In the middle of the 500 block of N. Chester Street in East Baltimore, half a block away from Northeast Market, sits Biddy’s TVs. The area has seen lots of changes since 2001 when Johns Hopkins Hospital partnered with the East Baltimore Development Initiative. The 20-year project acquired around 2,000 properties and 88 acres north of the hospital, but residential blocks like this one still remain.
It’s always a bit nostalgic for me coming back to the neighborhood. As a kid in the early ‘90s, between 4th and 7th grade, I lived right around the corner on McElderry Street. The building where Biddy’s TVs is now located was Stacy’s, a Black-owned convenience store that the owner named after his wife, Stacy. She would be in there managing the store almost every day of the week. Back then, I was told by my mother that it was rare to have a Black-owned business like Stacy’s in a Black neighborhood — by the ‘90s, most corner stores in Baltimore City were owned by Korean people. But, when she was growing up in the 1960s, the Black dollar stayed in Black neighborhoods because the businesses were owned by us. So, when I got caught stealing chips and cookies from Stacy’s, the lecture went deeper than just theft; it was the code of respect and appreciation for those providing everyday needs and access to groceries that I had violated.
Years later, Ivan “TVs Biddy” Baker stepped in after Stacy’s and kept that same energy alive when he opened up Biddy’s TVs. Biddy built his base from years of selling TVs, but the TVs were just the start. Today, he uses his charisma, authentic Baltimore sense of humor, and every part of his network to expand and grow other businesses.
When I mention Stacy’s, Biddy immediately knows the history. “The owner was a Black man. His son stops in here from time to time,” he says.
Biddy has seen his share of people violating the code of respect and appreciation. He’s been stabbed and held at gun point in attempts to rob him and take his life, but these brushes with mortality have never dampened his resilience or tainted his love for the city. It seems as if nothing can dim his light. A mutual friend, Kareem Garrison, who has known Biddy for a long time through party promoting, told me about a trip they took to the Dominican Republic.
“Like two weeks before we were supposed to go to the DR, this nigga got in a car accident. He was all banged up and still went on the trip,” Kareem says, laughing. “He was still the life of the party. Making jokes, cussin’ people out and everything. But that’s how he is, unbreakable.”
When I first stop in, Biddy is dressed in a Nike Tech sweatsuit. He is showing a small group of customers, two men and two women, an Instagram video of Baltimore rapper KiaB’s Floaters freestyle. KiaB, holding a healthy stack of cash, is sliding over the beat of Young LA’s 2008 hit “Aint I.”
“You gots to know I’m habbin’ / Hold on Bae I’m trappin’ / Don’t I like a real man who do it without askin’? / Don’t he hit my DM with the bluffin’ and the cappin’ / Bet I fucked ya nigga, I ain’t know, I was laughin’”
Baltimore accent on display, KiaB is talking cold cash shit on every bar.
Biddy has just discovered her. His excitement is contagious as he tells everyone to follow her. “She only got a couple thousand followers,” he says to urge us all to follow her now. The two men go back to playing a video game on a giant flat-screen TV that covers almost the entire wall. The ladies, seemingly happy with the purchased items in their bags, give Biddy their word that they’ll be at the next happy hour at his new lounge, Biddy’s Place. They leave the store laughing at a joke Biddy delivers referencing a conversation from earlier.
Biddy is effortlessly floating in and out of our interview and his business conversations, jokes, and plans that are almost impossible to keep up with. He’s comfortable outside, greeting everyone with a smile and treating every interaction as equally important as the previous one. He learned early that doing good business and showing love and respect can take you a long way.
Biddy is effortlessly floating in and out of our interview and his business conversations, jokes, and plans that are almost impossible to keep up with. He’s comfortable outside, greeting everyone with a smile and treating every interaction as equally important as the previous one. He learned early that doing good business and showing love and respect can take you a long way.
Biddy first popped up on my radar in June of 2016 after Baltimore rapper Lor Scoota was murdered. In a viral Facebook Live video, tears running down his face, Biddy expressed his disappointment in the city’s violence. His heartfelt cry for us all to do better resonated with me and so many others. Scoota had grown to be a city favorite and most people thought he would make it as a mainstream rapper before he was gunned down in his car after leaving a charity basketball game for peace in East Baltimore. Today, Baltimore’s historic drop in homicides is heavily credited to Mayor Brandon Scott and a coalition of violence prevention groups, but community figures like Biddy are rarely recognized for their influence during these moments. I didn’t know him then, but I could relate to his genuine love for Baltimore.
Over the years his comedic posts about upcoming parties, Ravens wins or losses, and new merchandise became a staple of my timeline. We have a host of mutual friends but had never had a chance to meet, so I wanted to get to know more about him beyond social media and the lore of his parties. Nearly a decade after Lor Scoota’s murder, he’s in his store putting people onto another Baltimore rapper he’d just discovered.
