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A thundering hip-hop beat blares out of the windows of a double-parked beer truck at Park and Saratoga as Morris Martick, with hands firmly ensconced in coat pockets and a folded New York Times underneath his arm, shuffles past morning traffic and walks into the Blue Sky Restaurant and Carry-out.
Wearing a floppy royal blue ski cap and heavy gray winter jacket, Martick nods unceremoniously at the diner's owner, John Yoo, and places the same order he makes every morning of his life -- a toasted bagel with cream cheese and a cup of coffee. He carries his tray to the back of the drafty eatery, puts on his glasses and immediately begins reading the newspaper, occasionally sipping coffee but seemingly never distracted by the Blue Sky's sporadically boisterous customers or the piped-in easy listening tunes.
More than an hour later, Martick shyly, and a bit reluctantly, greets an acquaintance while leaving the diner. He struggles for conversation, occasionally looking at his wristwatch. "You see, I go from prison to prison," he says with a nervous chuckle, alluding to the barred windows of the Blue Sky and his own home and eponymously named restaurant only a block away in this downtown neighborhood known by old-timers as "Chinatown."
When the acquaintance suggests that Martick's local celebrity seems to go unnoticed and unappreciated by the Blue Sky clientele, he shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head. "Boss, I know, I'm a living legend," says a smirking Martick, who turns 81 this Sunday, Jan. 18, "but unfortunately I'm a dying living legend as well." (One gets the impression that the fit and trim Martick has been telling people he's "dying" since he was a youngster.)
Walking down Park Avenue in the shadow of the scaffolded steeple of St. Alphonsus Church, Martick steps carefully but purposefully past a string of metal-shuttered stores, liquor outlets, pager shops, braiding salons and New Age tchotchke emporiums. Discarded papers, cigarettes and whiskey bottles lay scattered on the sidewalks. The faces of the few passersby are weathered, troubled, even dazed.
A smattering of Downtown Partnership workers diligently sweep the streets. But everything, and everyone, here feels obsolete, forgotten and out of sync with the rest of the city. It's a Baltimore frozen in...