Hometown Boy: The Hoodle Patrol and Other Curiosities of Baltimore

Get familiar with Canton's Chitter Chatter ladies ... Trace Frank Zappa's Baltimore Origins ... Go on patrol for hoodles.

Take an intimate look at the quirky lifestyles of Baltimore with Rafael Alvarez's, Hometown Boy: The Hoodle Patrol and Other Curiosities of Baltimore. This collection of stories "makes the argument that on any given afternoon, more truth can be captured in a Morrell Park kitchen than in any great nerve-center of post-industrial society."

Homicide author David Simon said of Rafael Alvarez's work, "Throw down a coddie, a beer and a chocolate-top cookie for dessert and discover thay there are moments when some of the verbiage in the hometown rag actually sits upright and behaves like literature."