City Paper

Neighborhood: Violetville Location: Southwestern Baltimore Average sales price: $135,000 (January through June) Notable features: This little triangle of a neighborhood, anchored by St. Agnes Hospital, started life as a 19th-century village and still has a small-town feel. Some streets are lined by rowhouses, some by single-family homes, all with yards. Foliage abounds. A park with ball fields and tennis courts gives kids a destination, and for the adults: Interstate 95. Nothing like slicing your commute time by living a minute from the on-ramp.

The deputy director of the Great Blacks in Wax Museum, where a 20-year-old man was fatally stabbed during a fight at a party Friday night, said he was cutting ties with a local promoter who had described the parties to museum officials as Christian fundraisers. Fliers for the parties, posted on a Web page for Big Les Productions, describe them as events for young adults and "mature" high school students. Many of the posters show young men flashing what appear to be gang signs or raising their middle fingers, and promise a "sexy ladies dance contest."

The deputy director of the Great Blacks in Wax Museum, where a 20-year-old man was fatally stabbed during a fight at a party Friday night, said he was cutting ties with a local promoter who had described the parties to museum officials as Christian fundraisers. Fliers for the parties, posted on a Web page for Big Les Productions, describe them as events for young adults and "mature" high school students. Many of the posters show young men flashing what appear to be gang signs or raising their middle fingers, and promise a "sexy ladies dance contest."

The wacky bakers at Charm City Cakes recently whipped up a big confection made to look like a bright yellow newspaper box. It was for a party celebrating City Paper's Best of Baltimore issue, which, as it turned out, bestowed one of its Best Of awards on the bakery. But the honor felt more like a pie in the face. The bakery, featured on The Food Network's Ace of Cakes, took the paper's "Best Cakes" category in 2003. This year, it won "Best Form Over Function." "There's no denying that the carefully sculpted confections of Charm City Cakes are beautiful," the paper wrote.

Mike Nguyen has no grand plan to become a publishing magnate. He just wants to get the word out. Working on a shoestring, the 30-year-old graphic designer has put together the first issue of a pocket-sized, full-color magazine about Baltimore nightlife, entertainment, food, bands and other subjects "dear to the hearts of the partying class," he says. It's something he has wanted to do for nine years. "The impression was always that if you wanted to do anything cool as far as clubs or going to a concert, you had to go to D.C.," Nguyen says in his modest home office on North Calvert Street in Charles Village, where the local Donna's coffeehouse serves as a handy spot for staff meetings.

John Bernard Naditch, a retired News American and Sun pressman, died of lung cancer Thursday at his Carney home. He was 79. Born and raised in Baltimore, he attended city public schools before enlisting in the Navy during World War II. He served with the Seabees in the Pacific. After the war he became a pressman at the old News-Post and worked there until its successor paper, the News American, folded in 1986. He then joined The Sun and retired about 15 years ago. A duckpin bowler, he competed in a league at the Patterson lanes on Eastern Avenue.

If a personal ad took out a personal ad -- "AGELESS BEAUTY: Single, trim, 39 years old, always a bridesmaid, never a bride, enjoys meeting new people, threatened by technology, fashionably out of style, seeking a change" -- no one would respond. That's because the matchmaking business has moved on to the Internet, where lonely hearts can write endless descriptions of themselves and their favorite things (sunsets, puppies, walks on the beach). The traditional newspaper personal ad, meanwhile, is dying a slow death.

STATE HOUSE watchers who paid $298 in advance for a "complete and comprehensive reference source on Maryland state legislators" are wondering where their money went. Bruce L. Bortz, the book's publisher and owner of Bancroft Information Group, has missed at least two deadlines to deliver the Guidebook to Maryland Legislators 2003-2006. To drum up orders for the volume, Bortz distributed a brochure last year that quoted former Gov. Parris N. Glendening calling previous versions "a handy reference guide that is packed full of useful, up-to-date information."