Baltimore: "?"

I'm from Baltimore, MD. I've lived my whole life in the Baltimore Metropolitan Area and every couple of years, there is talk to make Baltimore a bigger tourist attraction. So this week they are trying to find a new slogan to help encourage tourism in the area. To most of us Baltimoreans, the city is called Charm City. It's always been a nickname as far as I can remember. When I was in Elementary school, I remember Baltimore becoming "The City that Reads". It was painted on park benches and on the sides of buses. Recently, it became the "Greatest City in America". I don't know who decided Baltimore was the greatest city in America but I think that most people beg to differ. Anyway so now they are trying to revamp things and come up with a new slogan.

They said that they are having a bit of an issue because a lot of people have a negative view of the city because of television shows like "Homicide: Life on the Street" or "The Wire". To be 100% honest here, I didn't think people even knew where Baltimore was. I always thought that it was a city between Washington D.C. and Philadelphia that people only stop in if they have to. To be fair Baltimore does have a lot to offer. Just as much as any other city I suppose.

There is a lot of history here, specifically dealing with the War of 1812 and Edgar Allen Poe. They just opened up a new museum dedicated to African Americans called the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture. I haven't been yet but its supposed to be neat.

On one of the local radio stations 98 Rock, they were having a contest to see who could come up with the best one but of course these aren't ever going to be used. They cut on the city and some of them are rather offensive but there are a few that are pretty funny. One of the hosts of the show, Mickey, is supposed to be a comedian although I think a lot of people would beg to differ. I don't find him funny all that often myself and he did a GEBCO commercial with Johnathan Ogden which kinda creeped me out. GEBCO commercials are "famous" here. Famous for being really bad and cheaply made; they're characterized by girls dancing and someone singing the GEBCO song....trust me its bad, worse than the Katz insurance commercials but thats another story. I can only remember two of them and one was really bad. It was racially insenstitive so I'm not going to repeat it. The other one was "Our Syphillis is better than yours". This is of course in reference to a study that found that Baltimore had the highest number of people with syphillis infections. I know, not funny.

So, what is the point of this post? I have no idea. I just thought it was funny that a city is trying to find a slogan to sell itself. It just seems absurd to me. I know tourism can bring in a lot of money and yes the city needs it especially since the Baltimore City Schools went bankrupt but hiring a company to find slogans seems silly to me.