Chris Ciattei Photographer’s Moment: “There is water in one way or another in a lot of photos I take. It was the only puddle I found that reflected any part of the stadium, taken after a rare morning thunderstorm at about 9 a.m. while the Birds were in Cleveland. I was spending some time with my brother and he thought it was great shot. It just seemed right.”
August 13, 2010 Photo: Michael D. Golden Photographer’s Moment: “My late grandfather worked at the warehouse back in the day. As a kid, I was always amazed that he could go work in such a huge building and find his way home every evening. I’m still grateful that the landmark was preserved and incorporated in the overall design of the complex.”	August 14, 2010 Photo: Zach Pollack Photographer’s Moment: “As I arrived at the stadium, the ticket counter was the first thing that popped out to me … the first place every baseball fan goes when they want to see a game.”	August 15, 2010 Photo: Leslie F. Miller Photographer’s Moment: “My daughter Serena reading The Staircase, by Ann Rinaldi (summer assignment for incoming 7th graders) while wearing a t-shirt of the semi-fabulous Four. Her mom is not a Beatles fan.”
August 16, 2010 Photo: Jennifer Bishop Photographer’s Moment: “As the game began, I chased groups of people heading toward Camden Yards. I could spot them blocks away, all seeming hypnotically drawn to the same place. It was 7:00pm and the light was changing, moving like the people. I had to run to keep up, every now and then stopping someone for a quick shot. There were many enraptured faces, but I liked this shot of these teenagers the most for the authenticity of their gaze.”	August 17, 2010 Photo: Jonny Pine Photographer’s Moment: “A baseball game is fleeting, but by buying Orioles’ merchandise a part of the game comes home with you.”	August 18, 2010 Photo: Lea Coyle Photographer’s Moment: “Pubs on Washington Boulevard just across the street from Camden Yards.”
August 19, 2010 Photo: Stacy Spaulding Photographer’s Moment: “A bag of baseballs stands ready in the Rangers bullpen before the game.”	August 20, 2010 Photo: Joyce Murphy Photographer’s Moment: “Since my office is located on one of the upper floors at the South Warehouse, I have a ‘bird’s eye view’ of a portion of the stadium. As I look out the window, I am captivated by the bright orange colors along with the structural arrangement.”	August 21, 2010 Photo: Noam Sane Photographer’s Moment: “Pleasant geometry after the Rangers game.”
August 22, 2010 Photo: Angelo Jenkins, age 9 Photographer’s Moment: “I looked at the different angles of the stadium before I took the picture.”	August 23, 2010 Photo: Bill Hughes Photographer’s Moment: “The un-sung clean-up hitter washing down the bleacher seats out in the center field section of the Yard.”	August 24, 2010 Photo: Lorraine Whittlesey Photographer’s Moment: “The Man of Steel guards Camden Yards.”
August 25, 2010 Photo: John Lewis Photographer’s Moment: “My cousin Tim and I went to Memorial Stadium as kids, and he was preoccupied with the lighting rigs, saying things like, ‘Man, I’d like to be the guy to change those bulbs.’ Years later, he became an electrician and actually helped wire the light towers at Camden Yards. He even installed a few bulbs.”	August 26, 2010 Photo: Bunny Jenn Themelis Photographer’s Moment: “My husband and I used to work at Camden Yards together during our high school years. We were both working the night Cal broke Lou Gehrig’s streak. Despite our familiarity, we still felt like we were seeing the stadium anew…”	August 27, 2010 Photo: Dean Smith Photographer’s Moment: “Embedded in the molding of Camden Station is the number of the most celebrated Oriole to have graced the diamond at Camden Yards.”
August 28, 2010 Photo: Victor Paul Alvarez Photographer’s Moment: “My brother Danny — on a rare visit to the City of Baltimore, the day after the wedding of his daughter Erica to Jimmy Rupert. We stopped by the Yard on the way to Cross Street Market to slurp oysters.”	August 29, 2010 Photo: Roxanna Pollack Photographer’s Moment: “Warehouse Building A”	August 30, 2010 Photo: D.R. Belz Photographer’s Moment: “I remember when all of this happened because of a fire. It was the night before the old wooden Oriole Park at Greenmount and 29th burned to the ground—when you could see the glow from all over town. Nobody knew what started the fire. Somebody said it was a thrown cigarette. Some people said it was the Krauts. Whoever did it they started checking people real careful after that. That’s why I still think she didn’t have long to wait before they got around to deporting her anyway…” –from “Smart Boy” in White Asparagus by D.R. Belz

