No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service

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Well, it’s pretty hot outside. In the dead of Summer, most people want to get away with wearing as little as possible. Jorts sightings have been at at all time high in Baltimore recently, and tank tops and flip flops are out in force as well.

We would hope that it doesn’t still need to be said in 2011, but apparently it does. The old rule still stands: No shirt, No shoes, No service.

shirt and shoes

These things may be optional in your backyard or rooftop deck, but out in the streets, shoes and shirts are still mandatory, no matter what the temperature. Sure, okay, if you absolutely must you can wear sandals the right way but you’ve got to have something on your feet.

This is Baltimore City… it’s filthy. Aside from the typical urban grit and grime, our streets and sidewalks are often full of broken glass, chicken bones, and all other manner of hazards. The Chop happened to sight a girl walking barefoot down Cathedral Street a few days ago, and we were nothing less than revolted. Walking or (God forbid) running barefoot in an urban street is not only dangerous, it’s disgusting. Not even Rex Ryan would tickle those toes.

As far as shirts go, you’re gonna have to keep that on too. Nothing says absolute white trash redneck like going shirtless publicly. Have you ever seen COPS? The shirts to skins ratio on there is always at least 2/5.

It doesn’t even matter if you’re a sitting congressman who hits the gym regularly… shirtless is simply not a good look on anyone. This summer, just keep it on. You might even think about a lightweight cotton or linen jacket as well.

How to Stage a Boycott, Hon

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Most of you probably well remember the Great Hontroversy of December 2010, in which Denise Whiting trademarked the term “Hon” in various forms, and crowed about it in the media in an attempt to drum up publicity for her newly opened tacky souvenir shop, just in time for stocking stuffer season.

Ink was spilled and the fat was chewed (and not just in the restaurant), Facebook groups were formed and street protests organized, but in the end all it really amounted to was a collective “Yeah, fuck that lady.” Fast forward to June 2011: Honfest is upon us again, and Whiting has managed to piss people off even further by banning the sale of cat’s eye sunglasses and cans of hairspray and telling people that their political opinions and religious beliefs are not welcome. Everyone shall worship at the altar of HON, and all hail the mayor of Hon Town.

A visual approximation of our sentiments toward Honfest.

So we’re Skipping Honfest this year. This isn’t really news, since we’ve never actually been to any of the previous Honfests. Shitty grandpa music and overpriced Heinekens aren’t really our cup of tea, and we’re put off by anything that’s so cartoonishly self-referential and clichéd, especially when it’s organized by one of Baltimore’s most hated people. Honfest is not so much a festival to be enjoyed, but a product to be bought, paid for and consumed.

We wouldn’t call it a boycott though, and we bristle when we hear other people use the term. Most people in the modern age have a poor understanding of what a boycott actually is, let alone the skills or wherewithal to organize one successfully. Before you go calling for a boycott this weekend, or anytime, it’s a good idea to know what the keys to a successful boycott are:

  • Fight a grievous wrong. It’s difficult for any boycott to be successful without broad public support. It helps if what you’re fighting against is universally seen as an injustice. Child labor or unsafe working conditions are good grounds for a boycott. While Hon, Inc. has shown an incredible amount of hubris and alienated the community many times over, it’s hard to argue that there’s much actual injustice being done here. Some, but not much.
  • A pre-existing organizational structure. Some of the most successful boycotts in history haven’t been carried off by people coming together, they were won by people who were already together. The Montgomery bus boycott was only possible because churches and civil rights groups were already well organized, and were able to mobilize their members. Ditto with the California grape boycott, the core of which was the United Farm Workers’ Union. A Facebook group by itself is not an organization. It’s merely a tool for disseminating information among an organization.
  • Strong Leadership. At the head of every successful boycotting organization, there’s strong leadership. MLK. Cesar Chavez. Gandhi. Leading an actual boycott is a full time job. It’s not something to which you dedicate half an hour of internet time a few nights a week.
  • Dedicated foot soldiers. A true boycott of Cafe Hon, if it were to have any economic impact at all, would require people standing out on the Avenue morning, noon, and night wearing tee shirts, carrying signs, handing out literature, and making a case to the general public of the grievous wrongdoing we mentioned before. Any volunteers?
  • A manifold boycott strategy. You don’t just send an email blast, show up on a streetcorner and yell boycott. Who are you anyway, Jesse Jackson? A successful boycott requires a lot of advance planning. Even with something as small scale as a restaurant or a festival, if success is expected, there are enormous organizational, logistical, fundraising, and public relations challenges to consider. Do you just want to skip the festival, or do you want to boycott its sponsors as well?
  • An attainable set of goals. Part of that strategy should be a set of goals or reasonable demands. The idea of bringing the big bad evil corporation to its knees by crippling it economically is as cartoonish as the beads and beehives that are about to take over the Avenue. The goal of a boycott isn’t bankrupting anyone, it’s getting your target to change its behavior, e.g. integrating buses or paying farm workers minimum wage.
  • A viable alternative. Key to any boycott is not just saying “Don’t buy that” but saying “Buy this instead.” Fortunately, in the case of Cafe Hon, we’ve already got that covered.

