Never Be Lost Again.

Check out this amazing bibliography compiled by great historians including Dean Krimmel. He spoke to my history class a year ago and he is an awesome historian that is a completely self-made man. One of my personal Baltimore heroes.

                                                www.baltimorecityhistory.net

Happy Days Indeed!

Mencken and his autobiographical account in Newspaper Days has much more to offer me but already I have learned of the public hangings the city held. City law required the sheriff to commit the act and Mencken mentioned that he had never seen a sober sheriff on hanging day. I learned that some cops had the job of scooping floating bodies out of the Patapsco as they floated by.
     "There was a sort of derrick overhanging the water, and on it the harbor cops would pull up the floaters that they found, and let them dry. Some of them were covered with crabs and barnacles when they were brought in, and Hackman (morgue supervisor) had a long pole for knocking such ornaments off."

He also described the lack of an adequate sewer system in the city.
     "The Back Basin, which made up into the town so far that its head was only four blocks from the main crossroads, received the effluence of such sewers as existed, and emitted a stench as cadaverous and unearthly as that of the canals of Venice. In Summer it took on extra voltage, and became almost unendurable, but the old-time Baltimoreans pretended that they didn't notice it, and even professed to believe that it was good for their sinuses and prophylactic against the ague."

Not only does Mencken describe a Baltimore rarely revealed, but he makes me feel smarter for reading him. His vocabulary requires me to sit with a dictionary on hand. His descriptive prose brings every character to life. Reading his descriptions of Baltimore life allows one to view The Block in a different and deeper way. Now I may envision the businesses on Baltimore Street bathed in the stench of rotting human waste and washed up dead animals in the Back Basin. Girls would be soliciting sex or hawking beer as the horse draw buggies filled the air with dust or mud and manure.


Mencken's Baltimore allows me to forgive the nostalgia of those who existed in these times. I certainly wouldn't want to admit I hung out with hookers on The Block while smelling like an overflowing public toilet. Read some Mencken and you too may have these delightful realities thrust upon your senses. It's worth it.

Mencken's Law for an Enlightened Age

I hesitate to get too detailed about H.L. Mencken and his writing career in Baltimore. The Mencken Society and Friends of the H.L. Mencken House are incredibly knowledgeable about this prolific writer and thinker of the early 20th century. Both organizations were really helpful to me when I contacted them to find information regarding Mencken and his writing. Thanks especially to Oleg Panczenko secretary of the Friends of H.L. Mencken House and Garin Hovannisian of The Mencken Society. These guys certainly passed some Mencken love my way.

What I will venture to say about Mencken with my miniscule knowledge of his work is the fact that every scholarly website or person that I have contacted for information regarding social history of Baltimore has asked me weather I have consulted the works of Mencken. Finally...I can say that I am in the process. As suggested by the men mentioned above I picked up some of Mencken's autobiographies. The second in his trilogy is titled, Newspaper Days published in 1940 and chronicles his first years in the newspaper business from 1899 - 1906. I admit to being only on page 62 at this writing but already understand why this guy is such a Baltimore legend and why his influence was felt nationwide. The reason I trust Mencken's view of Baltimore society is summed up on page 38. It directly states:

     "I made up my mind at once that my true and natural allegiance is to the Devil's party, and it has been my firm belief ever since that all persons who vote themselves to forcing virture on their fellow men deserve nothing better than kicks in the pants. Years later I put that belief into a proposition which I ventured to call Mencken's Law, to wit:
               
     Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, then A is 
            a scoundrel."

It's like one of those postulates from Geometry class that I never understood, but now his law gives me confidence in my abilities of comprehension once more. There is no account this man can give of Baltimore life that I will not trust. One of the greatest dangers of researching The Block and the murky moralities of its life forms is the fact that so many who write and recall it later want to provide a shiny and virtuous account of the past. The past that I am intending to portray has never been nor will never be shiny or virtuous. The more I learn the dirtier The Block and Baltimore history gets. Mencken understood this darkness was essential in reporting the truth.

The Little Wins...

