Rain Pryor was getting divorced and looking for change nearly two years ago, when she left LA for Baltimore, home to two good friends.
"Best move I ever made," the Charles Village resident and daughter of the late comedian Richard Pryor says today.
Why is Charm City such a good fit for the actress, comedian, author and singer (who, by the way, will give a jazz cabaret performance to benefit the Maryland Center for Multiple Sclerosis at the Hippodrome on Friday)?
Demographics? Pryor also does a one-woman show, Fried Chicken and Latkes, that's all about being Jewish and black, and Baltimore has lots of both cultures, if not lots of double dippers.
Love connection? She met Yale Partlow, a nursing student and meditation teacher to whom she is engaged and with whom she had a baby, Lotus Marie, two months ago.
Sure, sure. But the really big appeal? Big bodies.
"In LA, I'd have to be on the starvation diet," she says. "Baltimore is a city of big girls. Here I can eat my fried chicken. And you can quote me on that."
Aiming for a leaner city government
One Baltimorean intent on not getting big: Sheila Dixon.
"I'm on the South Beach Diet," the mayor announced at a news conference Friday.
Her Honor did not assemble The Sun's John Fritze and other reporters to make this announcement, but the subject came up. Dixon had biked from downtown to Druid Hill Park and back that morning and mentioned that she'd felt sluggish during the ride.
"I'm on the South Beach Diet, and when you don't get any carbs, you're, like, blah," Dixon said.
Spokesman Sterling Clifford would like to assure citizens that Dixon has plenty of pep for her mayoral duties.
"Her day starts before mine and ends after I've gone home," he said. "So whatever she's doing, it gives her plenty of energy."
Ashes to ashes, dust to tchotchkes
Something new will be for sale in the Contemporary Museum gift shop as it opens its Cottage Industry exhibit today: dust.
Not just any dust, like the tiny tumbleweed that collects under your couch. This is museum dust, harvested from the Contemporary, put under a microscope, photographed and transposed onto a coaster, of all things.
I don't know what regular dust looks like under a microscope, but the stuff on the coasters is a cool-looking, multi-textured mix of green and red. The paper coasters sell in packs of six for $10.
