On the surface Baltimore doesn’t seems like the king of weird. This is why most people outside of the city give me a skeptical look when I describe the city as magical. The most popular TV show about the city is The Wire putting the city’s problems and complexities in full view. After all, our most famous resident died in a gutter. ![]() ![]() It seems like Baltimore has always been defined by its more seedy elements. It reminds me of a line from “ Good Morning Baltimore” in John Waters’ Hairspray: It is not the crab cake that defines Baltimore, it is the people you have to weave through to get there. When you watch the lost tourist souls, bravely venturing from the Inner Harbor, their wide eyes desperately trying to get a Findley’s crab cake, you realize like tourists in every city they fail to see what truly makes this city incredible. This is why I love guest blogger Devan Southerland’s love note to Lexington Market. The man who shouts at you for no apparent reason, the group of loiterers who mingle at the bus stop on the corner, the person who asks you for money every time you leave the grocery store are all part of the city too but rarely are they symbols of any Keep Weird campaign. We often deny that weird can sometimes be uncomfortable. Keep Weird campaigns tend to focus on gentrified areas where local businesses thrive and problems are kept at bay. Most campaigns generally only celebrate brick and mortar local businesses, excluding hustlers like the amazing makeshift market that appears daily on the corner of 25th and North. This brings me to my first question: who gets to define weird? One of the criticism of the Keep Portland Weird campaign is that it only celebrates the young Portlandia generation and not the original residents of the Oregon town. The “Oh Baltimore” moments people have shared this past week with ChangeEngine show a side of Baltimore often not embraced by people who try to brand our city, but nevertheless are one of the reasons we stay. The first question hit me when I was reading Lindsey Davis’ blog this week on “ Embracing the Noise.” Often times the “Keep Weird” campaigns focus on businesses or festivals that define the city but in reality some of our favorite things about our locale is the people you find on the streets. Over the next weeks I will look at the Keep Austin Weird campaign and ask three key questions: While I love the celebration of quirk, seeing the campaign through the lens of Baltimore brings some interesting questions to light that I am going to explore in a three part series. The campaign has spawned hundreds of knock-offs including Keep Portland Weird, Keep Ashville Weird, and even the small town in Virginia where I am currently writing this has a Keep Staunton Weird campaign. It has been seen as a huge success in celebrating the city’s tolerance, innovation, and local flavor. Keep Austin Weird is a slogan created by Red Wassenich and adopted by the Austin Independent Business Alliance to promote local business in Austin, Texas. The one I chose was a spin on the Keep Austin Weird campaign: A few weeks ago, ChangeEngine challenged us to come up with a tagline for Baltimore.
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