Downtown : Featured Stories

We've rounded up three choice entertainments this week that'll take you from Thursday through the weekend! A contest pitting local chefs against one another to create the best app around, a dance performance from the Baltimore Song Project, and a weekend of yucks and improvisations at the Creative Alliance.

Rock? Check. Hip-Hop? Check. Country? Check. Corporate sponsor? No way! Whartscape music festival puts the "indie" in independent with its no corporations allowed attitude. Why would a small group of music lovers decide to organize an all volunteer multi-day music festival featuring hundreds of bands?

This weekend may be summer's biggest holiday with 4th of July celebrations happening all over town, but tomorrow's the big day for Bmore Media! We're hosting our second Happy Hour at Nick's Fish House! Come down to South Baltimore meet the Bmore staff and pitch us your best story ideas!

What's on tap for the coming week? How about a taste of Baltimore's top winemakers, beer brewers and chefs. As if that wasn't enough, there's another free way to get from here to there as the Charm City Circulator adds a new route.

Watchen Harris Bruce has only lived in Baltimore for a few years, but in that time she's started a non-profit to help those with mental illness find a place in the workforce and been appointed the Commissioner for Liberia to the Governor's Commission on African Affairs. And, as though that wasn't enough, she's the assistant vice president and community development advisor at PNC Bank. We managed to catch up with Bruce, though it wasn't easy keeping up with her.

As the first African-American female to helm the University of Maryland's law school in its 185 year history, Phoebe Haddon is just one of a handful of women of color in such a pivotal role. So what's it like to be a first and a mentor in a new city? Bmore's Lori Grisham goes back to school to find out.

More than 25 years ago the Baltimore's redeveloped Inner Harbor area was the beginning of a new era for Downtown Baltimore. The Urban Land Institute honored Baltimore's Inner Harbor with its prestigious Heritage Award. The award, bestowed periodically on developments that have demonstrated industry excellence and made substantial contributions to their community's well-being for at least 25 years, has been given only 8 times in the past 35 years. Martin Millspaugh, who led the effort to create the Inner Harbor, talks about the development, the award and Baltimore.

Baltimore continued its Nevermore 2009 celebration, a yearlong observance of Edgar Allan Poe's 200^th birthday, finally laying the Master of the Macabre to rest with funeral services 160 years in the making at Westminster Hall on Sunday. If you couldn't make it, we've got the pics.