Make Baltimore

BALTIMOREANS ARE a prideful lot. They love their city and have a tendency to brag about its unique culture, artistic venues, economic rebirth, close-knit neighborhoods, ethnic ties and yes, even its eccentricity and general funkiness. They don't call it Charm City for nothing. But with Mayor Martin O'Malley's official entry into Maryland's gubernatorial race yesterday, the long knives are out. The Baltimore-bashing season is now open. Politicians from Arbutus to Rockville are only too happy to make sweeping and ill-informed condemnations of a city that deserves better.

Ten years ago, at age 20, Eric Svejcar was a concert pianist with the Cincinnati Pops. For three days. Svejcar despised all the scrutiny in the profession and felt he would be judged a sloppy player. Itching to focus more on the music than the notes, he came up with a compromise that would allow him to trade in Mozart's concertos for the show tunes of West Side Story: "I realized I could be a pianist without being a concert pianist," said Svejcar. Now, in Center Stage's production of Two Gentlemen of Verona, a musical from the creator of Hair playing through March 27, Svejcar is not only the pianist, but also the musical director, conductor and arranger.

More people booked hotel rooms in Baltimore this summer than last summer, and they paid more for them. But rising hotel rates are making the city less attractive to meeting and convention planners, who are taking business to Philadelphia, Washington and elsewhere. That was the conclusion of the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association, which released results from its quarterly report and a new Baltimore Tourism Barometer yesterday. The barometer offers additional information - including attendance at area venues, airport arrivals and hotel room and sales-tax numbers - to help the city, its hotels and attractions market and plan better.

WITH LITTLE FANFARE, the voters of Baltimore rewarded Mayor Martin O'Malley with a second term with a resounding 88 percent of the votes cast. Such a huge voter mandate, irrespective of the overwhelming Democratic voter registration in the city, is impressive and reflects the spirit of promise, hope and enthusiasm that emanates from the man who urged Baltimoreans to "Believe." Although the business community has differed on occasions with the mayor, one would be hard-pressed to describe his first term as anything but stellar.

Elisabeth Farwell is shedding some light on one of the major characters in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera. Although the show is a musical, this character doesn't sing, dance or even speak. It is, however, a highly animate object - the famous chandelier, which rises over the audience in the first scene, then comes crashing down just before intermission. As the advance stage manager of Phantom, which begins performances at the Hippodrome Theatre Wednesday, Farwell oversees the arrival and installation of the show - with its gilded proscenium arch, hundreds of costumes, life-sized model elephant and mechanized boat.

Bob Reuter is a religious man, but he practically worked his way out of Roman Catholicism a dozen years ago before finally finding a church that could accommodate a parishioner in a wheelchair. "St. Vincent de Paul's was the last stop on my way to becoming an Episcopalian," he says over lunch on a recent afternoon. It is hard to tell if Reuter means to be funny or is simply stating a fact. Reuter is a man who strikes some as all edges, and jagged ones at that. He is not without a sense of humor, but his observations are often caustic and delivered with the snap of a karate chop.

Andrew Silverman paced coatless in the courtyard beside his restaurant, City Crab and Seafood Company, in Lutherville's Greenspring Station. It was barely 10 o'clock on a freezing weekday morning not too long ago, but he'd already quizzed the hostess twice on how many reservations were booked for lunch. A grand total of six, she replied, had shot up to nine. Frosted by this news, if not by the single-digit temperatures outside, Silverman sighed deeply, sending forth a plume of visible despair.

The University of Maryland, Baltimore begins works today on the first phase of its $300 million UMB BioPark, the first of two major research parks that experts say are the key to Baltimore's dream of becoming an international leader in the bioscience industry. The UMB project, on the city's west side, is the smaller of two projects flanking downtown. The second is a much larger development planned near the Johns Hopkins medical campus on the east side. "These two biotechnology parks are more important to Baltimore's economic future than practically anything since the Inner Harbor," said Anirban Basu, chairman and chief executive of Optimal Solutions Group, an economic and policy consulting firm in Baltimore.

WASHINGTON - President Bush will polish off a week of fund-raising Friday with a luncheon in Baltimore, where he will ask Maryland Republicans for money and support for his re-election bid. The president is scheduled to speak at the Hyatt Regency in the Inner Harbor just before noon. He will then stop in Halethorpe in Baltimore County to talk about the economy. At the fund-raiser, Bush is likely to deliver some variation of a stump speech he has been giving to donors around the country, in which he says his administration is "meeting the test of our time."

Baltimore home fair If you're looking to make Baltimore your home, or already live in Baltimore and are looking for new scenery, come to the Live Baltimore "Buying Into Baltimore" Fair and Neighborhood Tours, running from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. In the past five years, this free fair has helped thousands of people find homes in the Baltimore area. Beginning at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, 1400 W. Cold Spring Lane, participants will take guided bus tours through city neighborhoods, including Hampden, Riverside and Dickeyville, to see homes for sale.