Who ♥ Baltimore?(The Talk of the Town)(Baltimore, Maryland)

Baltimore--famous for its harbor, its crab cakes, and its drug trade. Many know it as Charm City, although it's gone by other names: Monument City, Mobtown, Salty Balty, the City of Firsts (first American umbrella factory, first dental college), Balti-Sore (after the syphilis outbreak of 1996-97). Its official motto used to be "The City That Reads," until graffiti artists, perhaps aware that Baltimore led the country in out-of-wedlock teen pregnancies, redubbed it "The City That Breeds." So the mayor offered an alternative: "The Greatest City in America."

Baltimore is now the setting of two Broadway musicals--"Cry-Baby," which opens this week, at the Marquis, and "Hairspray." (There is also "Thurgood," now in previews, about the Baltimore-born Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.) Both shows are inspired by films by one of Baltimore's most celebrated sons, John Waters, who based "Cry-Baby" on his boyhood fascination with a local gang called the Drapes.

Don't think that Baltimore hasn't noticed the trend. The city has leaped at the chance for cross-promotion. "The thought was, O.K., here's an opportunity where Baltimore will be on Broadway," Sam Rogers said last Tuesday, over dinner. He was one of several executives from the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association (their slogan is "Baltimore: Get in on it") who were in town to attend a preview of "Cry-Baby," in preparation for a new marketing campaign aimed at theatregoers. Rogers held up an ad that will soon appear in Playbill: "You've seen the musical, now visit the set."

"We're helping people make that connection and say, 'Oh, I can go to a place like that?' " Jennifer Maguire, who does P.R. for the city, said. "A lot of people think Baltimore is what they see on ' The Wire.' But that's not the true Baltimore--it's too gritty." (Baltimore currently ranks as the country's twelfth most dangerous city.)

Tom Noonan, the president of the association, added, "People have a dated perception of Baltimore as more of an industrial city than the tourism mecca it is." Noonan detailed the city's attractions--the Inner Harbor, the Washington Monument (Baltimore's came first), an "emerging ...