Baltimore Vice

The Night They Raided the 14Karat Cabaret
July 17, 1993


14Karat Cabaret director Laure Drogoul (photo by Kirsten Beckerman)

I was digging through the piles of yellowing newspaper clippings I've accumulated over the years and came across this City Paper article by Associate Editor Sono Motoyama (who loved any story involving sex) from July 23, 1993. It described a vice squad bust of Laure Drogoul's 14Karat Cabaret during an evening of performance art - an event I attended. As I recall, the performer who caused all the fuss was Jeffrey Clagett (aka "Hermaphrodite"), a local hairdresser and Cher impersonator who was a member of that evening's Haus of Frau ensemble; he distributed the fliers advertising "Free Blow Jobs" that caught the eye of the city vice squad, who should have known better because there's no such thing as a free munch. - Tom Warner



BALTIMORE VICE
14Karat Cabaret Director Locked Up on Permit Violations
by Sono Motoyama (City Paper, July 23, 1993)

Responding to a flier announcing a "Biggest Dick Contest" and "Free Blow Jobs" at the 14Karat Cabaret, plain-clothes officers from the central district vice unit of the Baltimore City police department and a representative from the city's zoning enforcement agency descended on 14Karat Cabaret late Saturday evening, July 17, the cabaret's final performance for the season.

Finding no violations of the type implied by the flier at the cabaret, part of Maryland Art Place (MAP), a nonprofit arts organization and gallery on West Saratoga Street, police arrested cabaret director Laure Drogoul for permit violations.

According to sector supervisor Sergeant John Baker, who was at the scene, Drogoul was charged with "operating a business without a permit and selling alcohol without a license." Licenses are required by the city and state for venues offering live entertainment and serving alcohol.

After being handcuffed and taken to the central district lockup in a paddy wagon, Drogoul spent about 13 hours locked up downtown. She was released Sunday on her own recognizance. Reached Monday afternoon, Drogoul said that she "forgot" to get a temporary liquor license as, she maintains, she has done during every cabaret performance except Saturday's.

Jack Rasmussen, director of MAP, speaking of the cabaret's lack of a permit for live entertainment, said, "We though we had all the permits we needed...We always thought we had all the permits we needed...We always thought of ourselves as an art gallery with performance art."

"You may call it art. They may call it entertainment," interjected Drogoul.

"We've been here for eleven years," noted Rasmussen, "and the cabaret's been here for four years, and it's never come up before. You have to be an attorney to figure it out.

The cabaret, which was characterized by one central district lieutenant as "primarily a homosexual or gay club," featured as emcees on Saturday night the Headhuntresses XXXtraordinaire, a duo who wore dildoes strung around their waists. Also on the bill were the experimental music group the Recordings, saxophonists John Eaton and Nancy Sexten, and Haus of Frau, a drag-queen performance group. It was the Haus of Frau who printed and distributed the fliers announcing the fictitious "Biggest Dick Contest" and "Free Blow Jobs."

"[The police officers] wanted vice and they didn't get vice," said Drogoul, "and they were just angry and looking to find anything they could. They had six [officers] here and a paddy wagon. I wonder why they weren't picking up real prostitutes on Read Street and Howard Street three blocks away. Our tax money could be better spent cleaning up crime and violence on the street."

Drogoul said she was taken across town while still wearing the gold lame dress she wore to introduce the Headhuntresses, and she was fingerprinted and photographed at the police station. She calims she was not told she had been arrested and not read her rights.

"It was very unpleasant," she said. "They just didn't like what they saw. They probably saw acts the didn't understand and music they didn't like." She characterized the officers as "mean and rude."

In a peripheral arrest, Joseph T. Brady, a comedian and a receptionist, was arrested outside MAP for disorderly conduct. After police asked everyone to leave the cabaret, Brady and some friends were standing outside MAP's front door. While waiting, they saw Drogoul being led away in handcuffs and driven off.

