Buzz

Since opening late last year, the Four Seasons Baltimore has generated plenty of buzz for its chic design and celebrity-chef-owned restaurant. 

We already told you that the hotel's fancy macarons were featured in the Wall Street Journal. 

Now, Conde Nast Traveler has put it on its Hotel List 2012, which lists 121 new standout hotel properties. 

"You’ll see Baltimore’s gritty side as you drive into town, signs of moneyed Old Maryland as you near the water," the magazine says. 

You can read the rest of the description here. 

Baltimore's reputation as a beer town has spread across the pond. The BBC has a big feature on the renaissance in Baltimore's beer industry. 

"Beer is flowing back into the city, thanks to a combination of young beer enthusiasts, cheap real estate and the persistence of local brewers," the BBC writes.

Max's Taphouse, Pratt Street Ale House, Clipper City Brewing Co. and the Brewer's Art all get a mention in the story. 

Still, we can't help but be flattered that the BBC followed Bmore Media's lead. We wrote this story on the growing number of Baltimore brewers. 

"Veep," the HBO comedy starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus that was filmed in Baltimore, had a red-carpet premiere earlier this month, writes the Huffington Post.

The show, which airs April 22, is about a female vice president. Maryland film officials credit the state's expanded tax credits for convincing producers to let Baltimore be a stand in for the nation's capital.

But I guess, when it comes to the red carpet premiere, they had to choose the real deal, eh? You can read the story and some pics from the event here. 

Johns Hopkins University dedicated its new $1.1 billion hospital this month and Hopkins alum and major donor New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was on hand for the ceremony. 

"The 205-room Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children’s Center features 10 surgical suites, a 45-bed neonatal intensive care unit," the Wall Street Journal writes.

"Bloomberg, 70 years old, graduated from Johns Hopkins in 1964 with a degree in engineering," the Journal writes. "He is the single-largest donor in the university’s history, giving more than $800 million since 1965 and contributing $120 million to the construction of the hospital."

Bloomberg Philanthropies funded 500 works of art, the paper writes. You can read the rest of the story here. 

Embarrassed over the Facebook pics your friends posted of you swilling beer at a pool party last summer? 

Well your employer won't see them if you work in Maryland. The state is the first to pass a law that prohibits employers from asking staff for their passwords to social media sites. The law's passage got coverage in newspapers and tech sites around the country. 

"According to Maryland’s ACLU, states like California, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan and Massachusetts have already developed legislation that would ban the practice," Government Technology writes. 

You can read the rest of the story here. 

Baltimore doesn't always score points for offering low taxes to city dwellers. 

But a report from KPMG says the city's low commercial property taxes and relatively cheap office space makes it the sixth best city for business. The report was featured in 24/7 Wall St. Wire. 

Median income increased 1.7 percent in Baltimore between 2007 and 2010, making it the ninth-wealthiest major city in the U.S., 24/7 Wall St. writes. 

Cincinnati, Atlanta and Orlando, Fla., were the top three business-friendly cities. You can read the rest of the report here. 

Fancy cookies are featured from four different venues in the April 6 issue of the Wall Street Journal. 

And among them is an Oreo Macaron from Charm City's own Four Seasons Baltimore. 

" 'It's an ode to Americana and the French,' " pastry chef Chris Ford tells the paper. A pic of the tasty treat, along with cookies baked in Nashville, Washington, D.C., and Lexington, Ky., can be found here. 

It was a good month for Baltimore baseball. The Baltimore Orioles defeated the Minnesota Twins on Opening Day. Camden Yards celebrated 20 years of operation. 

Things couldn't get any better. 

But wait -- they can!

USAToday.com featured Camden Yards as an example of an urban baseball stadium that has boosted business for area shops, bars and restaurants. The article was originally featured on CNBC.com.

"The Orioles' success with Camden Yards spawned downtown stadiums in Cleveland, San Francisco, Denver and elsewhere," the article says. You can read the rest of the story here. 

