Down The Street

The Easter Bunny made an early appearance in Annapolis yesterday -- in handcuffs. A drug defendant on probation who was late for a hearing in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court bolted from the courtroom when he heard that a judge had issued an arrest warrant, said Sheriff George F. Johnson IV. Courthouse deputies chased him into the nearby Maryland Inn and found him in a storage room -- climbing into a white bunny costume used for Easter brunch....

There's this thing kids have been doing in the neighborhood lately. I've noticed it at my business, I've noticed it when I'm shopping at other businesses in the neighborhood. I've noticed it when I've been trying to enjoy a meal at local eateries. You're inside minding your own business and then you hear this very loud "Boom" as a pack of kids walk by. What they have just done is hit the front window as hard as they can, I assume because they think it's funny. I also assume it's because they aren't getting enough attention at home.

Before their marriage 14 years ago, Andre and Debbie Jones remember, they had a slight issue to overcome. They knew they would be moving in together, of course, but the question was where. Andre Jones was happy with his townhouse in Woodlawn. Debbie Jones was comfortable with her rented house in Ridgely's Delight. Something had to give. "I wouldn't live in the country, and he wouldn't move anywhere there were alleys with rats and where there were buses that shook the windows," she said.

Before qualifying started for Saturday's American LeMans Series race, points leader Gunnar Jeannette took the time Friday to explain what makes a sportscar race in the series so exciting and why people coming to the track should take the time to watch the race. "The main thing is they're going to see cars that have no business being out here driving down the street," he said. "They're going to see cars with 4, 5, 6, 700 horsepower trying to race between streets and over manhole covers.

A 30-year-old mother of five walking along a downtown Baltimore street with a shopping bag full of vanilla cookies and lollipops for her children was run down by an out-of-control Jeep Cherokee yesterday morning outside Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.Paramedics pronounced Pearl Brown dead on the glass-strewn sidewalk at Cathedral and Preston Streets shortly before 11 a.m. as traffic investigators picked through the overturned hulk of the 1994 Jeep that killed her.Last night, family and friends gathered at her parents' house to console her children -- ages 5 to 11 -- and sing solemn songs around the Christmas tree in memory of the lost daughter they called "Little Mo."

Baltimore police commanders have begun urging officers on the city's east side to abandon their patrol cars and stroll through neighborhoods with residents to enlist their help to fight crime.Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier told church and community leaders Friday that whenever patrol officers are not busy with emergency calls, they should be walking, preferably with one of them."There are times of day when officers are not in a car," Frazier said from the front steps of Zion Baptist Church on North Caroline Street.

The porch lights went on and people took to the streets last night in organized defiance of criminals and the fear that grips America's neighborhoods.As part of the annual National Night Out, thousands of Marylanders took a stand with parades and block parties, recalling a time when children could play on the sidewalk after dark and sleep undisturbed by the sound of gunfire."Every night should be like [this], when neighbors can sit outside in love and friendship, and kids can play in the street," Baltimore City Police Commissioner Edward V. Woods said while on a visit to the 2300 block of Harlem Ave.As children played on the street of the West Baltimore neighborhood, with their parents and neighbors drinking punch on the sidewalk, the commissioner said, "This is one night where they don't have to be afraid.

Twelve people were shot on a Baltimore street last night a automatic weapon fire erupted during what may have been a sidewalk craps game, police said.Five of the victims were critically injured as between 30 and 40 shots were fired about 7:45 p.m. in the 500 block of E. 21st St., said Lt. Wayne Wilson, adding that the victims ranged in age from 14 to 40.Hundreds of people spilled into the street after the shooting stopped. The crowd that jammed the corridor of three-story brick rowhouses blocked the path of ambulances and fire engines, police said.

FOR THE first time in decades, we are returning to Edmondson Village, driving past Lyndhurst Elementary School to the old neighborhood and our rowhouse on Mountwood Road. We had left there in the early 1960s. I now have children. The street to our old house is marked "Do Not Enter" on one end and "One Way, Do Not Enter" on the other end. We drive down the service alley behind our old street. My father and brother note how clean and well-kept the yards are. My mother has died. We give up trying to figure out the perplexing traffic pattern and turn.

Facing a possible 25-year sentence after being found guilty of assault with intent to commit robbery last January, Sherrell E. Walker took advantage of a situation too tempting to pass up: a chance for freedom.Yesterday, a short-lived period of liberty that began when he escaped from the basement of the Anne Arundel County Circuit Courthouse cost him an extra six months on top of the 15-year sentence he is serving at the Roxbury Correctional Institution in Hagerstown.Mr. Walker, 29, was waiting to be taken back to jail pending his sentencing Jan. 28, when a guard briefly left him and another prisoner unattended.

