Crab Derby celebrates old-time quirkiness of Baltimore

In between the old and the new, there stands a well-intentioned slab of concrete. It’s a courtyard newly poured to go along with the $43 million makeover of Lexington Market, which opened to the public last year. Until Wednesday, this open space hadn’t reached its potential. But thanks to the Crab Derby’s sponsor, Faidley’s Seafood, the courtyard on Paca Street bloomed as a ruckus of people pressed in to glimpse the contest, a tradition that dates back to 1859 — before the first running of the Preakness Stakes.

It was what one would expect of such an old school carny affair — a few pols, an ex-baseball player, a few self-promoters, an enthusiastic announcer, blue skies, and a rather impressively built crab racing shoot — picture a ski jump ramp for crustaceans. To make it truly Baltimore, one of this city’s true hons, Nancy Devine of Faidley’s — a woman credited by many with inventing the modern-day crab cake — was in the crowd donning a straw hat.

She knew the rules — you’re allowed a spray bottle and a stick with a lure to motivate those blue crabs, and she knew some of these characters just might cheat. At nearly 90 years old (that’s all she would give), Devine has seen her share of crab races. But Wednesday there was a sense of a jump-start, and it wasn’t just because the Crab Derby, like so many taken-for-granted annual events, had to be tabled for three years thanks to COVID-19. There was a sense that this event, which could easily be stitched in the fabric of Baltimore, is kind of an outlier. It’s as if part of the city has chugged on by, perhaps its attention turned to Harbor Point.

But on this bright noon day in Baltimore’s Old World shopping district, there was a sense that the city had been missing out. The folks here believe in the rebound, in history and, frankly, in the need for such shenanigans. Witness all the grownups who abandoned their nice row of chairs to rush to the finish line to shout and cheer on six crabs that frankly weren’t going anywhere — which only made the crowd laugh and cheer more.

The winner was the baseball player, surprise, surprise. B.J. Surhoff, a beloved ex-Oriole, may have given his crab a little flick at the start (you were allowed one such move), but his seemed mighty effective.

Surhoff, who was inducted into the Orioles Hall of Fame in 2007 and was representing his foundation, Pathfinders for Autism, wanted to know if he could keep the trophy, a triple-decker affair featuring oysters and crabs. Indeed, it would have distinguished itself in the trophy case. But the answer was no.

He could have elected to jump into the crab-eating contest, where contestants had to pick and eat three crabs in the fastest time. He didn’t, and if he wasn’t a true picker, he would have been out of his league.

A crab-eating contest isn’t pretty, folks, as backfin tends to fly up on the face as much as the table, but folks rushed forward to cheer and record the event on their phones. One woman was all about the ladies, yelling, “There you go, sister, open that crab up. Bam!”

Jeannette Green, who had gone to the derby before, came away as the winner. She attributed her skills to her practice regimen. “I eat them in the wintertime,” she said.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the derby established itself as part of Baltimore’s seasonal happenings along with grabbing lemon sticks at Flower Mart and catching a bus to the City Fair, a long-gone event that only lives on in posters framed and hung in Baltimore jury rooms.

Radio personality Nestor Aparicio noted that then-Mayor William Donald Schaefer injected hype back into the old derby in the ’70s to get people pumped for the Preakness, with parties all through the week.

“Lexington Market was a hub and it seemed quirky and weird and a tradition that they wanted to carry on,” he said.

Today, the new Lexington Market has already shown itself as a hub (quirky and weird remains to be seen), as it draws crowds in the middle of the week, a good sign. But the generations of Faidleys working there believe that tradition, the actually feel of history, is what transcends a place.

It’s what has worked for Faidley’s Seafood, and to walk through that market is to wade through placards of history that go back to 1886. Photos and cheeky quips about seafood hanging from the rafters now pose a puzzle ― how will this stuff fit in the new market? Faidley’s remains the last business yet to move to the new location from the old East Market, which was built in 1952 and will be used for offices for now. They now anchor nothing. Thus, they are in that in-between moment.

Traditions like the Crab Derby still need to fit in the new market, just like all the historic flotsam in their old place, said Alicia Mozina-Sidhu, a Faidley family member and the event’s organizer.

“We’re switching up the traditions, but we’re celebrating this part of it, adding some new flair,” she said.

Charles Cohen is a Baltimore-based writer and filmmaker.

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