As men sporting fezzes buzzed out unearthly Christmas carols with oboes, drums and gongs, and a 40-foot inflated toy soldier bobbed above the cheering crowd, the eight members of the "Hampden Hotties" marching team boogied down the street in red fishnet stockings.
Thousands of spectators lined Falls Road and 36th Street yesterday for the 30th annual Baltimore Mayor's Christmas Parade in the Hampden and Medfield neighborhoods.
Families set up folding chairs to watch Mayor Martin O'Malley, City Council President Sheila Dixon and others join an eclectic mix of floats, marching bands, firetrucks and vintage cars.
Jennifer Scott, a lifelong Hampden resident, held her shivering Pekinese-dachshund puppy wrapped in a blanket as she explained why the quirky annual parade captures the character of her beloved neighborhood.
"It's great - it's Baltimore's charm meets the city's arts community meets the 1950s all at once," said Scott, 26, assistant to the director of the city's office of the nonprofit Annie E. Casey Foundation. "The parade is unique because the neighborhood is unique and eccentric. I've watched this every year since I was a little girl, and I just love it."
As her dog watched with eyebrow raised, another tiny dog rode by atop a skateboard wearing red-tinted sunglasses, a hat and robe.
"Hampden is the only neighborhood I've seen in the city that has gotten stronger in recent years without losing its charm and character," Scott said.
Not far behind, a 40-foot-tall inflated toy soldier wearing a red jacket wobbled past, its hat higher than the roofs of the rowhouses.
A woman wearing elbow-length leopard-print gloves and a 2-foot-tall beehive hairdo rode by in a convertible, throwing handfuls of lollipops to the children in the crowd.
Katelyn and Hailey Hare, ages 7 and 5, sat in matching purple jackets on plastic chairs in front of their grandmother's home on Falls Road, with blankets over their knees and their family gathered around them.
The girls broke out laughing when a person in a Rudolph costume bumped into someone in a yellow chicken suit as they marched down the street. Apparently irritated, Rudolph raised his hoofs and started swinging at the slow-moving bird, which flailed its stumpy wings in an attempt at self-defense.
"A fighting Rudolph?" Katelyn shouted. "Who ever heard of a Christmas parade with a fighting Rudolph?"
The dozens of groups that marched in the parade expressed an odd mixture of the sacred and irreverent. Employees of the Oh! Said Rose gift store in Hampden dressed up as 1950s-style pinup girls and called themselves the "Hampden Hotties."
An enormous wooden cross, emblazoned with "Born to Die for Our Sins," cruised past. Also on the float were a baby Jesus figurine and two youths wearing angel costumes.
Potentates and high priests of the Boumi Temple of Shriners, a nonprofit group that raises money for children's hospitals, marched past in red fezzes, accompanied by an unorthodox nine-piece band of oboe players, drummers and gong-bangers atop a flatbed truck.
Keont-e Dorsey, 3, took it all in as he sat on a blanket beside his aunt, cotton candy in his hands and a huge heap of lollipops by his side. Every time a politician drove by, tossing lollipops to the crowd, the mound at Keont-e's side grew larger - until it was almost as large as his head.
"The candy," Keonte-e said, when asked what he liked about the parade, his mouth stuffed with blue cotton candy. "I like the candy."
His aunt, Daphne English, 33, said: "I just love looking at all the people. The marchers, the dancers, the floats. This just puts me in a holiday mood. This is my best time of the year."