I may be the only one left alive who witnessed Dominic “Mimi” DiPietro on that historic day when he walked into a peep show booth on The Block and professed himself shocked — shocked — at the sex film clip he beheld.
“Now I’d like to have that done to me,” said the late city councilman out of Southeast Baltimore, “and anyone who don’t is not a damned human being. But I understand that young men are going in here and degenerating.”
That was Mimi’s way of saying The Block was getting a little too risqué. It put the councilman somewhere in the historic heart of all those do-gooders who have attempted to shut down The Block or clean it up, or make its strip joint and bar owners and peep show operators close down earlier in the evening than any grownup could previously imagine.
That’s what some city officials are trying to do now — make it shut down at 10 o’clock at night.
That rumbling in the earth you just heard was the legendary stripper Blaze Starr, in her grave, who used to undress professionally at her place of business on The Block. It was called The 2 O’Clock Club.
Do these city officials today think she meant 2 in the afternoon?
Like Councilman DiPietro, city politicians have always had mixed feelings about The Block. But over the years, it was a rare City Hall figure who turned down large campaign contributions from Block club owners.
That’s why when the chips were down, officials invariably voted to leave The Block alone.
In the current debate, we have some city and state politicians, backed by the city police commissioner, saying there’s too much late-night unruliness on The Block. In a city already rattled by violence, they say, such trouble means added pressure for a police department already overburdened.
Here’s a historic irony: The area’s defenders used to say The Block was good for the cops, because it tended to gather into one specific area a bunch of troublemakers who would otherwise be spread across the entire town.
Not to mention The Block is located a literal stone’s throw from the police department’s very heart of operations. The cops can walk across the street to any outbreaks.
Well, these arguments have been going on for a long time. In the old days, they’d mostly argue over sexual limitations. In public, Mayor William Donald Schaefer was often critical of activities on The Block.
But I visited Schaefer a few times late in his life at an apartment where he’d hung an autographed photo in his kitchen. It was a photo of a voluptuous woman, completely unclothed.
It was signed, “To Don, With Love, Blaze Starr.”
Michael Olesker’s newest book, “Boogie: Life on A Merry-Go-Round,” will be published this spring. It’s the life story of Baltimore legend Leonard “Boogie” Weinglass, an original “Diner” guy who grew up to create the Merry-Go-Round clothing chain and contribute millions to charity.
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