Streets

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims churned in the Lebanese capital yesterday as armed clashes at a university killed at least two people and overflowed into surrounding neighborhoods. Hours after dark, the army imposed an overnight curfew in an effort to restore order. Community leaders took to the airwaves to soothe enflamed emotions. Rampaging youths had smashed cars, started fires and attacked the party headquarters of their political rivals for hours after the gunfire and rioting earlier in the day at Beirut Arab University.

Several Harford County agencies, along with police and about 30 volunteers, will conduct a biennial count of the homeless Tuesday. The results will help in the creation of new programs and the improvement of existing services, as well as ensure federal funding for programs for the homeless, county officials say. Harford receives more than $400,000 annually from the federal government to house the homeless in the community. The county spends about $2 million on shelters and programs to prevent homelessness, officials said.

The bocce tournament was in full swing by the time the float carrying the mariachi band came snaking through Little Italy's skinny streets. A cultural fusion was on display yesterday at the city's 117th Columbus Day parade, complete with a float representing the city's Hispanic Business Association, plenty of local high school marching bands and the standard, and always popular, Frank Sinatra impersonators. "Columbus opened the door for immigrants to come to the United States," said Angelo Solera, a Hispanic community advocate who helped coordinate the participation of Hispanic businesses.

I ADMIT it: I cut through.To get from Northeast Baltimore to Roland Avenue to my daughter's school, I drive through residential streets in Homeland and Roland Park. Anyone who has tried to negotiate Northern Parkway or Cold Spring Lane knows how sclerotic Baltimore's east-west arteries are. So people cut through.This commuter traffic does not please residents of Homeland, to whom apparently, we motorists on our way to school and work are a crowd of bashi-bazouks galloping over the hill to plunder their houses and slaughter their cattle.

WANTED: BLOCK captains. No experience necessary. Duties include being neighborly, playing in sand and starting fires. Apply at www.LuminaryProject.com.Kings Contrivance resident Jay Cincotta could place such an ad to recruit help (although he hasn't). Cincotta plans to bathe 1,000 Columbia streets in candlelight on the evening of Jan. 1, 2000."I think he got the idea when he was a kid," said his mother, Elaine Cincotta, who lives in Town Center. "We used to drive over to the neighborhoods by Centennial Lane at Christmas where they had luminaries on the streets."

You get a taste of it in Fells Point, where Mexican eateries, Syrian-run convenience stores and Greek-owned machine repair shops dot the streets. There's a hint of it inside Goldman's Kosher Bakery on Reisterstown Road. A glimmer among the Vietnamese groceries in Southwest Baltimore.Head outside the city limits. You can sense it in Randallstown and traditionally white Dundalk and Essex, where an increasing number of middle-class African-Americans are buying homes. In the Korean groceries popping up in Ellicott City.

In the wake of rampant drug activity on Westminster's west side, residents, police, prosecutors and politicians have taken up a united fight to rid the area of dealers and addicts -- one street at a time.A check of police reports, court files and recent indictments by a Carroll County grand jury showed the same streets and, in some instances, the same addresses keep appearing in drug activity: Sullivan, Pennsylvania, Kemper and Wimert avenues, and Union, West Main, Green, Liberty and Carroll streets.

A man known as Joe Homeless,who spent more than a decade living on the streets of New York City and had his story published, died Tuesday of heart failure at 56.The man used Joe Homeless as a pen name and, according to friends, did not want his name known. He died at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, according to George McDonald, president of the Doe Fund Inc., a nonprofit organization that assists homeless people.Using a tape recorder he had fished from the trash, Joe Homeless dictated his story while living on the streets.

THE FOLKS at Geneva "Cleo" Washington's church gave her a grand homecoming Thursday night. Choir members lifted their voices and sang exquisite, beautiful, soul-stirring hymns. Friends recounted how they cherished her glowing smile and her poetic glide as she marched down the aisle on Sundays.Seated in the front row at her funeral were Mrs. Washington's grieving husband, Johnnie Washington Sr., and her three daughters -- Sheila Brady, Michelle Johnson and Tangela Alexander. Missing was her youngest son, Gary B. Washington, serving time at the Maryland House of Correction at Jessup for a murder conviction.

A nurse at Mercy Medical Center was charged yesterday with fleeing an accident and other traffic violations after Baltimore police said she cut off an MTA bus, forcing its driver to swerve into two parked cars and plow into the hospital facade.Two bystanders, Lisa Harris and Karen Rayfield, said they ran after the 1985 Toyota Camry as its driver sped away from the accident at Calvert and Saratoga streets and into the hospital's parking garage a half-block away.The Camry collided with the bus, damaging the car's left front fender, police said.

