Eileen Murphy's feature, "Artists in Residence", describes how some artists, done with squatting, get help legitimizing their home-studio living arrangements. "Business and community leaders aren't involving themselves in such projects for the love of art or because of sympathy for its creators," Murphy writes. "As video animator Steve Estes, who's lived illegally in a number of studios, puts it, %u2018Baltimore thinks of artists as shock troops.'"
The Nose criticizes The Sun's coverage of William Welch, the gun-toting son of City Councilwoman Agnes Welch, discharging a firearm in order to "restore order" when a campaign worker demanded payment for election-day services. What the Sun's Peter Hermann missed: that paying "walk-around money," which is what the worker was demanding, was illegal at the time.
In Mobtown Beat, Molly Rath highlights lessons from other schools systems that Baltimore education advocates use "to show local school officials that people outside the system know something insiders might not."
In The Mail, A. Robert Kaufman, who won "Best Non-Politician" in the Best of Baltimore issue after his latest failed political candidacy (for mayor, that year), responds with a special present for City Paper: a half-used package of Anusol suppositories.
Mr. Wrong gets sick.
In Urban Rhythms, Wiley Hall III calls Maryland Senate leaders "people completely without shame" because they forced the rapid ouster of former Baltimore state Sen. Larry Young (now a long-time radio-show host on WOLB) after accusations he'd used his public officer for personal enrichment. The occasion for Hall's condemnation: an Anne Arundel County jury had just exonerated Young on criminal charges of bribery and income-tax evasion.
Tom Chalkley profiles hot-dog vendor Nick Maggio, who works the cart outside of City Hall in Charmed Life, and finds that he eats fresh fruit for lunch.
In Film, Ian Grey calls Three Kings "the smartest, most darkly humorous, and most disturbing war film since Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket," while Jack Purdy dismisses The Minus
Man as "both pretentious and tedious."
In Imprints, a book about living in a new Walt Disney Corp. planned community is reviewed by Frank Diller, Michael Anft touts The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, and Scott Carlson sniffs out an historian's take on trash.
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