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Page 9 of 'A Short History of Baltimore Fandom' © Jack Chalker | |||||||
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restaurant banquet one year, Harry Harrison leaped
across the table and attempted to strangle Ted
White over some dispute about how White had
edited Amazing Stories after Harrison had left it. |  BSFS was eventually re-started.
Some newcomers such as Sue Wheeler, Shirley Avery, and
Martin Deutsch got together with a few old vets of
the original club, like Pat Kelly and Mark Owings,
and began meeting in small rooms at the Johns
Hopkins University and other available places.
With another returned member from the 1960s,
Charles David Michael Artemus Ellis (CDMA in
print, Charlie to us), they also assumed control of
Balticon from Pauls, whose own business had been
having some problems that required a lot of his
time and resources; the club asked Charlie, who had
never run a large convention before, to run a big
one.
Charlie did. Moving out of downtown to the
Pikesville Hilton on the Baltimore beltway, Charlie
started with heavy publicity, made lots of deals, and
went beyond traditional con fandom to his own
contacts with film fandom to create a short amateur
film festival to run concurrently, and, as importantly,
he moved Balticon from President's Day
weekend to Easter weekend. Balticon suddenly
drew almost 2,000 people, including lots of writers,
editors, film people, artists, you name it... and it
was off. The Hilton, however, was not as good; its
franchise holder was in trouble and tried to stiff the
con, forcing a move the next year to The Hunt Valley
Inn even farther out in the suburbs. There it
remained for more than a decade, until Hunt Valley
management tired of Balticon and Balticon finally
faced the fact that it had outgrown the place. Since
then it's been mostly in the Inner Harbor, at various
hotels there. Balticons had quite a reputation in the
early 1970s as fun conventions; Wheeler even arranged to
import a performing group to Balticon that she'd seen at
the 1977 Westercon. We understand that The Flying
Karamazov Brothers still remember us fondly.
The high attendance brought BSFS lots of
money; in the early 1980s the club found and rented
a basement clubhouse on Charles Street near the
Johns Hopkins University. This remained the center of the
club and its activities until, after a decade there, crime had
increased to the point where everyone decided we needed
to move. At first intending only to rent, the club found and
then purchased a former neighborhood movie house in the
Highlandtown section of east Baltimore, then began to renovate
and rehab the place even while it was being
used as a meeting site. Only two other clubs that I
know of, LASFS and NESFA, own their own clubhouses.# # #
Sue Wheeler led a bid for the 1980 Worldcon,
but was beaten after a good campaign by Boston.
Three years later, however, a renewed bid under
Mike Walsh won. ConStellation was held at the
Inner Harbor in 1983 with John Brunner as Guest of
Honor, Dave Kyle as Fan GoH, and me as Toastmaster. Overambitious
and underinsured, the convention wound up with money problems
but managed to settle with all its creditors over time with
help from NESFA and Rick Katze in particular.
Contrary to popular opinion, ConStellation did not
declare bankruptcy, and those who worked on it
simply note that its problems cost no attendee one
dime and that everyone got more than their
money's worth. Eva Whitley's crab feast for 1,200,
the first food function at a domestic worldcon in
many years, actually made money and became
something of a legend. It was also the first crab
feast she had ever thrown.
Today's Baltimore fandom continues quite
active; a mixed WSFA-BSFS bid for the 1998
World SF Convention won, and next year another
worldcon will be held in Baltimore. The World
Fantasy Convention has been to the city twice so
far, once at the Hunt Valley Inn in 1981, and most
recently in downtown Baltimore, in 1995, under
Mike Walsh. Balticon is still held every Easter
weekend. BSFS continues to thrive and the clubhouse
is a center of faanish social activity in the
city; the club publishes a regular fanzine, is a participant
in fan activities all over the country, and is
in contact with fans all over the world. Recently
it's again become the center of regional fan activity, although
it is generally acknowledged that the
completion of clubhouse renovations will be one of
the Seven Signs of the Apocalypse.
Me, I still go to meetings whenever I can, and,
after the meeting, I lead a number of others out to a
24-hour eatery where tradition is maintained.
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