Confirmed Stock @ 2640 Space This Saturday

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If you live in Maryland, and happen to be a gentleman of discerning taste and consummate style, then this Saturday is your Black Friday, your Fashion Week, and your Record Store Day all rolled into one. Confirmed Stock makes its debut at 2640 on Saturday, and we couldn’t be more excited for it.

Billing itself as “a curated selection of menswear, vintage goods, and dry goods” Confirmed Stock is kind of like a men’s only one day flea market… but with really, really nice stuff.

Featuring more than 15 vendors, most of whom are local/regional and all of whom are independent, Confirmed Stock will offer everything from shirts to leather goods to bags, denim, stationery, and even furniture.

We’re going to keep this post kind of on the short side, because the Confirmed Stock website can tell you all you need to know. They’ve got the comprehensive list of participating brands, as well as brand profiles and links to their vendors’ websites. There’s so much interesting stuff over there, we can’t begin to squeeze it all into one post, and it’s all so good we’re even hard pressed to pick a few to highlight.

That’s the beauty of an event like this: it would take you quite some time to surf through all of them online, and even longer to seek out all these brands individually, but for a few hours this weekend some of the highest quality names in boutique men’s style will all be right there in the same room. All you’ve got to do is show up.

Well, maybe that’s not all you have to do. It wouldn’t kill you to spend a few bucks while you’re there, you know? When you break out your wallet this Saturday, you’re not only putting money directly into the hand that made your goods, you’re also helping to insure that this pop-up event will pop up more than once.

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Confirmed Stock runs from 11 am until 5 pm this Saturday, April 28th at 2640 Saint Paul Street in Charles Village. Admission is free. Follow the event and the team behind it on Twitter: @confirmedstock.

Early Summer: Our Bi-Weekly Political Roundup

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Summer is a notoriously dull time in American political life. Congress makes ready to recess and does even less than usual. The Fourth of July inspires even the hardest partisans to hate each other a little less and the King of England a little more, and even in an election year the President is mostly traveling on business or vacationing or doing behind-the-scenes campaign stuff.

This year it’s almost as if the dog days of Summer have come early. Now that Romney has the GOP nomination in hand and George Zimmerman has been arrested and charged, the two biggest stories in US politics have somewhat less urgency behind them. The re-ignition of the Mommy Wars was a non-starter and the Secret Service and GSA scandals aren’t really the kind of thing that pundits (and smarmy local bloggers) like to make hay about. It’s almost veepstakes time, but it’s still really way too early for all of that to begin in earnest.

Political Silly Season is almost here, but no one’s actually being silly yet. So we have no one to make fun of here on the blog. We also have no one to make fun of at tonight’s Drinking Liberally meeting at Liam Flynn’s Ale House. Maybe we’ll just spend the whole evening talking about the Orioles.

Speaking of silliness, Ron Paul is still a candidate for president. Speaking of baseball, here is some footage of Ron Paul playing in the Democrats vs. Republicans congressional baseball game of 1983 with Barney Frank providing color commentary about gynecology:

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The Baltimore Chapter of Drinking Liberally meets at Liam Flynn’s tonight from 7 pm until whenever. Meetings are free and open to the public. Liam Flynn’s is located at 22 W. North Ave in Station North.

Ballpark Fashion, Baltimore Style

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The O’s are back from their first road trip of the season today, and have home games scheduled every day from now through Sunday. We’re going to make sure to get down to the yard for at least one of those games and as always, we want to make sure we look good doing it. What’s more, we want to make sure you look good doing it too. So we now present our (possibly long overdue) guide to Baltimore ballpark fashion.

We’re just going to come out and say it: We don’t like jerseys.* Baseball jerseys are purpose designed for play, and when you wear them off the diamond they have all the fashion cachet of a frumpy old pajama top. We also don’t like the whole aspect of jersey collecting culture. You spend a ton of money on something and then the club goes and trades away the player whose name is on the back and seamheads all look down their noses at you because picking out a jersey is a game you just can’t win. And even if you buy the best one out there, it still looks dumb.

What’s more, you can get away with wearing it at the park because of context, but if you also want to hit one of the Best Bars to Visit After an O’s Game at Camden Yards, you’re not going to want to look like a Pennsylvania tourist after the last out is recorded.

Take a look at the above photo of Double Dagger via their Facebook page. This is how you should be dressed for a night at Camden Yards. Nolen looks sharp as hell in team-color plaid. Bruce is ready for the chilly early-season wind in the upper deck, and Denny has cleverly accessorized with an O’s cap and a one inch button that says “Yeah, I like sports and all but I’m still punk, see?” Bonus points for making your own foam finger to bring to the ballpark.

A faded orange oxford or a polo shirt like the orange one in this post are also good choices that can see wear even during the off season. We’ve lately been sporting a burnt orange knit polo to games that’s subtle enough to wear anywhere else as well.

But perhaps you don’t own anything orange? Perhaps you hate shopping and don’t want to go buy anything orange? The ballclub has you covered:

We found that picture at Fuck Yeah Orioles but it could just as easily be our own laundry line. We’ve got a whole drawer full of the free T-shirt Tuesday shirts. Everyone does. They’re becoming ubiquitous summertime wear on the streets of Charm City. The problem with being ubiquitous is that you can look hip, like Secret Mountains does on their Facebook page:

Or like a dumbass. Like these guys (via Greg Fiume/Getty):

The trick with free t-shirts is to dress them up a little. A lightweight Summer cardigan is an outstanding way to move from “I just threw this on.” to “I put some thought into getting dressed and actually looked in the mirror today.” Color is key though: almost nothing matches orange, and you’re not going to find a lightweight Summer cardigan in black. Failing that, you can also try a partially unbuttoned oxford over your tee, but be careful- while this can work, if it feels silly it probably is.

