When Variety Auto Brokers closed its doors last month, one guy lost his business of 30 years. Five employees lost their jobs. And all of Southwest Baltimore lost a beacon of both political discourse and check-bouncing shame.
The Caton Avenue used-car lot had a big light-up sign that owner Mark Richards turned into a soapbox to comment on world events ("Let 'em have it, George," as the war in Iraq was launched) and local politics ("Dixon and O'Malley - Bonnie and Clyde.")
The sign also served as a modern-day scarlet letter for writers of rubber checks.
"It would say, 'Introducing the bad check club' and it would list customers' names that had bad checks with the store," Richards said. "It was effective. They'd want to rectify it."
The sign, which Richards put up about five years ago, was one of Greater Arbutus' more notable landmarks. A Salisbury University student once told Richards that when he visited his parents in Violetville, he always got off the highway at Caton Avenue instead of Wilkens because he wanted to see what was up on the sign.
"I come through to see what's going on," the kid told Richards.
Richards said his employees - he had eight as recently as four years ago - would beg him to wipe out the political messages when he went on vacation. Otherwise, they'd have to take the calls from irate motorists who dialed the number out front. When he was in, Richards would gladly get on the horn with them.
"We'd always tell them, 'Come in for a debate,' " he said. "Of course, they'd never come in because the liberals can't debate."
Today, no one's calling Variety for debates or cars or anything else. The economy in general and the credit meltdown in particular did the place in.
"We lost all our funding for midscore credit tier people," he said. "We lost all those banks. We probably had, a year ago, 13 to 15 banks we had access to to get a customer a loan. When we closed the door the week before Thanksgiving, we were down to two."
He sold off all the cars and plans to retire in Florida. And the sign?
"I have that in a barn at my farm," he said. "Do you want to buy it?"
Give and take in the blogosphere
Fox newswoman Greta Van Susteren didn't like what The Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik wrote about her recently on his blog, Z on TV. So instead of just stewing about it, she fired back on a blog of her own.
