Fan Interference Release Party @ Atomic Books Tonight

Posted on July 11, 2013 by The Chop

We’re gonna be honest right up front and cop to this: we’ve never heard of Zisk Magazine before.

During the baseball season we typically watch an average of a little more than one game per day of actual baseball. We also watch an average of about 45 minutes of pregame/postgame/Baseball Tonight type shows on TV and follow a little bit of baseball reporting online, so seeking out baseball magazines and spending even more time with the Pastime isn’t really a high personal priority.

But Zisk bills itself as ‘the baseball magazine for people who hate baseball magazines’ so that made us sit up and take notice. According to this event’s press release Zisk features ‘contributions from academics to punk rockers, comedians to fans with an ax to grind.’ And Fan Interference, an anthology of content from the zine “examines the intersection of baseball, lifestyle and music all colored with bit of nostalgia, a great deal of humor and, often, a tongue planted firmly in cheek.”

You could say the same about this site, when you think about it.

Fan Interference’s publication was Kickstarter funded, and contributing authors Mike Faloon, Steve Reynolds, Nancy Golden and Charlie Vascellero are celebrating the release by taking the book on a tour, which makes its Baltimore stop at Atomic Books tonight from 7-9 pm.

If, like us, you’ve never heard of Zisk this is a good opportunity to snag a signed copy of Fan Interference and just read that rather than trying to track down back issues an buying them piecemeal. Plus the event is sponsored by Bugs and Cranks which is a most excellent independent site that covers all the MLB teams from a clever fan perspective.

So if you couldn’t score a rooftop bar seat at the Yard tonight, pop up to Atomic and have a beer with some top-notch baseball writers instead. You can even catch the late innings of the Oriole game on one of the 30+ TV’s next door at David’s 1st and 10, which is a new addition to the neighborhood and an excellent bar for watching the O’s.

Zimmerman, Egypt, and Water Bills: Our Bi-Weekly Political Roundup

Posted on July 10, 2013 by The Chop

We’re coming into one of the worst times of the year for news junkies and political watchers. We’re just a few weeks away from congress’ annual August recess when nothing at all happens in Washington. That’s not to say that anything has been happening in Washington with congress there. The House Republicans are still gripped with seizures at the thought of doing anything at all besides repealing Obamacare for a 40th time and restricting abortions.

The slowing to a crawl of the news cycle has begun about a month early this year with the coverage of the George Zimmerman trial. Now in its third week, cable news outlets have aired just about every single minute of the courtroom proceedings live. This was entertaining for about the first 10 minutes when the defense was saying ‘motherfucker’ gratuitously all over live TV, but even for people with a special interest in the case three full weeks of motions and testimony are bound to run into a monotonous drone.

An illustration from Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad. Egypt hasn’t changed much since then.

The only other big story with legs this week has been the coup in Egypt. There are a lot of ‘Egypt experts’ with dubious qualifications getting ink and airtime in the media, and you can go ahead and add the Chop to the list of fake Egypt experts. After visiting on ships several times we’re confident in saying that those people just don’t have their shit together. Reporters and editors gave them way too much credit during the original Arab Spring because it was a great narrative. Democracy was going to flourish and everyone was going to live happily ever after and that was that. They desperately wanted it to be true.

But Egyptians have more in common with spoiled children than they do with, say, our founding fathers. The levels of corruption and greed and poverty and mistrust and sectarianism in that country are absolutely astounding. It would take a thousand Freuds a thousand years to analyze the Egyptian national inferiority complex. They’re still not over the Six Day War and they can’t stand the fact that Israel is a modern developed nation with a stronger military.

We hate the fact that we have to agree with John McCain about something, but we do believe that foreign aid funds to Egypt should be cut off because that’s what the law says. Personally we’ve got a lot of patience for handing out foreign aid and we see it not as charity but as something that it’s in our direct interest to do for selfish reasons, but the Rule of Law is not to be ignored. Obama already had a fake shitshow to deal with after Benghazi, and if he doesn’t call this coup a coup and follow the law he’s going to have a real shitshow to deal with. And he’ll deserve it because it’ll be his own fault.

Locally there’s a story here in Baltimore that probably should be sparking Tahrir-style street protests but is going barely noticed. The Baltimore Brew has been providing coverage that is both complete and concise. Long story short: the mayor has decided unilaterally (counting on the BOE votes of lackeys) to raise water bills by 42% over three years with no audit and without taking any action to collect millions in past due bills from giant industrial customers.

Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is absolutely the worst mayor in our lifetime or in the memory of anyone we know. We’ll definitely be volunteering and/or donating to anyone who lines up to run against her, but in the meantime she needs to get off her ass and go get those past-due industrial water bills paid and go get some fucking federal funds to rebuild the goddamn system.