"We tried to find out why they were taking her away," Brady said, When he and his friends were told to disperse, Brady answered that he was waiting for a pizza he had ordered from a nearby shop. "Then they arrested me," Brady said. "I didn't expect it. When we were talking to the police, we weren't aware how serious they were being. We were upset and trying to find out what was going on. I don't believe we were going outside of our rights." Instead of enjoying his mushroom-and-onion pie, Brady commented, he spent about 12 hours locked up.

Tom Warner (an occasional City Paper contributor), who was with Brady at the time, said, "All [the pizza-parlor owners] were concerned about was who's gonna pay for the pizza. They did give us a bonus Pepsi, though - the incarceration special."

Artscape 2007 - Pt 2

Amy and I parked on Eutaw and Franklin Street and walked up Howard Street on our pilgrammage to Artscape. Passing Laure Drogoul's place, we peered in the front window and lo and behold, there was "The Root" (pictured at left), her huge devil head sculpture that was awarded the first Julie and Walter Sondheim Prize in 2006. (Laure wisely creates works that can be easily deconstructed to fit through doorways; this one broke down into 17 separate parts, like Tracey Ullman's broken heart.) A colossal head the size of a small SUV is not your normal living room decoration, but then artists are not normal people.

As we crossed Read Street, we decided to stop and check out what was there. Neither of us had been on Read Street since the glory days of The Leather Underground (the bet place to buy cards - I fondly recall getting my Abe Sherman "Holiday Schmoliday" and "Seasons Beatings" Christmas cards there back in the early '80s), the original Atomic Books, Modern Music, and the Read Street Festival back in the '90s. My sister used to get her hair cut at the legendary Hair Garage here, before that biz went under in a big drug scandal (the place allegedly gave new meaning to the term "blow dry").

But even before we used to hang out there, Read Street was a happening counterculture spot. According to the Maryland Historical Society, it was "Ground Zero for the state's counterculture in the late 1960s," with businesses like the Psychedelic Propellor, Omar’s Tent Factory and the Clothes Horse catering to hippies "with incense, paisley, and water pipes." Check out this Audrey Bodine photo of "the scene" from the Maryland Historical Society's Special Collections Department:


Groovy Read Street circa 1969.

We first passed Pete Babones' Beatnik Barbership (where Modern Music used to be), then spotted Read Street Books and Coffee. "I think this was where Atomic Books used to be," I told Amy. We went in and the woman behind the counter of this bookstore/cafe, Lisette, verified that it was ye olde Atomic. Read Street Books sells new and used books, vintage paperbacks, lesbian fiction, espresso, herbal teas, Italian sodas and desserts. I was impressed by the layout and the inventory, all esoteric arts books and leftist-leaning liberal media magazines (the kind I like). I even found an out-of-print British film history book, that I put aside to pick up on our way back from Artscape.

We did stop back after the festival, and there was quite a surprise awaiting us - one that made me realize why Atomic and Modern Music had moved out of this neighborhood. They'd been robbed. And they had it all on the closed circuit TV, so Amy and I got to watch the robbery in real-time, like a muted episode of COPS. Lisette said the Video Store owner on the corner had been robbed two nights previous by the same man. Apparently there's some rehab halfway house around the corner that acts as a staging area for these once-and-future criminals. Ah, junkies and crime - it's so Baltimore!

But I digress. A few blocks later we hit the Art Cars exhibit across from the Meyerhoff. But first, looking down, we had an Asphalt Elvis sighting.



Art Cars

The first car we spied was this treehouse pickup that had a bird's nest in the back. You can see Amy eyeing the eggs in the basket (I had to convince her that they were non-edible "art" eggs!). This car would have been considered the equivalent of a Hummer in Fred Flinstone's day.


Don't overheat this engine!


Don't be fooled by imitations. The license plate indicates that this is THE Art Car.

This one was called the FAUX JAG even though it was clearly a Karmen Ghia. Amy liked that's its interior was a lepoard skin bedsheet that matched mine.


Karma Karmen Khameleon?


This car gives you the bird's-eye view.


This one just gives you the Eye!


Full frontal view of the Igloo Car


Cool Girlfriend Amy Cools Off in the Igloo Car


"Understatement" is clearly the aesthetic of this art car.


