Ding dong, the spider lights are gone.

Anyone who may have visited Baltimore’s North Avenue in the halcyon days between 1910 and 1960 would have sent you a postcard from one of the three small but fashionable hotels there. They’d have told you about the three or four first class movie houses, the “Sports Arena” (read: ice skating rink with fake icicles on the façade), the big dance hall, and the several chic restaurants and watering holes. In town for a weekend, they might have mentioned a trip down to Fort McHenry or Druid Hill Park, but they’d have found plenty to do right at North and Charles. They might have mentioned an afternoon of ice-skating (in July, even) followed by tea in the Parkway Theatre’s mezzanine tearoom. If they weren’t tempted by the movie at the Parkway—one of the city’s most sumptuous theatres—they might have caught a picture at the Aurora. Dinner might follow at Hasslinger’s, known later on as the Chesapeake, famous for its fork-tender steaks stuffed with oysters. And what better way to work off dinner than an evening of cocktails and dancing at the Chateau Hotel’s roof garden? (Personally, I’m dying for the Chateau to make a comeback, primarily so that I can bomb passing friends with dinner rolls from four stories up.) Here it was that Noxzema was born, in Dr. Bunting’s drugstore in the Chateau; and here at the corner of Charles was the city’s first honest-to-goodness streetlight, planted sometime in the early ‘20s.

North Avenue’s days were numbered by 1960, though. It wasn’t far enough downtown to—well, to be downtown, and it wasn’t far enough out to be part of the suburban fashion. The gorgeous old residential areas around it were no longer the height of fashion.

Still, the street once called “Baltimore’s Gay White Way” held on for a few years; my parents marched me down to the Parkway, then renamed the Five West (for its street address—never mind what’s carved in stone on the building) to see a few movies that I’ve long forgotten. The North Avenue Market plugged along until a disastrous fire forced its closing in the early ‘70s, and a few of the old businesses tried valiantly. Goldbloom’s clothiers stuck around until all of the partners died, and Ken-Ray Business Machines is still there today. The North Inn bar is still around, if not particularly fashionable now.

There was one aspect of North Avenue that I alone liked, it would seem, in all the city. In the late ‘70s the city government realized belatedly that North Avenue had gone south, and tried ineffectually to stem the tide that had already withdrawn. Plans for grand arches and plazas were made, but the only result was a four-block stretch of particularly goofy light fixtures.

These were the Spider Lights. They looked like thirty foot tall tarantulas on sticks with glowing globes on the end of their legs. They were supremely silly, but to me, all the more endearing for their oddity. And, when they worked properly, with all of their garish globes shining bright, they brought a bit of the lost gaiety and effervescence back to the grand old avenue. No one could have ever mistaken them for objects of beauty, but they had a whimsy to them, a “so hideous that they’re cool” quality invisible to those who can see only artistic purity and practical functionality.

And now they’re gone. Good taste—which inexplicably allows the eyesore of the Morgan Millworking building and the freakish Victorian hulk of the Hotel Waldorf to stand—has eschewed the Spider Lights, and they’re as surely gone as the matinee shows at the Aurora. I think that it’s a sign of North Avenue’s comeback. The blocks of Charles just below North are THE place to be now, with a movie house, a live theatre and three fashionable restaurant/bars. And I think it’s starting to spill over onto North again.

It should go without saying that I eagerly await the day that I can again see a movie at the Parkway, dance and throw things at the Chateau roof-garden, and dress up for drinks at the North Inn. I will not miss the sadness that pervaded the forgotten North Avenue of 1982. I will miss very much, however, the silly hopeful glow that the Spider Lights cast over an otherwise grim period for midtown’s Gay White Way.

The Washington Pots has again decided to illuminate the poor, sad, ignorant world beyond Dupont Circle. It has discovered Rehoboth Beach and Lewes, of which no one has ever heard because the Post hasn't written about them in the last year, and it wants to tell us about them. Here's the article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31840-2003Jul22.html

As usual, the Post takes the happily congratulatory tone of the archaeologist who found the Rosetta stone. Never mind that Baltimoreans, Philadelphians, and--God save us all--Washingtonians have been summering in Rehoboth for years. (Actually, it's easy to identify the dwellers from each city when you hit a bar in Rehoboth. The Baltimoreans are easily the most gregarious and gossipy. We want to see and talk to everyone. The Philadelphians are more insular, friendly but reserved. The Washingtonians travel in packs from which they do not deviate. No Washingtonian ever gets laid at the beach, because they never get enough time away from the group to fire one lousy pickup line.)

