weekend update: Grand Prix

Friday evening we walked a bit around the racecourse to see what we could see, which was: a bit through the chain-link fence at Sharp and Conway, a bit through the chain-link fence at Lee and Light, and really quite a nice view from the foot of the hairpin on Light Street: you could see the cars coming straight down Light, and Light slopes a bit upward there, so it had a bit of a stadium-seating effect there.  But by the time we made it down there the racing had stopped for the day, so we went to dinner in Federal Hill, which seemed eerily deserted, especially for a Friday night.  (Probably because no one could get there, because Light Street was closed.)  We went to the Abbey Burger Bistro, where I risked Aristotelian evil (wishing for bad things and getting them) by building my own burger featuring the meat of the month: medium rare duck on a pretzel bun, with sauteed onions, mushrooms, brie, and white truffle oil, with the macaroni and cheese on the side.  It was quite rich, but really delicious.

Saturday we tried again to walk around downtown, which involved, as Jean Marbella said, walking miles but only going blocks, without seeing much besides the gulag-end of the fences, which got pretty tiring.  I concocted something for dinner inspired by Farm-Stand-Vegetable Green Curry, from Every Day with Rachael Ray, but used eggplant and zucchini instead of broccoli and bell peppers (because that's what the farmers market had Thursday), and non-green curry (because that's the only curry paste I could find at the Fresh & Green).  I served it with the last of our quinoa.

It was ok: Morgan was more taken with it than I was.  (I'm still looking for curry that tastes like the yellow curry at Noodles Etc.)

Sunday we went to Whole Foods to get groceries (add that as another cost of the race: it was impossible to leave our neighborhood by car, and Whole Foods is the only grocery store within walking distance, seeing as we live in one of those urban food deserts), and I made Lime and Honey Glazed Salmon with Warm Black Bean and Corn Salad, from Rachael Ray's 365: No Repeats.

It was pretty delicious, but because the salmon was from Whole Foods, it was also quite pricey.  Probably not any more than you would pay for a comparable dish at a restaurant, though, and at least I'm pretty confident that it actually was wild Alaskan salmon.  I'll make it again the next time I have company.

letter to the Baltimore Sun: Grand Prix police priorities

Here's the text of a letter I sent to the Baltimore Sun:

***

Dear Baltimore Sun,

On Saturday, I crossed over the Grand Prix track via the skywalk between the Pratt Street Pavilion and the Gallery.  Racecars were driving on the track, so I lingered for a moment to see what it was my tax dollars had bought.  But only for a moment, because then three police officers ordered me to move along.  Now, I know that it wasn’t for crowd control (there were only three other civilians on the bridge besides me, so there was no congestion crossing the bridge) or safety purposes (I have seen far more people congregated on this very bridge during parades down Pratt Street without risking the bridge’s collapse), so I could only conclude that they were there on behalf of the race organizers, who presumably believe that in addition to buying the right to use the people’s roads, they had also bought the right to observe the race from any other point in space, public or private.

I was delighted.  I could only conclude that there were no homicides left to clear, no citizens in the Northeastern District waiting for cops to respond to calls, and no teenagers dealing drugs on West Baltimore corners, if three of Baltimore’s finest could afford to spend their time hassling taxpayers for standing on public property.  Surely Mayor Rawlings-Blake had therefore scrapped her plan to hire 300 more police officers, and the money saved could instead be put toward repairing our crumbling schools and reopening our shuttered rec centers and city pools to keep our children off the streets and out of trouble.

Imagine my disappointment, then, when I opened Monday’s Baltimore Sun to learn that, in fact, there had been no fewer than six shootings in the city during the course of the Grand Prix, one of them fatal.

Turns out it was just another case of our city’s administration's putting the interests of developers ahead of those of its own citizens.  I cannot help but wonder that we might do more to convince people to come visit and spend money in our city if we focused our limited police resources on reducing crime in our city neighborhoods rather than letting the Grand Prix organizers use them as taxpayer-provided hired muscle on deserted skywalks downtown.

***

In conclusion: I survived the Grand Prix, but I'll be glad to have an excuse to be out of town come next Labor Day.