Neighborhood Pop-Ups: Get Ready to Buy Into Baltimore

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When we bought the Chophouse a few years ago, we had a pretty good idea exactly what we were looking for. Living close to downtown was a must for us, but alas… a four story brownstone next door to the Engineers Club was a bit beyond our means. We could afford a pretty nice house in a decent neighborhood, but we couldn’t quite afford to zero in on any particular place.

In our search we saw rundown rentals and homes meticulously maintained by their original owners; we saw a tiny Formstone house that was only 8 feet wide, an amazing 3000 s/f artist’s space with the kitchen and living room on the second floor, a former tavern, an urban farmhouse, a condo in the Belvedere and even a house where we could hear zoo animals from the front porch. There’s a lot to see out there.

Even for someone born and raised here, it was tough to compare Greektown to Govans and Lauraville to Little Italy, imagining what it would be like to actually choose one over another and live there every day. Savvy as we like to think we are, we still could have used a little help from the folks at Live Baltimore.

Live Baltimore's neighborhood pop ups are August 8, 15, and 22.

Every day on the Baltimore Chop we do our best to give you an inside perspective on the city’s social and cultural scene. Live Baltimore does the same thing for houses and neighborhoods. Their website’s got info on Baltimore’s 225+ neighborhoods, resources for buyers and renters, urban lifestyle help and more. You can drop by their Charles Street office to chat anytime, but this month they’re taking their approach to neighborhoods to a whole new level.

Wednesdays in August, neighborhood pop-ups will be happening throughout the city’s eastern neighborhoods. They’ll be setting up shop in actual homes for sale, leading neighborhood tours, and most importantly, connecting prospective buyers to actual residents. Volunteers from pop-up neighborhoods will be on hand to answer any and all questions about day-to-day city life in a way that even the best of Realtors can’t match.

The Fall 2012 Buying into Baltimore event willl be held September 8.

The pop-ups are a great way to do your house hunting, but they’re only a lead-up to the main attraction. The Buying Into Baltimore event for Fall 2012 is just a few weeks away, and it’s worth $4000 if you attend.

On Saturday, September 8 Buying Into Baltimore will combine homebuying workshops and a city-living fair with a neighborhood homes tour. Live Baltimore has arranged a route of featured homes for sale, and participants who take one of the narrated bus tours (or drive along a route themselves) can be among up to 50 buyers eligible for $4000 toward closing costs. (More details in the FAQ’s here.)

We’ve read the fine print, and it’s a pretty sweet deal. It’s something we wish we’d known about 3 years ago, especially considering we closed on a qualifying house on the last day of September.

Despite how TV shows make it look, house hunting is a difficult and time consuming process. Sometimes it can even feel like a full time job. Not only will Live Baltimore make that job easier for you, they’ll also pay you for it.

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The Live Baltimore Home Center is located at 343 N. Charles Street downtown. For more information: 410.637.3750 or info@livebaltimore.com. We’d like to thank them for sponsoring this post.

Baltimore Ratscape @ Hour Haus This Weekend

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First there was just the urban landscape. Here’s an old train station and here’s a little patch of grass and here’s a statue and a few old brownstones around.

Then somebody got the idea to fill the landscape up with art. They called it “Artscape.” It was a pretty good idea and a lot of people liked it in Baltimore City.

Then Wham City came along, and said ‘We are not Baltimore City. We are Wham City. So we’ll throw our own Artscape and call it “Whartscape.” It can be short for Wham City Artscape or something.’ So that was fun while it lasted.

Then when it was over people said ‘Hey I miss that let’s do it again.’ And they called it ‘Ratscape’ because if you rearrange the letters in the word ‘art’ they can spell ‘rat.’ And it sounds better than ‘Tarscape.’ And because, RATS.

And that’s this weekend.

There are 44 bands playing at the Hour Haus. Here are their names:

Friday, 6 pm

The Lottery
Foghound
Radical Discharge
Sand (Japan)
Numb (Japan)
Bet The Devil
Weed is Weed
The Pilgrim
Slowbull
Windhand

Saturday, 2 pm

Terrestrial Mass
Monster Museum
White Bear
Sal Bando
The Lexington Arrows
Orange Horse
The Matrimonials
Slow Jerks
Wild Honey
Dion Warlock
Dark Water Transit!!
Alto Verde
Grey March

Sunday

Yellow Raincoat
Old Lines
The Pallbearer
Spoilage
Baylors Eye
Castles
Station
Blackout Brigade
Gary B and the Notions
Ape
Melungeon
Heaviness of the Load
Other Gods
Extermation Angel
Skelptarsis

Since the Hour Haus is basically at Artscape, you can guarantee it’ll be just as much traffic and parking difficulties. It’ll be just as crowded. It’ll be just as hot and sweaty. Just as noisy. But no dad rock.

If you can’t decide, just do both. Or do neither. Wait till Scapescape. The scape of all scapes.

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Hour Haus is located at 135 West North Ave at Howard Street in Station North.