Biddy is the product of Black Baltimore’s rich history of entrepreneurship and its epic nightlife. His father, Henry Baker Sr., was a jazz musician. He played the saxophone in the 1950’s and ‘60’s and was known to bring big name acts to West Baltimore’s Club Tijuana on Pennsylvania Avenue. During that time, “The Avenue” was a world renowned hub for Black entertainment. The club brought in acts like Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, and John Coltrane. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, Baker Sr. owned a nightclub called The Closet. Baltimore jazz great Gary Bartz frequented The Closet in the ‘80s and recorded a live album there with Woody Shaw titled “2 MFs.”
“In the ‘80’s, Henry Sr. owned the club but Henry Jr. ran the place. Henry Jr. booked me,” Gary Bartz tells me from Oakland, California, over the phone. Bartz talked about how legendary Henry Sr. was. He looked up to him as a musician and a curator who had a reputation for bringing jazz greats to the city.
“Charlie Parker’s last week-long engagement, Henry Sr. had brought him down to Baltimore to play at Tijuana. Charlie Parker was our God.”
Henry Baker Sr. also owned a chain of beauty salons called Baker’s Beauty Salons. Baker revolutionized Baltimore’s Black beauty industry by transitioning from selling wigs to opening a chain of African American-owned beauty salons. The nine-shop chain modernized the hair salon with savvy slogans like “no waiting” and “no appointment necessary,” moving away from the traditional single-operator model. One of his salons is still operating in Mondawmin Mall today.
Michele “Shelley” Spence, a well-known hairstylist and owner of Salon Luxe in Randallstown, tells me how important Baker’s used to be for Black hair in the ‘80s and ‘90s. “If you wanted to get the latest hairstyle and have it done right, you went to Baker’s,” she says over the phone.
Henry Sr. showed them that Black ownership was not only obtainable, but key in supporting the ecosystem of a community that had been profited from but not invested in.
Biddy and other family members still carry on his father’s entrepreneurial spirit with pride. His older brother Jeffery Gordon owned a popular club on Maryland Avenue called Gordon’s before he passed away from cancer. His nephew Hank owns an auto parts store in Woodlawn. And his niece Demera Baker owns Mera Mirror The Salon on Erdman Avenue right off of Belair Road. Henry Sr. showed them that Black ownership was not only obtainable, but key in supporting the ecosystem of a community that had been profited from but not invested in.
Biddy started selling TVs in the early 2000s at 22 years old after coming home from jail. Being heavily steered by people around him, he decided to straighten his life up a bit. At the time, there were no Black-owned electronics shops in the city, and the television had started to transition from big bulky units to flat-screen smart TVs. Additionally, technology seemed to be moving faster than what his community had access to. Seeing the opportunity to fill a void, he began selling them out of his house at a discounted rate, until one day someone attempted to rob him and take his life. An associate recommended he make his business legit and move into a building.
“The popularity of the iPhone 2, iPad, laptops, and accessories started to be essential to people’s everyday life. My father always told me if you wanna get rich, you gotta have something dealing with people’s everyday life,” he tells me.
When I visit Biddy’s store early on a sunny Wednesday afternoon in January, the 500 block of N. Chester Street is buzzing with activity. The doors of Northeast Market swing open constantly as patrons come and go on lunch breaks. It’s a varied mix of Johns Hopkins healthcare workers, city employees, construction workers, and people from the neighborhood. Sanitation trucks add their workday noise to the mix as they ride through picking up the blue recycling bins that sit in front of rowhomes. Young men converse in front of the stores on both the McElderry Street and Jefferson Street corners of the block. Cars drive through, occasionally stopping to talk to people out front and en route to and from the market.
Biddy and I walk the half-block to Northeast Market for chicken boxes for himself, the two guys that were playing video games, and me.
It’s immediately clear that he is a beloved member of the community. Elders are getting hugs, young men are dapping him up. Ravens shit-talking ensues. “I’m waitin’ on yewwww. Yeah, how ‘bout da muvahfuckin’ Steelers though?” he yells to a guy across the street.
As a native of West Baltimore’s Park Heights community who moved over East and attended Lake Clifton High School, Biddy’s network is vast and he has earned a trusted reputation as a businessman, a promoter, and a personality.
As a native of West Baltimore’s Park Heights community who moved over East and attended Lake Clifton High School, Biddy’s network is vast and he has earned a trusted reputation as a businessman, a promoter, and a personality. He grew up at a time where if you were from the West Side, you couldn’t just go to a party on the East Side without getting pressed. But his welcoming energy and family ties would, for the most part, allow him to move freely around the city.
