The Stoop Storytelling Series gives Baltimoreans of all walks of life - "writers, dog-walkers, scientists, poets, moms, manicurists, museum directors, waitresses, TV hosts, taxi drivers ... and you!" as the show's Web site puts it - the chance to climb on stage and tell all.
Add one more job description to that list: mayor.
Sheila Dixon is getting into the act, performing Dec. 15, when the theme is "Favorite Holiday Stories."
FOR THE RECORD - The name of a former Sun reporter was misspelled in Laura Vozzella's column Sunday. He is Rafael Alvarez.
THE BALTIMORE SUN REGRETS THE ERROR
"Previously we've done 'Holidays from Hell,' " said producer Laura Wexler. "We've decided non-hellacious stories are welcome this year as well."
Like any good performance art, The Stoop can be revealing. These are stories, as the Web site puts it, "of love, death, revenge, forgiveness. Failures small and large. Double-crossing and two-timing. Shame and success. Epiphanies that happen just in time ... and others that don't."
Baltimore's mayor usually prefers to keep her private life private. Will Dixon open up on The Stoop?
If so, she's saving it for the show.
"At the Stoop Stories event, the mayor will share a story about a Dixon family Christmas Eve tradition," was all spokesman Ian Brennan would say.
Wexler was in the dark about the mayor's tale. She's just excited to have Baltimore's top pol take the stage. "I think it's a cool," she said. "It's a chance for her to speak personally about non-political things."
Whatever Dixon shares, it'll be with an unusually big crowd. Stoop Stories are usually told to an audience of 540 at Center Stage. Shows have been selling out recently, so this one is set for Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, which seats 2,300.
Billed as "A Charm City Seasonal Spectacular," it will have more of a variety-show format, with the Westsiders Marching Band and other musicians performing in between stories. Other storytellers that night will be editorial cartoonist Kevin "KAL" Kallaugher, Charm City Cakes manager Mary Alice Yeskey, writer Raphael Alvarez, City Paper film critic Violet Glaze, actress Maria Broom of The Wire, and writer Arthur Magida. (Disclosure: Both KAL and Alvarez used to work here.)
No doubt they're in compliance
City contractors have finally started demolishing Uplands for a housing redevelopment project that has hit one snag after another since the city acquired the former Uplands Apartments from the feds in 2004. (And yes, I've noticed because I live nearby.)
The project was nearly delayed again in October because demolition firm P&J Contracting Co. did not meet the city's requirements for using women- and minority-owned subcontractors. At the time, P&J promised that it would get into compliance.
Just in case anyone has any doubts, a banner on the chain-link fence around the rubble proclaims this to passing traffic on Edmondson Avenue: "Subcontractors: Phipps, MBE [Minority-owned Business Enterprise]. Hammerhead, MBE. Cleo Enterprises, WBE [Woman-owned Business Enterprise]. Hopkins Fuel, WBE. 'Minorities on the move.'"