Organizing a legitimate boycott is a lot of work, and can be a very long-term undertaking. When the faux-Hons invade the Avenue this weekend, we won’t be boycotting. We’ll be protesting in a truly homegrown Baltimore way- talking shit, holding grudges, and counting down the days to Hampdenfest.

The Chop Approves of Selling Water on the Corner

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Now that Memorial Day weekend has come and gone we’re officially in the midst of another Baltimore Summer, and all that that entails. As of now, and for the next three months or so we’re going to see all the hallmarks of Summer in the streets; packs of dirtbikes, open fire hydrants, Arabbers, and of course, kids selling water at intersections.

A little side-hustle for a kid selling cold drinks at traffic lights is a time-honored Charm City tradition, as much ingrained in the fabric of the city as formstone and painted screens. We here at the Baltimore Chop appreciate the work they do all Summer long, and we hope that this year they’ll multiply as fast as some other fads in street vending.

We're always happy to see some real small businessmen make an honest buck.

Summers in Baltimore are hot. You’ve gotta stay cool, gotta stay hydrated. You can try to run into the corner store for that nice cold beverage, but you know how it is… there’s never any parking, and if you try to double park or sneak in on the corner, then you’ve got some jerk behind you blaring his horn, and then a bunch of stoop-sitters will start yelling about that because it’s July, and it’s fucking hot and everybody’s all sunburned and irritable and ready to pick a fight over nonsense. Besides, even if you make it to the 7-11 and back, you’re going to stand in line and pay like $2.50 for that crappy little bottle of water which may or may not be cold.

As we’ve said before, the best cars to drive in Baltimore City are economy cars, and specifically the kind of economy cars that you get used and pay cash for and don’t make payments on. Our own Chopmobile is so, ummm, economical that it doesn’t even have air conditioning, so you can believe that if we can score a bottle of water for a buck we’re going to chug it hard, and maybe buy another one at the next light.

Admittedly, buying several bottles of water in one trip is not the best choice environmentally, but it’s certainly a great choice for everyone economically. 24-Pack cases of Deer Park bottles were priced at 3 for $10 at the Waverly Giant recently, putting the cost per bottle at around 14 cents. Any store can make money selling water in quantity, because it’s so cheap to produce. Selling it at a stoplight for a buck will yield a profit of around 600% after you spend a couple of dollars for ice, and the drivers save 50-150% over mini-mart retail.

As valuable as this tasty, thirst-quenching community service is though, there’s one more benefit- a hidden benefit, that kids selling water bring to the city- namely that no intersection is big enough for two hustles. The more kids we’ve got selling water and sodas in the city, the fewer we have wielding dirty squeegees and demanding money for a worthless “service,” and better still, it means fewer dirty, pockmarked junkies panhandling our corners with cardboard signs.

The next time you buy a bottle of water from a kid on the corner, thank him not just for the sale, but for his hard work and community service as well.

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Update: We wrote this story a few days ago, and pushed it back to Thursday so that we could write about Anthony Weiner’s cock. We now find ourselves a day late and a dollar short, getting scooped by the City Paper. For further reading, check out Lee Gardner’s feature story this week on bottle rockers.

Weiner’s COCK: Our Bi-Weekly Political Roundup

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Today is the second Wednesday of the month, and as usual Progressives of all stripes will be gathering on the patio of Joe Squared to swap stories, talk politics, and drink beers at the regular meeting of the Baltimore Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

Meetings start at 7 pm and are open to anyone who wishes to attend. Just look for the table with the red, white, and blue bottle and introduce yourself.

Baltimore's Drinking Liberally meets at Joe Squared tonight. 7 pm.

Of course, the topic of Weiner’s wiener is bound to come up, but we’ve been tired of that pun for at least two weeks. We’re going to insist on calling it Weiner’s COCK if we have to talk about it at all. Come on… that’s how people talk anyway. When’s the last time anybody sent a wiener pic? No one ever has. People send cock pics. Weiner sent a picture of his cock.

As far as where that leaves us now… well, we still think Andrew Breitbart is a sleazy, sensationalist, predatory asshole. He just happened to be right, the same way a broken clock will be twice a day. It’s safe to say that we won’t be seeing much more of Weiner on programs like Maddow and sites like Twitter. He’ll be going about his job much more quietly from now on. As to whether or not he gets to keep his seat, that’s up to the voters to decide, but we’re thinking he does. As we pointed out two weeks ago, sex scandals happen all the time now, and you’ve got to be pretty sleazy these days to seriously raise eyebrows. We don’t think that being a horny 16 year old who just got his first Myspace page will ultimately prove that destructive to the distinguished gentleman from New York.

In non-Weiner’s cock related news, this is also a good day to talk about who will be the next mayor of Baltimore. SRB, Otis Rolley, Jody Landers, and Catherine Pugh are all officially in, and with 98 days left until the election, it’s not out of the question that Kweisi Mfume, Carl Stokes, Andre Bundley or some other dark horse candidate could throw his or her hat in the ring. Like 99% of the city, we haven’t even pretended to pay much attention at this point, but any one of those names is a huge step up from one of the most hated people in Baltimore, Sheila Dixon.