Flicks From the Hill- Breaking Away @ AVAM Tonight

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We don’t usually like to write about the same exact things week in and week out here at the Baltimore Chop. We like to mix it up a little, keep it fresh. But as we mentioned yesterday, bloggers is broke these days, so things like free movies are exceptionally good entertainment on our budget of zero dollars.

Flicks From the Hill opened last week with Spaceballs. Tonight, the series continues with 1979 Oscar winner Breaking Away. According to IMDB:

“Although he has no job and doesn’t know what to do with his life, [Dave] is a champion bicycle racer. He idolizes the Italian cycling team so much he pretends to be Italian, much to the chagrin of his parents, who just don’t understand their son. Dave crosses the unofficial line when he meets and wants to date a [Indiana University] co-ed named Katherine Bennett who, intrigued by Dave, in turn is already dating Rod, one of the big men on campus. Dave passes himself off to her as an Italian exchange student named Enrico Gismondi… Dave’s main immediate focus is that the Italian cycling team have announced that they will be in Indianapolis for an upcoming race, which he intends to enter to be able to race his idols… After an incident at the race, Dave… has to reexamine his life, what he really wants to get out of it and how best to start achieving it.”

Clearly a selection like this is going to be popular not only with people who like free movies, but with Baltimore’s growing cyclist population as well. In fact, there are two separate organized bike rides taking place before the screening.

The folks from Race Pace Bicycles are sponsoring a “Tour de Federal Hill” beginning at 6:30 and leaving from their shop at 1410 Key Highway. Making its way around South Baltimore, the leisurely ride will end at the Visionary around 8 pm, giving participants plenty of time to check out the museum (also for free) or stake out a spot on the hill.

For those who can’t make it that early, or who are commuting by bike from North Baltimore, local bicycle advocacy organization Bikemore along with the organizers of Baltimore Bike Party will be meeting up at the Washington Monument at 8 pm and riding down to the Visionary Museum as a group.

Bikemore will also be providing a bicycle valet service (fancy schmancy) so that you don’t have to fight for space on the racks and lock your bike up to the same signpost as a dozen other cyclists. This is free too, but they are accepting donations. Since everything else tonight is totally free, you ought to have a few bucks handy to pass their way.

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The American Visionary Art Museum is located at 800 Key Highway in Federal Hill. Museum open (free) 5-9 pm, Movie begins at 9.

Free Happy Hour @ Center Plaza Today

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Update: Presumably because of the water main break and the extreme heat and the generally shitty state of affairs in Baltimore City this has been postponed until August 15. Not exactly a banner endosement for living and working downtown, but that’s a matter for another time.

Hey Baltimore, c’mere a minute. No closer. C’mere all the way. We’ve got a secret to tell you. A little secret we’re going to whisper in your ear just between the Chop and you and the internet. So listen close and don’t tell anybody, okay? The secret is this:

Bloggers is broke these days.

You see, we bought a bunch of furniture that we did not win for free. And then we had some grown folks problems besides. And we haven’t actually had a job for a few months now. And no one has given us a bunch of money for blogging yet. So we’re broke. And we’re looking hard for our ticket out and will soon be back abroad seeking fortune and adventure once-a-more.

If this blog is about anything, it’s about the art of living well. Sometimes that means fancy rooftop bars in the big town and sometimes, like today, it means figuring out how to drink for free.

Fortunately for us, today it’s not very difficult. We’re out pounding the pavement and looking for gainful employment anyway. Our daily cycle commute just happens to take us right through Center Plaza and up Park Avenue. We ride through the 401.

What the hell is the 401 you ask? Good question. It’s some fancy new rebranding of downtown or something. We don’t know. It sounds a lot like ‘The 410.’ Whatever- we didn’t make it up. Maybe dopey newspaper columnist Dan Rodricks can explain it better.

So basically, the Downtown Partnership and the luxury condo types want people to move downtown. So they hired this band songs that kinda-but-not-really sound like the Pixies and they got that “bar chef” guy to make a new drink and today from 5:30 to 7:30 they’re going to give them away along with a bunch of free beer and wine and of course plenty of Downtown booster promotional material.

Sometimes living well means being a man of means. And sometimes it just means casting your net downstream in the river of corporate money that flows through major urban centers. If our corporate betters are going to be beneficent enough to provide us with free booze on our way home, we’re going to be civil and polite enough to show up and drink it.

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Center Plaza is located just west of the corner of Charles and Fayette Streets downtown. See map here.

Baltimore in the Year 3012

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Good news everyone! In a thousand years most of you pathetic jerkbags will be ancient wormfood. And do you know what happens to ancient wormfood? (Hint: it involves the Slurm Queen’s cloaca.)

But that’s not really news, is it? You already knew you were boned. The good news is that scientists from Johns Hopkins have finally perfected head-in-jar technology. But the procedure is very complicated and expensive and will only be offered to Baltimore’s crème de la crème.

The superiority of our blog and social standing made the Baltimore Chop an obvious choice, so while the rest of you hoi polloi are being blasted into space or floated down to the sewer mutants or whatever we’ll do with dead bodies in a thousand years, we’ll be enjoying a nice cold Slurm with Baltimore’s high society.

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Futurama Head-in-a-Jar Creator is free in the Apple App Store.