Don't get your shorts in a bunch — visibly

Laura Vozzella

September 28, 2008

The ladies who lunch at Petit Louis in Roland Park know enough to keep their undies to themselves. Same goes for the Harbor East crowd forking over hundreds for dinner at Charleston and the oenophiles tasting wines at nearby Cinghiale.

Patrons of Pazo, however, need to be told.

Cindy Wolf and Tony Foreman have lots of restaurants in Baltimore, but only one with a dress code. It's just been posted inside the doorway at Pazo in Fells Point.

It lists run-of-the-mill no-nos: No ball caps, athletic shoes, flip-flops.

Laura Vozzella E-mail | Recent columns

And an unusual one: "No visible underpants."

Viewable unmentionables have become a problem recently at Pazo. Foreman put it in NFL terms: "Overly dramatic display of thong. You walk by it and you want to throw a yellow flag.

"Maybe it's something I don't understand in our culture," he added. "It just seems like there's an entire generation that's compelled to have their drawers on display. I'm in my 40s now, and I'm too crotchety to understand that, but I'm not thinking your underwear and my dinner are compatible."

The problem is mainly in the Pazo lounge, which turns into something of a club late at night. As Pazo puts it on its Web site: "The music gently crescendos throughout the evening as PAZO gracefully transforms into the perfect late-night scene."

A less graceful aspect of the metamorphosis: underwear becomes outerwear. Not on everyone, mind you. Skivvies show-offs remain a minority. But it only takes a few men with saggy pants, or a couple women pairing low-rise bottoms with high-rise thongs, to put a dent in a joint's fabulousness.

"There are a lot of people who put an awful lot of effort in their appearance," Foreman said. "They expect a certain quality of cocktails, they expect staff to be amazing, they expect the room to be amazing, they expect the music to be groovy. And it's reasonable to expect while they're sipping their fabulous martinis that they're not going to be looking at your fabulous drawers."

Put the emphasis on the hip, not on hip replacement

If Pazo wants to tame its crowd, why not let the Charlestown retirement community shuttle bus park out front?

Erickson, the retirement empire that owns Charlestown, recently filmed a TV commercial at Pazo's bar. It's all part of a push to shed the old old-folks' home image.

"After moving to Erickson, you will have more time to spend with friends, doing the things that you love, like shopping, dinner, and a movie with your closest girlfriends - 'Girl's night out,' if you will," Erickson spokesman Mel Tansill said.

Very attractive older people - actors, as it turns out, not Charlestown residents - were filmed in a hip-looking bar toasting hip-looking cocktails. (And no, their underwear was not visible.)

A real Pazo bartender served up the drinks. And they were real Pazo drinks, even though the director wanted colorful, said Allison Parker-Abromitis, marketing director for the Wolf-Foreman restaurants.

"We don't do the umbrella-in-the-drink thing," she said. "We still have to stay within our branding because it's important that what we serve here is a particular style."

Not that the Pazo name will appear in the commercial.

Said Parker-Abromitis: "We opted not to have a credit."

Not a judicial favorite

There's something of a judicial rogues gallery on the fourth floor of Baltimore's Mitchell Courthouse, with photos of the city's Circuit Court judges on display near the elevator.

Where's the one of Judge Charles Bernstein?

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Don't get your shorts in a bunch — visibly

Put the emphasis on the hip, not on hip replacement

Not a judicial favorite

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