The Daily Camden Archive

April 2010

May 2010

June 2010

July 2010

Extra Innings

Mueller’s did have white asparagus, but I couldn’t taste it. It was a Knorr’s white asparagus soup package in German: spargelcreme suppe. The delicatessen, which also has a few tables for eat-in customers, is an absolutely charming and delicious spot for authentic German cuisine. Closed Tuesdays, the delicatessen is open Monday through Saturday 9 AM to 5 PM and Sunday, 9 AM to 2 PM.

Mueller’s owner, Ken Mueller, is the third generation of Muellers to run the delicatessen; opened by his grandfather, George, in 1947. In fact, Ken still prepares many of Mueller’s specialties the way his family always has.

For example, the roast beef ($9.50 a pound or $4.25 for a sandwich) was seasoned only with pepper and roasted for about two hours until it is medium to medium rare. “The way our customers like it,” added Mueller. The oven he uses is in the back of the delicatessen, in what was the kitchen when his grandparents lived and worked at 7207 Harford Road.

Dave Belz and White Asparagus

Belz, who told me he had to acquire a taste for it, ordered the braunsweiger liverwurst sandwich for $3.55. He said it was “creamy, smooth , not garlicy. It was not overwhelming. The rye bread was fresh, too.”

He also had the German potato salad for $1.60, that had “just the right touch of vinegar and sugar. A sweet and sour mix. The potato salad was garnished with smoky bacon, pimento and pepper.”

Mueller was pleased to see Belz, one of his numerous multi-generational customers.

“Customers who came here when my grandfather ran the business, continued to shop here when my father, Edward, operated it. And they brought their children, who come here now, sixty-three years later,” Mueller said.

Belz told me Mueller’s is a Christmas Eve tradition in his family. “Mueller’s will put together a ‘plate of many colors’ for us. It will have blood sausage, head cheese, liverwurst, and schnitzel. It is something that has been passed down from my father-in-law, who used to host the Christmas Eve gathering with the German delicacies, to my wife and I who now host it.”

Platters from Mueller’s are available year round, starting at $4.65 per person for five ounces of meat per person (imported ham, roast beef, corned beef, turkey breast, Swiss and yellow cheese). Add $.95 a person for breads and salads.

Mueller’s also sells stollen (called weihnachtsstollen or christstollen in German), a cake with fruit, raisins, marzipan and powdered with icing sugar for Christmas.

“Our German gingerbread cookies and our asbach, liqueur candies, are especially popular during the Christmas season,” Ken added. He told me that German noodles, called spaetzle, are made and sold year round at Mueller’s.

The Mueller’s shrimp salad was a customer favorite, so I ordered it on a Kaiser roll for $7.95. It was lightly seasoned with a nice, spicy sauce that did not overwhelm. The large pieces of shrimp were served in an excellent, fresh roll and I could well understand why it was so popular.

The entire Mueller family, son Brady rang up our order at the cash register, daughter, Kristen, Ken’s wife, Sharon and another son, Justin, all work at the delicatessen. “It’s the only place I’ve ever worked,” said Ken. “A neighborhood gathering place with customers I have known all my life.”

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At Friday’s Orioles game against the Texas Rangers, no less than three Daily Camden contributors were in attendance – each looking for that perfect aesthetically pleasing shot. And each succeeding.

Here, then, are the other images:

August 20, 2010

Photo: David McAllister

Photographer’s Moment: “The side of the stadium, looking up. I like this one because all I can think of is a landing path for a UFO.”

August 20, 2010

Photo: Tyler Waldman

Photographer’s Moment: “Pitcher Neftali Feliz of the Texas Rangers stretches before Friday’s game against the Birds at the Yard. Orioles win, 8 to 6.”

