Neighborhood

Earl Johnson's boots crunch broken glass from liquor bottles as he walks down an alley in East Baltimore's Oliver neighborhood. He is just blocks from the site of the firebombing of a family who called the police on area drug dealers and were killed for it and just yards from some of the most memorable scenes of urban decay in "The Wire. " At his side are Rich Blake, 32, a Marine Corps veteran, and Jeremy Johnson, 34 , a Navy veteran, who like Earl — who is no relation — are on a different kind of mission.

The vision is this: At a six-acre wooded campus in Pasadena, Hospice of the Chesapeake has its headquarters, counseling program, a conference center and hospice facility. But the setting includes services, including tutoring and transportation, offered by others. The organization is about to start making that a reality. Ailing trees are being removed in preparation for a $2 million renovation of the offices of a defunct engineering company on a site tucked off Ritchie Highway.

The townhomes have the amenities of some of Baltimore's high-end neighborhoods - exposed brick, granite counter tops, trey ceilings and soaking tubs - but they're located in an area trying to leave its violent drug past behind. Just a few years ago, the homes located in the Oliver neighborhood in East Baltimore were vacant hulks where drug dealers would loiter on the steps. Then a developer stepped in and renovated 14 buildings along two blocks with environmentally friendly features.

For $3 a person, you can use the bathroom of Carol Hines' home on Winner St, across from Pimlico race course.  Hines decided to give entrepreneurship a try for the first time this year, one of many enterprises that pop up on Preakness day in the Park Heights and Pimlico neighborhoods.  Besides offering her restroom for Preakness attendees, Hines cooked up some of her best dishes, including jerk chicken, curry chicken and barbecue ribs. ...

If you lived in Baltimore in the 1970s, it seemed that William Donald Schaefer paved every alley. An exaggeration? Yes. But then, as now, old Baltimore needed a lot of fixing and Schaefer was in his neighborhood mode. He did it well and had the support of some pretty amazing people. He listened to his aides and he also obsessed over letters his constituents mailed him. I recall one night after a City Council meeting when his housing and development chief, Bob Embry, was having dinner at the old Horn and Horn restaurant on Baltimore Street.

Regarding the protests held in front of the Baltimore Circuit Court over the alleged beating of a black teen-ager, Nick Madigan wrote in his article ("Protesters gather as brothers plead not guilty in assault case," Feb. 17) that the boy was beaten, "as he walked through their neighborhood. "  Since when does any racial or ethnic group own a neighborhood?  Further, the Werdesheim brothers do not live in the neighborhood where the incident occurred.  In fact, they live in racially mixed neighborhoods with a crime rate way below just about any neighborhood in the city — as many Jews in Northwest Baltimore do. That is probably due to the great work of volunteer patrol groups such as Shomrim and the Northwest Citizens Patrol.

This former resident of Ruxton is not amused at the ugly show of prejudicial stigma against the mentally ill by it current residents. When the light rail was proposed to have a station in Ruxton, the same sort of bigotry was trotted out against the "blacks in the city. " There are plenty of unsound minds and substance abuse in Ruxton; I know I lived there for years. The hue and cry now emanating from Ruxton that a few more folks with unsound minds and a bit of substance abuse issues might be joining the neighborhood is a logical absurdity.

Dear Councilman McMahan: Wal-mart is attempting to build a super store in our neighborhood at Emmorton Road and Bel Air South Parkway. We do NOT want this store in our neighborhood. They would not be good for our property values nor provide anything positive to our environment. They are projecting 500 cars an hour traffic flow that I think is an underestimate. But even at 500 per hour would require massive upgrades to the infrastructure and traffic expansion. This is not a good thing for us. We do not want this kind of traffic in our community.

It started about 30 years ago — no one seems to recall the exact date — when three men who'd grown up together in Pigtown took a vacant lot at the corner of Ward and Bayard streets, sank two metal pegs into the ground and started tossing horseshoes back and forth. None of the three — not Roy Whitney, not his cousin Emory Green, not Emory's little brother, Leon — had a clue they were founding a tradition. "We started playing for the fun of it, then word got around, people started coming from other neighborhoods, and it kept on growing," Leon Green, 62, said Saturday afternoon as rhythm and blues music, the smell of burgers on barbecues and the "clink" of horseshoes filled the air at the First Annual Horseshoe Tournament at the Pit In Pigtown.

The CA Board's Planning and Strategy Committee, as indicated in the Master Plan, is eager to close ("repurpose" being the operative euphemism) three neighborhood village pools (Faulkner Ridge, Jeffers Hill, Talbott Springs). At the CA Master Aquatics Plan Public Meeting on Jan. 31, many residents testified that they opposed the closing of their neighborhood pools. They stated eloquently and passionately that such closings would be a great loss. And, they testified that should their pools be closed, going to the nearest alternate pool would, in many cases, require their children to cross highway 175, a most dangerous trek which these parents stated they would forbid.

