Ye Olde Arguments for a War on Ye Olde Boston.

Boston Beauties

Even though I was in the heart of the American Revolution and the symbolic home of Independence all I could wonder about was, "Where did they keep the strippers?" I had heard of The Combat Zone from those who had visited many years ago. It was supposed to be the Boston equivalent to The Block, with a much cooler name. In the very brief research I had done to find this place I found that it had been destroyed during urban renewal projects in Boston and turned into City Hall.

Baltimore Gems: Ready to Move In !!

The complete irony did not get passed me as I stood around what had been the area of The Combat Zone at the edge of beautiful Boston Common and watched couples kissing and homeless rummaging and tourists touristing with no idea that less than 40 years ago the district would have been blanketed by prostitutes, neon lights and peep shows.

Boston chose to solve this issue of sleeze by removing The Combat Zone and building the bright domed building of democracy and law, City Hall... where naked girls had once done splits. Baltimore chooses to simply ignore the sleeze, the tourists and the homeless by surrounding the depressing scenes with City Hall and all of the important government buildings. For Bostonians it wasn't acceptable to have a city center filled with drugs, underage strippers and prostitution. Baltimore likes to think of itself as a rebel, one that can live with real combat zones in full view and be progressive enough to allow them to exist side by side with half-assed urban renewal from 1970.

Boston didn't have the same unique character or characters that Baltimore can boast. We Baltimoreans have the privilege of affordable housing and cheap beer with no suits or high heels required. It seemed Boston had a lot of professional up-tights wandering the streets looking productive and educated. Baltimore doesn't have too much to worry about it that area either; everyone in Baltimore knows that those from Hopkins can't bother to mix with the rest of the population anyway. Baltimore's a lot more friendly and have way better accents. There has never been an instance when either "park" or "car" have ever contained an "h."

I didn't come back after two days in Boston to rip on my favorite city in the world. Instead, I came back like one does after attending the wedding of a really rich friend with impeccable taste. Their uncle is a bank president, their mom a beauty queen and brother Secretary of State. You showed up with a Goodwill dress you thought was funky and interesting, but really just looked like you dumpster dove outside the reception hall when compared to the designer crap the twiggy women wore so elegantly. When you get home from an affair like that your life all of a sudden seems so sloppy and out of control. At your wedding the wedding singer sounded like Neil Diamond, the catering was from the pit beef place down the street paid for with a coupon, and the most educated guest was your brother with an A.A. in General Studies from a tech school. The kid that walked in drunk to his last final and announced, "I feel like Ron Howard!" when he really looked like King Koopa smelling like Natty Light and vomit.

There are many fundamental differences between those scenarios and I would never want to live a life of designer clothes with the Secretary of State's secret service at family dinners. I just want to know that I am good enough to have anything I want and that people realize I choose to live the campy life and love it. As of right now, I take my English guest to Boston after living with me for months in Baltimore and I found myself trying to show her dumpsters behind the historic churches calling them "monuments" or asking the few drunken homeless people I could find for directions to avoid the nicely uniformed "information" people milling about every corner. It was just too upsetting to show her how easy and wonderful it was to navigate around a city that embraced and capitalized on both its hard drinking Irish side and refined Puritan roots. Even after taking her to a soup kitchen for our final night out and telling her it was the best restaurant in town she was starry eyed about the city that had started the war against her nation with tar and feathers!

Baltimore city government wants to start a 4 cent bottle tax to raise money for city improvements. I am totally for the tax and insist that all of the money go to a "Government Exchange Program" so we can import the Boston planners and send our impoverished government lot up to them. Our Baltimore city council will have the extinct Combat Zone moved into City Hall in no time. Tourists will be mugged and possibly shot in front of famous monuments while liquors stores will be instated on every block. At least this "Government Exchange Program" will keep us competitive with Boston instead of our usual lack of recognition for creation of complete unemployment, total violence and most effective littering campaign. Let's spread the love.

Three Sides of 1950.

Baltimoreans were busy during this time fixing the city or buying the new marvels being produced by re-purposed post war mega factories. A lot of money circulated in the new middle class formed by returning GI's and their young wives and children. This money made it quickly to the flashy Block. This area of the city had gotten much advertisement and legitimacy during the war blitz and now national reporters were looking in to see what was happening behind the extremely neon sidewalk.

The problem with this dissection of The Block was that little agreement could be achieved between the articles published. In 1954 Esquire called The Block, "the golden road." It invited visitors to experience some "innocent" entertainment. In 1951Washington Confidential defined The Block women, "Few have looks, none have wit, and at $35 a week most of these stag-show strumpets are overpaid." Ouch! The autobiography written by Blaze Starr in 1989 reflected on the days of The Block in terms of how it influenced the rise of Ms.Starr. She has mentioned The Block always as her home and The Two O'Clock Club as a fine club for adult entertainment. She settled down in Baltimore and bought the club without ever mentioning any problems on The Block until the mid 1960's.

It is a fact that The Block during the 1950's was not all horrible disgusting acts but nor was it a shimmering innocent night out. I don't think there is a balance that will be struck between good and dirty. It will be more like finding the shining parts amidst the dirty core.

Please look into these fascinating sources and find some answers for yourself. It is not just about the adult entertainment district of Baltimore, but more about what the city was allowing to pass legally situated in between police headquarters and City Hall. It also reveals how the city supported the prosperity of this district in an era of American history considered the most conservative ever. The Block continues to be a dynamic and revealing test to Baltimore history.

If you remember the 1950's in Baltimore or know someone who has memories of The Block please send them my direction. Thanks!

Stay underground!

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.