Lounge

Makin' Out at Sonar The lowdown -- When Sonar started hosting live bands in its current location, much of its attention to club and lounge music fell by the wayside. Now, owner Lonnie Fisher is beginning to revive the venue's club and lounge scene. DJ Feelgood recently moved back into the city and started a Thursday night residency called Makin' Out a couple of weeks ago. The next one is tonight. If you go -- Doors open at 9 p.m. It's 18 and older. Tickets are $5 before 11 p.m. and $7 afterward.

Between songs, the dancer steps to the side of the mirrored stage at the Diamond Lounge, casually removes her final piece of stringy clothing and, without fanfare, crosses a line that last month could have gotten her arrested.Next door at the Jewel Box, veteran doorman Lucky Phillips barks to a passing group of baseball-capped college types a promise he couldn't make a month ago: "Come on, guys, we've got what you want -- no cover charge on the outside, no clothes on the inside."It seems that The Block, Baltimore's rumpled but resilient slice of Babylon, is giddy that it can now do what it once did so well: get naked.

The door opens into the players' lounge, and there is Anna Kournikova, sitting on a couch, eating a cold-cut sandwich. She is dressed in a sweat suit. Her long, blond hair is bundled into a braided bun on the back of her head, and she looks like a typical teen-ager.Kournikova, however, is not known for being typical.The young woman, who will appear tomorrow night with No. 2-ranked Lindsay Davenport in the Chevy Chase Bank Tennis Challenge at Baltimore Arena, is the current glamour queen of professional tennis.

Anne Arundel County police are investigating whether an off-duty 18-year veteran of the force was involved in an assault, which allegedly included the use of a racial slur, on the operators of a Jessup lounge.The incident occurred just before 1 a.m. Sunday at La Continental Restaurant when a group of people were barred from entering and a fight ensued, said Lt. Jeff Kelly, a county police spokesman. The restaurant is located off Route 175 near the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.Kelly said the matter has been assigned to the Police Department's criminal investigation division to determine whether charges should be filed.

Two men wearing ski masks robbed a Crownsville lounge at gunpoint Monday night, county police said.According to a report, the men entered Sonny's Lounge in the 1300 block of Generals Highway about 9: 45 p.m. One of them put a silver revolver to a clerk's head and ordered him to give them money from the cash register.The clerk complied. The men left the store with an undisclosed amount of money and drove north on Generals Highway in a red Chevrolet Cavalier, police said.Man robs pizza shop with threatening noteA bandit robbed a Glen Burnie pizza shop of an undisclosed amount of money Monday night, county police said.

An obituary of Charles Edward Blackwell in Thursday's editions described jazz legend Ruby Glover incorrectly. Glover is still performing.The Sun regrets the error.When it came to settling arguments concerning jazz and its history, Charles Edward Blackwell usually had the final word.Mr. Blackwell, who died Monday of heart failure at his West Baltimore home, had collected jazz recordings nearly all of his life and had a vast collection of records. He was 78.As the longtime manager and bartender at the old 3 P's Bar in East Baltimore and later Maceo's Lounge on the west side, "Mr. B."

The Oxbow Restaurant on Ritchie Highway in Arnold makes some pretty big claims. "Seafood & Steaks," the menu promises."Award-winning crab cakes," the marquee announces."

ABOARD THE AUTO TRAIN - The party was rocking, literally. A karaoke singer crooned Hello My Baby," and friends hoisted plastic glasses of wine. All the while, the lounge - a car on Amtrak's Auto Train - swayed and bumped through the South at speeds of up to 79 mph.For many older folks, the Auto Train is a winter rite of passage, whisking them and their cars from Lorton, Va., outside Washington, to the warmth of Sanford, Fla., near Orlando. There they join the more than 600,000 snowbirds," mostly retirees and empty nesters, staying in Florida in any given month during the winter.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- The last Ink Spot is still making music here, high above the ocean.Duke Gainous, whose baritone tones so distinguished The Ink Spots on such classics as "If I Didn't Care," works nightly in the 10th-floor Penthouse Lounge of La Playa Best Western Resort.Sitting around the lounge, a varied crowd of mature locals and partying race fans sip their drinks, dance to everything from Ink ,, Spot favorites to the "Electric Slide" and listen to the man whose voice thrilled teen-agers in the 1940s.

It's the weekend. Time to go out and have some fun. But what's your idea of fun? Going to a crowded bar, standing elbow to elbow with several hundred people, drinking warm beer out of a plastic cup and trying to hold a conversation by shouting over the pounding bass of the dance music?Maybe you have another idea of fun. It would be nice to go somewhere where you could sit down. Someplace warm, inviting and kind of hip. A place where you drink from real glasses and where the music soothes the soul instead of making the fillings in your teeth vibrate.

