Hill Park

Six o'clock rolls around,You just finished wiping your car down.Time to cruise to the park where it looks like a car show -- "Summertime," D. J. Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince.The Park.In Baltimore, there is little question which park is The Park.Each Sunday, Druid Hill Park -- the city's largest park and perhaps the best place to profile/hang out/be seen/polish a spotless car/profile some more/check out sweet young thangs -- rocks.Sunday at The Park is when hundreds of immaculately clean cars line a stretch known as "Looker's Row" between the basketball courts and the reservoir as their owners -- ever worried about scratches -- lean lightly on their hoods.

A Roland Park resident has created a "passport" to Druid Hill Park. Janet Felsten, founder and director of the nonprofit group Baltimore Green Map, introduced the green-colored passport April 19 at a Baltimore Green Week kickoff party in the conservatory. Felsten said she created the 20-page, passport-shaped booklet on cover stock paper as a companion to a detailed map of Druid Hill Park that she made in 2010. The purpose of the map and the new passport is partly to point out places of interest in the 745-acre park, which is home to the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, Druid Lake and the Howard Peters Rawlings Conservatory and Botanic Gardens, among other attractions.

HERE'S A MODEST proposal for improving Druid Hill Park. Erect a statue of Harriet Tubman or another prominent African-American on its beautiful grounds. Here's why: When you enter the beautiful park on Swan Drive from Druid Park Lake Drive, you soon see living black people and statues of four dead white men. All of the statues sit in prominent places near the reservoir, Druid Lake. Frozen in time are: George Washington, the nation's first president; Christopher Columbus, who brought death and misery to Indians in the New World; William Wallace, the Scotish freedom fighter; and German opera composer Richard Wagner.

He has used a chain saw to carve intricate wooden sculptures for years, but when Mark Acton won a commission to hew two big new statues by the reservoir in Druid Hill Park, he wasn't sure he could pull it off. His material would be two tree stumps, each more than 12 feet tall and 20 feet around. Both were red oaks, which have especially tough wood. And when he first inspected them, he saw that each had lots of termite damage - the reason the city had cut them down. "'I thought, 'What in the world have I gotten myself into?

As a student guide at the Park School a few years ago, Sharna Goldseker, class of 1992, was giving a group of prospects and their parents a tour of the campus.She explained the school's progressive philosophy and mentioned that grades were not a matter of great emphasis at Park -- not given at all in the lower and middle schools, given in the upper school only because colleges expected them."But how," asked a nervous mother, "do kids learn if there aren't any grades?"The perception of Park reflected in the question -- that it is a place where there are few academic standards, where there is little emphasis on "the basics" and more conversation than rules -- has been a public relations problem for the school since its founding on Auchentoroly Terrace, across from Druid Hill Park (thus, Park School)

What's big and blue and crazy for books? That would be YoJo. The 7-foot-tall kids' character will playfully entertain and encourage youngsters to explore the joys of reading at his show "Choose to Read" today at Federal Hill Park. YoJo's show will be the final "Kids' Stuff" event of the summer. In his act, YoJo believes television and video games are more fun than books. But after discovering that the more one reads, the smarter one gets, YoJo changes his attitude and dives head-first into reading.

Running XTERRA Parks & People Scramble 5K Where -- Druid Hill Park (starting at Stieff Silver Building) When -- Sunday, 9 a.m. What for -- People, music, running - in costume. Info -- 410-308-1870 Halloween Ghosts, Ghouls and Legends Where -- Sports Legends Museum When -- Sunday, 1 p.m. What for -- Two-hour children's event; costume contest. Online -- www.baberuthmuseum.com Pro soccer Red Bull New York@D.C. United Where -- RFK Stadium, Washington When -- Sunday, 6 p.m. What for -- MLS Eastern Conference semifinal Game 2. Online -- dcunited.

They're the million-dollar properties with the 10-cent price tags.Look at 'em, up there on Druid Park Lake Drive: these poor, dumb, deserted, cancerous buildings, with ghosts clanking through their dusty interiors and windows smashed and trash lying in the weeds out front and, surrounding much of it, iron fences with barbed wire across the top.Somebody ought to be ashamed - but who?Try standing there, at Druid Park Lake Drive on either side of Linden Avenue, and imagine living on some of this property.

When more than 300 people turned out recently to tour six vacant wrecks in Reservoir Hill, it was clear evidence of tremendous curiosity in what once was one of Baltimore's most desirable neighborhoods. The question now is how to turn this faith in the city's future into buyer demand. The answer: Continue bringing in suburbanites, particularly from the Washington area, who recognize the inherent value of the area's tarnished Victorian and Edwardian houses and have the deep pockets to restore them.