I think that I like Rehoboth much in the same way I like Catholicism. It is predictable and formulaic. My behavior is rather more circumspect in Rehoboth than it is in Baltimore itself. In a big city, you can get away with quite a lot; but in a distillation of that city's society, there is going to be somebody on the boardwalk who knows your mother and won't hesitate to inform her that her thirty-something son has just been observed being pawed by an unknown jarhead.

The Post finds all of this new and exciting. I find it old hat, but nonetheless wonderful. It's refreshing to go to the beach every year. I mourn the loss of Dentino's only a bit less than the loss of Hochschild, Kohn & Co. And, just as Maison Marconi holds up the torch of Old Baltimore food, the pretty old Hotel Royalton still slings a thousand soda-floats per night. The Royalton is a charming contrast to the disco-ridden hell of the new and hip bars along Baltimore Avenue.

Fashion has, by its very nature, invaded Rehoboth, but tradition isn't giving up one lousy inch. Some of the old restaurants are gone, but the Corner Cupboard is still around and the food is still better than sex and frankly a bit less expensive. "Nice" people--which means all of the people I know who summer there--receive guests on their wide front porches and have ready pitchers of gin and tonic. You'll know when I'm there, because you'll hear the portable Grafonola blatting out German tangos and foxtrots for three blocks in any direction.

And so, it's amusing to watch the Post's staff-du-jour "discover" Delaware's Grand Strand. I enjoy reading their "omigod there's like this totally cool beach town like right down the road and all".

I think it is also worthwhile to note that I lately picked up a service for six in "Paul Revere" silverplate and immediately designated it as my "Beach Service". We may be on vacation, but we WILL set a correct table.

Every time I let it drop publicly that I am a monarchist, I get some kind of smarmy comment or another.

Usually the first comes from the effeminate gay set, or the oh-so-hip straight types.

“Oh, you just want to be the Queen of England”.

Please. I have better taste than that. For one thing, I look lousy in drag; with my big shoulders, hairy legs and beer gut, my drag name would be “Marpusha, the Ugly Russian Woman.” For another, genesis of our nation or not, I consider England a tinpot throne far inferior to about six other monarchies, so why would I want seventh-best? If I actually wanted to be anyone, I’d pick Emperor of Austria, which would give me a fashionable and Catholic country, good food, oogobs of wine and cool outfits, without actually having to get into too many unpleasant wars. Wars, after all, have an unpleasant tendency to make the meringue fall atop one’s dessert. Worse, they interrupt the after-supper figure dances, which have been known to solve more international intrigue than three wars combined.

Then, of course, you get the folk who jokingly propose an American monarchy. Invariably, they pick the opposing side, to demonstrate my foolishness. Republicans suggest the Kennedys, Democrats suggest the Bushes. Well, I’ll tell all of you now that I’d not have either dynasty; the Kennedys may be Catholic but they’re Yankees and they got all their money from bootlegging. I don’t mind their cheap affairs and rumrunning—actually, I respect both—but I mind very much their inability to keep such things behind a wall of potted palms.

The Bushes, on the other hand, have been spoon-feeding artifice to the American public for years—and, political toddlers that we are, we suck it up like so much Pablum. Nouveau riches in Yankeeland, they packed up their plastic in their old kit bag and moved to Texas—which embraces such things—and declared themselves good ol’ boys. Tacked some Woolworth pearls onto Big Mamma to make her look all homey ‘n all—but still bought their boy’s way into Harvard. Note, if you will, that the lordly Byrd family—who settled Virginia when the Bushes were still rooting potatoes somewhere in an unpleasant part of England—could NOT get one of their idiot sons into William and Mary. It does seem that things such as new Texas money and Yankee greed stick together; just as do Southern pride and pigheadedness.

So, in my ideal world, where the Habsburger and Hohenzollern and Bourbons have regained power, who would I suggest for the United States? Well, surely none of our current dynastic options. I say that we let California do its own thing. It always has anyway and somehow, through a cloud of patchouli, papparazzi and pot, it will make out. We’ll let Texas split off as well. They’ve been yelping superiority over the North and claiming themselves the home of true Southern-ness for a century; let’s turn them out on their own and see how long they last. (When they fail miserably, which should take about seven weeks, we can reintroduce them as someone’s colony.)

