Cafe Hon

Cafe Hon owner and "hon" trademarker Denise Whiting wants Baltimore to know she's sorry. Not sorry that she trademarked the town's classic term of endearment. Just sorry that she spoke about it so clumsily that her adopted hometown came to think of her as greedy. And sorry that nobody seemed to be listening a month ago, when she said basically the same thing in a letter to The Baltimore Sun. The newest apology came Wednesday in the form of a news release. "I apologize to everyone in Baltimore for misspeaking," Whiting says in the release.

He's calling it the first shot fired in the Battle of the Hons. An area writer has thrown down the gauntlet — or is it a housecoat? — challenging the legitimacy of the three-letter trademark that has had Baltimore up in arms through the holiday season. Bruce Goldfarb, a Catonsville writer who runs the website "Welcome to Baltimore, Hon," plans to start selling coffee mugs emblazoned with the word "Hon. " He's doing it with hopes of proving that Denise Whiting, the founder of Honfest, the city's annual homage to an apocryphal Baltimore gal known for her beehive hairdo and cat's-eye glasses, has no legal claim on the word.

One of the best Christmas cards out there can be found at NotCafeHon, the Twitter feed created after cafe owner Denise Whiting trademarked the word "hon. " There's a photo of Whiting celebrating with the mayor who came to her rescue a little over a year ago when the restaurant's pink flamingo was imperiled. "Merry Christmas," the card reads, "from a disgraced woman who stole from Baltimore … and Sheila Dixon . " On the same topic, a Baltimorean posted on Facebook: "Just realized that the Boycott Cafe Hon Facebook Page is registered under the username ' Cafe Hon .' What a huge mistake on Cafe Hon 's part for not getting to it first.

Welcome to my office. Once a supply closet, it's crammed with tools, merchandise and paraphernalia left over from this summer's HonFest. I've about five cubic feet of space for me, my desk and the finicky computer that helps me run this little gift shop I've opened, HONtown. The shop and Café Hon across the street employ 54 good souls. They're working hard through the holiday rush, though our morale took quite a hit from all the frustration vented last week, on these pages and elsewhere, about our trademarks.

The idea — the very idea! — that one woman could legally own a word so deeply entrenched in Baltimore's lexicon, a term that seems to touch on the city's very blue-collar, audacious essence, did not sit well with many Baltimoreans. On Sunday, capping a week of outrage about Cafe Hon owner Denise Whiting's trademarking the word "Hon," about 50 people gathered in Hampden to protest. The demonstration was organized through social media, particularly a Facebook page called "Boycott Cafe Hon . " It was one of several sites that sprang up last week after Baltimoreans found out that Whiting had established legal rights to the word "Hon.

Denise Whiting has not only built her life around the fabled Balmer Hon, opening Cafe Hon and founding the city's annual Honfest — she's helped to make the three-letter term of endearment a household word around town. Now she owns it. Whiting has officially trademarked the word "Hon. " Over the years, she has trademarked almost every play on the word she could think of. Like the words " Cafe Hon " and "Honfest" and "Hon Bar" and "Hontown," the name of her newest Hampden shop.

Dressed in a ruffled hair net, neon pink slippers, and a green floral muumuu, Julia Hidary was the quintessential hon. The 98-year-old Pikesville resident didn't let the fact that she uses a wheelchair get in the way of showing the younger generation of hons how to do it. "She adorable," said Emma Ur, a 14-year-old from Columbia who posed with Hidary shortly after the Best Hon competition. "I felt honored to stand next to her." Hampden was overrun by sky-scraping beehive hairdos, neon-colored feather boas, vibrant dresses and tacky housecoats this weekend at Honfest, a festival that celebrates the fashion and culture of Baltimore during the '60s.

Usually, Honfest is a celebration of kitsch, from beehives to cat's-eye glasses. This weekend, the annual Hampden festival will be honoring a different Baltimore icon. "It was all about the beehive," said Honfest founder Denise Whiting. "This year, it's all about the bird." Whiting is referring to the giant pink flamingo affixed to the front of her restaurant, Cafe Hon. It was there for years, until the city demanded Whiting take it down or pay an $800 "minor privilege fee" last fall.

Elaine Pollack's mom didn't know it, but she entertained a special guest for Thanksgiving dinner: Juror No. 11. Pollack might have been the most prolific note-writer on Sheila Dixon's jury, letting Judge Dennis Sweeney know things ranging from her desire for transcripts - "to clarify facts!" - to her accidental midtrial encounter with the mayor at Cafe Hon. But outside the courtroom, Pollack kept mum. She did tell her husband that she'd been picked to serve on the mayor's jury, but she said she never discussed the case itself.