Lee Cronbach

         As we drove down the last hill on the freeway before Baltimore, I burst out laughing.  I couldn’t believe my eyes!  The city was spread around the Chesapeake Bay, and rising proudly out of the center was a giant stone tower, like something from the Middle Ages.  In the middle of the tower was a huge clock, and what made it so absurd was that the words “BROMO SELZER” were prominently displayed on all four sides.        Indeed, Baltimore’s reputation for the strange and uncanny goes back as far as Edgar Allen Poe’s residence there, where he created the modern horror story in the 1850s.         Well, as we stayed in Baltimore and I read the local underground Press, it seemed to me to be the ultimate clown city.  I remember one article (since lost) where a column started with the line “As I lay drunk in the gutter, looking up at the stars…”.    And our friends from the clubs we played liked to call themselves “Baltimorions.”          The streets of the gay downtown area were thron