If you happen to be in Baltimore this weekend, you're in for a treat. It's the annual Hon Fest—where big hair, campy dress, pink flamingo sunglasses and a healthy appreciation for the wacky reign queen. I have to say, I've visited many places (and even seriously considered moving to a few) but Baltimore is definitely a town where you want to sit down and sip an ice tea with your neighbor. What is it exactly? Dave and I have often pondered that question. Because Baltimore is certainly the topic of national discourse on topics such school violence, drugs and syphilis (obviously these things need to be discussed and fixed!). And shows like the Wire scare the crap out of me. But there's something else. A big something else.
It's that Baltimore is and will forever have a wonderfully deep history. A history of knowing exactly who it is. It's not pretentious. Quite frankly, we don't have that much to be pretentious about. We're not glitzy and glamorous like our cities to the north. We aren't captains of major industry.
But what we do have, we have in spades. We have fun! We have a big heart! And we don't take ourselves too seriously. We have festivals like Honfest.
Perhaps that's one of the reasons Hollywood is turning to us more and more to film on location. We're attractive, we're nice, we tell a good joke...frankly, who wouldn't love us?
So grab some Berger cookies, a box of Rhebs, and a bag of crab potato chips and join in a celebration of some good old hometown fashion fun.
3 comments:
well, the neighbors ARE great...
I may be able to talk DH into going!
I am sure it will be fun~ too bad I can't make it.
Here is a a description from a PBS movie called People Like Us, http://www.pbs.org/peoplelikeus/about/index.html:
"Once, Baltimore was famed as a blue-collar city with a friendly workingmen's bar at the corner of every street of rowhouses and waitresses who would call you "hon" when they took your order at the diner. Nowadays, with most of the big factories gone and gentrification in full swing, blue collar life is increasingly a thing of middle class nostalgia, something for suburbanites to celebrate on a weekend visit to town. There's even an annual Hon Fest, where middle-class contestants in beehive wigs and exaggerated "Balmer" accents glorify (or mock, depending on your point of view) the rituals of blue collar life. And for those wanting an even richer contact with the working class, there are so-called "dive-bar crawls", where groups of suburban kids descend on unsuspecting neighborhood bars and try to ingratiate themselves with the locals, who they deem more "authentic" and real."
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