Time to Do Away With ‘Honfest’

Unfree State

As someone who grew up on the streets of East Baltimore, I think it’s time to do away with the so-called “Honfest” being held in Hampden this weekend.

I find myself agreeing with the filmmaker and creator of “Hair Spray” John Waters who told the Sun just what he thought of the so-called event where yuppies dress up like Mobtown’s working-class dwellers of the 1960s with bright clothes and beehive hairdos,

“To me, it’s used up,” Waters said of the Hon. “It’s condescending now. The people that celebrate it are not from it. I feel that in some weird way they’re looking slightly down on it. I only celebrate something I can look up to.”

Waters nailed it.

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The yuppies who have gentrified select neighborhoods of Baltimore City such as Hampden, Canton, Fells Point and Federal Hill have very little if anything in common with their predecessors except perhaps the color of their skin.

The blue-collar jobs, work ethic and religious beliefs and loyalty are 180 degrees away from the chic, college-educated humanists that when pressed about their beliefs may admit they are “progressive” and “agnostic” at best.

Such folks are eons away from the two-fisted mom and pops who populated the neighborhoods of Baltimore, who wouldn’t think twice about telling their bosses to go to hell, if they gave them too much guff!

Of course in those days, there were plenty of factories and can companies that needed that were willing to paying an honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work.

While I know it must give the new gentrified city dwellers a giggle to dress up and make fun of those working-class masses who built Baltimore with the sweat of their brows, I think it’s time to stop the charade.

It’s disrespectful.