Last week I did a Top 10 list of romantic restaurants for the budget-minded on my blog, Dining@Large. Because I believe you'll have a better time with your sweetie celebrating at a restaurant before or after Valentine's Day when places aren't as crowded, I'm reprinting it here. Note that the list is in alphabetical order. (We also discussed where to go for the what-the-heck-she's-worth-it dinner, when money isn't a consideration.) 1 Annabel Lee Tavern in Canton. Dark and romantically mysterious setting.

The city liquor board fined the owner of TD Lounge - formerly Timothy Dean Bistro - $3,100 yesterday after one of the board's inspectors was manhandled by restaurant security during an investigation last year. Owner Timothy Dean acknowledged during the hearing that his security guards should not have physically kept the inspector from entering his business, in the 1700 block of Eastern Ave., during an early-morning private party Nov. 15. But a member of Dean's staff testified that the inspector did not immediately identify himself and appeared to be trying to avoid paying a $20 cover fee. The inspector testified that he was escorted out of the front of the restaurant by three security guards, and he was not allowed to begin his investigation until Dean intervened.

Perfection would be nice, but life, and bargain dining, seldom are. Often, it takes a happy-go-lucky outlook to find the true value in an evening out. It can be discovered sometimes in the specialty of the house, that one great thing that keeps diners coming back, but just as often in the ambience, the service and the management. I think of them as "grace notes," those small but essential things that made an average outing very good and a very good one exceptional. Here are some examples from six months of inexpensive dining.

For years, Zeeba Lounge has been in a league of its own. When it debuted in 2004, it was Baltimore's first hookah bar. Even though a handful of other hookah bars have sprung up around town, Zeeba is still the city's swankiest spot for puffing flavored tobacco through big glass water pipes. And it's indisputably in demand: On Friday and Saturday nights, lines routinely snake out the door and onto the sidewalk. A few years back, a hookah bar called Three Kings of Egypt opened right across Light Street from Zeeba.

If any local fine-dining restaurant has a better shot than another of surviving in this economy, it would be the Brewer's Art in Mount Vernon. My reasoning is simple here. First, when anything is going on at the Lyric or Meyerhoff, the place will be busy. Second, the Brewer's Art doesn't have to depend on events for business. As far as I can tell, every college student and young professional in the city hangs out there. The bar and lounge area were packed on a weeknight, and the downstairs lounge was even busier.

Pull on your velvet jeans and let's head for Red Maple. Baltimore's foodie community is abuzz about the fact that Jill Snyder, its executive chef, is a contestant on the fifth season of Bravo's reality show Top Chef, which will kick off on Nov. 12. When I last ate at this ultra-chic Mount Vernon lounge not long after it opened almost seven years ago, Snyder was not yet heading the kitchen. (She took over in 2005.) It's time, it seems to me, for a return visit. It turns out that besides the executive chef, things have changed remarkably little at Red Maple.

LAST YEAR, WHEN THE OWNERS OF Mosaic in Power Plant Live wanted to retool the high-end lounge, they tapped Vincent Martinez for the job. Martinez, a Texas native who managed the Mosaic in Houston, moved to Baltimore in December and oversaw Mosaic's expansion and reopening in March. He now runs the club's daily operations. Martinez lives in Butchers Hill. 1 A six pack "No, not of Natty Boh or Yuengling, but the one I lost because I've been drinking too much of the other kind. It's swimsuit season!

Pur lounge, Canton's crisp new three-story club, has an undeniable appeal. Since opening in mid-January where the GoodLove Bar used to sit, Pur has upped the ante more than any other city club. With swaths of white paint, patches of stone tile, brick and wood, Pur's decor is the polar opposite of GoodLove's dark and earthy interior. Almost everything about the lounge is over the top. Siamese fighting fish float in small glass bowls set into a wall near the back of the first floor. Water cascades down a stone facade from the third to the second floor.

No expense was spared for Gwendolyn Burgess' 32nd birthday party in March at Maceo's Lounge in West Baltimore. A band played downstairs, while a DJ spun records upstairs before a group of about 40 people, including at least five Baltimore City school police officers. About 11:30 p.m., the party for Burgess, a school police dispatcher, erupted in gunfire. Panicked guests took cover or rushed for the narrow exits, knocking over snacks and tables. Lamont Thomas Harrell, 23, had opened fire on Allen Coates, 36, shooting him nine times.

For some young soldiers, it's mom's turkey and ham and greens that lures them home. For others, two weeks' holiday leave means a chance to hang out with high-school buddies again after months of training, to just chill and play video games. For Pvt. Misty Floyd, 20, going home for Christmas means a chance for a morning catch-up with her mother back in Tupelo, Miss., whom she hasn't seen since Sept. 3. "Oh, man! Me and my mom drink coffee every morning," Floyd said with a smile as she sat with dozens of other young servicemen and -women in the USO Metro lounge at BWI Marshall Airport before dawn yesterday.