As a warm and lazy July afternoon yesterday beckoned waves of visitors to Artscape, a group of enterprising street vendors established their own thriving bazaar on the fringes of the city's annual festival staged in the Mount Royal neighborhood.
Not officially sanctioned by Artscape's organizers, this impromptu fair -- where everything from Honduran cigars to scented oils was peddled -- seemed to draw its own constituency.
"I wouldn't miss this," said Colleen Hurley, a visitor from Fairfax, Va.
She spent part of yesterday afternoon hunched over a sales table on Dolphin Street west of Howard Street, outside the Artscape boundaries.
She and her friend Sandra Scott sampled the scented oils sold by a Randallstown woman named Tahseen.
"Strangers stop and ask me what I have on," Hurley said as she dabbed on a few drops of an oil labeled patchouli.
"It's something that came out of the flower children movement of the 1960s," Tahseen explained.
Hurley buys a vial of patchouli, one of jasmine and one marked "cool water."
Not only the vendors traded along the busy commercial streets on the fringes of the festival, which ends tonight. Some weekend merchants, because of where they live, set up shop closer to the center of the action.
A group of enterprising Bolton Hill residents used the crowd to ensure a captive audience for its yard sale.
"There was a rush of buyers here early this morning. My vintage kitchen implements, the pudding molds and the muffin tins went first," said Kathleen Knust, a Rutter Street resident.
The hazy afternoon's heat -- tempered by occasional bursts of a breeze -- seemed about perfect. Occasionally a loud whistle from a freight train leaving the northern throat of the Howard Street Tunnel momentarily overpowered the musical acts.
While the crowds in Artscape's restaurant district were buying plastic cups of micro-brewed Pilsner, crab meat quesadillas and vegetable platters redolent of curry, the fringe vendors along Howard Street were offering two hometown favorites: pit beef and lake trout.
Travis Glasgow saw the opportunity that Artscape presented and set up his cigar stand.
"When people listen to blues music and jazz, they relax. They like to smoke cigars," he said outside a main entrance to the festival.
Crowds milled along the streets around the city's old Mount Royal Station and seemed to grow thicker wherever a curious buyer leaned over a table.
"The competition for space starts early. Some guy lands here on Wednesday to get a good spot," said Robert Howard, a dealer in jewelry who found a spot yesterday morning on Dolphin Street.
Standing alongside was another fringe entrepreneur, Mack Rucks, a trumpet player who lives on Carrollton Avenue facing West Baltimore's Lafayette Square, who set set up a display of African-style musical instruments called shakerees.
He makes the shakerees from hollowed-out gourds. When tapped or shaken, they produce a distinctive percussive melody thanks to the glass beads he strings over their exteriors.
While the fringe-area dealers had no trouble finding spaces to sell their wares, a local painter and sculptor found he could not stage a performance piece when and where he wanted. Tom Scott was informed during a performance of his "Virtual Screens," a piece danced by the Sisters' Trousers troupe, that it would have to stop.
"I was told by an official of Artscape that we had to leave. She was courteous, but it seems a shame there is not a place where voluntary groups can have a showing," said Scott, a resident of the 1500 block of Mount Royal Ave.
For most visitors, there were more art exhibits, poetry readings and musical performances than there was time to enjoy them.
"Artscape has, in effect, replaced the City Fair as a coming together of the entire population -- all colors, all economic classes, all ethnic groups," said Rex Rehfeld, a Park Avenue resident who walked through the fair with his family. "It is what a city should be, a wonderful affair.
"Although the streets were crowded, all the visitors were courteous," he said. "There were so many people, I couldn't even get to my favorite food, the french fries."
Pub Date: 7/27/97
