Gayety

Services for Samuel A. Hartman, a taxicab owner and former president of the Diamond Cab Co., will be held at 1 p.m. today at the Loring Byers funeral establishment, 8728 Liberty Road.Mr. Hartman, who was 87 and lived on Chesterfield Avenue, died Wednesday at the Meridian Nursing Center/Multi-Medical of complications after surgery.He began driving a cab in the mid-1920s and soon became a charter member of the Association of Independent Taxi Operators, which became the Diamond Cab Co.Mr. Hartman was president of the company in the 1930s and 1940s and managed the Diamond Cab baseball team that won the Maryland Amateur Baseball League's 1937 championship.

Mary Ellen Kansler, a 100-year-old native Baltimorean who played the piano for silent movies, died Sunday at St. Joseph Hospital of complications of diabetes.A mass of Christian burial for Mrs. Kansler, who lived on Rosalie Avenue, was being offered today at St. Thomas More Roman Catholic Church, 6806 McClean Blvd.She was an Oriole fan, who ignored a congratulatory message from the president at her 100th birthday party last Jan. 1 in favor of an autographed picture of former Oriole pitcher Jim Palmer, the best player Mrs. Kansler said she had seen since Babe Ruth.

From The Sun Nov. 24-30, 1841NOV. 24: The failure of the Southern mail to reach this city on Monday evening at the usual hour, was caused by the cars from this city, on the Washington Road, running off the track near Beltsville.NOV. 26: Yesterday was by proclamation Thanksgiving Day throughout all "down East." That it was duly honored there no one can possibly doubt. It was honored here, too, by many a xTC descendant of the Pilgrim fathers.From The Sun Nov. 24-30, 1891NOV. 25: The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals are endeavoring to have the nails from packing house boxes picked up from the streets and gathered from the sweepings of the stores.

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.

Before Larry Flynt's Hustler Club opened in downtown Baltimore, the manager said he would run such a clean operation that it would be "just like you go to T.G.I. Friday's" restaurant, except for the nude women on stage. "No touching," promised Jason C. Mohney, 30, trying to distinguish the huge new club from the nearly 20 other strip joints crammed onto The Block, steps from City Hall and police headquarters. Today, the city liquor board is scheduled to hear police allegations that four days after the club's Nov. 12 gala opening, several people -- including Mohney's brother -- violated the city law barring sexual touching.

The call echoed across Blue Mirrors just after 3:30 in the afternoon: "Smoke!" Within seconds, dark clouds choked the bar on The Block, the city's storied red-light district in the heart of downtown. Young women clad in slivers of lingerie grabbed coats and dashed outside, as the first firefighters streamed water onto the blaze that would grow to engulf four buildings on East Baltimore Street. "We were trying to get the girls out as soon as possible without getting any indecent exposure charges," said Jeff Jones, the owner of Blue Mirrors.

Downtown Baltimore yesterday retreated to the year 1954 while a film crew for "Liberty Heights" commandeered Redwood Street, filling it with dozens of vintage cars, neon lights, gabardine suits, hats with veils and cameras on rolling tracks.Traffic congealed into a nonmoving glob, but few drivers complained as they caught a sideways view of star Joe Mantegna standing in a reconstructed world they had forgotten about or never knew."It was a little overcast this morning," said director Barry Levinson.

From The Sun Aug. 8-14, 1843Aug. 8: A horse, with his harness on, broke from his line yesterday morning and ran at full speed down Camden Street.Aug. 9: We are requested to mention, in order to quiet the fears of friends, that the Mr. Brown, U.S. Mail agent, who was injured in a fracas in Kentucky, is not James Brown, also a Mail agent, from Maryland.Aug. 10: The Centreville (Queen Anne's County) Telescope of Wednesday states that the county was visited, on Saturday last, by two destructive tornadoes.

THE massive police raid on The Block Friday night may spell the end of Baltimore's sin strip. But The Block already had been greatly diminished morally and physically.In its heyday, it spread for three blocks along East Baltimore Street, anchored on the west by the Gayety Burlesque Theater at Holliday and, on the east, by the popular Miami night club on Harrison Street. In between was Max Cohen's famous Oasis, the "world's worst night club," at Baltimore and Frederick streets.I was not a regular on The Block but, being in business at the old Marsh Market at Lombard Street and Market Place, I was friendly enough with (though sometimes apprehensive about)

&TC Last week this column related the story of cartoon sketches recently donated to the Jewish Historical Society. Artist Eddie Levin used pen and ink to record the gambling action along The Block in 1944.But more than drawings about men playing poker, they were records of men with names like Hambone, Hairsey and Big Abe. Specific details about the dozens of men crammed into the cartoons remain as sketchy as their likenesses.A few people familiar with The Block in the 1940s have provided the society with some information.