Everyone knows that the easiest way to rile a true Baltimoron is to insinuate that Charm City is just a suburb of Washington. Yeah, a lot of people around here work for the federal government, and a lot of investment money comes from our rich, fat-cat cousins down in the “Corridor.” But as the decade comes to a close, the Baltimore faithful can point to two things we’ve got on Washingtonians: the Ravens (who’ve got a Super Bowl victory, a bunch of playoff appearances, and no shame like the shame of a Redskins fan, especially this season, JEEZ), and now — the Health of our Housing Market!

Housingwatch.com posted an analysis a few days before Christmas that ranked the top ten healthiest housing markets of the decade, based on percentage change in median home sale price, and guess what? Baltimore-Towson came in at a whopping #2, behind only Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, Pa.-N.J.

According to data from the National Association of Realtors, median home prices in the Mobtown metro area rose 9.81 percent, from $131,800 to $261,100, from 2000 through the third quarter of 2009. That left the sprawling, all-inclusive DC metro area, referred to by most multiple-listing services as “Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, D.C.-Va.-Md.-W.Va.,” eating our dust in 9th place. Median prices there rose from $178,800 to $324,700 over the last decade, or a change of 8.16 percent.

So what does this mean? Well, DC real estate is still more expensive, but generally, your typical investment house inside or around I-695 was a better investment, by 1 percentage point, than the average DC-area investment home. And for that, folks, I think we can all be thankful to Santa.

And as for New Years resolutions? Let’s beat ‘em again! Here’s to the new decade!

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It’s that time of year again — when the shopping for others is completed and now it’s time to shop for yourself and spend all those gift certificates you got for the holidays.

According to the National Retail Federation, more than 5 percent of consumers will buy a holiday gift after Dec. 25 and more than 60 percent of Americans will be out shopping for themselves.

The general talk among retail industry watchers is that the discounts won’t be as steep as last year when stores were just dying to get rid of their excess inventory after a dismal holiday shopping season. In 2009, retailers were able to plan ahead for lower demand and weren’t left holding the bag.

But there are still plenty of bargains out there. Word on the street so far from Retail Eye Partners, a New York-based retail consulting company, is that promotions are continuing to drive traffic.

“We found malls to be busier than off-mall stores like Best Buy, Kohl’s, Target, Wal-Mart, Bed Bath & Beyond, etc. as shoppers finally turned their attention to specialty and apparel stores after weeks of looking for bargains and gifts at the off-mall stores,” the company said in a press release.

Macy’s is currently offering 15 percent off all online purchases, JCPenny has a code for 30-70% percent off their items with 99-cent shipping and numerous retailers have slashed their clearance and sales items to even lower prices.

Click on this link from shopping-bargains.com for some of the best sales and clearances going on out there from now through the first week of January.

Happy bargain-hunting!

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I came across a great piece today on the abysmal year its been for advertising firms that have seen their revenues plummet and have instituted mass layoffs. (Not much different from any other major company out there in 2009, come to think of it. But that doesn’t mean it stings any less.)

I highly recommend you read the whole article in the Wall Street Journal. But the gist of it is that ad firms saw unprecedented growth and creativity in the early part of this decade with the dot-com explosion only to finish out the decade with unprecedented cuts and downsizing (if not the total failure) of businesses.

And 2010 doesn’t look like it’s going to be much better, says Maurice Levy, chief executive of Publicis Groupe, one of the world’s largest ad companies.

Ad spending (which fell an estimated 10 percent in the U.S. this year) is expected to remain flat at best in 2010. Some say spending could slip again as far as 2.6 percent in the U.S.

Where did all the car ads go? Ad spending by U.S. automakers fell by 30 percent in 2009 and ad executives don’t expect the companies to return to their pre-recession advertising any time soon.

Lastly, while Washington may be bailing out the Big Three and other major companies, stiffer regulations passed by Congress are limiting the advertising world. In 2010, legislators may consider passing regulations on food advertising aimed at children, among other laws.

So I wonder what the long term effect will be for ad firms? In the earlier part of this decade, we saw larger agencies swallowing up smaller ones — but in 2009 those behemoth firms were the ones that had to make the biggest cuts in their workforce.

The last few years have been characterized by the popularity of boutique firms and specialty shops.  Nowadays it’s rare to find a major company that doesn’t have a contract with at least two advertising firms. Will boutique firms be the way of the 2010s? Or will the cycle start all over again in a few years when (if) the economy picks up?