Maryland and Virginia should be small independent principalities. Since the Calvert family—the Lords Baltimore—have long since died out, we can name a Carroll heir as reigning head of house. Virginia could pick a Carter or a Byrd, although given Virginia’s Anglomania, they might just want to rejoin the British Empire.

The overwhelming advantage of a Carroll-dominated states is clear. The streets would be no better paved than they are now—for Christ’s sake it couldn’t be worse—but gentility would take a front seat. The order of the day would be “curtiseye and gentilesse”. Perhaps the lines at the Motor Vehicle Administration would be no shorter, but the population would be courteous, well-behaved, and pleasant, and everyone would know precisely which well-polished fork to use.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. My friend Jacques, who writes a column for the Sunpapers, was recently given an account of Baltimore in 1902 as written by a visiting British sailor.

The city was “a jolly place”, but the sailor noted that the sidewalks were notoriously out of repair and that the streetcars had a tendency to run into wagons and pedestrians. A year and a century later, that rings true.

Our faithful correspondent didn’t think much of shopping in Baltimore, though. He was unable to find “one good greengrocer”. I wonder if he managed to wander as far west as the Lexington market? Odd, since he proclaimed the glories of the Cathedral, and the “Jewish Synagogue”—I’ll assume that he meant the spectacular Eutaw Place temple, since the synagogues closer to the waterfront are and were less than inspiring. He did give our seafood a good recommendation though. (Again, some things never do change.) I was also surprised that he didn’t find “one good house”—well, perhaps the stately old piles of Mount Vernon were a bit too dowdy, and the tidy rows of East Baltimore a bit uninspiring for a man used to the grandeur of Europe. Really, though, I’ve seen London’s East End, and I think that we’ve made quite a few advances over THAT particular aspect of culture a l’anglaise.

Jacques was surprised by one thing that I don’t find surprising in the least. Our friendly Jack Tar, who seemed quite taken with our fifty different ways of preparing oysters (all somehow involving horseradish) was a bit confused by the fact that we were drinking iced tea in January. (Apparently in England one does not drink iced tea at all, much less in the middle of the winter.)

In the house on Guilford avenue, under the aegis of grandmother Lily Rose and aunt Cora, iced tea did not appear until Memorial Day and vaporized shortly after Labor Day, just like the white linen suits, fly netting over the chandeliers, and Panama hats.

In my houses—my parents’, and my own, iced tea is a staple through the calendar. We drink it for breakfast and lunch, and have it on the table during dinner in a vague pretense that we’re not downing cocktails through the entrée.

I have established that Baltimore is the Iced Tea Line of Demarcation. The wild lands to the North, where Kawwffy is the only acceptable beverage, consider it exotic even in summer. The genteel latitudes below the Potomac know that iced tea is something that must be available continually, to the point of having its own special spoons, glasses and pitchers.

In the movie version of “Steel Magnolias”, Dolly Parton refers to Dr. Pepper as “the house wine of the South”. So it may be, but if it is, iced tea is the house specialty. Everyone has his own preference—sweet or not sweet, lemon or no lemon (there are some heretics who use oranges), but the stuff is indispensable.

Even as a devout alky, I can say that nothing captures the spirit of the beautiful Southland quite like a good glass of iced tea. I’ve tasted the golden glow of Muenchener beer and the liquid delight that is a Spaetlese of Rhein-Hessen, but only iced tea goes just right with barbecue and coleslaw.

Every once in a while, when I read my friends’ blogs, I have a small crisis of self. I read of Bill’s work sagas—much more high-powered and electric than any of my own—and think “Yes, I want to be a Busy Downtown Executive!” I read his recounting of exploits with the Kinder and think “Oh, yes! I want to be a nice Dad with two lovely kids and a pretty wife!” (I was going to avoid pointing out that I had a crush on Pam during sophomore year, but it’s nice to kick Bill in the butt now and again.)

And then, I read Lisa’s chronicle, and think “Oh, dear God yes, I want to be in Richmond again so badly”, and “I want to have a coterie of interesting friends who read the NYer at the pool and have both nipple piercings AND kids!”