Sitting in my little cubby at the B level of the John's Hopkins University library with only sharp fluorescent lights to guide my thoughts I made a jack pot discovery. I uncovered a book detailing the history of Baltimore's movie theaters. The first movies appeared on The Block in the early 19th century. This book must logically be an excellent account of early Baltimore Street and if I am lucky the author threw in the scratch houses as well (scratch house -  nickname for an adult movie house on The Block / the lice and filth in the theater left men scratching themselves when they left- gross!) Robert Headley Jr. and his book Exit: A History of Movies in Baltimore self-published in 1974 now sells online for no less than 300 dollars and up to over 1,000 due to its rarity and academic value. While the book is available to buy on several websites JHU does not have a single copy in their world famous library. The kind Information Man told me that it isn't there because it doesn't fit into their specialty categories of Science and Engineering. My joy was not hidden as I proudly told tell him about Blaze Starr and her movie Blaze Starr Goes Nudist and her famous smoking couch routine. He laughed to cover the fact that he was blushing like a pretty pig pink.

Consider it awesome that this stuffy name dropping nervous breakdown factory overlooked the one subject I have dedicated to my historical future. I would feel dirty and broken down if Hopkins had already sent their research pit bulls on the topic because a girl like me wouldn't stand a chance.

Enoch Pratt Free Library and their stunning Maryland Room rule again as their online catalog reveals 3 copies. I intend to speed over and lovingly read each page of Headley's precious work. Underground history may produce more frustration than content on occasion, but today's silly win keeps me going. It's helpful to know that some ideas are yet to be taken.

The original movie theaters on The Block represented a source of great pride for the city. They established the rich history of entertainment Baltimore Street would be infamously known. Stay tuned for some amazing and fascinating history of The Block as I unfold these pieces. Please send pieces of your own to sininmobtown@gmail.com.

This is NOT Sucking Up! I promise.

Stumbling into an article like this on Goucher College's news site brought a huge smile to my face. Robert Beachy has been my college adviser since Sophomore year. While I've been working with him for a few years he has never taken a moment to boast about all of his amazing accomplishments. The only reason I knew he had recently won a Guggenheim Fellowship was because I found a page containing the winners list in the New York Times orphaned on a library table. All he can do is giggle and blush when I ask about how he did it. He changes the subject quickly to my projects and we move on.

Please take a second to check out this link as well (just look quickly past the murder thing..all the Gopher's were fine...) and get to know this awesome guy and professor. His progressive ideas of sexuality and gender through history have been inspirations for this Baltimore history project. Going to his office is always an experience filled with laughter and support and I will miss him greatly as my advisor in my last year of school as he works on his book Gay Berlin due out in 2011.

I still have at least one pending grade from Robert, but even if I didn't I would be saying the same nice things about his work, really Robert, I think you rock...Thank you for inspiring me and telling me when I am completely whack.

Stop by the Goucher link up top and give this man some love! I promise that when you're finished the only word you'll have left to say is, "Daaaammnn!"

Naked? So What?

Naked girls, cheap sex and cops looking blindly into The Block's many sticky pleasure dens have enticed tourists and bums to sit side by side and grasp for the jiggling titties all around like candy on Halloween. The girls practically enter the stage naked and bobbing along to foul music such as Linkin Park or Disturbed. Baltimore has watched and heard about these strippers taking a little extra to give one desperate or curious guy some action on the side. The cops have holed up right next to the clubs parking their cruisers at 500 E. Baltimore St yet only a few fairly minor liquor license violations are prosecuted each year.