August 20, 2010

Photo: Beth Sherring

Photographer’s Moment: “My son Evan . . .”

Occasionally while tooling around town I’ll see something that registers a ring of familiarity, unsure for a moment whether it’s from first-hand experience or from the large or small screen.

Over the summer, while making numerous trips across town to visit Tom Chalkley and his crew working on the Waverly Village mural, I often took meandering paths through West Baltimore to my destination at Greenmount and 33rd Street.

Going down the 1300 block of W. Baltimore Street, I had a sense of deja vu passing by New York Friend Chicken. Oh yeah, this is where Wee-Bey pulled over and dressed down D’Angelo Barksdale about the rules – no talking in the car.

View The Wire: A Streetview Tour in a larger map

On the ever-popular Google Streetview Tour of The Wire filming locations page, somebody recently said, “Ignoring Pearson’s Florists, huh?” As a matter of fact, I just drove past Pearson’s on North Avenue the other day. This is where Bodie went to buy a funeral arrangement for D’Angelo.

Bodie: I tell you what. Let me get something with strong colors – red, black, whatever. But make it look like one of them towers on Franklin Terrace. You know – the high rises, right?

Florist: You want the arrangement to look like the high rise housing project?

Bodie: Hell yeah. And put 221 in big-ass numbers on the front.

View The Wire: A Streetview Tour in a larger map

In a later episode, Poot went to Pearson’s to buy an arrangement for Bodie’s funeral.

A block to the west and on the other side of the street is a place that used to be called the New Motel. This is where Omar got the drop on Brother Mouzone.

View The Wire: A Streetview Tour in a larger map

Driving up McCullough, I immediately recognized two statues on either side of the entrance to a public housing project. When I first watched The Wire I was sure they were props – the visual irony of two playful children amid this inner city squalor. But no, they’re real and they’re there. In the courtyard beyond the statues, maintenance worker William Gant was gunned down for testifying against D’Angelo.

View The Wire: A Streetview Tour in a larger map

A corrupted database knocked us out of commission for a day or so, and it wasn’t until the pre-dawn hours of this morning that the problem was repaired.

Steps are being taken to ensure that this problem doesn’t happen again.

Meanwhile, a couple of Daily Camden contributors were shortchanged from their time in the sun:

August 18, 2010

Photo: Lea Coyle

Photographer’s Moment: “Pubs on Washington Boulevard just across the street from Camden Yards.”

August 19, 2010

Photo: Stacy Spaulding

Photographer’s Moment: “A bag of baseballs stands ready in the Rangers bullpen before the game.”

Over two steamy summer months, dozens of volunteer artists helped paint a design by cartoonist and writer Tom Chalkley.

Full disclosure: Chalkley is a long-time friend and cartoonist-in-residence at Welcome To Baltimore, Hon!

The 485-square-foot mural depicts a “slightly idealized” vision of Waverly Village. It features a parade, the farmers’ market, a circle of friends playing music, a mother reading to her two children at the library, community activists, and the new Waverly playground.

“I always got a big kick out of Waverly,” says Chalkley, who resided in the community from 1988 to 1993. “It’s a colorful and noisy and a very stimulating environment. It’s very funky, it’s ethnically diverse, [with] interesting little shops and odd architecture. We made allusions to all those things in the picture.”

The mural was painted over a two-month period that was beset by a wall that needed more scraping and preparation than planned, days of 100-degree temperatures, thunderstorms, at least one car fire, and various other unanticipated events.

“This is not at all what I was expecting in terms of the arduousness of it all,” Chalkley said one sweltering afternoon.

Chalkley began the project by drawing a cartoon in Photoshop with grid lines representing one inch to two feet. The Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts and local community groups reviewed and approved the proposed artwork.

After the wall was scraped and primed, the grid lines were laid out and the cartoon sketched in pencil. The wall is painted in latex exterior house paint that has been formulated for murals, tinted by hand with a mix of colors.

Depending on sun exposure, wall preparation, and other factors, a mural can last from five to 25 years, according to Shawn James, community arts coordinator in the city’s Office of Promotion and the Arts.