Personally we’ve received erroneous water bills for hundreds of dollars which the city ‘investigated’ and found nothing odd about at all. Meanwhile they’ve torn up the street in front of the Chophouse twice in the last year and there was water leaking out of the sidewalk here just last week.

We may not be gathered with tents and torches at city hall plaza, but if you want to grouse about your water bill or anything else politics related come on out to Drinking Liberally tonight at Liam Flynn’s Ale House at 8 pm. Bi-weekly meetings are free to attend and open to liberals of all stripes. New participants are always welcome.

The Crown: Station North’s Newest Bar

Posted on July 9, 2013 by The Chop

The first time we walked into the Crown one of the first thoughts that entered our head was ‘If we say anything online about this anywhere some dickhead is going to be all ‘Hey man why are you blowing up our spot? We’re like the top secret underground or whatever.’ Located in the Hyundai Plaza building at 1910 North Charles, the place had the distinct air of a modern speakeasy with no signage, no advertising, and an entry system by which people had to be buzzed in.

Since then though they’ve added some signage and we’ve heard them mentioned in places like WYPR, City Paper and Showspace so while it would seem they’re not deliberately shunning any kind of press attention the way WC Harlan’s was said to they’re still pretty firmly underground. (Harlan’s, for its part, has been written up by several outlets including the Sun and Baltimore Magazine and their address is easily searchable. They’ve even got a Facebook page.)

But we digress. The first time we walked into the Crown it felt like we were walking into a super-secret club made up of the creme de la creme of hip-creative Baltimore. There were a handful of people in there we recognized from various creative and community endeavors. We had just seen our bartender playing in a band the very same week. The place was also very brand new at that point which lent it a special sort of atmosphere. It’s a rare thing to be in a Baltimore bar that just sort of appears out of thin air.

And that’s pretty much what it did. The place has a weird cross-cultural vibe, being Korean owned but run by hip white kids. It’s the kind of place where young bands do cassette release shows, but there’s Korean karaoke playing on a monitor in the corner. They sell a lot of PBR and Boh, but Asian beers are available as well.

The Crown may be a new bar, but it certainly doesn’t have that new bar smell. The actual renovations done to the space are minimal, and the only things that seem new are the actual bar itself along with the back bar shelves and lighting above it. Things like draft and soda gun systems were not installed along with the bar. Everything else in the place is pretty well worn and frankly a bit worse for wear. The carpet is in particular want of updating and the lack of air conditioning makes the room fairly stifling on Summer nights the likes of which we’ve seen recently.

If you do the Truffle Shuffle they’ll buzz you right in.

The Crown’s secret weapon may be its kitchen though. We haven’t tried the food yet but we did watch as a friend tried and liked an order of fried dumplings. The menu is also a mashup of Asian and American choices, and although it’s small there’s a lot to like about it. By the time we’d made our second visit to the Crown, it seemed like the menu had changed entirely, so it appears to be a constantly rotating bill of fare. The food is very fairly priced and we could easily see the Crown becoming a go-to spot for a quick late-night bite.

Final Verdict- Overall we’re giving the Crown a two Oriole Bird review. We don’t want to say anything against it because it’s a great addition to the neighborhood and more bars is always better than less bars if you ask us. Honestly though we think the place is better suited to a younger and less discerning crowd. People over thirty are likely to find themselves migrating back down to Club Charles, Joe Squared, Windup or Liam’s.

How To Buy Roof Deck Bar Stool Seats at Camden Yards

Posted on July 8, 2013 by The Chop

One of the most exciting features of Oriole Park at Camden Yards is the expansive center field roof deck and bar that was added during the renovations before the 2012 season. The bar area sits atop a building housing the also-recently added Gino’s Burgers & Chicken plus a suite of restrooms. It features more than 75 feet of bar length as well as several sofas and umbrellas for lounging, plus a row of rear-facing stools with a view of the downtown skyline. It’s an especially enjoyable spot to be during batting practice or a long rain delay (as most of it is also sheltered overhead).

The bar integrates seamlessly into the overall design of the park, and any out-of-town fan would likely be incredulous to learn that it hadn’t been there all along. But perhaps the part of it that’s drawn the most curiosity over the last season and a half is the two rows of bar stool seating that face the field and look over the batter’s eye wall.

In 2012 these seats were available on a first come, first served basis. A fan with a ticket to any seat in the ballpark could choose to sit on a center field bar stool instead and watch a couple of innings or stay for the whole game. Likewise if fans got up and went back to their ticketed seats, they forfeited any claim to their bar stool and someone else would sit down quickly. There was some confusion about this at the time, as these seats were and are numbered, but that’s how it worked in 2012. If you wanted to sit in the CF bar, all you had to do was show up early.

For 2013 that policy has changed. Those two rows of bar stools are now ticketed seats for the game. This has also caused quite a bit of confusion and many people we’ve talked to this season, including Oriole fans that attend games regularly, were not aware of the change. The club has placed a rope-line behind the second row of stools, and ushers patrol the section quite strictly, providing a better experience for the ticket holders up there..