When I sat all by myself in at the Midway Bar, a classic hook up joint on The Block with posters of famous pin-up girls circling the entire room pressed up right under the graying drop ceiling, the only patrons during that hour were shaky mumbling men paying with mixed change and exiting with fifths of Mad Dog in small paper bags. The bartender took only the fewest minutes possible to grab me a beer from the refridgerator and speed walk back to her game of electronic poker pushed against the back wall. Every few minutes or so she would yell, "Goddamnit!," or "Shit!" as she lost a round. I certainly didn't blame her for getting a little excitement into her shift of emptiness and boredom. The bar was so clean, despite nips and cracks in every surface that I would have consumed my beer on the floor instead of the creaky red plastic bar stool. Rather than the traditional smell of stale smoke the entire bar reeked of Lysol and the original scent Mr. Clean. My favorite part of my hour at the Midway was when an obvious regular entered and stood at the very front of the bar by the smoky windows. The bartender almost materialized in front of him from the back of the room and had a conversation so quickly and full of Bawlmore english I missed everything that was said besides, "You know Shorty, tell him to c'mere." The tall and lanky black man, while holding onto his drooping pants, did a turn to his left out the door and within the minute had dragged a big black man about 300 pounds to the doorway. The second that man reached the doorway the bartender began screaming, "What the fuck you fucking asshole....(garbled angry things)!" Over her screaming the big man, now shuffling side to side in the middle of the sidewalk added, "Shut up you stupid bitch. I hate your voice, that fucking voice drives me fucking crazy...(garbled angry things)" In his defense she did have a voice similar to fingernails on a chalkboard and a pissed off harpie. The screaming lasted for less than a minute, the big man stalked off to his club having already scooted back to the edge of the sidewalk looking like the Midway had contracted some contagious virus. The bartender immediately attended to her customer in a very professional manner. No one on the street fliched during the screaming match, no one looked or stepped around the big yelling man. Since I was the only one in the echoing bar I was torn as to whether I should stare like a bug eyed freak or become really interested in the wet label on my Yungeling. I chose the former and gawked liked a Japanese tourist at Disneyland.

I had parked my car right in front of the club Lust dead center in the middle of the decaying 400 block of Baltimore Street. It was only 5 pm and the street was obviously filled only with strippers getting off shift or getting ready to start and men walking tightly against the buildings groping like moles in the bright sunlight. Here and there the men in drooping jeans and massive XXXL t-shirts would fumble to holler at a woman as she skirted by them. They tended to go for the women in poured on jeans and a shirt that covered everthing above their belly button and just below the nipples. Not a single girl responded to the wavering mating calls. Baltimore Street, being a major city thoroughfare filled every light cycle with crowded minivans, beaten up Honda Accords carrying a blank eyed guy in a wrinkled white shirt and tie or vibrating hunks of metal alternating between cargo of guys in huge white t-shirts and gold grills or girls singing along to Beyonce or Rihanna. The same pattern followed the hundreds of cars idling at the lights. The people inside, including the curious children, never turned an eye to the huge and flashing Hustler Club or the stripper that ran by me while crossing the street wearing a long ripped t-shirt and 7 inch clear heels full sideboob visible. In the light, her make-up looked quite terrifying in its quantity and blue eyeshadow reaching into the eyebrows. Not a head turned or a finger pointed at the spectacle I was witnessing. Even as I got in my car and a homeless man, hot in his many layers, pulled his pants off and took a t-shirt out of his boxer briefs so very brief that the holes revealed all but the precious frontal bit so close to my car he could have leaned on the hood for support. Not a look. The Block was so full of screaming and stripping and bad make-up that no one took a gander. Baltimore has made it invisible. Yeah, Yeah, a little block right? A little piece of garbage next to the cops that they can keep quiet. True. It hasn't really caused a racket in Baltimore. It brought us fame and tourists from the 1900's through the 1970's when "urban renewal" swiped a lot of the clubs. It's not the morality that matters it is the fact that Baltimore allows this decaying block of prostitution and drugs to exist in direct violation of the laws the city is trying to impose. It sits blocks away from City Hall and on the same block as the Central District Police Station. We can keep it contained, sure, or we can fix it up and make a downtown that reflects the words Dixon and Bealefeld and the rest speak.

Since the inception of The Block the city has been spreading a positive buzz while the club owners ran things their own way. Even during the "urban renewal" project in the 1970's, after the devastating race riots of 1968, while the city was buying up clubs on The Block to make room for change and speaking loudly "about cleaning up the city" the Baltimore Sun was publishing articles oozing nostaligia for the clubs and bars. "Baltimore Street in the Roaring '20's produced a night-blooming hybridization of bookmakers and congressmen, prostitutes and society debutantes." stated an article titled, "An Affectionate History, of The Block," publised in 1979 by the Baltimore Sun.

The statement above failed to recognize that the reason The Block succeeded so broadly during the 1920's was the fact that it completely ignored the rules of Prohibition. Govenor Albert Ritchie defyed the Federal imposition of Prohibition leading Baltimore to become the 2nd wettest city in the country next to New York City. However, The Block lead the rest in defying the laws of Prohibition and held the title for defying the rest of Baltimore and U.S. laws as well. For the Sun to publish such strange articles during a time when the city was slowly eliminating The Block is still very mysterious. There is so much information available that could support the idea that the city was one: being paid by rich Jewish club owners, often reffered to as "The Jewish Mafia" and two: absolutely fine with the corruption and lawlessness on The Block because it existed within very controlled circumstances.

