Letter from the editor-in-chief
Letter from the editor – Issue 24
A typical news cycle churns out information. Something big happens, reporters race to the scene, we get all the breaking news, and then we move on. In a city like Baltimore, where it feels like something big is always happening, we get constant, sometimes traumatic updates but not as much opportunity for introspection and meditation.…
In this issue
Deep Sugar, Baltimore’s traveling house music party, celebrates its 20th anniversary
With a cursory Google search of “house music in Baltimore,” you’ll see several mentions of men like DJ Spen, Karizma, Teddy Douglas, Jay Steinhour, and Thommy Davis, who formed The Basement Boys in 1986. But an important legacy is often overlooked: that of two Black women who created an itinerant house music party known as Deep Sugar,…
Compounding History
Understanding Brooklyn Homes means taking time to learn the neighborhood’s history and the impact history has on the community members who are still grieving. We must acknowledge that the tragedy on July 2 is one recent event in a long history of disregard. Both South Baltimore and grief are familiar to…
Photostory: Reemerging nature, part 2
This is the second set of photos taken by Baltimore Beat Director of Photography Schaun Champion’s students. Champion has taught classes at the Youth Art Institute at Morgan State University’s James E. Lewis Museum of Art since 2019. Participants range in age from 11 to 16. The…
‘Biosphere’ is a peculiar but affecting two-hander film
Unavoidable spoilers ahead for “Biosphere.” Early in director Mel Eslyn’s feature debut, “Biosphere,” the film’s two leads, Billy (Mark Duplass) and Ray (Sterling K. Brown), comedically debate Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel, “Kiss of the Spider Woman.” Billy, the less erudite of the two, laments the book’s lack of quotation marks to delineate dialogue, making it…
It’s So Hot In Here!
It’s so hot in here, it feels like my body is melting into liquid. It’s so hot in here, it feels like I’m giving myself a welt. It’s so hot in here, it feels like I bathe in lava. I don’t know if I will ever feel the coolness of my house again, the coolness…
