KIX guitarist Brian Forsythe was sitting in a jail cell thinking about how it could all go so wrong. “I had visions of being on an arena stage, and here I was,” says Forsythe, who had been arrested on drug charges. “I couldn’t believe that my life had changed so much.”

Whether you’re in the market for fine antiques, a cozy stay at a bed and breakfast, an accountant to do your taxes, or just a good beer, we’ve got it in our annual reader’s poll list of the best of Hagerstown and Washington County. Here are the restaurants, businesses, professionals, and entertainment venues that our readers picked as the best.

The new look of professional baseball in Hagerstown extends beyond a new name, new uniforms, and a new stadium. The league the Flying Boxcars will play in when they take the field in the spring of 2024 is different from the Minor League Baseball system that the Hagerstown Suns played in from 1981 to 2020.

“Life in the Ukraine was very disturbing—sirens sound every day and this means that missiles and suicide bombers are flying somewhere over the city,” says 76-year-old Svitlana Rochniak. “You don’t know where they will fly. Rockets flew into our city, suicide bombers came into the park next to our house. The facility in the factory where my brother works was bombed, and the research institute where my mom worked was bombed.”

Winter offers us a chance to spend evenings by a cozy fire or curled up on the couch watching a good Netflix series. Of course, when the days get longer and the nights colder, cabin fever can sometimes set in and those quiet evenings at home become mundane.

Hagerstown’s love affair with baseball spans nearly the entire history of the sport, although like most relationships, it has been a somewhat up-and-down affair. The Western Maryland Historical Library tells us the Hagerstown Base Ball Club was…

As a native of Hagerstown, Mayor Tekesha Martinez has seen the ebbs and flows of the economic development of Hub City.
“I grew up going downtown with grandfather,” remembers the 45-year-old.“ Downtown was where you’d go to get pizza. I would go to McCroy’s to get my school supplies…

Josh Goldman has stuff. Lots of stuff. Lots and lots of old stuff. He loves stuff. He keeps it all in his 20,000-square-foot…

Every year in the US, there are tens of thousands of new business start-ups, only a fraction of which will become successful companies. Business incubators- special programs combining office and work space, specialized training and mentorship - can guide these entrepreneurs as they turn their dreams into reality.

There’s a saying when it comes to writing: Write what you know.

For author Roberta L. Greenwald of Williamsport, that’s setting novels in Washington County and also Ocean City, Maryland, places familiar to her.

Understanding community and the importance of sustaining it is what makes a community thrive. In North Hagerstown there sits a 3-story refurbished bank barn that is doing just this—helping sustain a thriving and diverse community. The Market Hub, conceived by owner Jill Hudson, is home to 103 local vendors…

Lou Scally is described by listeners and viewers as Mr. Hagerstown and the man you can trust. And the radio morning show host and former television weatherman is much loved by his community.

No matter what people say, most are a little bit nosey, or at the very least curious. Especially when they drive by a beautiful home and want to be able to see if the inside is as impeccably dressed as it is from the curbside.

As a little girl Tina Fraley feared the silence. Not her mother crying or the furniture crashing, as her mother fought with Tina’s stepfather. But the silence.
“Because if I could hear my mom crying at least I knew she was alive,” recalls Fraley, who at 6 years old remembers hiding under the bed in her room with her…

Growing flowers for sale isn’t like growing flowers for pleasure, as Laura Zimmermann discovered when she started Cool Hollow Flower Farm in the Beaver Creek area four years ago.

Charles “Charlie” Sekula was born on May 25,1945,in Braunau, Austria.The birth took place in a schoolhouse enroute to a refugee camp, attended by a young doctor. It was the first time the doctor had ever delivered a baby. Charlie’s parents were refugees during the evacuation from Ratibor due to Russian invasion near the end of WWII. Lack of food caused his mother to…