Highlandtown

For bicyclists, a ride focuses on cars

Lisa Harbin hasn't yet made the plunge and started bicycling from her home in Hampden to her job as a technical writer in Fells Point. But she's seeing more people ditching their cars, devising commutes that don't come with a price tag of more than $3.50 a gallon - and she admits she's inspired.

Baltimore Running Festival is a relative thing for this bunch

Organizers of this weekend's Baltimore Running Festival can't say exactly how many families, spouses, friends and co-workers will be running among the more than 17,000 who have signed up for the eighth annual event.

City OKs payments in 2 suits against police officers

The city's Board of Estimates approved payouts in two lawsuits against city police officers this week, including a $320,000 settlement for four men a jury found had been improperly arrested in Patterson Park two years ago.

Jean Marbella: All aboard: Green Line, Red Line, Yellow Line, home

It's not just because yesterday was my birthday - thank you, yes, being another year older does beat the alternative - that I've been imagining my future self lately.

FHA loans enjoy a boom

It was the mortgage of last resort when home sales were booming. Buyers balked at the paperwork. Sellers hated the home-repair rules.

Joseph J. Cicero Sr.

Joseph John Cicero Sr., former owner of Globe Poster, the Highlandtown printing company whose posters of such soul music legends as James Brown, Otis Redding and Solomon Burke are highly sought after by collectors and museums, died Tuesday of complications from diabetes at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. He was 91.

Rehabbing starts today for East Baltimore homes

Near the intersection of East Chase and McDonogh streets in East Baltimore, most rowhouses have shattered windows, boarded-up doors and weedy lots. The sign on the vacant corner grocery has faded.

Powwow keeps native culture alive

Two by two, they danced into a tent wearing elaborate feather headdresses, leather moccasins and bells tied to their ankles or knees. A circle of drummers played and chanted in the corner.

Police Blotter

Police Blotter is a sampling of crimes from police reports in Baltimore and Baltimore County.

Police Blotter

Police Blotter is a sampling of crimes from police reports in Baltimore and Baltimore County.

Back in the game

Late yesterday morning in Druid Hill Park, Wayne Collier handed his son tennis gear.

Police blotter

Police Blotter is a sampling of crimes from police reports in Baltimore and Baltimore County.

Parked

I'm wobbling down Light Street toward a busy intersection, clinging perilously yet stylishly to a sleek hybrid bicycle: metallic gray with gears to shift and a beverage holder clearly meant for someone brave enough to pry a hand from the handle bars.

Officer cleared in sting assault

A Baltimore police officer who was criminally charged with assault after he punched an undercover internal affairs detective during an "integrity test" was found not guilty in Circuit Court yesterday.

Easing way for foot traffic

Hoping to clear a waiting list for sidewalk repairs that stretches back four years, Baltimore officials said today they will focus more attention - and an additional $2 million - on smoothing the way for foot traffic.

Laura Vozzella: Cosby's suddenly camera-shy

Bill Cosby comes to town tomorrow to speak at a Park Heights block party. Should we expect the genial actor/author/Jell-O pitchman or the tough-talking, black self-reliance preacher?

Laura Vozzella: Just give us the loo-down

The political opposition researcher who illegally snooped into Michael Steele's credit history has found something else to stick her nose into: toilets.

Dozens rally for Burns' ouster

With supporters holding signs that read "No More Lies," the widow of a man who died after spending months in a beating-induced coma urged onlookers at the Baltimore Farmers' Market to join her movement to oust the spokeswoman for State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy.

Fake forest hides in plain sight

Braking at the intersection of North Avenue and St. Paul Street, drivers breathe cigarette smoke out their windows, slosh takeout sodas, stare at their nails.

Spokeswoman firing urged

A member of the City Council has called on State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy to fire her spokeswoman over comments she made about Zachary Sowers, a 28-year-old man who was severely beaten last year.

BGE effort targets energy efficiency

The rowhouses are boarded-up shells, roofs open to the elements. They're magnets for drug users, blights on their East Baltimore community.

