From Middle River to the Marine Terminal: Kim Klacik’s New Show Tours Baltimore’s Working Backbone

By: Adam Reuter

BALTIMORE, Md. — Around here, The Baltimore Informer usually spends its digital ink holding public officials’ feet to the fire. Every once in a while, though, the real story in Baltimore County isn’t happening inside a hearing room in Towson or Annapolis–it’s happening out on the water at dawn, inside a bustling Middle River storefront or under the floodlights outside the Dundalk Marine Terminal.

That everyday blue-collar rhythm is the heart of Not Just a Job, a new YouTube docuseries launched in early October by former Baltimore County congressional candidate and WCBM morning host Kim Klacik. Instead of debating talking points behind a desk, Klacik spends each 15- to 25-minute episode pulling shifts alongside working tradespeople and small-business owners across the region–asking how they built their livelihoods, what keeps them up at night and how state regulations land on the shop floor.

The timing isn’t lost on local political watchers. Following a bruising November election cycle for Maryland Republicans–and Klacik’s sharp public criticism of state GOP leadership over weak support for gubernatorial nominee Dan Cox as she weighs a run for Maryland GOP Chair–the series doubles as an informal listening tour. Yet on screen, politics takes a back seat to curiosity, humor and genuine respect for people who work with their hands.

Episode 1: Chasing Sponge Crabs and Surviving Fuel Hikes on the Bay

Klacik kicks off the series in neon bibs aboard the F/V Miss Paula in Commercial Crabbing w/Kim Klacik EP 1, spending a morning on the Chesapeake Bay with 25-year commercial waterman Capt. CJ Canby (“The Crab Dad”), whose catch supplies local favorites like Stony Creek Inn and Ekiben.

Viewers get a crash course in Bay biology and dockside economics–from learning how a single “sponge crab” carries up to five million eggs to discovering why most restaurant crab cakes rely on imported meat unless a menu carries Maryland’s verified “True Blue” seal.

Canby also lays out the math squeezing local watermen: a $4-per-box jump in bait ($3,500 a season) and $1-per-gallon higher fuel ($2,500 a season) wiped out $6,000 in operating margin before he even turns a profit. Because watermen sell into a global commodity market flooded with Gulf Coast and overseas crab, they can’t simply raise dockside prices to cover state fees or equipment taxes–even when shore-side gear like a $900 cooker motor falls outside Maryland’s vessel-only sales tax exemption.

Episode 2: Starter Townhomes and Permitting Bottlenecks Up I-83

For Real Estate Development, w/Kim Klacik EP2, Klacik heads 45 minutes north up I-83 to York, Pennsylvania—a longtime landing spot for Baltimore County families priced out of Maryland’s housing market–to tour construction sites with Johnny Inch Jr. of Inch & Co.

Inch’s backstory is pure grit: homeschooled through high school, he started in his father’s landscaping business at age 14, hired a tutor to become fluent in Spanish so he could work alongside his crew and raised $3.4 million from local investors for his first major project. Walking viewers through $350,000 – $500,000 townhomes built with off-site pre-panelized walls–where skilled drywall finishers make around $30 an hour–Inch points out that putting up a neighborhood takes about a year, while clearing 10 government agencies drags timelines out three to four years. That bottleneck mirrors the exact zoning, permitting and affordable housing debates playing out across Baltimore County today, even as Annapolis pushes new incentives for modular and panelized homebuilding.

Episode 3: Safety First—and a New Year’s Deadline—in Middle River

Klacik brings the cameras right into eastern Baltimore County for Not Just a Job, FreeState Gun Range EP, stepping inside FreeState Gun Range on Crossroads Circle with owner Ryan.

Designed as an approachable walkthrough rather than a lecture, the episode shows how a local business hosting 3,500 visitors–and up to 1,000 first-timers–every month instills basic safety habits. Viewers watch Klacik suit up, practice trigger discipline, fire a .38 Special revolver, and inspect the range’s 30-ton shredded rubber bullet trap.

For Baltimore County gun owners, the conversation also carries an urgent calendar reminder. Maryland Senate Bill 334–what Second Amendment groups challenge as an unconstitutional ban on selling Glock-style pistols equipped with cruciform trigger bars–takes effect January 1, 2027. Senior U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett–a George W. Bush appointee–declined to pause the law this autumn. While the statute carves out exemptions for police officers and military personnel acting within the scope of official duty (as well as retiring officers), everyday citizens and off-duty buyers face a December 31 cutoff before local shops are forced to pull one of their top-selling product lines from the shelves.

Episode 4 Preview: Heavy-Haul Muscle at the Port of Baltimore

While the first three episodes are streaming now, a newly released teaser for the upcoming fourth installment stays right in Dundalk’s industrial backyard. Filmed along Broening Highway outside the Dundalk Marine Terminal with Trans American Trucking & Warehouse, the preview shows Klacik beneath 50,000-pound overhead steel cranes, climbing into a heavy forklift, and following nighttime MDTA Police superload escorts—asking whether artificial intelligence threatens warehouse jobs while spotlighting how Maryland’s inflation-indexed diesel taxes and Key Bridge detour routes ripple straight to shoppers’ grocery bills.

Whether viewers tune in for the Annapolis policy debates or simply to see how a soft-shell crab, a townhome wall, or a steel coil gets from point A to point B, Not Just a Job offers a refreshing reminder of the craftsmanship keeping our corner of Maryland moving.