Public support for large-scale murals can be traced to Philadelphia in the 1970s, when civic leaders discovered that colorful public art is an effective deterrent to graffiti and vandalism.

Graffiti artists and taggers rarely deface murals. “There’s an unspoken respect between graffiti artists and mural artists,” says James, who is trained as a photographer and mural artist.

“Once a mural goes up, nine times out of ten the graffiti stops,” he says. “I’ve seen it many, many times. You take a heavily graffitied wall and put a mural on it, the graffiti goes away.”

The City of Baltimore has commissioned at least 120 murals since the program began in 1987 (see below for a Google Map of Baltimore murals). Philadelphia boasts more than 3,000 murals.

According to James, the average Baltimore mural is about 1,200 to 1,400 square feet and with a budget of $10-12,000 to cover manpower, materials and scaffolding.

Despite the success of a program that beautifies neighborhoods and prevents vandalism, budgetary cuts have pulled the plug on the program. James says he was told that city would not be accepting any more grants.

“The city decided to cut the funding for the Baltimore mural program,” says James. “The Office of Promotion and the Arts is going into a different direction.”

James says that he will continue to paint and coordinate murals for community groups and corporate sponsors through his own company.

“One of the best parts of my job with the Office of Promotion and the Arts was the fact that I was employing artists,” he says. “To help beautiful the infrastructure of the city while employing artists is a great feeling, which is something I hope to continue.”

This year, in what may be the last of the program, Office of Promotion and the Arts commissioned nine murals – more than in any other year.

“They wanted to go out with a bang,” says Chalkley.

Murals in Baltimore

View Baltimore City Mural Program in a larger map

A contributor to City Paper virtually since its inception, Chalkley’s distinctive visual and written work is seen in publications everywhere. He has published several volumes of comics featuring his work and that of other local artists. Chalkley also teaches cartooning at the Johns Hopkins University Art Workshops.

Aside from designing the WTBH marble step logo, Chalkley produced a Cartoon Map of Baltimore that features 176 present and historical figures, which has been digitized and linked to encyclopedic biographical information. A full-color 24” by 36” poster of the Cartoon Map is also available.

Two paid assistants worked with Chalkley on the Waverly Village mural; self-described “highway artist” Kenneth Clemons and house painter Greg Gannon, a graduate of Maryland Institute College of Art.

West Baltimore resident Clemons is an art student at Community College of Baltimore County.

Gannon moved to the Waverly neighborhood from the county about a year ago. “I’m excited about contributing something to the community,” he says. “It’s the friendliest neighborhood I’ve ever lived in.”

Nearly 40 volunteer artists were recruited to work on the project through Facebook and word-of-mouth. Volunteers ranged from neuroscience students from nearby Johns Hopkins to neighborhood graffiti artists.

“I’m more adequate with a spray can than a brush, but it’s not that hard,” says Westley Singletary, 19, who plans to pursue a career in computer animation.

Working on the mural is “pretty good experience, and a lot better to do something legally,” he says.

The end result is a collaborative artistic effort that retains creative input from every person involved in the mural.

“I am the artist of the original design, but it is very much a community mural,” Chalkley explains. “There’s no way I could control the entire project. I’ve been surprised by a few things, like a choice of paint colors, but just rolled with it.”

Volunteer artists who worked on the mural include Oth Aphone, Anna Cha, David Chalkley, Mark Chalkley, Karen Chan, Kelly Chuang, Jocelyn Durkay, Robert J. Friedman, Rigshana Giffin, Phillip Goldfarb, Angela Green, Karam Han, Renee Hopkins, Brooke Katz, Chelsey Keys, Sierra Keys, Valerie Keys, Sharon Kim, Yejin Kim, Sarah Lesperance, Sandee Lippman, Rebecca Mathias, Caitlin Murray, Eric A. Nelson, Kevin O’Reilly, David Pugh, John L. Quinn, Aliyah Sanders, Nicole Schultheis, Westley Singletary, and Krystina Whitesell.

About the videos: The music video was recorded over a two month period, and features the song “Flying Colors” by the Ellicott City-based band King Lewman.

