Honfest 2007
Perhaps you have to be from Baltimore to love Baltimorese, but the diction that curls letters like cars wrapping around telephone poles is a beautiful thing to my ear. The MC for the semi-final round of the Hon contest spoke a right awful version of Baltimorese, but perhaps the best was hearing the accent on display everywhere around me.
Without the stage or the mic, a few denizens of Honfest still mangled words as eloquently as the MC. “Their” became “dare,” “wash” became “warsh,” and “Baltimore” became, of course, “Bawlmer.”
Ladies outside the dunk tank paraded their friend’s State Police badge and shouted at passersby to get their revenge on the cops by dunking their friend. Vendors hawked every variation of fried food and frozen sugar, and nearly every store had great sales.
If Honfest has a darkside it’s simply the grandiosity and sugar-coating that has taken over 36th street. Every shop on the street is wonderful, but the old Hampden Festival that got kicked out and forgotten (and that supported the Hampden Rec Center) was probably wonderful in its own way too, and maybe an even better place to see the real hons.
But what is a real hon? Isn’t a hon a stereotype, and what stereotype is ever good?
I think it’s wonderful to have a festival, however campy, that celebrates looking different. The best hon is not the skinniest, tannest, most carefully made up woman in the crowd. A Hon is a stereotype but it’s not the one women struggle to match every day, and it champions a lifestyle that’s not on TV, that might not be ideal but can still be something to be proud of. It’s important to remember, when every billboard and magazine cover looks exactly the same, that most of us don’t.