Burns apologizes to Sowers' widow

The spokeswoman for the Baltimore state's attorney's office has apologized by phone and by e-mail to the widow of a robbery victim whom she had criticized in an online publication, but she maintained that her comments were "vastly misrepresented" by the freelance journalist who wrote the piece.

Restaurant Review

Saute has imaginative food, an identity crisis

Saute, a fancy new bar-restaurant, opened in March where the Duck Inn was in Canton. It generated a lot of buzz, and it's the kind of place I would normally review a month or so after it opened. But, like Three... near Patterson Park, there was considerable turmoil in the kitchen after the first few weeks. The executive chef, Cyrus Keefer, left and was replaced by Mark Suliga, who had been at Cosmopolitan and Dooby's, and then Brian Mathias, formerly at Hampton's, Joy America and Brasserie Tatin.

Remarks about fatal beating spark outrage

The wife of a man who spent months in a coma after being hit during a robbery and later died is outraged at a spokeswoman for Baltimore prosecutors who questioned whether her husband's injuries were the result of a "vicious beating" and said that he looked like a "sleeping baby" at the hospital.

Girl, 14, killed; suspect held

A 14-year-old girl was fatally shot yesterday morning in a rowhouse in East Baltimore, and police later arrested a suspect, according to a department spokeswoman.

After attack, still grasping for life

Anna Sowers celebrated her 28th birthday in a Federal Hill restaurant yesterday with cake, balloons and good friends. But the most important person in her life, her husband, couldn't be there.

Maryann James: Love it or hate it, Feb. 14 is a day of great expectations

I despise Valentine's Day, and yet I end up celebrating it: The rampant commercialism works.

Police Blotter

Police Blotter is a sampling of crimes from police reports in Baltimore and Baltimore County.

40 years given in attack

Anna Sowers took no solace sitting in a Baltimore courtroom yesterday as her husband's attacker - a 16-year-old boy - was given 40 years in prison.

City's fire chief resigns

Baltimore Fire Chief William J. Goodwin Jr., hailed for his early leadership but increasingly under pressure after a fatal training accident this year, has resigned, Mayor Sheila Dixon announced yesterday.

Road yields route to past

Someday soon, this rock-strewn path under a canopy of trees in suburban Washington will likely be a major highway. The rocks and many of the trees are expected to be cleared. In their place would run the Intercounty Connector, a road that has been in the works for nearly a half-century.

Teaching good ol' dogs new tricks or treats

Wearing a miniature yarmulke and prayer shawl, Avi - a grayish-black standard poodle - was more prepared for Halloween than most people as he strutted his stuff to the sounds of the Hora on Sunday.

Taking back a community, step by step

As dusk settles, the glittering lights of downtown emerge, just a few miles away -- but a world removed -- from one of the roughest areas in one of the deadliest cities in the country.

Teen denied trial as juvenile

A Baltimore Circuit Court judge has denied a man's request to be tried as a juvenile in two violent robbery cases earlier this year, including an attack that left a Southeast Baltimore man in a coma.

Watchdog

Many fixes, others pending

The fix is in.

6 people dead in a span of 16 hours

Six people are dead after the weekend got off to a bloody start in the Baltimore area, as violence stretched from the toughest of city neighborhoods to a leafy subdivision in Timonium.

City is fighting battle against violence - and hopelessness

Dondrea Ross' backyard is no longer her own. It belongs to the drug dealers who stalk the playground behind her house.

Violence hits too close to home

It was her one free weekend amid a hectic schedule juggling work and graduate school, and Anna Sowers spent it shopping for purses and jewelry with friends in downtown Chicago. But she couldn't reach her husband back in Baltimore, who had been out with friends in Canton the night before.

Baltimore Faux Real

Hometown fans and film workers shredded their garments and tore their hair when producers decided to shoot Hairspray the movie musical - based on the Broadway musical, based on the 1988 John Waters film - in Toronto instead of Baltimore.