Ed Hale

FOR A COUPLE HUNdred folks, Artscape began with a trip to the top of the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall garage -- for the opening night VIP party. There, they got a bird's-eye view of the festivities as they sipped on cool drinks and caught up with friends. "I like this party," said Maryland Film Festival founder Jed Dietz. "Because it's hot and feels like summer and Artscape. Just the way it should be," said his wife, Dr. Julia McMillan, a Johns Hopkins University pediatrics professor. Soon-to-be restaurant owner Kevin Brown had his own way of beating that heat.

Edwin F. Hale Sr., chairman and chief executive of First Mariner Bancorp and owner of the Baltimore Blast soccer team, will become chairman of the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association next month. Hale, whose appointment by Mayor Martin O'Malley was announced yesterday at BACVA's annual meeting, comes as the city moves forward with a $305 million project to build a publicly financed convention headquarters hotel. City officials have argued that the 752-room Hilton, to open in 2008, is needed to boost the city's faltering convention center.

She goes by a single name, one shared by a flowering herb. And when she isn't working as a spokeswoman for Arundel Habitat for Humanity, she is a feng shui consultant. So Yarrow, of all people, knows the value of natural beauty and good chi in a house. That's why, on some level, she understands why Habitat is having trouble giving away the four houses it's building in Curtis Bay and Brooklyn. "It is boarded-up houses, it is burned-out houses, it is bricks through windows, a lot of dogs.

In the lobby of the Anchorage Towers in Canton, someone's swept the coins at the bottom of a burbling fountain into the shape of an anchor. Clearly that's not where Ed Hale's been throwing his money. Fourteen flights up in the penthouse, Hale, chief executive officer of 1st Mariner Bank, developer and owner of the Baltimore Blast professional soccer team, has used more than a little of his spare change to create a swank bachelor pad with breathtaking views of the city he has literally worked his way to the top of. But Hale wants to cash out and trade up. To move just feet down Boston Street into the top of a 17-story office tower he's building there, Hale is selling the condo he spent a decade molding to fit his definition of man-about-town luxury.

It was dusk when 1st Mariner Bank chairman Edwin F. Hale Sr. left a meeting in his Canton office to drive west across town to the Baltimore civic arena that bears his bank's name. The official unveiling of 14 giant billboards on the arena's exterior was only two days away, and the gray-haired banker, in jeans and a navy Polartec jacket, watched closely as workers in cranes smoothed wrinkles on the ad promoting his professional indoor soccer team, the Baltimore Blast. He wanted to be sure that the Times Square-style signs looked good, because plenty of people were upset about them - including Peter Angelos, the prominent attorney and Orioles owner who has redeveloped property just blocks away on the city's west side.

Eight days after the City Council voted in April to allow businessman Edwin F. Hale Sr. to raise 14 billboards downtown despite a citywide ban, Hale invited the council to a dinner that cost $1,413 at Fleming's Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar at the Inner Harbor. Hale, chairman of 1st Mariner Bank and a campaign donor to many at the table, said he planned the evening to explain how hard his bank works to lend money in the city's poor neighborhoods, which had been questioned during the debate over the billboard legislation.

As a retiring professional athlete, Blast captain Lance Johnson already has plans to sharpen his golf game. It's not to pass the time or fuel his competitive drive, but more out of necessity as he prepares to move full time into his next playing field - the world of banking. "What I've been told, when you're out golfing, people tend to let their guard down a little bit. So it's not so much a business meeting as it is two friends playing a round of golf - that's where you can create some good business opportunities," he said.

As the new commissioner of the National Professional Soccer League, Steve Ryan sees a bright, new beginning for a league that's about to begin its 17th season next month. Ryan, two weeks into the position after succeeding Steve Paxos, brings an extensive marketing background in professional sports, including 13 years with the National Hockey League as its president and chief operating officer of NHL Enterprises. Yesterday afternoon at Baltimore Blast headquarters, he talked about the NPSL's future and the role he'll play.

Since this is Labor Day weekend, we asked some notable Baltimore workers to name the worst job they ever had. Michael Gaines Sr., president of Maryland Center for Arts and Technology (former vice president and general manager of Harborplace): "When I was going from high school to college, I worked on a construction crew. While I respect all the guys who do that work -- it's very hard work -- it was the worst job for me because I served as a flagman on a highway construction crew. It was hot. It was boring, dirty, thankless work.

No excuse for BelleHow can Albert Belle make $80,000 per game and behave so poorly?I am no great fan of baseball, but these types of actions by highly overpaid professional athletes make my skin crawl. If I carried myself in my profession like Belle does in his, I would be jobless in less than a week.As soon as it is possible to get rid of Belle, the Orioles' management should not waste a second in offering him the door.Jim McFallsHanoverHow to cope with bad yearWith respect to the 1999 major-league baseball season, an advance reality check sadly indicates that perhaps no team missed reaching its potential by as wide a margin as the Orioles.