Charm City

Everyman Theatre has enlisted a food truck to provide dinner for its patrons at its new home. When the professional Equity theater reopens in its new home on West Fayette Street, Charm City Gourmet will be parked outside the theater for several hours before each performance. Patrons will be able to order from the truck and eat their food outside, but Charm City Gourmet will also be providing table service inside the theater's lobby. The truck, a side project of Shapiro's Cafe , serves a full cafe menu that includes New England lobster rolls, falafel and Israeli salads.

Nearly a year after the Inner Harbor's historic carousel was ordered to move over unpaid bills, the city has struck a deal with a new merry-go-round operator. Charm City Carousel Entertainment LLC, of Stevensville, will bring a new carousel to the city's downtown waterfront in the spring, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said Thursday. "Baltimore's Inner Harbor draws families from all over the country and the world to experience everything our unique waterfront has to offer," the mayor said in a statement.

I got lost on the way to the church. A few weeks ago, I was heading down Wolfe Street into the complex that is Johns Hopkins Hospital when I drove past Ashland Street. I had to stop at a Citgo station for directions to get back on track. There it was - the City of Hope Missionary Baptist Church - a two-story building that shared a block with some of the vast medical encampment that is both swallowing and saving East Baltimore. Just beyond the church were abandoned rowhomes, some of them roofless, all of them boarded up. This particular weekend marked City of Hope's fifth anniversary.

I'd love to see "The Other Wes Moore," developed into a movie, as Oprah Winfrey is planning. The book, by a former Johns Hopkins student named Wes Moore, focuses on the factors that can affect whether a child grows into a meaningful life or is dragged down into depair. It's a cautious tale for American cities such as Baltimore, where dangers of crime and addiction derail many lives each year. Moore contrasts his own upbringing with that of another Wes Moore, one who was involved in a notorious crime in Baltimore County.

Part of the charm of Baltimore's arts scene is that someone is always hitting the "refresh" button. An art gallery or music club shuts down on one block, only to have another pop up a few streets over. Abandoned or underused venues might suddenly sprout a theater troupe one day, an artists' collective the next. A lot of the refreshing can be traced to a thriving DIY culture in town, a culture that has been responsible for some of the most intriguing new enterprises over the years and that helps give the city its reputation as a place where artists of every genre can find - or create - an outlet.

In 1985 I bought a small house in the Cedmont neighborhood in Northeast Baltimore. At the time, I knew nothing about Formstone ("Formstone would be banned on new buildings under proposal," Dec. 1). I have found it to be beautiful, especially up close when it includes subtle shades of pale pink, blue, and gray with sparkles. Several years ago, a storm damaged a small piece of Formstone. I had some difficulty finding a person who could repair it properly, and I am pleased the Formstone artist blended in the new with the old. Baltimore has many charms we can all enjoy, and I'm very pleased to live here and have a unique home.

A couple quick things to share with you from sunny Nashville (We can only assume it is sunny. But it is very temperate inside the hotel.) Major League Baseball's pre-integration committee reviewed candidates from the sport's beginning until 1946 and chose three people for induction: umpire Hank O'Day, former Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert and former player Deacon White. Ruppert is the guy who actually purchased that kid from Baltimore away from the Boston Red Sox in January 1920, in case you were wondering.

Patti Smith has a soft spot for Baltimore, dating back to the early '80s, when she and her husband would visit the city for soft-shell crabs and beer. These days, she "hardly ever" gets to play in Charm City, so when her current tour gave her a day off in the area, she booked a performance here - on Saturday at Rams Head Live . "I always liked Baltimore," Smith said. "I've always loved [Edgar Allan] Poe, too. The end of Poe's life is so mysterious - I like to contemplate that.

Mother's Federal Hill Tavern has announced the date for what it's calling the First Annual Charm City BACON Wars. It's Sunday, Feb. 10, 2-6 p.m., and in case you were wondering, that's the Sunday following Super Bowl Sunday. The challenge is out to any restaurant in Maryland to come up with its "most creative, most tantalizing bacon dish. " The announcement was posted on the restaurant's Facebook page . The public will be the judge. Restaurants interested in participating should email Mother's Federal Hill Grille at colleen@mothersgrille.com Follow Baltimore Diner on Twitter @gorelickingood

Charles Greene II lay immersed in a pool of his sweat as the snow and rain collected around him on the Johns Hopkins track. It was December 1982 and Greene had just completed his six-minute mile, which was required of anyone trying out for coach Dick Oles' Blue Jays fencing team. But he was exhausted and felt unable to walk to Oles' office, which led some other students trying out to ask Oles whether they should help him. The coach's response? Leave him until he was able to get to the fencing room on his own. Though his legs wouldn't carry him, Greene was able to crawl to the room, where he again fell, prompting the students a second time to ask whether they should move him. And again, Oles said no. He reasoned that Greene would move when he's ready or when he was tired of being stepped on. "[That was one of my fondest memories]