Landers

No picnic for candidate Landers at Proven Team cookoutJody Landers was feeling rejected this week after the chilly rebuff he got from the Proven Democratic Team at its weekend picnic for precinct workers and their political friends.The 3rd District councilmen, who's running for the comptroller's job being vacated by the retiring Hyman Pressman, was getting distinctly unfriendly vibes when he arrived at Roy Staten's Shore on Miller's Island Road, where the old line East Baltimore organization held its annual cookout.

It was nervous time at Fair Lanes Middlesex on Sunday, Feb. 26 for Rocky Landers of Essex.Charles McElhose of the Duckpin Bowlers Tour was presenting a duckpin singles event with a first-place prize of $800. It was the first singles tournament for the 16-year-old Landers and there some butterflies.Landers has a career high game and set of 189 and 476, respectively, but the DBT is an pins-over-average format so every bowler has a chance to win the event; a high average doesn't give an advantage.

The incoming mayor, Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake, could have a tremendous impact on improving the city's housing market by committing to lowering property taxes and pushing for a land bank authority to help the city get control of vacant homes, said Joseph T. "Jody" Landers III, executive vice president of the Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors. The city has seen its tax base erode as it struggles to compete with the declining home prices and lower tax rate of the surrounding counties, Landers said.

In the latest effort to rid downtown Baltimore of The Block, the storied adult entertainment district, a bill was introduced today in the City Council to phase out the strip joints and peep shows over three years.The legislation would amend the zoning code to prohibit adult entertainment such as nude dancing bars and peep shows from all business zones and from the M-1 light manufacturing zone.Adult entertainment businesses would become conditional uses in M-2 and M-3 zones, but they would have to be at least 1,000 feet from any homes, churches, schools and libraries.

Mayor Schmoke had a good Democratic primary. He won 57.5percent of the vote against seven opponents, two of whom had won past citywide elections for major office. Mr. Schmoke was nearly 18 percent ahead of the second-place finisher, the former Mayor Clarence H. ''Du'' Burns. That is a thumping.The outcome is an endorsement of Mr. Schmoke's first term in office, compared to his initial victory in 1987, when he squeaked to 50.6 percent of the vote against 47.4 percent for Mr. Burns and a scattering for two nobodies.

Apparently tired of his candidate being broadsided by mayoral rival Clarence H. Du Burns, the manager of Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's campaign committee says Schmoke will be firing a few shots of his own.Larry S. Gibson told a recent gathering of the New Democratic Club that Schmoke's 1991 re-election campaign will talk about the "deficiencies of the mayor's opponents" as well as the mayor's record in office.That is a marked change from Schmoke's 1987 campaign when, Gibson said, there was a "directive" not to criticize Burns to show "respect and deference to the city's first elected black mayor."

Once upon a time, Kurt Schmoke had this funny idea that being mayor was about running the city. Today, he knows better.That's because he can read that he is "too cool" and "too cerebral." That he is "detached." That he is "uninspiring." That he is "cold." That he is not sufficiently "likable."And make no mistake: likability is a big factor in American politics. Michael Dukakis lost his race for president for a number of reasons, but likability was certainly one of them.Dukakis was called Zorba the Clerk, the man who could eat one potato chip.

In murky daylight, The Block feels like the morning after a party that went on too long. Somebody's got to clean up the cigarette butts and the booze, but everybody's gone home to sleep off their yesterdays.In the doorway of The Jewel Box early yesterday morning, a woman suddenly emerges in purple stretch pants and gazes out at the world through puffy marshmallow eye sockets. The night before, with the lights dim, she was somebody's vision of sensuous. Now she looks like she's dodging the eviction cops.

INSIDE THE Rams Head on Sunday afternoon was the future of Baltimore, and maybe the future of politics around here. The club was jammed with young people who have learned to feel at home in this city in ways their parents have not. The parents were the generation that fled town for Rosedale and Owings Mills and Bel Air. Their children came of age discovering the Inner Harbor and Fells Point and Canton and Federal Hill across long nights of partying....

The 4,242 residents of Lauraville now reside at one address: www.lauravillemd.com.Anyone interested in learning about this northeast Baltimore neighborhood can hop on the Information Highway, stop at the community's World Wide Web site and discover the advantages that this community, rooted in the early 20th century, offers."