And A Giant Happy Face Saved Our Fair City

Hello, and welcome to Baltimore! We invite you to stop by for a visit and "Find your happy place."

Yep, that's the $500,000 ad campaign the powers that be in my fair city are hoping will put a positive twist on Baltimore, sometimes lovingly referred to as Charm City.

Poor Baltimore. It really does need a public relations lift, but many Baltimorons (yep, that's what we call ourselves) are having a good laugh over the theme. As one of my Facebook friends said:

"Baltimore. Good at crabcakes. Bad at slogans."

Here, why don't you take a look for yourself:

Baltimore Sets Record for World's Largest Human Smiley Face


Let me know what you think. I'm originally from Detroit, so I could be a little jaded!


Look, I'm all for happy. Life is too short to not be happy, but I don't think putting people in orange rain slickers and making a ginormous happy face is going to change anything.

Here's a couple of news items from Charm City the past couple of days:

An 18 month old baby tested positive for gonorrhea and police suspect she was sexually assaulted by a 21 year friend of the family.

In an effort to balance the budget, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is thinking about reducing the size of the police force. Criminals should be happy about that, anyway.

You know what would make me happy?

Having enough money to keep our police department fully staffed, and castrating repulsive child sex offenders.

But that could just be me.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to find my happy place...