Social Club

A disco floor, black lights, an old VW beetle and '70s icons painted on the walls made the Baltimore Sports and Social Club's first annual holiday party an out-of-sight happening. About 150 guests grooved to the music and mood at the recently opened Have A Nice Day Cafe, raising more than $4,000 for the Children's House at Johns Hopkins. Among those making the scene: Mike Cray, owner of the Baltimore Sports and Social Club, an organization for sports-loving adults; former Baltimore Colts Tony Linhart and Artie Donovan; Baltimore Ravens players Stoney Case, Spencer Folau and Mike Flynn; Baltimore Blast players Derrick Marcano, Ronnie Simmons, Tarik Walker, J.J. Kremer, Danny Santoro and Paul Wright; National Hockey League referee Tim Nowak; Vanessa O'Brey, pharmaceutical sales rep for Astra-Zeneca; Terry Hickey, director of Community Law in Action; Mary Wells, New York City singer-songwriter; and B.J. Crouch, customer business manager with Nabisco Foods.

Baltimore police yesterday identified two people who were shot to death over the weekend. One was a Southern High School teen-ager, and the other lived in Harford County.No arrests had been made, and no motive is known.Homicide Detective Joseph Kleinota said Larry Knox, 15, of the 1700 block of Ensor St. in East Baltimore was gunned down about 11: 45 p.m. Saturday outside a senior citizen social club in the 500 block of N. Patterson Park Ave.Kleinota said Knox was shot once in the head and once in the chest and was pronounced dead at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

"Buena Vista Social Club" is a movie so full of heroes that it's difficult to know whom to single out. Its subjects -- a group of elderly Cuban musicians who re-unite in an expression of passion, commitment and solidarity -- are heroes, if only for surviving years of neglect and cultural amnesia.Ry Cooder, one of America's most eclectic popular musicians, is a hero for seeking out these important and forgotten folk musicians and not only recording them but also assembling them for two legendary live performances.

One of the partners in a Frederick Avenue after-hours club testified yesterday that a city liquor inspector began collecting cash payments from her establishment shortly after she became an owner in 1992.Joy Nickey, part owner of the Twilight Social Club, told a Circuit Court jury that J. Bernard "Bernie" Martin, then an inspector for the Baltimore City Liquor Board, was collecting money "whenever we saw him." She said initially the payments were made every month and a half but became more frequent.

Martha Brown always liked to say that when you start to slow down, you start to worry. She did little worrying.Mrs. Brown, who died Friday at Windsor Ridge Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Catonsville where she had lived for the past four years, was active in numerous church and social clubs, organizations and committees well into her 90s.She was 105."She had a keen mind, sharp wit and a feisty spirit," said her daughter, Ruth Lee of Baltimore. "She was always aware of current events and liked to talk about them."

On the cusp of the 1950s social revolution stood Margaret Davidson. And the picture before her was quite unsettling.Her teen-age son and his Highlandtown friends were applying grease to their hair, listening to rock 'n' roll music, fighting in the streets and getting chased by the cops."

PITTSBURGH -- Trying to pump vitality into the NAACP, Kweisi Mfume told local leaders yesterday to recruit members on street corners, form youth councils and hold demonstrations."

NEW YORK -- As a gunman tried to kill five people yesterday morning during a robbery at a Brooklyn social club, Evelyn Davis tried desperately to stop him.Davis, 32, had been chatting with friends at the Happiness Social Club in Bedford-Stuyvesant when a bloody holdup left her and two men dead and a fourth person in a hospital with bullet fragments in the head, police said.A witness said that before the robber fatally stabbed Davis, she struggled, knocked the gun from his hand and saved the lives of the two men who were next in line to die. The killer escaped.

You don't have to be a fan of Minnie Mouse to join Arundel's Swinging Minnie Mouse Club, but a sense of humor is a must, and knowing the words to that famous mouse song doesn't hurt."

Bonnie and Joseph Beurer Sr. of Hampstead want a place for county high school students to have fun in a safe, moderately controlled environment: a club for teens in ninth through 12th grades that would be open evenings and weekends with arcade games, table tennis, fast food and a disc jockey now and then.This teen club would depend upon the young people for leadership as well as membership. The teens' interest would make it survive. Students would form committees to plan entertainment and decide issues of membership and finances.