This first column of the year for Baltimore Fishbowl keeps a tradition maintained at The Baltimore Sun for the previous 46: It provides a list of random aspirations for these next 12 months — things I’d like to do, things I’d like to see, things I’d like to hear, and a bunch of suggestions that nobody asked for. Here goes.
Things I’d like to do:
Interview the great Herb Alpert. He’s now 90 years old, on tour again with his trumpet and coming to Baltimore. Alpert and the New Tijuana Brass are scheduled to play the Lyric on March 27. (He is scheduled to turn 91 four days later.)
See and hear Herb Alpert in concert. I’m a longtime fan. (My adolescent self pretty much stared at the “Whipped Cream and Other Delights” album cover for three years.) As a mid-generation boomer, I try to explain to Millennials and Gen Z that, once upon a time in America, we had Top 40 radio, and Top 40 radio meant a station aired an insane mix of performers and genres: You could hear a Rolling Stones hit just before a song by The Supremes followed by “Zorba The Greek” by Herb Alpert and the TJB. Top 40 burned an eclectic mix of music into our brains, which is why “Tijuana Taxi” rings as familiar as “Paint It Black” and “You Can’t Hurry Love.”
Complete the plastic purge. At our house, almost all storage containers of the Tupperware-like variety have been jettisoned and replaced by glass containers of the Pyrex-like variety. The transition should be completed by the end of February. My suggestion: Try this at home.
Celebrate Candlemas with French pancakes: This is a Christian feast day that takes place on Feb. 2. But it is completely overshadowed in the U.S. by Groundhog Day. (Get it? Overshadowed!) In France, Candlemas is known as La Chandeleur and it’s pretty much La Jour National de la Crêpe. It’s a great excuse to devour crêpes for breakfast, lunch or dinner, along with some sweet or hard cider. Here’s the thing: A person making the crêpes, using a crêpe pan, is supposed to hold a coin in one hand while flipping the crêpe with the other. If you can do the flip successfully, it means good luck for the year. My suggestion: Try this at home.
Get to the 2026 Maryland Cycling Classic: It happens during Labor Day weekend in September. What you want to do is make a picnic and spend the day watching the big race from a carefully selected viewing spot.
Get to four places to eat and/or drink: Gin up at Dutch Courage in Old Goucher (despite having lost my desire for adventuresome cocktails) and dine at The Duchess in Hampden, the Broadway Hot Pot & Bar and, at long last, Puerto 511 Cocina Peruana. The latter is BYOB. “So bring pisco,” says a friend. “They make the best pisco sours.”
Suggestion: A February 9th trip across the bay to the Avalon Theatre in Easton to hear some of Baltimore’s best roots musicians — Caleb Stine, the Honey Dewdrops, Charm City Junction, Letitia VanSant — in a “musical confluence,” or collaborative concert, called “Across The Harbor.” Sub-suggestion: If they don’t perform it that night, check out the Dewdrops’ recording of “Tuning To.” It’s a beauty.
Also on the Eastern Shore: We will again make a trip to The Bookplate in Chestertown. As bookstores go, it’s Fantasy Island, with more than 50,000 titles, new and used, between the Cross Street store and its warehouse.
Recommendation: The folks at Baltimore-based Mount Royal Soap make a lot of good products — soaps, of course, but also shave cream, balms, shampoo, scented candles. You might want to make the company’s lemongrass-calendula concoction your go-to body lotion for 2026. Its cool name, “Good God, Lemon,” quotes Alec Baldwin’s frequent exclamation to Tina Fey in the Many-Emmy-winning NBC comedy, “30 Rock.”
Prediction: The most common six-syllable phrase to be uttered by Earthlings this year: “That’s not real, that’s AI.”
Suggestion: Next time you invite friends or family to dinner, ask each to bring a poem to read before dessert. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at the result.
Cooking tip: When you make the inevitable lasagna in 2026, skip the ricotta and substitute a creamy bechamel sauce. That’s the Northern Italian style and, after years of research, I’ve concluded that the North won this war. Bechamel is better, and less expensive. Sub-tip: Use pasta that is corrugated through its length (not just wavy along its edges) for the lasagna. There are some mass-produced brands but also excellent homemades sold at Trinacria Italian Deli on North Paca Street. The corrugated pasta holds the sauce — and the bechamel that you will use from now on, right? — much better during the baking.
Things I’d like to know: The name of the person who changes the light bulbs atop the TV Hill towers.
Things I’d like to see: Fried, New England-style soft-shell clams (available from the Chesapeake Bay) on the menu at more Maryland restaurants, either as part of a Captain’s Platter or in a split-top hot dog roll.
Suggestion: If you listen to music via Pandora, look up the Cole Porter station. It starts with Porter singing his own song, “Anything Goes,” then heads for Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Fats Waller, with detours into Oscar Peterson, Artie Shaw and Sinatra, and a stop at Dooley Wilson.
Things I’d like to see: The four August Wilson plays scheduled for local theaters this year, a major part of the Baltimore Wilson Century Celebration that started here in 2024. We get “Seven Guitars” at Spotlighters this month, “Fences” at Chesapeake Shakespeare in February, “Two Trains Running” at Theatre Morgan in October, and “Jitney” at Fells Point Corner Theatre in November. Two more plays from Wilson’s century cycle remain: “King Hedley” and “Radio Golf.”
Things I’d like to know: When and where those last two plays will be staged. . . . Also, I’d like to know why, halfway through the composing of this column at home, I went to the basement.
Things I’d like to do: Write a note to myself to remember to take a hike through Leakin Park on the first day of 2027, then remember to take a hike through Leakin Park on the first day of 2027.
Dan Rodricks’ column appears weekly in Baltimore Fishbowl. He can be reached at djodricks@gmail.com or via danrodricks.com