Last week's question Where's the best place in Baltimore to keep cool? 14 votes Mall/movies (46.7 percent) 6 votes Frozen food aisle at the local grocery store (20 percent) 4 votes Loch Raven Reservoir (13.3 percent) 3 votes Neighborhood swim club (10 percent) 2 votes The Inner Harbor (6.7 percent) 1 votes Druid Hill Park (3.3 percent) 0 votes Patterson Park (0 percent) 30 total votes This week's question Which local baseball team's games do you most enjoy attending? Aberdeen IronBirds Baltimore Orioles Bowie Baysox Frederick Keys Hagerstown Suns Vote at www.sunspot.

Superstorm Sandy may not have hit Baltimore as hard as weather forecasters had warned, but it did claim one of the city's oldest trees, an impressive Osage orange in Druid Hill Park that's been estimated to be nearly four centuries old. As reported Tuesday morning by my Baltimore Sun colleague Steve Kilar, (a "scoop" wrongly attributed to the Baltimore Brew when I first posted this - sorry, Steve!) the tree fell across Greenspring Avenue on Monday as winds and rain lashed the region.

As taken from the pages of The Aegis dated Thursday, August 30, 1962: Ground was broken for the first planned industrial park in Harford County. Fifty-two acres were designated by a group of private citizens for development into an industrial park in Forest Hill. There were 11 lots, ranging in size from 2.8 acres to 5.9 acres, available for sale or on a lease-back basis with option to buy. The first tenant to sign a lease for the property was the MarBelAir Co. of Memphis, manufacturers of precast Marbell terrazzo tile for flooring, walls, concrete blocks and stair treads.

There's a new champion in Baltimore. Not a sports team, a tree. Tucked amid a clump of loblolly pines in Druid Hill Park stands Maryland's largest striped maple. Acer pensylvanicum , as scientists know it, looks striking in winter, when its bare branches show off its greenish bark painted with orange and gray stripes. It isn't particularly big, as trees go. It's an understory tree, like a dogwood. This one stands 47 feet high, with a trunk that measures 21/3 feet around.

A Baltimore police officer out walking his department dog in Druid Hill Park Wednesday afternoon shot and killed a pit bull that he said was attacking him, according to a police report. Police said Officer Jake Corbett was near the department's K-9 headquarters near Swann Drive when he noticed a pit bull running off the leash. The police dog, Thoda, was wearing a harness with Baltimore police patches and a neon police identification tag on a six-foot leash. Corbett said in a report that a black dog stared down Thoda from atop a hill about 100 yards away.

During an emotional hearing Friday, the Maryland Public Service Commission adopted new regulations intended to prevent accidental electrocutions like the one that killed 14-year-old Deanna Green at a church softball game in Druid Hill Park more than five years ago. The requirements will force state electric companies to find — and eliminate — dangerous "contact voltage" in public objects that can transmit electricity, such as streetlights, traffic...

Former farmland near the heart of Columbia would become a children's garden and "early childhood education nature center" if a citizens group is successful in persuading Howard County officials to carry out the project. The land is part of a 300-acre tract - once known as the Smith farm and now called Blandair Park - that the Rouse Co. was unable to acquire when it assembled 15,000 acres to build Columbia starting in the 1960s. The heavily wooded property straddles Route 175 between Tamar Drive and Thunder Hill Road, making it highly visible to people driving to Columbia from Interstate 95. Howard County acquired it in 1998, one year after owner Nancy Smith died without a will, and has an eight-phase plan to transform it for park and recreational use. The entire project is expected to cost $54.7 million and take eight to 10 years to complete.

$9.2 million approved for Program Open Space The Board of Public Works approved more than $9.2 million in Program Open Space funding yesterday for Baltimore parks and recreation areas, according to the state Department of Natural Resources. The funding includes: $450,000 for roof replacements at the Lakeland Recreation Center, Herring Run Recreation Center, Mount Royal Recreation Center and the Dome Basketball Court at Madison Square Recreation Center. $500,000 to complete the second phase of work at the Lyndhurst Recreation Center gymnasium.

For years, St. Paul's Cemetery, a Victorian city of the dead on a knoll in a remote corner of Druid Hill Park, was nothing more than a nearly forgotten, weed-choked, overgrown burial ground that had been subjected to mindless vandalism through the decades. Today, it's brimming with new life as volunteers and members of Martini Lutheran Church man humming lawn mowers and screaming chainsaws as they cut grass and remove felled trees. Their common goal is to restore the cemetery, which dates to 1854, to its former glory.

Gay Pride festivals are in season. Washington's Capital Pride was last weekend, and so was Philadelphia's. Chesapeake Pride is coming up in mid-July at Anne Arundel County Fairgrounds. But this weekend, it's time for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Baltimoreans to celebrate. The Baltimore Pride festival , which officially kicks off Friday and ends Sunday, includes an opening garden party, a performance by Deborah Cox, a block party, a high-heel race and the annual parade.