THE CITY: REQUIEM FOR THE BLOCK

THE best thing about Baltimore," according to Comedian Mark Russell, "is the tunnel that runs under it." Nonetheless, its garish strip clubs and clip joints make it one of America's favorite ports of call for sex-starved sailors and roistering conventioneers. If it is something of an Eldorado for the fun-seeking male, the city's seedy 19th century core is also a nightmare for a reform-minded police commissioner and city planners, who in recent years have managed to replace 22 depressed acres of slums with office buildings, hotels and theaters. The city's present target is one that many Baltimoreans had long considered inviolable: the Block. A loud, neon-bathed concentration of gin mills and peel parlors, the Block (which at present embraces four city blocks) is a short walk from the waterfront--and only a few paces from city hall and police headquarters.

While Baltimore's urban-renewal program has concentrated from the start on the city's seediest areas, the Block has traditionally been regarded as more of a boon than a blight. Like New Orleans' French Quarter, it attracts hordes of free-spending tourists--and offers them a wider range of distractions. However, Baltimore's new city planner, Larry Reich, doubts its worth. "I'm convinced the Block isn't that much of an entertainment value for the city," he says. "I really think it has become an obsolete, tawdry thing of the past." Reich is planning to eliminate the Block within 10 years, replacing it with a multimillion-dollar inner-harbor redevelopment project, including a community college, a shopping mall, and municipal and commercial office buildings. Meanwhile, one whole block of seamy establishments has already been razed to make way for, of all things, a new $11 million police headquarters.

Dearth of Suckers. Actually, the Block's heyday has long passed. While miniskirted hookers are still out in force, most of the bars and strip joints are half empty. There are fewer suckers to buy endless rounds of watered-down drinks (at $2.50 a shot) for B-girls who deliver only promises, promises. Such famed attractions as Ronnie Bell and Her Twin Liberty Bells, who work the Villanova Show Bar, and 6-ft. 6-in. Kitty, a few doors down at Club Troc, have trouble piling up bar tabs. Some club owners complain that today's movies, which are consistently more erotic than any cabaret act, are keeping customers away. While the Block has the reputation of being one of the safest places in town to walk after dark--the cops give it very special attention--incidents of muggings and robbery are no longer uncommon. "They lure them out of here where there's all these lights and go up the street where it's quiet," a bartender explained. "They don't want to ruin a good thing."

Disillusioning Revelations. Baltimoreans have mixed feelings about the Block's gradual demise. City Council President William D. Schaefer has supported its continuance. But Police Commissioner Donald Pomerleau claims to have dissuaded Schaefer. "I told him," says Pomerleau, "that there is the most base, gross conduct over there and there is no place for the Block anywhere in the city of Baltimore." Investigations of organized crime in the city have uncovered a $10 million-a-year numbers empire operating out of the Block and linked several club owners to nationwide betting syndicates. These revelations have disillusioned many Baltimoreans who had previously opposed any interference with the sin strip.

Many in the city fear that when the Block falls, its residents will simply reestablish themselves all over town. "If the bulldozers come, the Block will scatter just like the whores do," said a veteran nightclub owner, Maurice Cohen. "They'll move upstairs and downstairs with you." To prevent such an occurrence, civic leaders have given thought to transplanting the entire Block onto a showboat, or a nearby pier, or, possibly, onto a rat-infested island known as Fort Carroll.

The Block's most ardent champion is its reigning queen, Stripper Blaze (40-24-38) Starr. At 34, Blaze is still the liveliest ecdysiast on the Block and heads the bill at her own nightspot, the Two O'Clock Club, whose value she estimates at $500,000. "You have to change with the times," Blaze says. "I'm not against urban renewal, but Baltimore needs a place for conventioneers and tourists." Often half her audience is composed of women friends who work with her on various Baltimore charities. Blaze is respectable and respected, but she is sadly aware that the Block is not. "There will always be a Block, whether it is here or somewhere else," she contends. In all probability, she is right. If the present city administration has its way, the Block will indeed wind up somewhere else--far from Baltimore.

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