Baltimore, being both Northern and Southern in its nature exists an enigmatic environment encompassing an attitude of government and people that accepts just about any type of person or place. It is able to forget those things lacking taste or couth and in many ways embraces the seedier aspects of the city. Of all those articles and books written about Baltimore throughout the 20th and 21st century the majority emphasize the invisible city of Baltimore that lives within its own rules and accepts and embraces corruption and hookers just a few block shy of City Hall.

I like to say that I am researching the underground history of Baltimore until I realized that Baltimore doesn't have an underground because it's never cared so much to create one.

Props to Van Smith

This is just a quick thanks to Van Smith of the Baltimore City Paper. He is a great reporter who wrote the article that sent me on my way to becoming a Blockologist. If you don't read a thing on this blog please check out his work for the City Paper. His articles on The Block are clear, concise and incredibly interesting. It's a great way to get great information free and easy. Show Van some love.

First Lady of Trash

The photo to the left and the polka dotted lady above are both Ms. Doris Wishman. She was the first lady of any type of movie ending with -plotation. Okay, blacksplotation excluded even this wild woman knew her limitations. The stupefying picture to your right is a frame from one of Wishman's movies starring Chesty Morgan. Chesty Morgan boasted stats of 73-32-36. In the movie she did with Wishman Chesty played a secret agent with a camera in her breast. Of course, every time she took a picture she had to release her set of 73's to the wind for a clear shot. Finally, no story in this blog is complete without an appearance by the beautiful and talented, not to mention, tough Ms. Blaze Starr. Besides playing a nudist Starr was also handy in a fight. When she spotted her ex-boyfriend pulling up across from her Two O'Clock club on The Block in the lavendar caddy she bought him with a new woman she sped across the street and pelted the woman with her fist gashing her eyebrow open with her large diamond ring. When the ex called to threaten a lawsuit of 10,000 dollars Blaze invited the ex, his lady friend and lawyer to the Two O'Clock Club. While waiting for the group to arrive she had worked herself into such fury that as the three entered she belted the woman again, but this time knocking her to the floor. The lawyer turned to flee, but before her ex could get away Blaze had grabbed a bottle and broken it over him on the way out. While violence doesn't solve many problems it did this particular disagreement. He sold his club across the street from hers and quickly and quietly moved to Florida. Entrepanuer, burlesque legend, writer, actress and prize fighter Ms. Starr is quite the renaissance woman. In fact, she is currently a jewlery maker and peddles her goods on her own website that also contains great photos for sale that she will personalize free of charge.

Blaze Starr certainly was a nudist, from the waist up, in the slowest, most unappealing bit of erotica I have ever seen. I was amazed to find out that Blaze Starr Goes Nudist was developed and directed by a woman. Doris Wishman, I later found out, was a queen of B (really D) movies all through the 60's and was still working on films into her late 80s and early 90s. Wishman just passed away in 2002. Gender bias allowed me to expect the film to be sensitive and erotic based solely on the assumption that it was how a female director would create a porn. Not Wishman. Her camera work and direction jabbed through each scene to highlight the sweat and melting makeup coating Starr's face. She had almost no use of artificial lighting or bounce boards or even a flag or two to protect the moist bodies from reflecting every nook and cranny visible in the uncovered cellulite fleshy bits. In fact, the blog Bloody Terror has an awesome description of Wishman's work that I will allow to speak for itself:

"I'd had the pleasure of discovering Wishman around the same time that
I discovered Andy Milligan ("The Body Beneath", "The Ghastly Ones").
These two filmmakers are very similar, and both photograph sex and
nudity in the most sexless manner possible; cold, disconnected bodies,
cellulite and pimples emphasized by harsh lighting. Where Milligan
had ambitions toward dysfunctional family costume melodrama though,
Wishman abandoned all pretense to create absurd, eye-popping trash
cinema. Her films appear so unencumbered by all but the most basic
film making skills that they approach the level of high art."

