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Editorial

Introducing Best of the Bay 2007

This issue of Bay Weekly opens the balloting for Best of the Bay ’07, with results to appear in the last issue of the year.

Timing couldn’t be better: We’re half-way through 2007, just beginning summer and your Bay Weekly 101 Ways To Have Fun (still available on-line and in Bay Weekly offices) will map your path to pleasures while helping you fill out your ballot.

On this year’s ballot, you’ll find categories to match your expertises and to send you on new excursions. It’s a tough job, but somebody has to devote their summer to finding the Best View on the Bay.

We know people who have spent their whole vacation hunting for the Best Crab Cake on the Bay. And don’t get too full: You still need to find the Best Ice Cream, the Best Pizza and our favorite competition, the Best Crab Soup.

It’s a great season to gauge the Best Fundraiser with August bringing the Cancer Gala’s Celebration of Life at Rod ’n’ Reel in Chesapeake Beach on the first Thursday in August, the Annapolis Rotary Club’s world-class crab feast on the following evening and the Chesapeake Bay Blues Fest with this year’s special guest, Aretha Franklin. They’re called fundraisers, but it wouldn’t be wrong to call them fun-raisers.

Starting now, you’ll have plenty of time to decide who is most deserving of this year’s Bay Hero award and to stalk the villainous Bay Zero. (Warning: We’ve had an early nomination of Omega Protein, the Texas company that is breaking the Bay’s food chain by harvesting millions of menhaden from the mouth of Chesapeake Bay in Virginia.)

For Issues Needing More Attention, you need go no further than Bay Weekly. This week, you’ll read about litter pollution, a subject so dear to our hearts that we featured it in our premier issue on Earth Day 1993.

As you’ll read in Carrie Madren’s story this week, trash in and along the Potomac River is getting creative attention from the Alice Ferguson Foundation, which sponsors the annual cleanup. But more attention is needed.

And yes, there will be a test: In the pages of Bay Weekly, you’ll need to take notes on the Best Story, Best Interview and even the Best Bay Weekly Blunder.

So keep your ballot with you so all of your Chesapeake experiences this summer can be your guide the Best of the Bay ’07.