If it’s a little cooler out, you can also go full-on sweater. We’ve got a favorite black merino sweater that we like to wear to April and September games with an O’s shirt underneath. The V-neck flashes a little orange and we usually let the bottom hang out as well (although not too far, huh?). Remember: the team colors are black and orange, so there’s nothing wrong with letting black take the lead.

Finally, if you really want to dress it up, sport a Summer jacket right on top. Most people associate sport coats with formality, but this is actually why they’re called “sport coats” because they were originally designed to be worn to events that were too casual for a proper blazer or suit. Have a look:

This image came from Street Etiquette. We don’t really like SE because it’s way over the top, and even in this extreme closeup you can see a bunch of dumbass bracelets, but never mind that. You could easily replace this orange shirt with an O’s shirt and get the same effect.

Wearing that exact look out to the park (minus the bracelets) would be the type of thing that allows you to stroll ticketless right into the club level without so much as a glance from an usher. You’d be the best dressed fan at the park, or anywhere else in Baltimore for that matter.

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*Notable exception: soccer jerseys.

Sherwood Gardens

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We feel kind of silly admitting this, but before this weekend we had never heard of Sherwood Gardens, even though we live close enough to walk there easily. Obviously, we haven’t been paying very much attention. We live nearby to Guilford, and we go through there all the time, but we’d never gone right by it before. Even with all the time we spend consuming local media, we’ve managed to miss even recent stories in the Sun and on WJZ about the gardens. Even the Baltimore Brew, which we read regularly in our RSS did a Sherwood story last week that escaped our notice.

So when we were riding our bike up Underwood Road on Saturday, we were taken completely by surprise.

The photos don’t nearly do it justice. We were absolutely floored to just be riding along up to Belvedere Square and accidentally find six acres of gorgeous tulips in bloom. Okay, so it may not technically be a secret garden. It may even be regarded as one of the finest tulip gardens in the world by people who know about tulip gardens. If you’re like us though (and we think you are), you don’t know about tulip gardens. You know about dive bars and punk rock and rowhouses. And maybe Patterson Park.

City Parks are nice and all, but Sherwood Gardens in bloom kind of makes them look like so many Soviet Era dogshit and empty liquor bottle farms. It’s that gorgeous. As that Brew article points out, it’s owned and maintained by the Guilford Association (these photos are from their website), and no detail is overlooked in keeping the grounds as lush and manicured as they were in the 1920’s when they were the private playground of some of Maryland’s richest and most powerful residents. Secret Garden or no, it is at least an underpublicized garden, one of those open secrets that permits those in the know to feel as though they too are part of that privileged few.

Late April and early may are the ideal times to see the tulips, and the annual tulip bulb dig is scheduled for May 26th this year. As soon as the weather dries out we suggest you make your way out for a stroll. We’re planning on walking the gardens several times in the next 2 weeks, and may even bring along a date and a picnic basket.

The Couch Chronicles, Volume V

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It’s been about a month now since we announced we’re participating in the Test it, Blog it, Win it contest from one of our favorite local retailers Su Casa Furniture. They let us pick out a custom couch for the Chophouse, and we’re going to live with it for a month and describe it on the blog. And maybe win it. Or at least buy it for half off.

It’s more than just a couch though. We’re decorating our entire living room from scratch, and are documenting the whole process in our Couch Chronicles series. We’ve already shown the before pictures, talked at length about the selection process, and revealed the couch we picked out from Pad as well as several additional items we purchased at the same time.

Now we play the waiting game. Most of what’s on offer at Su Casa is custom furniture, and doesn’t just sit around in a warehouse in China someplace, you know? It takes a few weeks to be built because they’re building it for your house. In the meantime though, we’ve managed to stay pretty busy in the living room.

Here’s a reminder of what we started with:

And here’s what it looked like after our first shopping trip:

That’s a lot of stuff. It was fairly bursting out of the little Zipcar we rented to go get it all. But it’s still just a small fraction of the total amount of things we need to fill the space. Most of this stuff is going to remain boxed up and be stowed in closets and the basement until we’re ready for it. The important thing in that photo is the paint… 2 gallons of Lavender Sparkle.

Here’s how it turned out:

If we’re being honest, we were really gambling with this color choice. We also gambled with the color choice in the dining room, which is a bright and pale shade of green. That gamble paid off, but it forced us to go with something equally bold in the living room.

We’re endlessly amused by the name Lavender Sparkle, and the fact that this is maybe the most feminine color out there next to baby-nursery pink. With the heavy fabrics, rustically solid woods, and finished steel we’re bringing in though, we definitely need something to balance out a lot of masculinity in the space. We’re also confident that once the room is actually full to the point where we have art on the walls, there will be enough visual interest to detract quite a bit from the color choice.

We want to take this opportunity to thank Su Casa and Pad once again. We highly encourage our readers to check out their stores, and to check back here next week for more improvements too the Chophouse’s living room. In the meantime, let us know what you think. Would you live in a lavender room? Green, orange, or gray? Maybe even go a step further and hang wallpaper? Or are you one of these boring neutral sort of people? Let us know in the comments.