Celebrated Summer Record Store owner Tony Pence recently posted a photo of one of my favorite signs in Baltimore: Umberto’s – The Total Look. In the early-through-late 90s I spent many hours at the bar next door: Dead Freddies. And every night when I left with a belly full of chicken wings and beer I’d look at that dirty, dimly lit sign and laugh. (It was a loving, fond laugh.)
One of Pence’s friends noted that the local Baltimore band Asthma Castle parodied the Umberto’s sign:
Sheer marketing genius! (This is your chance to get your very own Asthma Castle “The Total Look” 3/4 sleeve Baseball T!)
Odder than the sign is the story about the shooting that took place at Umberto’s:
Shooting at bar leaves 2 men hospitalized; Suspect in police custody, but motive, events leading to attack are in dispute
By Peter Hermann (The Baltimore Sun , 10/20/1998)
David Steele had just closed his Harford Road bar, Dead Freddies, when a regular customer returned and began pounding on the door. Steele reluctantly opened up, afraid his friend wanted to continue drinking.
“He said, `I’ve been shot,’ ” Steele said yesterday, recalling the early Sunday shooting outside his tavern in Northeast Baltimore. “I thought he was kidding. Then he lay face down on the sidewalk.”
Police said a man who lives across the parking lot from the bar aimed through a scope and fired nine shots from a rifle as patrons emerged, hitting Michael Ferro, 33, and his brother, Stephen Ferro, 27, who were about 60 feet away. Both survived.
Michael Ferro collapsed at the door, lying on top of a sidewalk advertisement for the bar — a chalk outline of a body holding a frothy mug of beer.”
Article continues: “…Police said a search of the suspect’s apartment, beneath Umberto’s Total Look Salon, turned up an M-16 rifle, two other military-style assault weapons, ammunition and a cross-bow.”
Continue reading at The Baltimore Sun.
from Baltimore Or Less http://www.baltimoreorless.com/2018/03/umbertos-the-total-look/
No comments:
Post a Comment