Sure, you might own every episode on DVD. But if you ever meet David Simon, don't go waxing poetic about "the Wire."

That's according the New York Times ArtsBeat blog. Writer Jeremy Egner explains:

"Before Mr. Simon went Hollywood, creating the endlessly exalted “Wire” and the current HBO series “Treme,” he was a longtime crime reporter for The Baltimore Sun, and he often evinces that breed’s hard-bitten outlook and allergy to cheap sentimentality."

Simon also tells the Times that he wrote the series for the city of Baltimore. You can read the Q&A with David Simon here.

Millennial Media's stock market debut is the biggest tech IPO since last year's LinkedIn offering, writes the New York Times.

The Baltimore mobile advertising firm went public March 29 and its ad network reached more than 300 million unique users in February, the Times writes.

"The exuberance for Millennial Media underscores the rising profile of mobile technology companies, particularly those that help serve advertising to consumers," the article says. 

You can read the rest of the story here. 

Baltimore's coffee shops has gotten some press from the Huffington Post. The website features a slideshow of local spots to get a java jolt, including Hampden's Spro, Mount Vernon's Koffee Therapy and the Four Seasons Baltimore's Lamill Coffee.

"What is different about Baltimore's coffee renaissance is that it has percolated less through the corporate culture of selling high-end brews to rich people than through home town pride," the Huffington Post writes. "The thinking seems to be that this is the sort of economic development that can keep talented people in a city suffering from brain drain."

You can read the rest of the story here. 

Baltimore's favorite famous and quirky film director John Waters is featured in the April 1 issue of the Wall Street Journal Magazine.

No it's not an April Fool's Joke.

The director, 65, talks about a lot of things -- why he doesn't lie about his age, his childhood in suburban Baltimore where stood out from the other kids (you don't say?) and that he's mellow now because it's not cool to be his age and be angry. 

He also says he likes rap music. 

"I like rap music. But bragging about being rich to poor people is really offensive," Waters says. "I want to hear a gangsta rap song about buying a Cy Twombly painting or dating a museum curator. I want to hear about that kind of rich." 

Read the entire article here. 

Maryland crab is known throughout the world. And the state's fisheries want to keep their competitive edge by touting its sustainable practices.

They are applying for Marine Stewardship Council certification, writes the Associated Press in an article that ran in Bloomberg Businessweek. 

It is following on the footsteps of Louisiana, which sought certification for its crab harvest. 

"Crabs are the Chesapeake Bay's biggest moneymaker, bringing in $52 million in Maryland in 2009, and many chefs believe they are among the world's best," the AP writes. "The lower salinity of the upper Chesapeake Bay makes the meat sweeter and more tender, and the crabs hibernate over the winter, storing fat that makes them taste richer than nonhibernating crabs from farther south, said Chad Wells, executive chef at Alewife in Baltimore."

You can read the rest of the story here. 

"Maria. I once knew a girl named Maria."

Oh wait, wrong West Side Story.

Hutzlers. I once knew a store named Hutzlers. 

A new play that tells the story of Baltimore's west side retail history premiered March 25 at the Hippodrome. 

"The performers, part of Fluid Movement, a Baltimore group best known for its elaborate and creative water ballets, staged a play on skates commemorating the area's history as "The Hub," the center of city shopping in the era before malls," writes the Baltimore Sun in its review. 

The performances for "HOWARD & LEX: The Way We Roll!" continue March 31 and April 1. Westside Renaissance Development, PNC Bank, the Weinberg Foundation, and the office of Baltimore City Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake are sponsoring the show.

The Washington Post has called the Evergreen Museum & Library a "Gilded Age beauty" in a recent review. 

"The cozy warmth of the reading room didn’t prepare us for the jaw-dropping elegance of the Great Library, a stunning room with floor-to-ceiling walnut bookshelves, reading areas and statuary," the Post writes. "I half-expected to see Lord Grantham from “Downtown Abbey” reading his newspaper there."