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I always skirted Bartenders on Boston St. because I thought it was one of those yuppie bars where they try to impress you; every week with a new flare and style. We met up with some friends there for a wine tasting which completely changed my opinion. Not only does Bartenders have a great wine selection, above most bars, they’ve got KILLER pizza. This isn’t just something they pull from the oven. These are gourmet, decently priced, well made pizzas. Our personal favorite so far is the Spence pizza which is roasted red peppers, andouille sausage, onions, cheddar and Parmesan cheese.

The wine tasting was presented by Tim Schestag from Republic National Distributing Company. It involved 6 wines:

Finca El Origen Torrontes, Argentina
The Infamous Goose Sauvignon Blanc, New Zealand
Red Guitar Old Vine Tempranillo Garnacha, Spain
14 Hands Merlot, Washington
Joel Gott 815 Cabernet Sauvignon, California
Vermonte Primus, Chile

Tim did a great job of explaining and helping us discover the intricacies of the wine while Dave, the bartender, did a phenomenal job of keeping our drinks going and the food plentiful.

If you haven’t been to Bartenders yet, it’s definitely the place to go on Boston Street!

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I want to write about things in Baltimore but all I see is snow. I did see a ton of dump trucks taking snow to Pier 5 to dump into the water by Mccormick and Schmick’s. Those have got to be some cold fish. This is also whats screwing up traffic on Presidents St. at Fleet and Eastern. Oh and also biking in this mess is NOT fun.

Baltimore City’s new Mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, was tweeting all through the blizzard that just struck Baltimore. Her twitter account shows activity starting as early as Feb. 3rd and right after that, a huge increase, with a significant amount of updates and information regarding how the city crews are operating and how the city was faring.

Twitter was very alive through the entire storm. Many of the local news tweeters were spreading information around about the quality of the roads and the openings of places for food and groceries. InsideCharmCity, http://twitter.com/insidecharmcity, was making a huge effort to coordinate between individuals to keep everyone updated, tweeting and retweeting.

There was a drastic difference in the level of news quality between that of twitter and the local news stations. The feeds on twitter were locally oriented. There was coverage about local restaurant and bar openings where city residents could walk to. There was discussions and tweets about snow ball fights, accidents, school closings, local gatherings.

With the Mayor’s continued feeds from twitter, it makes it much easier to follow a lot of the goings on in the city. Hopefully this isn’t just a trend and that the city will start to provide a easier way for its officials to feed information to the communities.

I should also add a thank you to insanebaltimore.com for spreading the news about mayorsrb being on twitter.

I declare tomorrow, Feb 6th 2010, national east coast blizzard snow fight day! If you see a friend or a neighbor, Baltimore, put down your guns and throw a snowball instead! Show your support by throwing snow balls in fun! Bloods, crypts, food coloring can be effective in marking snow balls.*

*this post is simply suggestion and in no way shape or a call to harm or hurt anyone.

I have to give it to Accuweather.com. this is by far the greatest weather report I’ve ever seen. This is Jim Kosek giving Baltimore’s weather cast right before the storm hits.

The video used to be linked on the site but due to the nature of their video hosting, I think it rotated. Now they’ve got another video by Jim Kosek up here http://www.accuweather.com/video-on-demand.asp?video=1671939093.

The Business Insider has an article on Jim Kosek and they seem to echo my sentiments that we need more people like this guy,