FROM CITAYPAPUH LOLOLLloo!L1

Westward Ho

Back in its heyday, Paloma�s was as hot as the hottest tech stocks. That�s when, in our 2000 Best of Baltimore issue, City Paper awarded it Best Groove Spot and Best Place to Score (dates, not drugs), and waxed in a review that the live-entertainment destination was a �beautiful venue filled with beautiful people.� It had opened in 1999 on Mount Vernon�s Eager Street, taking over the space that had been Fabulous Follies, a restaurant staffed by lingerie-clad ladies that had briefly taken residence there after the long tenancy of the venerable Eager House. Just like those tech stocks, and at around the same time, Paloma�s tanked.

By the time the Nose last wrote about the club, in the spring of 2003, it was already gone, its demise hastened, we wrote, after Paloma�s had �copped a punk-tinged reggae-faire attitude that seemed hard on business and rough on the real estate.� (�Meager House,� March 26, 2003) Since then, the owners�led by a 51-year-old self-described artist whose name, according to liquor board records, is River Biton Fogle�opened up shop as Paloma�s Underground in another former strip club, this one on Sparrows Point Road in Dundalk.

Now, River and her crew are buying a bar in Southwest Baltimore, the former M.R. Shooters at Ramsey and Woodyear streets, right near the Mount Clare Junction shopping center. It�s a rough, violent, very poor neighborhood, where drugs and prostitution are the bedrock of the local economy. The bar is half a block west of South Carey Street, which the locals call �Scarey Street.� (�Scarey Street,� Feb. 26, 2003) Drug-treatment services are provided in the shopping center, attracting a large population of itinerant clients, who are housed in scattered, unregulated group homes and constantly tempted by hard-working dealers.

�This neighborhood speaks to me,� River told the Nose as we stood outside of her new bar on June 29. �I chose this neighborhood.� She�s plunked herself down and, apparently, is optimistic about the prospects for success�despite the distinctive demographic, so different from Mount Vernon. �Hey,� she points out, �the gays told us a straight club would never work on Eager Street.� The Nose had to hold back from pointing out that history shows the gays were probably right. But we wish her better luck this time. Given the $350,000 purchase price of M.R. Shooters, and the liquor license�s prohibition on live entertainment, she�s going to need it.

J00 NO W0T DIZ M33NZ? J0R LIEF IZ IN D4NJUR1!!!!13 WAWAWAWAWAEEAWAAAWJ00 HEP UZZZ!!1