Then, when I walk down the street on a Saturday morning on my way downtown, I realize that I am doing precisely what I want to do. Even though I might like to do it in Richmond just as well, or in Philadelphia, I love walking down a summer-baked street wearing seersucker trousers. I love the fact that I’m probably planning a summer evening cocktail party as I walk, and wondering where to station all of the fans so that both the people chugging drinks in the dining room and those clustered around the Pianola will keep cool. I love that I am planning to strip off the seersucker when I get home from shopping, and have already laid in provisions for the pickles I am going to make this weekend. I’ll get down to work, lay in a good six gallons of mustard pickle, a few quarts of lekvar, and run up a batch of spice cookies just to be safe.

That businesslike trot of everyday life, of seersucker and red brick sidewalk and mustard pickle, is an amazing restorative. Just when you despair of your place in life, put on your summer clothes and take a run to the Lexington market—I guarantee that you’ll feel fine the minute you smell Konstant’s peanuts.

On Sunday I visited two cities, neither very far from my own, and right across a river from each other, but light years apart in every other respect.

In one of these cities I saw something very beautiful, but very sad. It was the city’s stylish, Art Deco city hall, built of white marble and crowned with a stunning clock tower. Below a frieze at the top of the façade was carved this motto:

“In a Dream I Saw A City Invincible”

As well it should. The city is Camden, New Jersey; the author of those words its most famous native son, Walt Whitman.

But poor Camden. For nearly two hundred years thought of only as the bastard sister of shining Philadelphia a mile across the Delaware River, its image has never been the best. In the early years of the twentieth century, it was a factory town—home to Campbell’s Soup and the Victor Talking Machine Company, before whose restored factory I fell to my knees and salaamed wildly. As the factories dimmed their lights in the ‘50s and ‘60s, the city’s reputation slid ever further down; people from Philadelphia’s most frightening neighborhoods feared Camden.

Camden is in the unenviable position of Ozymandias. Eighty years ago it was a city invincible, or at least enviable. For a small industrial city it had name recognition—who didn’t have some Victor records, and who didn’t settle down to Campbell’s chicken noodle soup on a cold day? Now it doesn’t even have its tough reputation of thirty years ago. A good third of the buildings in the downtown area are just…gone. Apparently, some city father of the recent past decided that its bombed-out reputation was too much, and the quick fix was to tear down everything that didn’t look pretty anymore. Never a good answer--the city now looks like a Monopoly board before anybody’s had a chance to even stick a house on Oriental. Gone are all of Market street’s businesses; Broadway has quite a few storefronts left but not much in them. There are two lonely and shuttered hotels.

Still, Camden may yet pull it out. The Victor plant is being converted to not-very-cheap condos. There’s a spiffy little minor-league ballpark on the site that once cranked out millions of cans of tomato soup. There’s a big, nice aquarium with a little fun park for kids. This last has a cute little midget train you can ride, and a nifty old caboose. And, the Big J—the USS New Jersey—is tied up there, and was my reason for visiting Camden in the first place. (This is, by the way, the largest battleship ever built for the US Navy, and easily one of the more impressive displays of naval power I’ve ever seen, including the carrier Nimitz, Germany’s Brandenburg and a blond German lieutenant I met once.)

It’s nice to see cities making a comeback, but it’s sad when they have to fall so far, and lose so much, before doing so.

On Sunday I visited two cities, neither very far from my own, and right across a river from each other, but light years apart in every other respect.

In one of these cities I saw something very beautiful, but very sad. It was the city’s stylish, Art Deco city hall, built of white marble and crowned with a stunning clock tower. Below a frieze at the top of the façade was carved this motto:

“In a Dream I Saw A City Invincible”

As well it should. The city is Camden, New Jersey; the author of those words its most famous native son, Walt Whitman.

But poor Camden. For nearly two hundred years thought of only as the bastard sister of shining Philadelphia a mile across the Delaware River, its image has never been the best. In the early years of the twentieth century, it was a factory town—home to Campbell’s Soup and the Victor Talking Machine Company, before whose restored factory I fell to my knees and salaamed wildly. As the factories dimmed their lights in the ‘50s and ‘60s, the city’s reputation slid ever further down; people from Philadelphia’s most frightening neighborhoods feared Camden.

