As Baltimore has changed, so have its summer pastimes. But classics like snowballs and crabs remain.
The hankering for an egg custard snowball topped with marshmallow starts about now. It’s one of Baltimore’s guilty pleasures when you’ve got to have one, sweet and cold.
The corner snowball stands may not as be as simple and plain as they once were, but people here love slipping out on a hot, torpid Baltimore evening for their dose of orange or blueberry. Lines form along Walther Avenue in Northeast Baltimore for a long established stand or South Baltimore’s Fort Avenue for the newer Ice Queens operation.
There’s another Baltimore warm weather treat, the ice cup. It’s frozen, sweetened ice and comes in flavors like strawberry (bright red) and hot orange. Ice cups are a Baltimore City thing, sold by strictly independent makers from front steps or better yet, handed out a basement window to strollers on a hot sidewalk.
The summer begs some other only-in-Baltimore questions. Where’s the best peach cake bakery? Or, more essentially, the preferred (highly subjective) place to get crabs. People become territorial about this decision and harbor secrets about finds in Eastern Baltimore County, in Deale in Arundel County somewhere south of Annapolis, or right in Hampden or Highlandtown.
Baltimore’s summer outdoor habits have markedly changed as the city has been remade in the last 40 or more years. The harbor metamorphosis that began in the late 1960s has driven out the smelly old industrial zone and replaced it with the recreation-friendly place we take for granted during the summer.
Take, for instance, the Sandlot, a bar that’s opening for the summer this weekend. It’s a beachy styled piece of as-yet undeveloped land in Harbor Point off the foot of Central Avenue. As late as the 1990s this spot was still so industrial, a part of Allied Signal’s holdings in Baltimore, that if you somehow managed to gain access to this property, private security guards on duty might call the police. Today, look for summer cocktails and food trucks.
Over these years places for summer congregating have changed, perhaps no more than along Baltimore’s harbor waterfront. This is a curious, eye-opening change for anyone who knew the old, industrial harbor. In the days of active marine piers (and I do not mean sailboat slips) and warehouses, the last place you wanted to be on a broiling July day was along Boston Street. Or enjoy an August at the “foot of Broadway,” now called Fells Point.
On a humid day, the smell of the harbor 50 years ago was pretty bad. It was an accepted part of Baltimore living. Even the fondly remembered McCormick Spice plant on Light Street, where the scent of cinnamon was so obvious, could produce a dubious olfactory cocktail when mixed with the prevailing Inner Harbor’s miasma.
Another neighborhood hot spot you wanted to avoid was a bit inland, at South Charles and Cross streets. It was no worse than other low-lying places in the city. But the landlocked, hot asphalt street surfaces made it feel like the Torrid Zone. Also, the fresh fish was sold at the Charles Street end of the then-ungentrified Cross Street Market. If you savored the smell of hake fish on a July morning, this was your address.
Today it’s a summer destination. There’s a rooftop drinking and dining space atop the Cross Street Market that has been branded as the Watershed. The crowds that assemble here obviously like their summers spent squarely in the city.
There were other game changers, beginning with Harborplace some 42 years ago. More recently, the renovations of the Broadway Market buildings, completed in 2019, gave a spot for the Choptank seafood house. Not far away, the old Recreation Pier emerged anew as the Sagamore Pendry Hotel. And, parking was was not an issue when beer was cheap on the harbor. Now it’s best to arrive on via water taxi.
