My neighborhood plays host to two different street festivals during the year. HonFest, the more well known and popular of the two was held this past weekend. Like most street festivals there is lots of food, music, and booths selling stuff. What differentiates HonFest from other street festivals is the theme. Hon is a term of endearment still often used in Baltimore by some of your older blue collar workers. It’s not unusual to be called hon by waitresses at many old school Baltimore restaurants. HonFest is celebration of these women (though there are a number of Baltimoreans who claim that it is disrespectful). People dress up in cats eye glasses and feather boas and put their hair up in bee hive hairdos. I was really bad about taking pictures this year, so I don’t have any good examples of what I’m talking about.

There are contests every year for Little Miss Hon (ages 3-6), Miss Honette (older kids), and Baltimore’s Best Hon (adults). I always like the Little Miss Hon contest because the little kids are super cute all dressed up and sometimes very funny. Based on this year’s contestants I can tell you that Maddie/Madeline is this generation’s Jennifer as I think about 50% of the girls on the stage had that name.

Due to the fact that we leave a mere block from the festival we usually hit it up multiple times over the weekend. We went up first thing to watch the Little Miss Hon contest and took a walk around to look at everything. We went back again about an hour later when we decided it was time for lunch and some of our friends let us know that they were about. After getting some food and walking around with our friends we went home again. Our final trip on Saturday was to see my coworkers band that was playing. Chick-fil-A had a booth at the festival and had a cow walking around. I grabbed a picture of the cow dancing to my coworkers band.

The festival runs all weekend, so I also popped out on Sunday to grab lunch, but that was about it. Even though it makes it really difficult to park in my neighborhood, I look forward to HonFest every year.