I can guarantee that his reference to "high art" would cause even many of the most liberal art critics to clutch their ascots in terror while washing down the rising gag reflex by slugging gulps from large goblets of white zin. Doris Wishman, I'm almost positive, would think that was a hilarious as I do. There is no way these films weren't amazing fun to make. With no concern for lighting, costumes, diva stars or having any money Wishman created hilarious B movies of the simplest fashion. Nude on the Moon, while not having the beauty of Starr, did have a far superior plot line. Men in tiny shorts frolicked on the Moon, as acted out by the state of Florida, amidst Moon sprites in metallic bikini shorts that only covered half of their snowy white and often pimpled and cellulited behinds. Each Moon man and woman had headbands of glitter complete with bobbling star antenna that allowed telepathic communication. The plot basically called for the two male astronauts to wander around this lush Moon lagoon. The girls often jumped to shake their breasts for the camera and coyly gathered around the curious astronauts to rub themselves with leaves and flowers as the puzzled and delighted scientists took copious notes. Neither of the movies had a single bit of on site audio recorded. Every noise was added in post and all of the voices were ADR. Much of the time the actor would move their lips just a split second sooner than the dubbed voice or the scene called for a soft senous growl and the ADR voice turned the actress into a confused voice actor reading off of a script in a sound booth complete with the hiss and pop of a microphone set to record too loud. You know, the perfect pick for a quite love scene in the woods.

What importance does this fabulous film experience have to The Block in Baltimore? Part of this project and research about Baltimore and it's characters on Baltimore Street is to reveal the history and stories that exist in the wings that prop up the scene. Certainly these Wishman films were just the tip of the iceberg when it came to B movies and stag films. The films reveal what erotica of the time was. The girls could not be on camera without their crotch covered and men could not be filmed with full frontal nudity either. In the film with Blaze the nudist camp was filled with naked women all holding towels over their loins or laying with a strategic leg covering their lap. The men more often than not walked around the nudist camp in swim shorts so they could be on camera at all. Yet, it was this type of film that was considered dirty and inappropriate. It's almost laughable today. Considering both the nudity and violence visible on television for anyone to see nowadays it gives me a lot to think about when it comes to the ultimate downfall of The Block.

Blaze Starr would be considered modest as she walked around topless with her dubbed voice and plastered up bee hive. What created the difference between that erotica and the XXX porn that has infiltrated society via the Internet, television and print media? Is that loss of "modesty" in some way in part responsible for the drugs and violence that made their way into the clubs and bars on Baltimore Street. I continue to read quotes from club owners in the late 50's and early 60's as they spoke out about "Go Go dancing" and "taking off cheap bikinis without a show" as being a destructive force to the art and lifestyle of The Block.
While Blaze Starr didn't ooze much sexuality in her Wishman flick she was always treated like a "lady" by the men in surrounding her. Even man opened doors for her, allowed her to go first and most surprisingly the director of the nudist camp left the room so Starr could undress and waited for her to come outside "when she was ready."

I don't know how to reconcile this change with what we experience in today's post-women's lib porn but, Blaze Starr Goes Nudist did allow me to put her personal mystery aside and just watch as she emerged in her true profession. Every book about her, including the one she wrote states that she loved being a stripper more than anything else. She lost relationships and marriages as a result. Miss Starr was so dedicated to the art of the show that she went through training a leopard and a panther to remove her clothes onstage before she realized that putting wild cats near her breasts and the face of potential customers was never going to work. She was arrested in almost every city she preformed and even had an affair with the tough Captain of Vice in Philadelphia to reduce his raids in her club. I guess as far as The Block is concerned it is more than sufficient to know Blaze for her professional devotion and forgo the mystery for another research paper.

It's Bawlmore Hon'

I am spending a good Saturday afternoon listening to 105.7 FM "The Fan" the last inning of the Orioles - Blue Jays game waiting for the O's to get the tie breaking run before extra innings. But, as a true member of the Generation Y I must have at least one other form of entertainment going at the same time. It is no other than the sensual and excessively wiggly striptease of the Baltimore Beauty Blaze Starr. I forgot that I had ordered this exploitation film "Blaze Star Goes Nudist" shot in 1960 "revealed in Beautiful Eastman Color."