SAN DIEGO -- In Rancho Bernardo, ground zero for the Witch wildfire that burned more than 1,700 homes in San Diego last month, neighbors are adjusting to the "new normal." Firetrucks have given way to street sweepers, utility vans and contractors. Signs thanking the firefighters are being replaced with ads for power washing and something called a smokeater, an industrial-strength air purifier. Neighbors are walking dogs, pruning roses, feeding finches and skateboarding. They've done their best to clean up - hauling away downed trees and charred cars, sweeping, raking and scrubbing the signs of destruction.

The Rochambeau, the 1905 apartment house on Charles Street owned by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, is looking forlorn these days, now that some church officials want it torn down and replaced by something they call a prayer garden. For some years, Cardinal William H. Keeler has been spending millions on refurbishing the Basilica of the Assumption, which sits immediately to the southwest of the Rochambeau, though currently separated by an ancient city alley. I would guess that the proximity of the old Rochambeau irked and occasionally irritated some of the proponents of the Basilica rebuilding effort; for many years its former owners rented small budget apartments and rooms to people who were not in the Social Register.

LOS ANGELES - It's just around the corner from the Jaws pond on the Universal Studios tour. But the chatty tour guide never mentions Wisteria Lane, where a string of fanciful houses on a curvy street once known as Colonial Drive houses America's most popular new TV stars. The house lights twinkle the way they would on a normal, lively suburban street. The lawns and hedges are neatly trimmed, the flowers blooming and, if you touch them, fake. Except for the big Universal Studios parking garage looming on a hill, you might believe this street from Desperate Housewives really exists in a town called Fairview.

Before 13-year-old Mattie Stepanek became famous, before his poetry hit the New York Times best-seller list, before he met Oprah Winfrey and former president Jimmy Carter, the precocious boy with a rare neuromuscular disease knew he was dying. It was a terrible knowledge, coming from having seen his sister and two brothers die of the disease, but it gave young Mattie a sense of urgency. As he told the Make-A-Wish Foundation three years ago, when the bleeding in his trachea wouldn't stop, he had three goals: To meet Carter.

Ignoring a bitterly cold wind, thousands of people stood shoulder to shoulder in the ice along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard yesterday to cheer for a parade honoring the civil rights leader and to reflect on how he might view his nation today. Families perched on the curb, heaping blankets over their legs to keep warm. Drill team dancers, high-stepping to the thunder of drums, wore earmuffs and scarves. Hawkers sold gloves and hats instead of balloons and flags. But not even the frigid temperature could cool the passion everyone there felt for King and his message.

NEW YORK -- The stench of slaughter is inescapable most days in the meatpacking district. For decades, this cluster of narrow streets on the cusp of trendy Chelsea and the West Village has been home to many of the city's meat distributors. A sign boasts "Gachot, Quality Meats Since 1903," and ubiquitous large ads tout wholesale beef, chicken and lamb. But, lately, a whiff of something different has been creeping into the neighborhood. As an aproned man hosed down the sidewalk outside Eastern Meats on West 14th Street one recent afternoon, stylish women just across the street thumbed through racks of Stella McCartney wool coats and satin bomber jackets.

Traffic passing the back door of City Hall on Willis Street has beentesting the nerves of visitors and city employees for years.The one-block stretch -- a combination through-street/parking lot -- has become a "Bermuda Triangle" for pedestrians."

Next month, the projected 1 1/2 -year reconstruction of East Main Street and Washington Road in Westminster will begin. When the digging, paving and planting is finished come fall 1994, the streets' appearance will be improved -- although maybe not to everyone's satisfaction. Utility poles and overhead wiring will remain.As much as Westminster city officials may have wanted to bury the overhead wiring, they have decided it is just too costly. The price ranged from $2 million (if the poles were moved to the rear of the buildings along the street)

What is it about Frank Sinatra and the Hippodrome Theater? Everyone of a certain age seems to remember hearing the legend sing at the long-closed Eutaw Street theater on downtown's west side. Jean DiCarlo is among the many. As a girl in the 1940s, she warmly recalls, she once journeyed all the way from Westminster with her aunts and a cousin for a Sinatra show. Yesterday DiCarlo, now of Dundalk, visited the Hippodrome for a different spectacle. A party was held to fete the $63 million renovation that is turning the 88-year-old dusty gem into an elegant, 2,250-seat house for Broadway shows.

BEIJING - When Wang Di, a businessman, and Wang Daoping, a farmer, visited the capital's main pedestrian mall a few days ago, one spent most of his time on the east side of the street, the other on the west. They might as well have been in different countries. Tourists from across China come to Wangfujing, the 700-year-old commercial avenue nicknamed Gold Street, the pinnacle of consumer culture in a country being revolutionized by capitalism. Couples and families from out of town and young Beijingers form a seemingly monolithic crowd, strolling down the center of the mile-long street.