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The Ed Block Courage Award recipients are scheduled to be announced by the Ed Block Courage Award Foundation today at Baltimore’s Sports Legends Museum — but don’t expect it to be a totally congenial display of what’s great about the NFL.

Some fans in the city are upset over the Philadelphia Eagles’ choice for their award recipient, Michael Vick. (The Ed Block Courage Award is given to NFL players who have been selected by their teammates. The team selects someone from their squad they believe exemplifies a commitment to sportsmanship and courage, according to the foundation.)

According to The Baltimore Sun, animal lovers in Baltimore plan to protest the press conference that officially announces the 32 players set to receive the award this year. The Baltimore Ravens, by the way, selected Dawan Landry as their 2009 winner.

In case you were under a rock this summer, Vick was released from prison after serving two years for his role in a brutal dog-fighting operation and signed with the Eagles in August. Those upset about Vick getting the award say the Eagles’ selection is offensive and Vick in no way reflects the intention of the award.

“The Ed Block Courage Award Foundation is an NFL-supported charity dedicated to recognizing courage in the League while improving the lives of abused/neglected children in NFL cities throughout the country,” according to the foundation Web site. Ed Block was the longtime head athletic trainer of the Baltimore Colts, was a pioneer in his profession and a respected humanitarian, the Web site says.

Do you think Vick getting this award is out of line?  On the one hand, he’s served his time, he’s now working with the Humane Society and does seem to be turning his life around. On the other hand, it’s only been two years — is it too soon to start congratulating Vick and forget his past?

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Today I got a package at work with these words printed on the front: “To prevent cervical cancer, open this box.”

Inside I found a bottle of white distilled vinegar and cotton swabs. Huh?

Turns out, January is cervical cancer awareness month, and cervical cancer is the No. 1 cause of cancer death for women in the developing world. While Pap tests have lowered the U.S. mortality rate by 70 percent, about 95 percent of women in developing nations don’t have access to the test.

Enter Jhpiego (pronounced ja-pie-go), an international nonprofit health organization associated with Johns Hopkins University. The group is working to save the lives of women in South America, Southeast Asia and Africa through a visual inspection of the cervix that consists of vinegar, cotton swabs and a flashlight.

Sounds pretty elementary for such a complex disease, but it’s been working for Jhpiego.

A basic health worker is trained to compare a patient’s cervix with photos of a diseased cervix. The worker is trained to use cryotherapy to freeze the cells if any precancerous cells are discovered. With one visit, a woman can be screened and treated. All at 1/50 the cost of a Pap.

Now if only this bottle of vinegar and these cotton swabs were doing some good in Africa rather than sitting on my desk.

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If and when David Cordish’s slots casino at Arundel Mills opens, how will nearby Laurel Park’s business be affected? That seems to be the million dollar question — and we may find out part of the answer next month when Maryland’s thoroughbred tracks are auctioned off.

The Maryland Horse Council sent out an e-mail this week after Anne Arundel County Executive John Leopold approved zoning legislation that allows Cordish to move forward at Arundel Mills. In it, the MHC says that the state racing commission’s chair John Franzone estimated that the value of Laurel “would plummet from about $250 to $50 million if Arundel Mills gets the slots license.”

If that’s true, is Laurel Park’s value just as land and not as a race track? But (I can’t resist) hold your horses — the horsemen still say they can block Cordish’s casino project.

Here’s what they say are their options: 1) to take advantage of a county law that allows them to put the issue on the November ballot if they can collect 19,000 signatures in 45 days, 2) campaign in the upcoming legislative session to “hit the re-set button” on slots implementation.

“Nobody intended for the [Video Lottery Terminal] Location Commission to deliver the death knell for Maryland racing,” the e-mail says. “Legislators and the governor can choose to start over if their constituents demand it.”

After the governor implored the county council for months to vote on the zoning issue and the county executive quickly signed the bill, how fast do you think people are ready to do it all over again? If Laurel’s owner, Magna Entertainment, hadn’t messed up in the first place and just filed the $28.5 million application fee for a slots license, the racing industry might not be in this situation in the first place.

But then again, I don’t think anybody wants to see racing decline even more than it has in Maryland, and I agree with the horsemen that many assumed the slots site in Anne Arundel County would be at Laurel Park. But at what point do we have to move on?

