A hair-raising experience

“It’s true. You can’t get through a metal detector with a beehive,” said Sue Ebert, the owner of Kumbaya, a Hampden hair salon. And she should know. Ebert will be teasing hundreds of heads of hair for towering beehives in the Glamour Lounge at this weekend’s festival. “They’ll wand your head at the airport.”

Over the past nine years, Ebert’s work at HonFest has earned her the title “Updo Diva,” and she swears by the adage: “The higher the hair, the closer to God.”

In one day at HonFest, she pushes more than five pounds of bobby pins into soaring hairstyles.

Ebert and her five-woman crew estimate they build and shellac about 150 to 200 beehives a day at HonFest. The hard-as-a-rock hairdos will hold for six days, Ebert said. “Sleep on it, and it will bounce right back.”

Before opening Kumbaya, Ebert created looks for PBS period-film actors, the Fox reality show “Ambush Makeover” and New York City runway models.

“I’ve had my hand in hair for the past 25 years,” she said. “At HonFest, everyone is light, funny and embracing each other as women. In Hampden, the camaraderie between the female entrepreneurs is unlike anywhere else I’ve ever been. Everyone is there for everyone else. If you need an accountant or whatever, talk to your next-door neighbor. There’s very little competition between merchants. We come from all walks of life and understand that the more successful one merchant is, the more successful we all are. That’s what drew me to Hampden.”

After speaking with Denise Whiting, HonFest founder and owner of the Cafe Hon, you understand why the kitschy festival draws a crowd of 50,000 from across the country — and why people in 45 states and 22 countries spend time decoding Baltimore’s unique culture on HonFest’s Web site.

The festival’s success, a modern phenomenon, has brought national eyes to Hampden. The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Post all have covered the Bawlmer spectacle.

Only in Charm City — a collection of neighborhoods that continually poke fun at themselves — can you find thousands of beehived, bespeckled and bedazzled hons celebrating the working woman, all dolled up in full 1960s glory. Since 1994, hair-hoppers adorned with pink feather boas, cat’s-eye glasses and leopard-print pants have drawn visitors to a four-block stretch along The Avenue on a late spring weekend.

During the two-day event, you can gorge on festival foods, sip a Blue Beehive beside plastic pink flamingos, hear live music from such local legends as The Glenmont Popes, and peruse a collection of hairdos and vintage hair accoutrements. But the hons and honettes are hands down the highlight of the festival.

The hon who started it all is Whiting’s Aunt Sharon. “I grew up in the 1960s, and she was on the cutting edge of fashion,” Whiting said. “My mom was too busy to make her hair big, but my aunt had every outfit, did her hair, wore the glasses. I looked up to her as far as fashion goes.”

Through the Baltimore’s Best Hon Contest, “we give women an opportunity to be that special someone that they’ve always aspired to be but weren’t given the opportunity,” Whiting said. “Last year, Baltimore’s Best Hon, Eliana Fetsko, was told in elementary school she would never amount to anything. Look at her now.”

Fetsko knows the recipe to being a great hon.

“You gotta have a spandex outfit, animal print is a must, and you gotta have the beehive and the hairspray and bright pink lipstick and the real bright blue eye shadow that really sparkles in the twilight,” she said. “You gotta look Bawlmer, hon.”

And have a loud, affable personality — one of the key points to being a real hon. “Listen baby, you can’t never take the hon out of a Bawlmer woman,” she said. “We are unique. You will never find a hon anywhere else on the planet. I don’t care where you go. You will never find another hon anywhere else in the world other than Bawlmer.”

Even those not vying for the Best Hon title dress up at HonFest.

Tease your hair to cathedral heights, slide into leopard-print spandex pants, wrap a feather boa around your shoulders and put on crazy, cat-shaped glasses. Now, you’re a Hampden celebrity.

“Simply by changing your hairstyle and clothes, people want to take your picture, say hello,” Whiting said. “I’m an introvert — might be hard for people to believe, but when I put on that wig and dress up, I become someone else.”

HonFest highlights a specific niche but possesses a universal appeal, Whiting said. “It gives people permission to just have fun. That’s really what it’s about. I try to keep politics out of it. I try to keep it not overwhelmed with advertisers. We promote small business in Hampden, which are predominantly women-owned, like Ma Petite Shoe, Hometown Girl, Mud and Metal, Kumbaya, Red Tree — I could go on and on and on.”

HonFest’s proceeds will fund Project Twelve programs aimed at helping teenagers make it through high school, said Whiting, who founded the nonprofit after spending time with Hampden’s youth.

“Because I hire local kids and I’m out there in the community, I see it firsthand,” Whiting said. “Some kids don’t believe they are entitled to an education, and I want to change that way of thinking. I’ve worked with kids ever since I opened the restaurant. I want these kids to achieve their goals.”

“Everybody who lives in or near Baltimore should go at least once to HonFest,” said Cindee Velle, whose dancing students (ages 9 to 13) will perform a “Welcome to the Sixties” “Hairspray” routine among other numbers. “I had never been to one before last year. Now I know I should have come to this earlier.”

jnovak@baltimoreexaminer.com

ecampbell@baltimoreexaminer.com