hon
A week before Baltimore's annual homage to the Hon, the hullabaloo over who owns rights to the city's quintessential Everywoman seems to have reignited.
Hampden merchants were taken aback this week to receive a list of things Honfest vendors would be prohibited from selling or saying. No politics. No religion. Nothing bearing the Honfest logo. Nothing that would infringe on the various Hon trademarks. And what chapped folks the most: no cat's-eye glasses.
"You can't restrict cat's-eye sunglasses. That's ridiculous and going too far," says Glenn Bennett, manager of In the Details, a men's and women's clothing store on The Avenue. "This is going to drive me to produce my own Hon T-shirt, except mine is going to be spelled H-U-N because it's more appropriate in this case."
The list of restrictions came just as most people seemed to have gotten past last year's flap over Hampden business owner Denise Whiting's laying claim to the word "Hon," a long-colloquialized term of endearment that, to many, seemed as intrinsic to the city as its red-brick rowhouses.
Then, people were surprised to learn that, over the years, Whiting had not only trademarked the word "Hon," but almost every play on the word she could think of. Like the words "Cafe Hon" and "Honfest" and "Hon Bar" and "Hontown," the name of her newest Hampden shop. Furthermore, she owned the rights to using the three-letter word on everything from napkins, notecards and calendars to pens, shirts, hats, underwear, ties, shorts and even feather boas.
And because Whiting founded and runs Honfest, the city's annual tribute to its apocryphal gal known for her beehive hairdo and cat's-eye glasses, she can dictate what goes there as well.
The reaction last year was as quick as it was defiant.
Thousands of people joined Facebook pages with names like "No One Owns Hon, Hon." They organized a protest along The Avenue. Someone inverted Whiting's well-known oval "Hon" bumper sticker to read "NOH." Quite a few people with Facebook accounts adjusted their settings to make "Hon" their middle name.
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