An extended video of the car fire received more than 26,000 views in 24 hours at LiveLeak.com.

Here is Tom Chalkley discussing the Wavery Village mural at the beginning of the project:

And here he is at the end:

None made a contribution to medicine as far-reaching or personal as Henrietta Lacks. Until this year, few people even knew who she was.

(Left to right) David Lacks, Jr., David Lacks, Aiyana Rodgers, David Henry, JaBrea Rodgers, Jeri Lacks Whye, Thomas Whye

On a recent blisteringly hot summer day, a small group of people gathered in Turner Station to remember Henrietta and unveil plans for a historic marker in front of the former Lacks home at 513 New Pittsburg Road.

Her story was told in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, published in February by Crown Books.

Cancer cells from Lacks – taken without her permission while receiving treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital – were the first grown in a laboratory. Known as HeLa cells, a concatenation of her name, they were a breakthrough that led to countless discoveries and launched the multi-billion dollar biotech industry.

Born in Roanoake, Virginia, in 1920, Henrietta grew up on a tobacco farm and married at age 15 to David Lacks, who moved to Turner Station when World War II produced a boom in jobs in the steel mills and shipyards of Dundalk.

Turner Station is a small, close-knit African-American community tucked into the Southeast corner of Baltimore County, separated from the Dundalk Marine Terminal by a 15-foot sound barrier.

Despite the notoriety gained by the release of Skloot’s book and the ensuing publicity, Lacks is not Turner Station’s most famous resident. That would be Kevin Clash, the Emmy-winning puppeteer who is the voice and alter ego of Sesame Street’s Elmo. Clash was born at 510 New Pittsburg Road, across the street from the former Lacks house.

Turner Station is also home of NASA astronaut Robert Curbeam, NBA player Rudy Gay of the Memphis Grizzlies, and former NFL running back Calvin Hill.

But it was Lacks that drew people to Union Baptist Church on Main Street. Jeri Lacks Whye thanked the gathering for coming to honor her grandmother. She quoted scripture, from the Gospel of John: “whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

In 1951, as a 30-year-old mother of five children, Henrietta died from an extraordinarily malignant and aggressive cancer of the cervix. At Johns Hopkins, a biopsy of her cancer was taken to a lab where researchers were trying to coax human cells to survive outside of the body. Although scientists around the world had been trying to cultivate human cells for years, the cultures eventually died out.

Lacks’ cells didn’t die. They kept dividing and growing, thriving to this day and achieving a pathological immortality. According to Skloots, more than 50 million metric tons of HeLa cells have been grown over the years, a mass lager than a hundred Empire State Buildings.

HeLa cells were the first to survive outside of the human body, and the first distributed by cell banks. HeLa cells were employed in the development the polio vaccine, and were used to determine that humans have 23 pair of chromosomes. They were he first human cells sent into space. HeLa cells have instrumental in myriad discoveries in medicine and biology, the testing of drugs and vaccines, and advances of in vitro fertilization and cloning.

Although Hopkins never licensed or sold the HeLa cells, nor profited from their sale, they were freely shared with other researchers, institutions, and companies who used them to make valuable discoveries. Entire companies and industries owe their foundation to HeLa cells.

Henrietta Lacks' son, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren

The Lacks family has never received a dime of compensation, nor for a long time even correct attribution. For many years, the source of HeLa cells was reported as Helen Lane. The Lacks children were used for research purposes without their clear understanding of why Henrietta and her family were of such compelling scientific interest. Individuals at Hopkins committed egregious acts, such as giving confidential medical records to newspaper and magazine reporters, that are clearly illegal today.

Skloot’s book documents her pursuit of Henrietta’s story, in particular her relationship with Henrietta’s daughter Deborah. The family was tormented by the thought that Henrietta was still alive in laboratories around the world, and being experimented upon. Does that mean she’s not in heaven? If she was so important to medicine – the basis of huge fortunes – why does the family still live in poverty and without health insurance?

Since the book’s release, the family has gained a new perspective on Henrietta’s role in history. At Union Baptist Church, before a procession walked down Main Street to the former Lacks home, a collection basket was passed to support the family’s travel to Atlanta to attend a memorial honoring Henrietta at Morehouse College of Medicine in September.