Baltimore has a gem online that's worth exploring for a few minutes the next time you're info-snacking on the web. CityView is Baltimore's online database that lets you plug in your address, or any other address you're interested in, and search for crab houses that are nearby, local food trucks or libraries within walking distance. The site is a map-based portal that plots addresses by neighborhood. The city bills the site as being useful for residents, visitors, researchers and businessmen and women.

For many years, some Baltimore area neighborhood groups have fought strenuously against the addition of methadone clinics to their communities on the grounds that such facilities inevitably bring loiterers and traffic, depress property values and increase crime. Yet it may be time to take at least one of those objections off the list. A soon-to-be-published study that looked at incidents of crime in Baltimore over a two-year period found that the presence of a methadone clinic did not correlate with higher crime rates.

Detectives are investigating an overnight shooting in the 2500 block of Edgecombe Circle in the Parklane neighborhood of Baltimore, police said. An adult male was shot in the legs, according to authorities, and that he was in stable condition. ywenger@baltsun.com

The other evening, I sat at Doris Poling's dining room table and we discussed Overlea. A lifelong resident of the Northeast Baltimore neighborhood, she asked what angle I would take in writing about it. After all, it is a quiet, livable residential community crossed by Belair Road and straddling Baltimore City and Baltimore County. Not much happens here, except for the current spring show of lilacs, fresh grass, irises, azaleas and buzzing bees. The place, with its church steeples and old-fashioned walk-to shopping strip, looks like a community out of a holiday train garden.

Rep. Elijah Cummings wants folks to know that he's keeping it real. Like really, really, really real. Starting with where he lives. He told a crowd at Howard University Wednesday just how down-and-dirty real his Baltimore neighborhood is. “I live in the inner, inner, inner-city. I'm one of the few congresspeople who live in the inner, inner city," The Hill reported Cummings saying. "You know, I ain't living close to the inner city, I'm right there on the 'Do the Right Thing' block.

The guilty verdict against one of two brothers accused of beating a Northwest Baltimore teen cuts through the conflicting accounts of what happened on Fallstaff Road nearly 18 months ago and arrives at an essential truth: When Eliyahu Werdesheim stepped out of his car and confronted Corey Ausby, he stopped being a volunteer on neighborhood patrol and became a vigilante. No matter whose account of the incident you believe, it is clear that he overstepped his bounds. Neighborhood patrols serve a valuable purpose, and Shomrim, the organization to which Eliyahu Werdesheim belonged at the time, has long been lauded for its efforts in Northwest Baltimore.

George Zimmerman was not properly doing his job as a volunteer neighborhood watch captain. He had no right to follow a person and make contact with the person. If you suspect something while performing that role, you call 911 give location and stand way back, and you should not carry a gun on watch, even with a permit. How do I know this? I lived in Florida for 18 years. I was in a gated community and pulled neighborhood watch duty many times. I also had a concealed gun permit for 17 years in Florida, which is not easy to get. You get a book of laws for when you can use it. I guess George Zimmerman did not understand the laws or just did not pay attention.

Tucked away near the western edge of Baltimore, the neighborhood of Hunting Ridge is full of charm. Stone, brick and wood homes are nestled on nice-sized woodsy lots along winding streets and backed by beautiful parkland. "It's beautiful and cozy and hidden," said David McDonald, president of the Hunting Ridge Community Assembly. "It's the best neighborhood in Baltimore." Bordered by Cooks Lane, Edmonson Avenue, Swann Avenue and Leakin Park, the neighborhood is diverse, easily accessible and, according to its residents, is one of the city's best-kept secrets.

Younger members of Gail L. Dener's neighborhood association suggested a neighborhood website in the '90s, but older members didn't see the point. Who needed to go online when you could just go right outside? There was no easy way to set a site up, either. "We tried to get some help in establishing a website for county neighborhoods, but could not connect with anyone who had the expertise," Dener wrote me in an email. Well -- the once-robust association for the Parkville neighborhood since died "with a whimper.

Methadone clinics are often seen as the bad neighbor nobody wants. Residents concerned about crime and other quality-of-life issues often protest if they even hear word of a methadone clinic, which treats those addicted to heroin and other opiates, is considering moving into the area. But drug-addiction specialists who say methadone is one of the most effective ways to treat opiate dependency are hoping a new study led by a University of Maryland School of Medicine assistant professor debunks concerns that the clinics breed crime and drag down neighborhoods.