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According to a book by two researchers from New Zealand, because of what they eat, dogs have larger carbon footprints than SUVs.

Researchers Robert and Brenda Vale studied the composition of the most popular dog foods and found that the land it takes to produce all of the meat and grains is larger than the land it takes to produce the energy to fuel an SUV.

The book “Time to Eat the Dog? The Real Guide to Sustainable Living,” has gotten a lot of buzz. While the title may be provocative, the researchers don’t exactly suggest eating your pup, rather changing its diet to reflect a more sustainable food regimen.

However, they say a more eco-friendly pet choice would be a rabbit or a chicken. They find it socially acceptable to eat those pets.

But the book has left a lot of dog lovers and environmental types snarling over what they call shoddy figures.

The Vales say a typical medium sized dog eats 360 pounds of meat and 209 pounds of “cereals” each year, using about 2.07 acres of land. The SUV (they used a Toyota Land Cruiser) driving about 6,200 miles a year uses 1.01 acres of land.

But Clark Williams-Derry, director of research for the Sightline Institute, a nonprofit research center focusing on a sustainable economy and lifestyle in the Pacific Northwest, points to U.S. Department of Energy numbers that show that Americans drive our SUVs about 13,700 miles a year. He also says the energy consumed, plus what it takes to produce the gas and the car, are underestimated.

Then there’s the issue of the dog data. According to a study done by the Animal Protection Institute, a nonprofit animal advocacy group, dog food is made up from the scraps of human food — the stuff we wouldn’t deign to eat.

Pet food provides a place for slaughterhouse waste and grains considered “unfit for human consumption” to be turned into profit. This waste includes cow tongues, esophagi, and possibly diseased and cancerous meat. The “whole grains” used have had the starch removed and the oil extracted — usually by chemical processing — for vegetable oil, or they are the hulls and other remnants from the milling process.

Williams-Derry says that because most of what dogs eat are the scraps of what we eat, considering the carbon footprint of their food as completely additional to ours is inaccurate. He recognizes that dogs do have an environmental impact – just as SUVs do, but he takes issue with the Vales’ suggestion that owning an SUV isn’t so bad for the planet.

He says the idea that dogs are worse than SUVs is invalid. It might be time to put that idea to sleep.

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Any day now, the U.S. Bid committee for the World Cup is expected to announce its final list of 18 cities it will include in its bid to host the World Cup in 2018 or 2022.

And in the meantime, it’s the last chance for the 27 finalists — including Baltimore — to show the committee they have what it takes to host a world class soccer event. On the bid committee’s Web site, www.gousabid.com, visitors can sign up to support their cities and see the running tally of votes for each city.

So how’s Baltimore doing? Not great. Of the 27 cities in the running, Baltimore’s vote total ranks 21st with 3,750 as of Friday afternoon. FedEx Field isn’t doing much better, ranking 19th. For the full list and rankings, see below.

I asked Terry Hasseltine, the state’s sports marketing director, how this could be when M&T Bank Stadium sold out 73,000 seats a week before England’s Chelsea and Italy’s AC Milan played here this summer.

Turns out, he said, the committee Web site used to have people sign up and vote for their home state. So the M&T Bank and FedEx stadium votes were dumped into a single category. Then the bid committee decided to split up the voting by city. At that time, Maryland had 3,000 votes and many of those came from Prince George’s and Montgomery counties. Guess which stadium got those votes? Yup, FedEx.

Going into this week, Baltimore had about 1,500 votes, Hassseltine said. Thanks to some marketing efforts and e-mail blasts from Visit Baltimore, that number has more than doubled this week.

Hasseltine, who has plenty of experience with this stuff, said that typically the selection committee will base about 90 percent of its decision on the technical presentations from the cities and about 10 percent on petitions.

“But if you’re sitting there at the end of the day and you have two stadiums you think have been equal in the process and it’s going to go to that last thing that could sway your mind…We don’t want to put ourselves in that position,” Hasseltine said.

