Last year marked Erin Klarman’s 15th time at the Annapolis Rotary Club’s annual Crab Feast.
And to commemorate the occasion? Klarman stepped out of a tangle of folding chairs to show off the red rotary wheel interwoven into the vibrant collection of tattoos on her shin.
“I figured it was gonna be a lifelong thing, so I might as well have it lifelong on my body,” said Klarman, who’s from Pasadena
“That’s a rationale,” her mom, Jennifer Klarman, snorted, as she cracked open another crab.
Almost 2,500 people were expected to move through the Rotary Club’s 74th annual Crab Feast Friday evening. For lots of folks, attending the event has become a yearly tradition — even though most don’t show their love for the feast by getting it inked on their skin.
Still, the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium was packed with Crab Feast veterans.
Lanae Richardson has been coming to the event since 2002, but she doesn’t keep returning for the crabs — even though there was a heaping pile in front of her and her husband, George.
“I come for the corn,” she said, pulling a paper plate stacked with cobs toward her. “Imma eat a lot of it.”
That might be true, but what Richardson eats will still make up only a teeny fraction of the 3,400 ears Crab Feast-ers were expected to put down Friday night. That’s in addition to 320 bushels of crabs, 100 gallons of crab soup, 150 pounds of beef barbeque and hundreds of gallons of soft drinks and beer.
Richardson added that she was also there for the hot dogs — she had two sitting in front of her. Over the 17 years she’s been coming to the feast, she still remembers the time there were no hot dogs, she said, shaking her head at the memory.
But she wasn’t the longest tenured Crab Feast-er seated at her crowded table. Richardson pointed toward a woman cracking crabs with long, gold, shimmery fingernails.
“She’s the champion,” she said.
Indeed, Shirley Bennett (no relation to Tony Bennett, she said) had been coming to the feast for 30 years. Everybody’s so friendly at the event, she said. And it doesn’t hurt it happens rain or shine.
“It’s just so awesome, baby,” she said. “So awesome.”
The feast isn’t just about crabs and a good time. Since the event started in 1946, it’s brought in more than $1.5 million — and every penny of that money goes straight to local charities, since the Annapolis Rotarians pay all their own administrative costs for club operations.
What’s more, for the last few years, the feast has been 100% green, said Elvia Thompson, president and co-founder of Annapolis Green. Everything, right down to the soup spoons and crab trays, is either recyclable or compostable. The environmental organization even collects all of the plastic bags from ice and rings from sodas and takes them to Graul’s Market, which takes care of recycling them.
The feast generates a whole lot of compost — around 14.5 tons, to be precise, said Thompson. That’s equivalent to two dumpsters full.
“And they will be full today,” Thompson said, nodding.
Life has brought the Klarman clan all across the country, with Erin in Pasadena and her sister, Allie Bast, living in Atlanta with her husband. But every year, they all come back to Annapolis for the Crab Feast.
At the head of the family’s table, behind stacks of crab trays, sat a birthday cake covered in white frosting for Bast’s 29th birthday.
Was Bast there to celebrate?
“No, I’m here for the crabs,” she said. “It just happens to be a very great birthday present.”
![Helena Hicks, a civil rights advocate who led a 1950s protest to desegregate the old Read’s drug store lunch counter, died of pneumonia complicated by Lewy body dementia Thursday at the William L. and Victorine Q. Adams Gilchrist Center Baltimore. She was 88 and lived in Northwest Baltimore. “We think of our historic personalities primarily […]](https://www.capitalgazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/TBS-L-HELENA-HICKS-LAM_187855807.jpg?w=620 "Helena Hicks, a civil rights advocate who led a 1950s protest to desegregate the old Read’s drug store lunch counter, died of pneumonia complicated by Lewy body dementia Thursday at the William L. and Victorine Q. Adams Gilchrist Center Baltimore. She was 88 and lived in Northwest Baltimore. “We think of our historic personalities primarily […]")
