I Love The Nightlife...Baltimore, DC, Midwest
The Depot Baltimore	Located at the SW corner of Fayette & North Charles Streets, across from the historic Charles Theatre, this is one fantastic little venue. Friday nights have a mixture of 80's music and old school Goth. Sundays have more recent music plus techno & electronica. Features include cheap drinks. lounge with bay windows, and the hottest lady bartenders I've ever seen. Great especially for its absence of annoying Mansonites and across the street is Tapas Teatro, one of the best Spanish cafes in the area.
Club Orpheus Baltimore	Located at 1003 East Pratt in Little Italy, the biggest and roomiest venue so far. Bars on two floors. The head bartender is an elegant elderly matron who is a spitting image of actress Delphine Seyrig from the cult horror movie "Daughters of Darkness." Hosts Ascension on Thursdays, Nevermore on Fridays, and Taboo on Saturdays. Drinks pricey but there are free snacks and the atmosphere and the crowd are worth it.
The Meeting Place Washington DC	Home of the late, lamented Catacombs on Saturday nights. Now replaced with some other show but I have yet to go there and report on it. I will list it here when I finally attend it.
Dr. Dremo's Arlington, VA	Big restaurant size place 2001 Clarendon Blvd. with an incongruous tiki bar theme. Pool tables upstairs and downstairs. Great drink selection. Best recommendation: Brooklyn Barleywine at $13/pitcher. Downstairs section hosts Purgatorio on Wednesdays and recently Voltaire played a gig there.
Smart Bar Chicago	Hosts the best gothic night I have ever been to: Nocturne on Tuesdays with my friend the lovely and inimitable DJ Scary Lady Sarah. From 10PM-4AM the biggest basement I've ever seen comes alive. Great bartenders. Unbeatable set lists...lots of atmosphere and cool people. What more could you want?
NEO Chicago	This is hosted by another friend of mine Carrie Monster. She is a wonderful person but I haven't been to her venue yet but from what I heard when she spun at Catacomb events, it rocked!
Other Metro Area Venues	Check out DCFreaks.com for more information.
Edgar Allen Poe Society of Baltimore	One could never complete this list without mentioning one of its most influential inhabitants. Twice a year his birth and death are celebrated here and elsewhere. One of the most interested, if decaying cemeteries, has his remain though it is seemingly being swallowed up by urban renewal.
	Historic Cemeteries & Resources
Greenmount Cemetery Baltimore	1501 Greenmount Avenue off North Avenue. One of the very first public cemetery parks in the nation and perhaps the closest thing in the Mid-Atlantic to Pere LaChaise. Open Monday - Friday 9-5. The gate is rather narrow and you can drive through and around. Visitors office has lots of freebies. Highlights include towering gothic architecture, life size pleurants in bronze and marble, gigantic Celtic crosses, and some of the oddest memorials I've ever seen.
Mt. Carmel Baltimore	5712 O'Donnell St. just across from the Baltimore Travel Plaza and the I-95 junction. Known by some as "The Pagan Cemetery" because of the overgrowth that has been allowed in some areas (making for spectacular color in autumn) and an array of very unconventional monuments from the simple to the garish. Recommended by a model who became my friend, I had never seen this place before and haven't seen anything like it since. In some ways it is the lonely eastern Baltimore's answer to Greenmount. Worth spending an afternoon exploring.
Mt. Olivet Baltimore	Located along Frederick Avenue between Mt. Olivet Lane and Foot Hill Avenue in SW Baltimore, it has a very high elevation from which the Francis Scott Key Bridge can be seen clearly in the distance. Has some very unusual monuments.
St. Anne's Annapolis	Between Calvert and Northwest streets off Church Circle. The burial ground for the church of the same name in the center of town. Has some very impressive monuments and is still accepting tenants. Some of the most verbose epitaphs I've ever seen are there.
Rock Creek Cemetery Washington, DC	Don't have much to say but that I got a great impression walking through this place, though it was on my way to a Markland feast. I've always wanted to see the famous bronze pleurant by Auguste St.-Gaudens entitled Grief that a wealthy patron paid lavishly for.
Forest Hills Madison, WI	Speedway & Regent Street. I am indebted to this place for sparking my interest in cemeteries as places of history, beauty, and art. Perhaps the finest cemetery park of its kind in the Midwest. The pedigree of the land goes back to ancient times when burial and effigy mounds were made by ancestors of the Chippewa and Ho Chunk. These fortunately remain, if not altogether intact. Extraordinary monuments of many people prominent in the state's history and that of the University especially. Highlights include the half-circle of Roman columns of the Slaughter family memorial, complete with Latin phrasing. One of the tombstones had the most extraordinary lament. It was all in German and I found no one could translate it precisely until an Internet query yielded a translation with the comment that it was a dialect that went extinct in the early 20th Century!
Ressurection Hill Madison, WI	Across the street from Forest Hills. Whereas the above was strictly non-denominational, this Catholic cemetery stands in many contrasts to the other one with its grand monuments. Cameo niches from the turn of the century are still maintained with restored photographs. Perhaps the most noteworthy was a former mausoleum that stuck out prominently. Because it was believed to be vacant, it was going to be demolished but State protocol demanded an inspection by the State Forensic Archaeologist. Leslie Eisenberg investigated and discovered it was anything but...it held the remains of a mother and young child interred together in an open crypt and, most startling of all, a glass topped casket hermetically sealed. The engraved bronze plaque stating the deceased had died in 1912 of tuberculosis. Very fortuitous they followed procedure. Guys in spacesuits had to haul the coffin out as bio-hazardous material. It and the other residents were interred elsewhere. I thought they should have properly let the mausoleum stand but space is money in the funeral business.
	Hauntingly Beautiful & Elegant Stuff...
Gothic Babe of the Week	Often imitated, never duplicated, and outlivng all its competition, GBOTW continues to astound and impress with its weekly award to a woman whose gothic beauty and style merit attention. What is great is that practically all the awardees have great personality and talent to make them really special!
Parasols by Mirabai	I met Mirabai via GBOTW and we've corresponded once in a great while. She manufactures those cool Victorian style parasols with hardwood construction, fringe tassels, and heavy fabric! Now in its 7th year of online business!
Chaotic Creations	Maker of the best and most original custom-made jewelry I am proud to own! Silverfoot is talented and does his research.
Westgate Gallery	Home to my friend Leilah Wendell. Has some of the most unusual fine art I've seen. She gifted me one of her paintings that I hope to one day give the frame it deserves.
Brute Force Leather	Any of my old college chums may recall the name of Hrathmir. Well, he and his wife Miraj have their own business where they make custome corsets and costumes. Very high quality. They did a fantastic Lady Death that was so good, the comic company paid them to do promotionals!
	and the Just Plain Morbid Stuff
Cinemorgue	An unusual website dealing specifically with actress death scenes in various movies. Not just horror, but suspense and drama films too. If a female character died anywhere onscreen, this is the place to find out who and how.
George Higham	Used to have a catalog called "Higham's House of Horrors," where he did pewter casts of baby skulls and skeleton hand ashtrays. Did a Poe tribute film called "Annabel Lee" where the link goes to. Don't know if he still does sculpture but at least he is keeping busy. Think Voltaire without the humor.