MY REJECTED, MOSTLY INCOHERENT BEST-OF-BALTIMORE PITCHES FOR BALTIMORE CITY PAPER

Best Sit-Down Chinese Restaurant: The Orient (Towson)

Best Place To Get Up Close And Personal With Runaway Pollution: the spaces between docked ships at Harbor Place

Best They're-Originally-From-Here-But-Now-Belong-To-The-World-At-Large Rock Phenom: Animal Collective

Best Place To Witness A Street Brawl Randomly Break Out: Oh, man. I suck at identifying places in explicitly specific terms. But I can tell you this: it was an ATM near that historic port building where they filmed The Wire (or maybe Homicide: Life on The Street) - just around the corner from Soundgarden, on the same block as that historic hotel. The ATM - which was a BoA ATM for a bit - is cattycorner to Max's bar and faces out into the brick-paved "park" full of benches that used to be home to a sort of tiered pyramid thing before the merchants teamed up to have it torn down because skaters were doing tricks on it and kids liked to congregate there. I think there used to be a piercing/tattoo place a few feet away from the ATM, maybe it's still there. I don't know if all of that confused the issue further or what :)

Best Chill Coffee Joint: The Daily Grind