Baltimore has a Skid Row that turns your stomach even in Baltimore, where so much of the burg looks like one Skid Row. Next door to and around the corner from some of the best hotels, cafes and department stores, you will find nude strippers, B-girls, hostesses and whores. Guttered drunks and street-walkers may be the badge of the Bowery elsewhere; here they are a common sight on every street.
The visitor heads for one of a half-dozen hotels, all but one of which are almost as ancient as the city itself. The newest, the Lord Baltimore, is almost a quarter-of-a-century old.
The hotels are cozy, but musty. The elderly Belvedere, once the class joint, is now part of the nation-wide Sheraton chain. Its cocktail lounge is the only social hangout left. The Emerson and the Southern are doddering old ladies. There is an air of laissez faire in Baltimore which extends to the inns. If you are quiet and gentlemanly about it, they probably won’t throw that broad out of your room. For it is a friendly town, as you will have many occasions to find out. Everyone talks to you, half the girls you meet want to go to bed with you. The name of its new airport is Friendship International.
When Judy Coplon worked for the Department of Justice she was considered the most amenable gal there, which made her the most popular. Harold Shapiro, a good-looking assistant attorney general, dated her frequently. It was testified at her first trial that they went together to Baltimore, where they spent a night in a room in the Southern Hotel.
Judy admitted that, but claimed she did not undress. Shapiro was an unhappy witness against her, because many thought he had acted for the government to lure her—kissed and told.
He moaned to friends in Baltimore, “It happens to lots of guys. But not everyone has a G-Man under the bed.”
The first item on the tourist’s agenda after he gets out of the hay is East Baltimore Street, part of the main commercial thoroughfare. From Gilford Avenue to Fallsway it is Hobo Heaven. You know when you are getting to what you want to find when you see a Salvation Army meeting on a street-corner, in front of a barker for a burlesque house. Other towns have honky-tonk lanes, too, but this is the only one where it is the main attraction.
Skid Row starts as soon as you walk past the Emerson and Southern hotels. You are right in the middle of it—a good half mile of avenue lined on both sides with burlesque theatres, cheap bars, low-class night clubs, novelty stores, shooting galleries, penny arcades, flop-houses and second-hand clothing stores. All burlesques and some saloons have hawkers who will pull you in by main force if you hesitate or stop to look at the pictures.
The most famous dump in town is a basement dive called the Oasis Club. Years ago, when we first visited it, it specialized in a rowdy floor-show, with a chorus of elderly relics, their drooping bosoms unencumbered by brassieres. It is now a strip-joint selling a parade of nudes, some “refined” with bubbles or fans, pretending to “tease.” Many peelers make $1,000 a week. But not these in Baltimore. The Oasis is non-union. The maximum salary is $35. They earn the rest of their living sitting out with male customers. We had seen crummy shows before, but nothing quite like the Oasis. Yet, when we stepped around, we found it tame for the course.
In Chicago, where nudes run wild, they never work at floor level. They are lewd on raised stages or on platforms behind bars. At the Oasis and a good many others in Baltimore, they work on the floor. If you are sitting at the ringside, you can reach out your hand and tap the babe on her bare behind. And she’ll love it.