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.

Carnival Strippers.

photo by Susan Meiselas

Take a close look at the beautiful photo documentary book by Susan Meiselas, Carnival Strippers. It may not focus on the girls from The Block but does bring the sentiments of the current day Block strippers to life. It is sad and poetic and has blocks of transcribed interviews taken by the author beside images wavering between purity and total resignation.

Her documentation took place between three summers of 1973 through '75 as the carnival strippers performed in town. One girl cites Blaze Starr as an example of how well she wanted to do for herself as a stripper. Another girl candidly stated that all of the dancers were prostitutes veiled as strippers. It did seem this was true there as well as the way it seems to be on The Block. I can confirm that information for the present day and feel very strongly that the atmosphere of explicit sex acts on stage and prostitution were a common historical theme on The Block as well.

It is so unfortunate to me that a similar collection of photographs does not exist to document The Block of this same time period in the 1970's. The women interviewed for this collection spoke very often of their disdain for woman's liberation and their great desire for being homemakers. It makes me think deeper about the role of feminism in society beginning in the late 60's then taking flight in the 1970's and how it was translated to life in a strip club on The Block. I am curious how much of an effect the women's movement had on the souring of the adult entertainment district of Baltimore.

Carnival Strippers will most likely not appear in your local library. It is very explicit and often times highly disturbing. I checked it out from Goucher College Library in Towson, MD. It's worth searching for to help with your understanding of the most basic adult entertainment that was and still can be found all over the country.

photo by Susan Meiselas

Sin in Movies

Dim the lights and roll the drums...Sin in Mobtown's first movie review! While this movie has nothing to do with Baltimore it has lots of strippers in a seedy club. While you watch Zombie Strippers keep in mind the scratch houses of the 1960's and 70's filled with rats, roaches and desperate men. The girls entered the stage and quickly stripped down to pasties and g-strings amidst cat calls and slobbering men before grabbing their slinky clothes and rushing backstage. While there may have been no literal zombie strippers, those girls lived a life wiggling for a few bucks until the end of a shift and then hitting the bars on The Block to seduce men into paying a few more bucks for their services. Think about that while you watch Zombie Strippers and the movie will feel just like it was filmed on Baltimore Street.

Zombie Strippers is a film starring Jenna Jameson and written and directed by Jay Lee . Jenna finally looks a lot better than some of those refugee shots of her floating around the internet. Robert Englund, of Freddie Kruger fame, stole the entire movie with his outrageous portrayal of a purple velvet suit wearing strip club owner obsessed with earning money and saving his ass. His acting saved a lot of otherwise poorly written and terribly acted moments. This was a zombie movie and not intended to be presented to The Academy for consideration. Director and writer Jay Lee threw in an unnecessary dose of Nietzsche and political jabs at George W., but he got every bit of zombie stripper *movie clips 5 & 6 correct. Lee understood that these girls weren't spoken word performers but masters of the pole and 10 inch heels. He let the majority of the film encompass super hot strip teases and topless stripper tiffs behind the scenes. The zombie virus affected Jenna and her super stripper pals pulling flesh from bone and glassy eyes an eerie black. Oozing death the girls used their super zombie tricks to whip around the pole at inhuman speeds. The make-up was top-notch and the creation of sentient female zombies moved the plot along in very interesting ways I have yet to see in a zombie film. Overall, I haven't stopped thinking about this movie as a great and super creative zombie adventure. I laughed hysterically start to finish. All you can hope to expect is 1. hot naked chicks  2. sweet strip scenes 3. kick ass zombies 4. gratuitous filth and gore. I rate it right up there as a Sinful Perfection. Thank you Jay Lee!

But....don't have to take my word for it.

N.Y. Times Review

Rotten Tomatoes Review

Cinematical Review

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.