Today, another installment of The Accountability Index, our series of conversations with reporters of The Baltimore Brew, the online investigative news journal that spotlights issues of fiscal and policy accountability in state and local governments. Tom is joined in studio today by The Brew's veteran city reporter, Mark Reutter. Vacants - those dilapidated buildings that dot the landscape of so many neighborhoods, were a hot topic in the Mayoral campaign. Mark’s been covering this issue for 40 years, and as he tells Tom this morning, the number of vacants in Baltimore is at least three times the 16,000 units the city has been reporting. Why the discrepancy? And how have city leaders allowed this problem to fester for so long?
Then, the writer and Salon columnist D. Watkins joins Tom to talk about his raw, riveting new collection of essays, a memoir of his time as a drug dealer, and how the love of a woman and the love of reading enabled him to leave the life of the street, and become one of the country’s most trenchant and compelling African American writers. D. Watkins on The Cook Up: A Crack Rock Memoir.
Plus, Theater Critic J. Wynn Rousuck reviews the "Great American Rep" at the Everyman Theater -- a remarkable, season-capping twin bill of A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman, performed in rotating repertory.
And local funny guys Umar Kahn, who hosts a comedy showcase every month, and Rahmein Mostafavi, this Thursday's headliner at Umar's standup comedy night at Joe Squared, talk with Tom about where their best comedy routines come from.
