Hanover Street

When British decathlete Daley Thompson repeated as Olympic champion at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, his victory-lap attire included a T-shirt that read: "Thanks America for a good games and a great time, but what about the TV coverage" - a dig at ABC. In similar fashion, the organizers of Saturday's inaugural Baltimore Marathon Festival received this response: "Thanks for a good atmosphere and a great party, but what about the hills." Corrigan Sports Enterprises has a three-year contract with the city to manage the marathon, and it includes an option on a pair of two-year extensions.

UNLIKE Baltimore's glittering Inner Harbor, the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River has escaped development pressures. Although just around the bend from Fort McHenry, the six miles of shoreline is a jumble of industrial relics, neglected wharves, parks and wetlands. This could change. The National Aquarium plans to build an animal hospital, quarantine holding tanks and classrooms on six acres of parkland near the Hanover Street bridge. Over the years, this newspaper has campaigned for the inviolability of parkland.

THOUSANDS of NAACP members descended on Baltimore for their convention this week, prompting visits to the major tourist attractions that line the Pratt Street corridor. What most of the hundreds of thousands of tourists who visit the Inner Harbor each year don't realize is that they are walking on sacred ground, where countless thousands of men, women, and children suffered during Baltimore's darkest hour. Between 1815 and 1860, traders in Baltimore made the port one of the leading disembarkation points for ships carrying slaves to New Orleans and other ports in the deep South.

Hanover Street between McComas Street and Brooklyn was closed overnight while crews worked to remove about 8,900 gallons of gasoline that spilled into the Patapsco River when a tanker truck overturned about 5 p.m. yesterday on an on-ramp to southbound Interstate 95.Battalion Chief Hector L. Torres of the Baltimore Fire Department said firefighters and crews from the Maryland Department of the Environment were cleaning up the spill.Witnesses told police the tanker, owned by Dana Transportation, whose address was not available, was rocking back and forth on the ramp from northbound Hanover Street before it overturned near the top of the ramp and landed on its right side against a wall.

Two roads will be closed in downtown Baltimore on Sunday so that heavy equipment can be lifted onto the NationsBank building at Charles and Lombard streets, the Department of Public Works said yesterday.Lombard Street between Hopkins Place and Charles Street, and Hanover Street between Lombard and Pratt Street, will be closed to traffic from 6: 30 a.m. to noon, said a department spokesman.A suggested alternate route is for motorists to travel north on Charles, west on Fayette Street and south on Liberty Street.

At week's glorious end, we have Eddie from South Baltimore, the semiwell-known bookmaker, standing on Hanover Street and grunting merest splinters of the English language to avoid suspicions that he has an actual brain in his head."

William E. Blayton, 64, steamship agentWilliam E. Blayton, a retired steamship agent, died of a brain tumor Sunday at his Millersville home. He was 64.Mr. Blayton began working for Lavino Shipping Co. in his native Newport News, Va., in 1951 and came to Baltimore in 1979 as vice president of the firm's local office. He left Lavino in 1992 and joined Fillette, Green & Co., retiring as a vice president last year.His professional memberships included the Traffic Club of Baltimore and the Propeller Club.

Brooklyn may be across the river like the New York borough for which it was named, but it is convenient to most every place around Baltimore.The Rev. Richard Andrews, pastor of Brooklyn United Methodist Church, says you can get to downtown Baltimore by car or light rail "in five or 10 minutes," and George J. Gonce, who has operated a funeral home that straddles the Baltimore City-Anne Arundel County line for 46 years, says the highway network makes Brooklyn...

ON HANOVER STREET in the financially fertile hours before the Super Bowl, we see Eddie from South Baltimore, the semi-well-known bookmaker, but no sign at all of Parris Glendening, the semi-well-known governor.This means Eddie can conduct commerce as he chooses, and no matter that the governor of Maryland attempts to stand in the way. The governor says no gambling, not now, not later, not over his living body. Eddie says, "What do you want?" to a guy holding out a $20 bill."Gimme the points," the guy says, meaning New England.

There's a rumble brewing in South Baltimore.Two firehouses less than a half-mile apart are facing off for bragging rights in the hotly contested race for "best outdoor display" during Fire Prevention Month.Truck 6 on Hanover Street took the top spot two years running, but the upstarts of Engine 26 on Fort Avenue won the prize last year. Now Truck 6 is gunning to get it back.In a tradition decades old, Baltimore firehouses have put up elaborate displays, featuring cartoon characters and snappy slogans, to educate the public on fire safety.