With a terse nod the doorman swung open the doors to Club Pussycat, admitting two visitors into a dim, smoky blur of eager men and eager-to-please girls.
It was a Thursday night on The Block in downtown Baltimore, and the Pussycat was beginning to buzz like the 18 other strip bars wedged on and around East Baltimore Street.
One dancer in spike heels gyrated on the tiny stage, her otherwise naked body bathed in purple fluorescent light and multiplied by smudged mirrors on the wall. Ten or so dancers sat at the bar with men sipping $6 cans of Coors Light. A matronly barmaid watched over everything.
Almost immediately, a 20-something blonde in heavy mascara and a short, flimsy chemise marched over. By way of a handshake, she put a palm on the groin of one visitor, sitting near the sign saying the bar tolerates no "sexual conduct or solicitation."
The cost of a brief chat with her was a $25 ladies' drink, often tap water. As the pop music played on the jukebox, she talked about her infant. She also offered to have sex in a back room for $250 - $150 for the bar and $100 for her tip.
"Anything goes," she promised between drags on a cigarette.
Downtown has changed a lot in 30 years, but the city's once-famous Tenderloin is as tawdry as ever. The Inner Harbor three blocks south has long since become a tourist center. Power Plant Live, just around the corner, draws thousands to its bars, restaurants and dance clubs.
The Block, though, is still a grungy strip with panhandlers and barkers on the outside and prostitutes masquerading as dancers on the inside.
"It's nonstop," Sgt. Craig Gentile, head of the Police Department's vice unit, said of prostitution that police say occurs in some clubs.
Calls for a crackdown come from multiple directions. Some developers say the seediness is holding back progress downtown. They want The Block to disappear, even while conceding that a planned high-end strip bar might clean it up a bit.
At least one club owner says a government-imposed cleanup is vital - to save The Block from itself. "Get rid of the prostitution, get rid of the drugs, get rid of the doormen who are junkies!" yelled Peter W. Ireland Sr., owner of Tiffany's Show Bar, in an interview at his office.
But the odds of major change are as slim as the gauntest dancer. Mayor Martin O'Malley, unlike his predecessor, Kurt L. Schmoke, has no plans to try to disperse Block clubs to industrial areas.
"I've got a lot of other, far more important and deadly problems than The Block that I need to dedicate limited city resources toward," O'Malley said. He wishes instead it would "fade away."
Despite a get-tough promise, the three liquor commissioners who regulate Block clubs have not stemmed the vice. The state-run board has not made good on a 1997 warning from Commissioner Claudia L. Brown that Block clubs would face harsh consequences for multiple violations.
A review of liquor board files going back to February 2000 reveals a pattern: Police officers or liquor inspectors cite a club for violations. Liquor commissioners find guilt, impose a fine and maybe add a brief suspension. A finger-wagging scolding ensues, and the contrite owner apologizes. Then it's often back to business as usual until next time.
Except for nine suspensions of five or 10 days apiece, the board has mainly used fines as punishment. Even chairman Leonard R. Skolnik conceded that fines - over $100,000 since 2000 - are just a "cost of doing business" for Block clubs.
In the past 2 1/2 years, seven clubs have gone before the board at least three times on violations that include sexual intercourse, prostitution and employing dancers as young as 15. Only the Jewel Box, Club Miami and Mousetrap have avoided fines for adult entertainment misdeeds.
Several have been rung up repeatedly: the Plaza, $22,000 in fines; Stage Door, $17,675; Flamingo, $10,775; Foxy Lady, $10,250; Pussycat, $8,475.
Pussycat owner William G. Wantland Sr. says any illegal activity is the fault of dancers who turn tricks when the bosses aren't looking, possibly to feed their drug habits. Wantland figures one-fifth of his dancers use drugs. "There is no prostitution at the Pussycat," he said, meaning none that he knows of or condones.
Skolnik, a retired apartment manager who, like his colleagues, was appointed by the governor and recommended by Baltimore's state senators, said violations on The Block are getting worse.
"At some point these guys are going to stop doing that kind of crap, or we're going to revoke their license," he said in an interview. "It's going to happen. Maybe, maybe, we've taken too long in getting there."
Not much is left of The Block from its peak in the 1940s and 1950s, an era long before the mass-marketing of pornography. Back then cabarets and burlesque houses spilled over three blocks of Baltimore Street. Crowds flocked to see popular comedy acts, concerts and, of course, stripteases by the likes of the legendary Blaze Starr.
The district sprang up near the waterfront because that is where weary sailors came ashore to unwind. Then, as now, some visitors sought to buy sex.
Today's shrunken Block is confined to the 400 block of E. Baltimore St., Custom House Avenue and Commerce Street. Tourists have replaced sailors at the Inner Harbor, and few venture up to The Block, still home to half the city's 37 adult entertainment licenses. The city's convention bureau no longer promotes it.
It's an odd little world, with City Hall a block away and a city office building, the Charles Benton Jr. Building, even closer. Police headquarters and the 30-story Alex. Brown bank tower hem in an adult entertainment zone formally set by the city in 1977.
The once-sleepy area around The Block has evolved over 25 years. Power Plant Live is thriving. Long-empty offices in the Munsey Building at Calvert and Fayette streets are now apartments.
Echoing O'Malley's lack of concern, city economic development officials view The Block as self-contained. There is "no spillover of nasty stuff," said M.J. "Jay" Brodie, president of Baltimore Development Corp.