Camden is in the unenviable position of Ozymandias. Eighty years ago it was a city invincible, or at least enviable. For a small industrial city it had name recognition—who didn’t have some Victor records, and who didn’t settle down to Campbell’s chicken noodle soup on a cold day? Now it doesn’t even have its tough reputation of thirty years ago. A good third of the buildings in the downtown area are just…gone. Apparently, some city father of the recent past decided that its bombed-out reputation was too much, and the quick fix was to tear down everything that didn’t look pretty anymore. Never a good answer--the city now looks like a Monopoly board before anybody’s had a chance to even stick a house on Oriental. Gone are all of Market street’s businesses; Broadway has quite a few storefronts left but not much in them. There are two lonely and shuttered hotels.

Still, Camden may yet pull it out. The Victor plant is being converted to not-very-cheap condos. There’s a spiffy little minor-league ballpark on the site that once cranked out millions of cans of tomato soup. There’s a big, nice aquarium with a little fun park for kids. This last has a cute little midget train you can ride, and a nifty old caboose. And, the Big J—the USS New Jersey—is tied up there, and was my reason for visiting Camden in the first place. (This is, by the way, the largest battleship ever built for the US Navy, and easily one of the more impressive displays of naval power I’ve ever seen, including the carrier i>Nimitz, Germany’s Brandenburg and a blond German lieutenant I met once.)

It’s nice to see cities making a comeback, but it’s sad when they have to fall so far, and lose so much, before doing so.

Side note: no one seems to have googled wallaby sex lately, which simulatenously relieves and frustrates me. Someone did get here, however, by googling "tippler clothes".

What the F***???? I need special clothes to get bombed? We're in more trouble than we thought, folks.

Aside from the maudlin pleasure of visiting Fitzgerald’s grave every few years, I find the idea of spending time in Rockville on the same level of pleasure with picking lice off the back of a psychotic orangutan.

I’ve got an urge to visit Maryland’s largest non-town now, though, and I’m taking a carton of Chesterfields. I know that nice people do not walk and smoke at the same time, but I am going to march through that nest of self-righteous prigs and smoke myself senseless. Or, at least I would if they hadn’t ripped up all the sidewalks years ago to install malls, access roads and parking decks.

I’m not a shill for Liggett and Myers–I’ve never forgiven them for abandoning Richmond–but Montgomery County has just banned smoking in restaurants and bars. If New York and California want to do so, fine, but this is Maryland, which was to a great extent built on tobacco. (For California; it’s just sort of a joke; they choke the atmosphere with car exhaust but cigarette smoke is Pee Yew Nasty!)

Montgomery County has gone from aw-shucks farmland to an SUV disaster within the space of two generations. Once content with its sleepy backwater status, it has managed to get overrun by thousands of professional whiners with six-figure salaries. Terrified by the idea of living in Washington itself, they whine that the Baltimore symphony doesn’t play in Montgomery, whine that their tax dollars are going to support Baltimore City and less-affluent Prince George’s County. They’ve fled the city pavement for a place in what used to be country, but then whine that it takes too long to get to work and pout until the state paves over some more country to make an eight lane expressway for them.

I’ll be the first to admit that a smoke-filled room is not always the most desirable place to be. However, being an occasionally-efficient sort, if I see a bar that’s too smoky, or too sleazy, or too anything for my taste–I just don’t go into it.

Montgomery has been a smarmy little know-it-all of a county for twenty-odd years, but this is just too much. She is now that horrid little girl we all knew in the fifth grade who told the teacher if she saw someone passing notes. Worse, Frederick and Howard now seem to be the horrid little girl’s accomplices (she always DID have a couple of followers. Too bad none of the other twenty counties will dunk their pigtails in ink.)

This sort of thing is the worst example of a nanny state. As far as I’m concerned the government is there to print the money and deliver the mail. Right now, it’s not managing to deliver the mail very effectively, but it’s doing a bang-up job of telling me what to do. The American people just never do seem to get that morality isn’t a matter of simple legislation.

I’m starting to believe that Americans really just aren’t happy unless they’re miserable, and they’re only really happy if they’re making someone else miserable. We’re going to be good, pure, devout, hardworking people and damnit, so are you!

If I decide to protest in Montgomery, I’ll first have to find three square feet to stand upon that hasn’t been eaten up by on-ramps. Montgomery’s problem will then arise: who to send to chide me for smoking in public? Do they send a cop, a Baptist preacher, a health inspector, a lobbyist, or a teary-eyed activist? By the time they’ve figured it out I’ll have polluted all of their fern bars and retreated to alcoholic, sinful and nictotine-addled Baltimore.