Being mayor of Baltimore is a really hard fucking job and honestly, we’re surprised that even that many people would want to do it. With more than one candidate that we’d actually consider voting for already in the race, we feel like we’ve already won.

The Ten Most Hated People in Baltimore

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For all the reputation this city carries nationwide as being rough or gritty, we don’t exactly pour on the hatred the way we pour Natty Boh. Living in a place like Charm City, you learn to put up with a lot, and Baltimoreans sometimes even exercise more patience than we ought to.

There are a few people though who have raised the ire of enough Baltimoreans to be truly hated. If we were still living up to our Mobtown nickname, and if there were any justice in the world, these ten people would have been rode out of town on a rail long ago. Some of them actually were. Five of these ten have been convicted of crimes, and four have served or are serving jail time.

This is the impression that Michael Steele gives the nation of Maryland politics.

10. Michael Steele. The last time he was in town, Michael Steele lost a debate, and got caught out playing the victim and making up race-baiting stories. Steele is mostly an ineffectual horse’s ass, and hasn’t done any real damage to anyone, but his rise to national prominence as RNC chair and now as an analyst for MSNBC have given him ample opportunities to make Maryland look bad nationally, and that is unforgivable.

9. Patricia Jessamy. Pat Jessamy may not actually be hated but she’s definitely not very well liked. It never mattered whether you were her employee, a defendant, the police, or just a conscious citizen, no one liked Pat Jessamy, yet she was able to keep her job a very, very, very long time.

8. Ed Norris. Ed Norris came from the great grand city of New York to save us from ourselves. He didn’t. Ed Norris stole $20,000 in public money. Ed Norris used that public money he stole to buy nice things for his mistresses. Ed Norris used city cops as his own bodyguards and gofers. Ed Norris was a tax cheat and a perpetrator of mortgage fraud. Ed Norris went to jail for 6 months, and his reward for all this is his own radio show and many product endorsements. Perhaps what bothers us most is how few people this bothers. Fuck Ed Norris.

Peter Angelos is definitely one of Baltimore's most hated men. Unfortunately, there was no room left on this list for Rafael Palmeiro.

7. Peter Angelos. Peter Angelos would probably be very well liked and admired if he didn’t own a baseball team. Unfortunately, he does own a baseball team. Whether it’s raising ticket prices and fees annually, hiring clowns like Sammy Sosa and Dave Trembley, oractively encouraging the arrival of out-of-town fans, Angelos seems to revel in his status as one of Baltimore’s most hated men.

6. Sheila Dixon. Nobody particularly liked Sheila Dixon before she stole gift cards from poor children and threw in a sleazy sex and contracts scandal for good measure. It took her just over a year as mayor to go from ‘vaguely unpopular’ to ‘downright disgusting.’ At least she has the good sense not to show her face publicly anymore.

When Hons are outlawed, only outlaws will be Hons.

5. Denise Whiting. A lot of people never cared much for Denise Whiting, either. We’ve always preferred dining at local restaurants that don’t condescend to to us. Not content with being corny, tacky, and generally disliked though, Whiting embraced full-on hatred when she trademarked imagery which was mostly stolen from John Waters anyway, then got huffy in the media and threatened to sue a bunch of people. She’s getting even huffier now that Honfest is upon us, and is doing her level best to nurture resentment wherever she can.

4. Bob Irsay. We’re being very careful in ordering this list. Although you could conduct any number of polls asking “Who’s the most hated man in Baltimore?” and have Bob Irsay come in #1 every time, we cannot in good conscience rate him higher than third. Considering who the top three are, we just can’t do it. Sorry. Irsay will have to settle for being number 4 on the list.

20 Years in prison. Keep Snitching.

3. Ronnie Thomas. Rodney (Ronnie) “Skinny Suge” Thomas is best known as the man (and we use that term very loosely) behind the 2004 Stop Snitching DVD that circulated the streets of Baltimore and brought the city much unwanted national attention as a result. Suge typifies just about everything that’s wrong with our city, and his lifestyle and philosophy are every bit as ugly as his pockmarked, toothless face. The 20 year sentence in federal prison he received wasn’t enough in our opinion.

2. Milton Tillman Jr. Drug dealers should be hated on principle, but there are so many other great reasons to hate the Tillmans. Not satisfied with having a bad name as a dealer, Milton Tillman also went a long way toward giving bad names to the bail bond industry, longshoremen, and landlords. If you’re new in town and have never heard of 2008’s citizen of the year, the FBI and Justice Department will be happy to catch you up to speed.

This was unforgivable.

1. Darrell Brooks. Darrell Brooks is a horrible person. He took some matches and some gasoline and killed seven good people. He did it because they were good people. Anyone who lived here in 2002 will never forget the Dawson Family murders, and most will never forgive Darrell Brooks. We never will.