“I had the best of both worlds because, like they say, it takes a village to raise a child. In high school I moved over East with my aunt and uncle,” he says as we walk through the market.
Biddy’s parents both passed away when he was young, but even before that it was his grandmother Eunice Williams who raised him, providing what he describes as a “good Christian home.” She passed away in September of 2024 at the age of 96. Biddy credits her for instilling the goodness within him.
“All death is sorrow, but you gotta be proud of the things you accomplish while people are alive. I take those morals and it comes out of me as a person,” he says.
Williams was able to see her grandson do quite a bit. Today, Biddy leads the family as the owner of four-going-on-five businesses. Biddy TVs has been at 527 N. Chester Street for a decade. Next door at 525 N. Chester Street sits Biddy’s Braiding Bar, which opened in August of 2025. Biddy’s Place, an extension of the good time reputation he has built as a party promoter, is his new lounge where the popular neighborhood bar Sugar Ray’s once sat on N. Milton Avenue. Whether you’re there for happy hour, crab night, or a Ravens game, the vibe is welcoming and familiar. It’s a natural progression for a guy who started out helping to run his brother’s nightclub at 25 years old full time.
In the tradition of his father’s relationship with Baltimore music, Biddy’s Place recently became the subject of a new song “Party At Biddy’s” by Dancing Bari and Turk P. Diddy. In the same way that Bartz was given a residency at The Closet, Bari tells me that Biddy gave him a night at the lounge to promote.
“He was the only promoter to put me on a party, showed me love and never switched up,” Bari says via Instagram. “He gave me my own Wednesday night to make money. So it was only right to show love through the music.”
As one of the city’s most popular party promoters, Biddy is always hosting events, often with themes like the MLK Brunch held this year at Nola’s in Federal Hill. In the summer, his pool parties sell out faster than egg custard snowballs in a heatwave.
“And I give back,” he adds. “I give away TVs, give to youth programs, and just do what I can to look out in general.”
He uses social media to announce his parties that always begin with affordable admission fees like $1 advanced tix, and $20 to $30 sections. “A lot of clubs and party promoters have failed because they want to charge money that people just don’t have anymore. People want to come out and have a good time. I want us to get back to that,” Biddy told me.
As if his schedule wasn’t already busy enough, he plans to open a hookah bar in Fells Point soon.
As Biddy and I talk, he takes parts of the chicken box he isn’t eating and throws them into the middle of the street to feed the pigeons that circle nearby as if expecting to be fed. He watches out for the block, down to the pigeons.
Some people have to spend years learning the kind of personable skills that make a guy with so much on his plate feel comfortable spending most of his time among the ones who support him. Some people are just raised that way.
One guy walks up to us after finding out someone he knew died. He asks Biddy for a piece of chicken, and without hesitation Biddy places the styrofoam box in the man’s hand. As we continue to talk in front of his store, people keep showing up. One woman pulls up in her SUV and calls out, “Aye Biddy, when the next time you throwing a party?” She’s a classmate of Biddy’s from Lake Clifton. She heeds his advice to keep an eye on the Lake Clifton Facebook group.
Then, an older gentleman pulls up in a black luxury car. “Where you goin’ at?” Biddy yells.
“I’m going home,” the man responds.
“Don’t forget you owe me a game next year,” Biddy says.
“I got you,” the man says.
Biddy tells me the man is a personal bodyguard for Steve Bisciotti, owner of the Baltimore Ravens. He shares the info not to brag, but to bring the conversation back to where we left off. When he was 22 and getting in trouble, he and the gentleman went to the same barbershop. “He was one of the people to let me know I could do better,” Biddy says. “He got my TVs all over his house. He got a Ravens room that’s nothing but jerseys from the actual players.”
As I left Biddy that afternoon, with the intention of returning to buy some things myself, all of the good things I’d heard about him were true. But it was his unwavering commitment to Black people and Black neighborhoods that left me proud and hopeful for the future of my city.
As the afternoon continues, the store gets busier. People show up to buy airpods, inquire about TV prices, or just to say hi. Being a Black business owner is something he takes great pride in. He also keeps himself in the company of other Black entrepreneurs, following his father’s tradition. As I left Biddy that afternoon with the intention of returning to buy some things myself, all of the good things I’d heard about him were true. But it was his unwavering commitment to Black people and Black neighborhoods that left me proud and hopeful for the future of my city.
I remembered my childhood convenience store Stacy’s and the way people always felt comfortable stopping in and spending their money with someone who cared about the community they served. Being business savvy is more than just slogans and cutthroat development practices. Longevity materializes when the customers feel they are valued and can give their recommendation with pride.
“You can have all the advertisements in the world, but the word of mouth in the Black community is never gonna kill you,” Biddy says.