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The Sedan Also Rises
On the streets of Havana, a 1955 Chrysler New Yorker carried Ernest Hemingway to the long bar at the Floridita for daiquiris mixed strong and sour. It took him to the hilltop farmhouse where he lived most of the last twenty-two years of his life. Then it disappeared. read more…
Is Any Town Truly Safe From Gun Violence?
Tim Hewlett was nearly dead when his brother Christopher arrived. Hewlett was a cop, and he had been shot in the head with his own gun as he slept. By the time Christopher came to his side, his massive frame was quickly losing life. The house appeared to have been ransacked.
Police soon uncovered the truth. There had been no intruder. read more…
Bullet Holes in the City of Light
Our teenage boys lacked patience for the Louvre, so we made the streets of Paris our museum. read more…
City Living
Driven by millennials and baby boomers, a demographic shift is remaking Montgomery County, morphing suburbs into cities. It’s part of a national transformation that some say signals a whole new way of life. read more…
Narrow Rails
On my way to Sonjoji temple, I sit on the Tokyo subway with dour-faced salarymen.
To reach the forest temples of Nikku, I hurtle 200 miles an hour across Honshu.
Click by click, a cog railway bears me to sacred Koya-San amid its mandala of mountains.
In search of ancient Japan — its Zen temples, manicured gardens and Buddhist priests muttering prayers in black robes — I find myself on trains. read more…
The Eyes of Death—And Life
Beneath the resorts that line the Yucatan, underground rivers run through ancient coral bedrock, making for mellow water adventures. Scuba divers risk getting trapped in these cenotes(sinkholes formed by collapsed rock), but for snorkelers, who can’t penetrate as deeply, only a fool would come face-to-face with death in them.
I am that fool. read more…
Ronnie’s Encore
As a young guitarist, Ronnie Younkins wanted rock ‘n’ roll to take him as far as he could go. Now, music brings this Blues Vulture home. read more…
The Last of the Arabbers
As he leads a painted horse cart brimming with oranges and bananas and peaches past housing projects and boarded-up buildings, B.J. looks like the king of West Baltimore. Friends shout his name, grasp his hand, lean over to share hugs. He greets, chats, and moves on, calling out his wares in the grimmest part of town, through streets strewn with garbage and smelling of urine.
“Yeah, pretty red tomato, tomatoooo. Yeah, watermelon, watermelon, watermelon.”
The syllables melt into a tune that, to the uninitiated, might sound like nonsense.
“Wat-oh, wat-oh, wat-oh, oh-oh…”
It sounds like a voice from the past as it echoes off brick and formstone walls, and many Baltimoreans fear that it will be. B.J. may be the end of a nearly 150-year-old lineage. The last of the arabbers.
Go to the story on Eater.com.
Rescue Day
A silent killer turns a day of celebration into one of the biggest emergencies the B-CC Rescue Squad has ever faced.
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Bethesda-Chevy Chase Rescue Squad Chief Ned Sherburne awoke around 6 a.m. at the squad station, where he had spent the night, as he often does. He knew it would be a busy day. Saturday, Oct. 5, 2013, was the Taste of Bethesda, and the station would be welcoming the public for its annual Rescue Day open house. Kids would be checking out the shiny fire trucks, dousing cardboard cutout houses with a fire hose and watching as members of the station’s crew rip apart a car to show what a real rescue looks like.
Sherburne busied himself getting the station ready for the event. He cleaned up, moved the trucks out to the parking lot, then jumped into the chief’s car, a Chevy Tahoe stocked with communication radios and incident command equipment, to drive home, change clothes and come back to the station to greet visitors when they began showing up at 11 a.m.
He made it only a few blocks.
Go to the story at Bethesda Magazine.
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david@davidmfrey.com
301.466.0544