World Cup votes as of Friday, Dec. 18:
1. Seattle; Husky Stadium & Qwest Field 19,056
2. Atlanta; the Georgia Dome 14,665
3. Houston; Reliant Stadium 12,904
4. Indianapolis; Lucas Oil Stadium 10,598
5. Philadelphia; Lincoln Financial Field 10,544
6. Miami; Land Shark Stadium 9,993
7. Kansas City, Mo.; Arrowhead Stadium 9,742
8. Tampa Bay, Fla.; Raymond James Stadium 7,723
9. Dallas; the Cotton Bowl & Cowboys Stadium 7,631
10. Cleveland, Ohio; Cleveland Browns Stadium 7,519
11. San Diego; Qualcomm Stadium 5,513
12. Jacksonville, Fla.; Jacksonville Municipal Stadium 5,473
13. Charlotte, N.C.; Bank of America Stadium 5,246
14. Orlando; Florida Citrus Bowl 5,030
15. Chicago; Soldier Field 4,813
16. New York-New Jersey; New Meadowlands Stadium 4,671
17. Boston; Gillette Stadium 4,610
18. Nashville; LP Field 4,351
19. Washington, D. C.; FedEx Field 4,078 votes
20. Oakland, Calif.; Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum 4,072
21. Baltimore; M&T Bank Stadium 3,750
22. Denver; Invesco Field 3,668
23. St. Louis, Mo.; Edward Jones Dome 3,656
24. Los Angeles; Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum & the Rose Bowl 3,094
25. Detroit; Ford Field & Michigan Stadium 1,965
26. San Francisco; Stanford Stadium 1,250
27. Phoenix-Glendale; University of Phoenix 1,163

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Laurel Park

After some members of the thoroughbred industry stated their case against developer David Cordish’s bid for a slots parlor near Arundel Mills, the folks on the harness racing side of the industry came out with a statement of their own. Surprise, surprise, it’s in support of Cordish’s effort to get zoning approval at the site.

From the Cloverleaf Standardbred Owners Association’s President Thomas Cooke: “The CSOA Board of Directors has long favored the location of slots at racetracks. Given the current economic conditions, the need for slots revenue at the earliest possible time and the fact that Mr. David Cordish has been acknowledged by the Maryland Video Lottery Facility Location Commission as the only qualified bidder, the CSOA Board supports Mr. Cordish in his efforts.”

From the Maryland Standardbred Breeders President Ralph Hayward: “The racing industry and the State of Maryland needs the revenues that will be generated by Mr. Cordish’s casino. He must be allowed to move forward without any further delays.”

If you’re wondering why I said “surprise, surprise,” the standardbred folks and the thoroughbred folks have a longstanding tiff. You can read more about it here, but the gist is that the standardbreds feel as if the thoroughbreds treat them like the ugly stepsister. Harness racing used to be more popular but it now only accounts for about 10 percent of the wagering in Maryland…and the state’s standardbred tracks simulcast and take bets on thoroughbred races, which accounts for much of their gambling revenue.

The way the slots payout to the horse racing industry works, less than 10 percent goes to the industry for bred funds and to enhance purses. Lack of purse support is the main reason why Rosecroft Raceway stopped running live races more than a year ago — the standardbreds could really use the infusion to breathe more life into their industry.

They’ll take what they can get.

Meanwhile, while bigger purses would of course help the thoroughbred side too, their big concern is that if Cordish’s plans go through at Arundel Mills, it’ll take action away from Laurel just down the road….that maybe Laurel Park will become the ugly or forgotten stepsister to Cordish’s casino.

I wonder if the standardbreds are secretly laughing behind closed doors.

There’s all sorts of arguments to be made here (slots customers are different from racing customers, Laurel Park could be torn down if a casino opens up the road, the tracks will still see money from more gambling action due to bigger purses from slots funding, etc.) so PLEASE sound off and make yourself heard!

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It’s only getting sadder for the woeful Nationals. For the second year in a row the team’s pitiful attendance (that are actually worse than the Orioles!! Seriously!!) has caused the team to try and meet their fans halfway.

At least as far as their pocketbooks go.

I guess that’s what you get when you build an expensive ballpark with expensive seats…then a recession hits and the team plays just as bad its new home as it did in its old one.  At least at RFK, you could get some decently priced seats on game day — even if the food was more of a science project than edible.

The Nationals announced yesterday that they would be reducing the price on more then 3,000 outfield seats (they lowered the price on 14,000 seats last year) for the 2010 season. The lucky section this year is in the Outfield Reserved, where all tickets will cost $24. (Last year they cost $24 to $30.) Seats in the Lower Right Field Terrace will also be reduced, from $18 to $17.

The remaining seats are under a price freeze, as the team did last year. Since the day the park opened in April 2008, the team has only lowered ticket prices. Isn’t it supposed to go the other way?

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