But developer David Cordish, creator of Power Plant Live, disagrees. The Block has a "tremendously harmful effect," he said. "It is such a shame for the city. These are nice historic buildings and you could rehab them, and it'd be this great little historic district."
"If The Block suddenly didn't exist," he added, "you would find all kinds of development, not just on it but around it."
Cordish points to former plans for luxury apartments atop a parking garage on nearby Water Street. The project fell through, in part, over doubts that anyone would want to live there. Most Block clubs are open daily from noon to 2 a.m., and even though sidewalk barkers are illegal, the liquor board asks only that they wait until 6 p.m. to bark at prospective customers walking by.
"The lenders that had interest in financing our development had significant concerns about the closeness of The Block to the proposed development," said Todd Tilson of Consolidated Equities Corp., a Lutherville firm that hoped to develop the Water Street apartments.
The deal has since been picked up by different developers who insist The Block is part of the city's "sizzle," as Brian D. Morris, chief executive officer of Legacy Harrison Development put it.
Cordish said a supposedly upscale strip club called Deja Vu that might open in the Gayety Theatre building could raise the standards in the area, but he still thinks The Block needs to go.
That's not likely anytime soon.
Though O'Malley wants the liquor board to "whack" repeat offenders, he said he will not push to move the clubs using condemnation or zoning changes. He will not pursue the sort of change that has transformed Boston's Combat Zone and New York's Times Square.
That leaves The Block largely in the hands of the liquor board, a state entity that has long licensed liquor sales at the clubs and in 1999 won City Council approval to oversee city adult entertainment law.
Under the law, performers can dance nude onstage and give "lap dances." Sexual touching is not allowed, though lap dances often involve just that.
Dancers can't legally ask patrons to buy them drinks, but that appears to be routine. Ladies' drinks start at $20, with dancers pocketing $4 or $5. For patrons, that is the cost of a few minutes of chitchat - and the chance to broach sex-for-money offers.
At one Block club, a stripper said she would do a $60 lap dance to "release all that stress and tension." Explaining the sexual euphemism, she said, "I can't solicit for prostitution - that would be illegal." Another dancer marketed herself at a discount: She started at $200 for a trip to a back area of the bar, then quickly dropped to $160.
Some bars try to hide prostitution, police say, by selling bottles of champagne for $100 or more and then giving the buyer a chance to enjoy the bubbly in the quiet company of his favorite dancer.
Not all dancers are that way; one said bluntly, "I'm not for sale." Another, despite her willingness to break the law, said the job has been good for her. After all, her husband was once her "client."
The stripping itself seems to be a sidelight. That is not how all dancers, who might get $30 to $40 a night from clubs before tips, make most of their money. The dancers, who go by names such as Raspberry and Buttercup, typically get a $1 tip per customer after each dance, sometimes just a halfhearted twirl around the metal poles.
For some, lap dances and sex provide most of their earnings.
Many nights, some bars have few customers at any one time, and dancers sometimes must pay a $1 jukebox fee before their routines. Occasionally, but not often, a limousine will pull up to disgorge bachelor party revelers.
It is not rare to see four or five dancers - many of them single mothers, plus the random college student - clumped at one end of the bar, smoking and waiting for business to walk in. When that happens, they pounce quickly. Some claim to make several hundred dollars on big nights; others say a good week is $500.
Sometimes, Tiffany's Ireland said, business walks out the door. There are clubs, he said, where a customer can pay $500 to the bar plus tip to procure a dancer's services for the evening at a hotel room or some other offsite venue.
Now Skolnik is hinting that the board may start swinging more of a hammer. Revocations, he said, are coming for the worst scofflaws.
But Wantland, the Pussycat's owner, hardly seems worried about The Block's fate: "It hasn't changed in 20 years, and it's not going to change in the next 20 years. It ain't going nowhere."
Sun staff writer Alec MacGillis contributed to this article.
Violations on The Block
February 2000 - Present
A breakdown of fines and suspensions imposed on Block strip clubs by the city liquor board. Figures include all fines for adult entertainment violations and related liquor law violations. Some cases are under appeal.
Club .......................................................... Fines ............Suspensions
Plaza Saloon, 404 E. Baltimore St. .......... $22,125 ......... 25 days
Stage Door, 5-11 Commerce St. .............. $17,675 ........... 5 days
Flamingo Lounge, 403 E. Baltimore St. ....$10,775 ..........15 days
Foxy Lady, 16 Custom House Ave. ........... $10,250
Club Pussycat, 411 E. Baltimore St. ......... $8,475 ........... 5 days
Circus Bar, 427 E. Baltimore St. ............... $5,650
Diamond Lounge, 415 E. Baltimore St. .... $4,250 ............5 days
Norma Jean's, 10 Custom House Ave. ..... $4,075
Club Harem, 425 E. Baltimore St. ............ $3,775
Golden Nugget, 411 E. Baltimore St. ....... $3,750
Club Chez Joey, 415 E. Baltimore St. .......$3,125 ............ 5 days
2 O'Clock Club, 414-16 E. Baltimore St. .. $2,625
Glass Slipper, 14 Custom House Ave. ..... $2,450
Oasis, 417 E. Baltimore St. .......................$2,350
Dynasty Lounge, 406 E. Baltimore St. ..... $1,950
Custom House Saloon
18 Custom House Ave. (since closed) ..... $1,625
Tiffany's, 408 E. Baltimore St. .................... $525
TOTAL ....................................................$105,450 ...........60 days
Source: Board of Liquor License Commissioners for Baltimore City