An external gas tank?


A car only the Quay Brothers could love.


Rotary engine?


Detail from roof of an art car.


Art Bikes: These two bipeds were parked behind an art car.


Art Cars: You are what you drive.

Tomorrow: more Artscape pix.

Related links:
Artscape 2007 - Pt 3

Ceci n'est pas a Booth, Kiosk or Gazebo...

and other Radical Shacks



Performance artist-sculptor Laure Drogoul, winner of the 2006 Julie and Walter Sondheim Prize and founder-director of Maryland Art Place's 14 Karat Cabaret, is curating a show at this year's Artscape that spoofs the arts festival's reputation as being nothing more than "Foodscape," a place for Baltimorons to eat bad food.

Hence we have Ceci n'est pas a Booth, Kiosk or Gazebo and Other Radical Shacks, a play on the title of surrealist painter Rene Magritte's picture of a pipe that he called Ceci n'est pas une Pipe (This Is Not a Pipe).
The point being that, just like Magritte's painted pipe that viewers can't smoke, the booths occupied by the artists in the food court don't sell food, they only look like they do.

Anyway, I came, I saw, I interacted with the art. This kind of thing usually isn't my bag, but I have to admit that everyone was really nice (especially the LEXI MOUNTAIN BOYS, who are in fact lovely ladies) and I really enjoyed Dan Van Allen's TREE HOUSE FOR AN AUTUMN MOON and the video installation and synthesizer sounds provided by SNACKS (Tom Boram and Dan Breen, the later of Trockenis) at their YE OLDE ELECTRO-MATIC SMOOTHIE SHOPPE booth. The Snacks boys also played tubas that generated power to run blenders filled with red and white wine, which they then dispensed to lines of supplicants in a sort of performance art Holy Communion.

OK, enough talk. Here are some photos of the exhibit.


The Entrance Gate
Abandon all hope of real food, ye who enter.


Tim Scofield's kinetic AERIAL SCULPTURE at rest


Fly guy Tim Scofield prepares for takeoff


Tim Scofield getting high as a kite


I've run out of high jokes. But he is. Very.


Tim Scofield gets a rise of out of the audience


Whatever you do, don't look down!


"Fuck! There goes my bus fare!"


Tim demonstrates his World's Highest Yo-Yo Trick.


Tim does his Puppet-on-a-String impression


"And this is how I do the back stroke."


"Here we go Allez-Oops!"


What goes around comes around. (We hope!)


"Clear the landing strip!"


"Damn! My socks don't match."


"Ha! From up here you humans look so puny!"


R.L. Tillman's COTTON SALTY stand


Dan Van Allen's TREE HOUSE FOR AN AUTUMN MOON


TREE HOUSE Close-up


TREEHOUSE extreme full frontal close-up

Girls just wanna have Treehouse fun



TREEHOUSE long shot


Dan enjoys an upskirt view of his TREEHOUSE


Dan Van consults with Dr. Angela about the green slime on his chin


Dan Breen in front of the his Snacks Video Installation

For me, this was the highlight of Artscape 2007, a simple yet clever video that seemed to feature every artist or "scene-maker' in Baltimore.


Odd in Quad: Snacks Videos Loop Mismatched Tops and Bottoms


Snacks: Iron(ic) Chef


Birthday girl Spoon and roomate Uli send a shout out. (Spoon must have gotten a grant because she's drinking Bud instead of Natty Boh.)

The "#$%@!!" Gnome Hut
created by Melissa Webb, M. Jane Taylor & Co.


The "#$%@!!" Gnome Hut Redux


>#$%@!! Gnome Icon


Imus would call these tough-looking gnomes "Nappy-headed"


I'd jump through hoops for this gnome
(the lovely Paige Shuttleworth)


Mama's got a squeeze box


Girls will be LEXI MOUNTAIN BOYS.
Here they are in front of their CLEARAMID.

Related Links:
Ceci n'est pas review in Baltimore Sun
Dan Van Allen (Soweboarts.org)
Snacks Review (City Paper)
Lexi Mountain Boys (MySpace)