Baltimore: Light City 2019
As has been extensively documented here on Hashtag Jetlag, I LOVE LIGHT CITY. It’s such a beautiful celebration of art, innovation, social and political commentary, and of course, Baltimore. In the past, I’ve also considered it part of the best weekend in Baltimore, that weekend in April when the weather is finally warming up and a number of fun things are going on around town, including Light City and Sole of the.
This year, whoever makes such scheduling decisions (ahem, looking at you, BOPA) whiffed and decided to move Light City to November, also pushing back the Baltimore Book Festival a couple weeks to coincide with the first weekend of Light City, rebranding the week as “Brilliant Baltimore.”
While I can totally get behind a new hashtag, especially one that pumps up good old Bmore, I couldn’t help but think this was a mistake. For starters, shoutout to my people with seasonal depression who know that April is when you start to come alive and November is the time for hibernation and dreading of polar vortices to come. Secondly, we were in a great rhythm, coming to expect Light City in the spring. And third, Jen didn’t come to Bmore this year to run Sole since Light City wasn’t here as an attraction as well. WHOMP WHOMP.
More seriously, it seems obvious to me that the Book Festival and Light City would cannibalize each other. The Book Festival does not happen at night, and Light City does not happen during the day, which means a family coming into the city would feasibly have to come in twice in one day to see both. I’d be interested to know the attendance rates for each compared to last year.
Because the last Light City happened before Scott moved up to Baltimore, he had never been before, but he had heard me talk it up. While Jen heard me rave about it and later agreed I didn’t oversell, sadly this year Light City did not deliver the way it had in years past. Perhaps because it was cold and miserable, perhaps because people preferred the Book Festival, there were far fewer people this year than usual. The last two years, you could barely move around the Inner Harbor through the crush of people there to see the performance art, art installations, and live music.
I didn’t count, but there seemed to be fewer installations as well. There were DEFINITELY fewer food vendors (I keep meticulous mental records of these things). And I know concerts were scheduled, but it just didn’t seem to be the same lively atmosphere I had come to expect. I think it was best summed up by the fact that one of the installations was (I shit you not) one of those LED digital road signs. I had to wonder if I was being trolled.
The REAL installations though were fantastic. You could use “tiles” to magnify and project a design onto a high rise. You could use water to paint your own temporary graffiti. You could walk through a light installation and listen to the sounds of the Amazon. Here’s hoping BOPA does next year’s installations justice (and keeps the road signs on the highway). In the meantime, enjoy photos from this year’s Light City!
-Staci