Henrietta's son, David Lacks

Skloot established a scholarship fund for Henrietta’s descendants, to which she and members of the public have donated. The foundation may soon get another boost, since Oprah Winfrey announced plans to produce a movie for HBO based on the book along with Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, True Blood).

According to Whye, several family members have begun the process of applying for educational funds from the foundation.

In front of 513 New Philadelphia Road, a Boy Scout troop recited the Pledge of Allegiance and a sign reading “We Will Always Remember” was placed on the sidewalk gate of the property. Family members posed for pictures on the front porch, by the window where Henrietta posed in one of the few images of her that exist.

Later, Whye pointed to the empty spot on the sidewalk in front of the house where a historical marker is to be placed one day.

Video of the ceremony and the family is below.

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Long before adopting his gansta personna, long before his career as an actor and one of the best-selling rappers of all time, long before the great East Coast-West Coast hip hop rivalry, young Tupac Amaru Shakur nurtured his dreams of becoming a performer.

Tupac – also known as 2Pac, Pac, or Makaveli – was born in 1971 in East Harlem to Black Panther Party leaders Afeni Shakur and Billy Garland.

Even at an early age, Tupac seemed destined for the stage. At age twelve, he enrolled in Harlem’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble, where he performed in Raisin in the Sun at the famed Apollo Theater.

In 1986, the Shakurs moved to Baltimore. Tupac attended Paul Laurence Dunbar High School before transferring to Baltimore School for the Arts, where he studied acting, poetry, jazz and ballet. He performed Shakespeare and played the role of the Mouse King in The Nutcracker.

At Baltimore School for the Arts, Tupac also formed a close and life-long friendship with an aspiring actress, Jada Pinkett (who later married Will Smith and became Jada Pinkett Smith).

Tupac and Suge Knight minutes before fatal Las Vegas shooting

“He was like a brother,” Pinkett Smith said. “It was beyond friendship for us. The type of relationship we had, you only get that once in a lifetime.”

Tupac went on to sell more than 75 million albums, making him one of the top-selling musical artists in the world. He died on September 13, 1996, six days after being shot at a Las Vegas intersection. His murder remains unsolved.

This clip includes rare home video from 1986, Tupac and Smith dance to Will Smith’s Parents Just Don’t Understand. The music, production, clothing, and styling all add up to a priceless time capsule. Tupac’s youthful exuberance really shines through.

Sigh. It makes one wonder how, with a tiny alteration in history, West Side Story might have been done differently.

“I came in the back, of course, I never thought to look up at Elvis,” Maria said.

Thieves left one of Elvis’ shoes, and aside from a bust of Elvis that has a prominent place inside the diner, he has, indeed left the building.
The good news is the food at the Happy Day Diner has not. And it’s superb. When asked what the customers’ favorites are, Maria rattled off a list:

Burgers! They range from $5.50 for a 100% Angus beef burger ($7.80 for the deluxe version with French fries or onion rings and coleslaw) to the Happy Day Burger (with ham and provolone cheese) for $7.45 or $10 for the deluxe version.

Liver and onions (served with a cup of soup or salad and choice of two vegetables) for $13.00.

Chip beef. Cream chipped beef on toast with home fries, for $8.40. Or chipped beef in a cup as a breakfast side order for $4.40.

Crab cakes and French toast! Two of my favorites. I ordered the French toast with bacon for $8.30. The French toast was excellent, with just the right hint of vanilla and cinnamon. I ate every bite. My companion had to finish my bacon, the serving was too much for me to eat! The bacon was crisp, tasty, good…

“We were a little disappointed that Elvis was stolen,” said William Ulrich, who was eating the Happy Day Diner’s “B3,” two eggs any style, bacon and sausage with the diner’s “famous” French toast for $7.60. William’s wife of ten years, Annette, had the eggs over easy with home fries and bacon for $5.55.

“We have eaten here at least once a week for the past twenty years,” Annette said. The atmosphere is family friendly, and we can get breakfast [which they were both eating at two in the afternoon] anytime.”