Bar stool tickets range from $25-$45 depending on the game, which is a fairly small premium when compared with center field bleacher seats. They actually come in at a lower price than seats in the left field club box sections which offer a similar view, especially from the back rows.

So how do you score these great seats? What’s the secret? Who do you have to know? What radio call-in contest do you have to win?

Actually all you have to do is walk up to the box office and ask for them. Even on game day. Even 30 minutes before first pitch, which is what we did for a game back in May. We liked the seats pretty well, but we were a little stiff after 9 innings since those stools sit relatively low to the ground and have no backs on them. You can also buy them online directly from the Orioles ticket page. We looked up tonight’s game against the Rangers and there were still seats available.

You’ve got to click this to find the bar stools.

You will NOT find them in the seat map screen that pops up and allows you to select individual seats from sections. However they are listed at the bottom of the section menu. It’s necessary to click on the little red ‘x’ that we’ve highlighted above and select from the menu, as pictured below.

From there you just follow the prompts and buy them the same way you would with any other set of seats.

Perhaps it’s because of the confusion about policy from one season to the next, or perhaps it’s because the Orioles don’t generally advertise and promote these particular seats the way they do with things like student night or flex packs, but for whatever reason they are generally available and easy to get. We’ve been to several games this season in which this particular section didn’t even sell out which strikes us as odd, considering there are relatively few of these seats.

Also generally available are the ‘Drink Rail’ bar stools on the club level in left field. These stools are fitted with seat backs and are higher and more comfortable. They provide a much different experience because the drink rail is a lot quieter than center field, with no crowd behind you and only a small section in front and below. There’s a much better atmosphere for paying close attention to the minutiae of the game, and the rail is perfect for filling out a scorecard. The drink rail spans sections 268-280, which are our picks as some of the best seats in the house.

You can find drink rail seats on the list above and check the box, but unlike in center field you can also use the seat map to pick out specific stools and see what exact seats are available. Using the seat map we selected two seats in section 280 for tonight’s game against the Rangers, and the process looks like this:

Select your desired section from the map.

Select the seats you want. There are 2 drink rails available in 280 for tonight’s game in this picture.

View your tickets and proceed with your order. ‘Row A’ signifies drink rail.

The process works exactly the same way for the bistro tables in sections 282-288. Bistro table seats range from $35-$50 depending on the game, but you must buy all four seats at the table, meaning each table ranges from $140-$200 depending on the game.

Bistro tables are also available through the online seat map.

So there you have it folks, a complete guide to the Oriole Park bar stools. We’ve got to admit we were hesitant about publishing this post, as this is one of those open secrets we’re sort of glad not many people seem to know about. In the end though these seats are a great feature, and can enhance the ball park experience for everyone.

But only if people actually buy them.

Tomorrow: Title Tracks, Sick Sick Birds @ Metro Gallery

Posted on July 5, 2013 by The Chop

It’s always a weird feeling when a holiday isn’t on or book-ending a weekend. It’s like a stutter-step, with most people not knowing whether they should be in full on weekend party mode or not. It’s also hard to know what’s open or closed, and of the things that are open most everybody wishes they were not there.

But starting tomorrow it’s no longer a kinda-sorta holiday weekend and just becomes more of a regular weekend, with people doing all their regular weekend activities like going to punk rock shows, such as the one we’re going to tomorrow at the Metro Gallery.

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Baltimore’s own Sick Sick Birds return to Metro tomorrow, and will be playing a nice mix of stuff from their recently released All the Fins in the Sea EP and last year’s full length Gates of Home. And if the chance to see them play wasn’t enough enticement to show up tomorrow then you should know that you can also buy this shirt at their merch table. And look at it… it’s beautiful. This is easily the coolest Baltimore themed shirt we’ve seen in 10 years or more.

We’re not sure if you’ve noticed, but between knockoff Boh crap and unlicensed Orioles and Ravens gear and the proliferation of online shirt makers and meme culture the streets of charm city have been absolutely flooded with crappy Baltimore-pride shirts. Make a mental note of it and go to Artscape this year and see if we’re wrong. We’re definitely going to pick up one of these beauties, even if the only place we wear t-shirts anymore is at the gym.

Also up tonight at Metro Gallery is DC’s Title Tracks, featuring ex- Q and Not U Drummer John Davis. We’re not sure if they just usually stay out of Baltimore or if we’ve just been missing them or both but the last time we saw Title Tracks was way back in March 2010 when It Was Easy had just come out and they still sounded like a raw, new band. Their second full length on Dischord, In Blank has a decidedly Ted Leo/Wipers kind of feel that makes them a perfect choice to split this bill. We’re excited to see how far they’ve come since the last time we saw them, and you should be too.