While I am waiting for the end of the game to truly indulge in such a film my mind was already turning with the visions of the premier in some scratch house on The Block. I see Starr proudly introducing it and the packed house smelling of cigarettes and bum sweat erupting in applause and cat calls begging her to take off her clothes. I have certainly taken this research to a nostalgic peak with my fantasy because there is no evidence it appeared anywhere on Baltimore Street. However, you can bet that my next adventure is to find out where one could have seen the stunning red head in all her curvaceous glory nude and wriggling through a forest on the big screen.

This DVD is such a great relief to me after watching the movie "Blaze," released in 1989 and based on Starr's memoir. The movie left me reeling with so many questions as to how much of the putrid romance and cheesy dialogue was truly exchanged between Starr and Earl Long. I just couldn't believe that Starr was giving him political advice and running his broken career from behind the scenes to help him create a successful bid for Congressman. While, I don't want to downplay Starr's intellect because of her Burlesque career I'm sure that she was a very savvy business woman. Yet, after researching the whole two official biographies of Earl Long I found that she did not show up as anything more than an affair that damaged Long's career and represented his very possible manic spree through the cat houses of Bourbon Street. I have yet to fully go through Starr's memoir to see how she represented the affair, but she had a cameo in the movie and it was based on her memories so I am hypothesizing that she viewed the love as something very different than Long biographers. The only facts that stick is the statement that "Long was completely in love." His biographers and Starr seem to concur. The mysteries surrounding Blaze Starr and her life both on and off The Block are very important to my study of The Block because they are just further proof to me that those who have taken time to record and recognize the importance of The Block and its influence in history have built misty and love lit mythologies. Blaze Starr is considered the most important Burlesque figure on The Block and essential to the history of Burlesque. So, if that story is misrepresented to those who search for the truth in The Block then I can only assume that misinformation is rampant in our memories.

Blaze Starr as a nudist is such a wonderful break from the mystery. She is on film portraying her true profession. If one were to be given one piece of information regarding her role on The Block I would hand them this DVD. The special features are some of her famous strip teases complete with legendary smoking couch routine. Her beautiful body is put on display for money and her feisty and sexy routine is the entire point of the experience. Maybe I will never get to the bottom of her gubernatorial affair in Louisiana, but as far as her role in Baltimore is concerned one may need go no farther than her stripteases. She was a good ol' fashioned entertainer who in her words, "used the strengths that God gave her." Ahhhh...real simplicity.

Orioles baseball, and I'm even used to the fact that they lost in the bottom of the 9th to the Jays, and Burlesk, as the Bawlmorians spell it, is the perfect combination on a beautiful Saturday.

Blaze Starr

I just got the movie Blaze in the mail. It is a "sizzling comedy from the creator of Bull Durham." According to USA Today it is a "funny, sexy movie!" The screenplay is based on the book Blaze Starr: My life as told by Huey Perry. The book can be found on Amazon for .01 cent. I have to admit that after reading the foreword and a few paragraphs of the first chapter I'm disappointed with how elementary the writing is.
Blaze Starr is a serious character and a living legend on The Block. She was one of the best and most beautiful (see picture) stripper of the 1950's and seduced the governor of Louisiana, and according to her own account (listen to it yourself in the clip below), President JFK as well.

Starr has a great interview easily found by typing her name into You Tube. For convenience it is also posted at the bottom of this entry. It is there that one can see in her eyes and wily smile that her life hasn't been all Cracker Jacks and romance.

Unfortunately, I have hit yet another piece of evidence that points to the misrepresentation of The Block. If one were to read only the topical stories and antecdotes surrounding this decaying hole of prostitution and drugs it would seems as if a tux and top hat were required to set foot on Baltimore Street. The Block did have its glory days of the 1940's and 50's but then quickly tumbled into a spiraling black hole similar to the one Alice falls into while chasing the white rabbit. It's no wonder to me now why the city of Baltimore has neglected this failing "Adult Entertainment Zone." City officials have built such a thick wall of denial and nostalgia that has permeated the once highly respected Baltimore Sun, local media and writers that as one city planner said to me, "There's nothing wrong with The Block, I mean it doesn't bother too many people." And maybe she was right because most Baltimoreans just try to forget that it's even there as it slowly fills with vacant buildings and "For Lease" already so familiar.