Annette and William Ulrich

Annette and William said the Happy Day Diner treats them “like we are family.” William praised the rice pudding as “great and homemade.” Annette lifted her drink and declared, “They make the best sweet iced tea!”

My companion had the crab cake sandwich which was market priced at $11.00. It was served with French fries and coleslaw. “The crab cake is meaty, flavorful,” he said.” It has nice big chunks of crab, not too much filler, and they serve an ample portion.” He had asked for it to be fried and declared it was not greasy. The French fries were hot and good, too.

I tasted the crab cake and understood why it is a customer favorite. The combination of crab meat, filler, and mayonnaise is exceptional.

Maria, whose three daughters – Angela, Irene, and Georgia – were all working the day we visited, says they will serve two hundred people at the Happy Day Diner on a typical day.

“I’ve worked here for fifteen years, the last five as owner with my husband, Dimitrios.” She added that the diner is a challenge. “I typically open at 5:45 in the morning, and I’m still here 8, 9, or 10 o’clock at night.” The diner is open Sunday through Thursday 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. On Friday and Saturday, it is open 24 hours.

Elvis was obviously taken on a Thursday night, after the diner closed. Because the Happy Day Diner opened at 6 a.m. Friday, July 2, and stayed open around the clock through the holiday weekend. “We would have heard or seen something if they had tried to take Elvis while we were open,” said Maria.

She has not yet decided if Elvis will return for a “repeat performance” as a replacement statue…

Update: Not a week after we visited the Happy Day Diner, Elvis returned. Elvis was found the third week of July in The Gardens of Faith Cemetery in Overlea. Elvis is currently residing in the room where my companion and I ate our fabulous meal. He needs a little help – a new right foot for example – to climb back up on the roof.

View Happy Day Diner in a larger map

Photos by Caryn Coyle

I made my way to Mass at St. Vincent de Paul Church in Silver City, a sanctuary completed in 1876, two years before the founding of the mining town.

I don’t often walk out of Mass before Communion, but I walked out of this one.

St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church, Market Street. Photo: Macon Street Books

The white pastor – the Rev. Rod Nichols, credited in a plaque with overseeing the church’s 2006 renovation – was preaching about St. John of the Cross and the dark night of the soul, a favorite subject.

He lectured in English to a mostly Hispanic congregation, and perhaps it was because of the language barrier, but it was one of the most condescending public performances I have witnessed.

Maybe the problem was me since I was the visitor and these folks seemed at ease with Father Rod’s third grade Sunday school approach.

But it pissed me off, and I left without receiving the Eucharist, which many times is the only reason I attend Mass.

I drove back to Los Pinos Circle, where I was staying with Eric Mithen, a friend who had moved west from Baltimore.

At Mithen’s yellow, Formica-topped table [bought for $50 in June 2004 at a Patterson Park flea market], I worked on an exegesis of my own dark night, a series of connected fictions called The Long Vietnam of My Soul.

And then I took the daily nap that for almost two decades has been my custom, necessity, and well-defended joy, a luxury that a yacht or Porsche cannot approach.

Rafael Alvarez on Los Pinos Circle. Photo: Macon Street Books

Unless you work night shift, there are few things more subversive or derided in American culture than sleeping in the middle of the day. I am convinced that employers would more readily endure protracted thefts from a star employee than a worker who insists on napping in the afternoon. Whether or not the time is made up for later doesn’t matter: you snooze, you lose.

In 2003, I kept a sleeping bag in my South Clinton Street office while a member of the season two writing staff of The Wire.

The bag was relied upon with such set-your-watch regularity that series creator David Simon instructed an assistant turned screenwriter named Norman Knoerlein to buy a blow-up sex doll, dress it in cheap lingerie, and hide the plaything between the covers before my siesta.

Pretty funny. But of no help when the “two hour naps” ended up on a laundry list of real and exaggerated affronts when the show and I parted ways.

Leaving The Wire immediately led me to Los Angeles–my first-ever move away from Baltimore–and that led to years of driving from one end of the country to the other.