Those going to this weekend's Fells Point Fun Festival might consider a farewell appreciative look at the Moran tugboats that tie up alongside Recreation Pier at the foot of Broadway. They might not be around next year if this site begins a long-discussed transformation into a waterfront hotel. If an agreement hatched at the city's Board of Estimates goes as planned, Moran could relocate farther down the harbor on Clinton Street out of sight from Fells Point. For as long as I can recall, those dark red tugs have darted around the harbor and tied up here.

It's taken Baltimore a long time to take outdoor table service at restaurants and bars seriously. We may be late to buy into a trend, but now it seems to be spreading like Formstone. I tend to equate the outdoor tables with an increase in outdoor presence in general. It's been a pleasant summer, with few prolonged patches of heat, and everyone seems to be out walking, biking or just taking in the sights of Baltimore. I watch grocery shoppers with their bags hoof it to the store. I see mothers and fathers with baby strollers - many the size of an infant SUV. I just see people walking around in unexpected places.

Baltimore might be the pick of Indy Racing League, but is Baltimore ready to embrace Indianapolis 500 cars zooming down city streets at 180 miles per hour? Baltimore Racing Development's announcement Monday that the IRL is ready to roll through Baltimore in 2011 is great news, but only if organizers can make their case that the benefits outweigh the headaches. Small wonder that Mayor Sheila Dixon was left waving the yellow caution flag. "The city must carefully consider the costs of this event ... against the competing economic interests," the mayor's statement explained.

It's been heartening to see so many of Baltimore's downtown banks and commercial buildings refashioned into busy hotels. But I slipped into a broad smile when I saw the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad logo on the rail giant's former headquarters. The old B&O main office at Charles and Baltimore streets recently reopened as part of the Hotel Monaco chain. I've made a couple of trips to visit this impressive landmark, which suffered a botched renovation in the 1980s. The ripping apart of this grand commercial palace was so painful I had hesitated to step inside its lobby.

Nicole wanted to be a lawyer but instead, at the age of 23, is "on the stroll" on Calvert and on East 21st streets, at 1 a.m. this past Saturday, searching for the next trick. "She" is a "he," working the Old Goucher neighborhood in Lower Charles Village, an area notorious for liaisons with transgender prostitutes. Nicole's story is typical - parents addicted to heroin, grandparents to alcohol, dropped out of high school at 17, sexually confused, hit the streets as a teenager to be sold to older men, robbed, raped, battered and abandoned.

"Lovely," Kari Snyder groaned as she rode shotgun with Officer David Bednar on patrol in Southeast Baltimore. A call had just come over the radio for two men selling drugs on a corner that just happened to be at the end of the 29-year-old's street in Highlandtown. Just then, Bednar swung his cruiser across one lane of traffic near Patterson Park and slammed on the brakes. Earlier, at roll call, where Snyder and about 20 other residents met with officers before hitting the streets as part of a citywide ride-along with police, a sergeant had instructed officers to be on the lookout for a man wanted for questioning in an arson.

W. Scott Ditch, a retired Rouse Co. vice president who oversaw the naming of Columbia's streets and helped persuade Baltimore's voters to approve Harborplace, died Thursday at Maryland Shock Trauma Center of head injuries suffered after a fall at his Royal Oak home. He was 80. Born in Baltimore and raised in Riderwood, he attended Gilman School and was a 1946 Boys' Latin School graduate who earned a degree at the Johns Hopkins University. During the Korean War, he served as a fighter pilot in the Marine Corps and attained the rank of captain.

City leaders, the elected and the appointed, from a lowly assistant to the chief executive, sat under swinging chandeliers in the ornate Charles Room of the Belvedere. The topic was "Safety, Mt. Vernon & Beyond!" and, one by one, they plugged their programs and their platforms. The senator talked about funding more police. The state's attorney discussed her three-pronged approach to fighting crime (which listed arrests last, earning her a heckle). A community law center attorney urged people to fight problem nightclubs.

East 21st Street between Charles and St. Paul, 11 p.m. on a recent night: a rat scurries across an alley; a motorcyclist clad in leather revs his Harley outside a Hells Angels clubhouse; a man wearing high heels, a halter top and a red-and-white striped miniskirt saunters by. Up the street, another man dressed as a woman - wearing nothing more than shoes, a T-shirt and a thong that reveals, well, almost everything - stands outside the stone edifice of...

The following are selections reprinted from The Baltimore Sun's transportation blog, baltimoresun.com/gettingthere. Our take: The intersections where the city wants to install roundabouts are at some of the most visible, high-traffic locations in Baltimore. One is at Key and Light streets - the gateway to Federal Hill, Locust Point and the rest of South Baltimore. Two are proposed for 33rd Street, where the city wants to build traffic circles near Lake Montebello and at University Parkway.