The need for sleep in the middle of the day (my physician says I have a narrow air passage) is the reason my road trip vehicle is no longer the VW Beetle in which my son Jake and I logged 10,000 miles over the summer of 2000.

Since 2006, I have piloted a pick-up truck with a cap on the back, the carpeted bed of the white Toyota–my caballo blanco–for an easy cargo of pillows, blankets, sleeping bags, and books.

So that on these cross country jaunts–enough in this closely observed year of 2008 to count on both hands–I can pull over whenever and just about wherever I want.

On the parking lot of a McDonald’s (one with a shade tree in the summer) or interstate rest area, I close myself up in the back like John Glenn in a Gemini capsule, read for a half hour, and fall asleep without a care in the world.

And I think it is exactly this comfort which, upon editing these accounts, makes the journey of 2008 feel less compelling than the exalted road trips documented by others.

Fort Hancock, Texas

By way of example: Early in my friendship with Mithen , which was a year or so after his transformative immersion into the short stories of John Cheever, he remained agitated by adventure as mapped out by Kerouac.

Mithen was determined to make good on a long-held dream of walking across the United States. He was going to carry an American flag and practiced by walking from Highlandtown to Bolton Hill and back with a sack of rocks over his shoulders, and though I teased him about it, I admired the goal.

While reading about the select club of people who have walked from one end of United States to the other, I became intrigued with an almost-fatally overweight man named Steve Vaught. Hoping to lose a significant portion of his estimated 400 pounds, Vaught left suburban San Diego on April 10, 2005 and arrived in Manhattan 13 months later.

Vaught apparently didn’t lose as much weight as he expected, somewhere between 40 pounds according to a filmmaker who joined him on the trip and 110 pounds, as he claimed.

He did lose his wife to divorce before the walk was over, and there was controversy about whether his courage and stamina flagged at times and if he accepted rides.

Yet Vaught’s effort remains impressive; more so than the 14-year [1983-to-1997], on-again-off-again walk from Manhattan to Washington State by Art Garfunkel, who was followed by a camper in which he slept at night.

Which story would you rather read?

The most subversive thing I did in Silver City?

I ventured into the silent stacks in the library of West New Mexico University–founded in 1893 on a hill overlooking town–and slipped photocopies of Baltimore stories into dusty books on forgotten shelves.

In special collection rooms, I secreted a CD-rom of my on-going autobiography (a time line of Thanksgiving dinners going back to 1975, the last year my Italian grandmother was alive) in equally forgotten tomes; wondering, if and when it is found, the technology needed to read a CD will have survived.

And knowing that if it hasn’t, black marks scratched into drywall and white paper will endure.

How long?

“Until,” wrote Philip K. Dick, “the library was discovered and dug up — and read … [a wait] not 40 years but 2000 …”

I left Silver City at dusk after the late afternoon nap, the cooler carrying leftovers from my Sunday dinner with Mithen (who instead of losing a spouse on a cross-country walk, abandoned the idea, and took a wife instead) and a hunk of gourmet cheese from a weekend pot-luck.

Western New Mexico University

That evening I made 213 miles to Fort Hancock, Texas. The route took me south to Deming, New Mexico, east to Las Cruces and then south through El Paso before finding a suitable parking lot to pull over in Fort Hancock–a staple of the I-10 route–and zipping up in the back.

When it’s freezing outside, the bag is perfect for sleeping as long you don’t have any skin exposed. I have been woken up by the tip of an ear stinging in the cold.

McDonald’s coffee for breakfast in Fort Hancock early Monday morning, and then, after a hundred miles or so toward the fabled town of Marfa, I pulled over for a bowl of cereal.

With a pint of convenience store milk in a waxed carton, I dropped the tailgate to the Tacoma and sat by the side of the road with Corn Chex (one metal spoon for the trip, one red plastic bowl) and munched the toasty corn goodness while a mile-long freight train passed through the desert.

No one around but me in the cool morning, my feet dangling from the tailgate, chewing in rhythm with the sounds of the rolling train cars.

Would not the story be better if I was on the freight train, cold and hungry and envious as I watched some lucky guy eat a bowl of cereal?

Only if the guy on the train took the time to write it.