Baltimore has always been the center of filmmaker John Waters’ universe, the place where he made all 16 of his movies. Last weekend, it was the place to be for his superfans as well.
Sixty-five of Waters’ biggest fans came to Baltimore from around the country for three days of filthy fun and revelry, including a Garage Dance Party and bar hop on Friday night, a visit to Divine’s gravesite on Saturday, tours of filming locations in Hampden and Fells Point, and a “Dinner with the Dreamlanders” to close out the weekend.
“It’s a labor of love,” said Maureen “Mo” Mack Nair, one of the organizers. “We only charge enough to break even.”
This was the fifth year for the “Baltimore Weekend,” one of several times a year when John Waters fans come together besides attending events such as his spoken-word shows, book signings and other appearances.
The largest gathering is Camp John Waters, which the filmmaker sanctions and attends. Launched in 2017, billed as an “All-Inclusive Dreamland Sleepaway Weekend” and a “Campy Getaway with the Pope of Trash,” it draws 300 fans to Club Getaway in Kent, Connecticut, in September. Waters has called it “Jonestown with a happy ending.”
Fans also gather in California when Waters hosts the annual Mosswood Meltdown punk rock festival in Oakland. There have been meet-ups in New England and New York City pegged to specific events, and Waters drew hundreds when he addressed a writers’ convention in Baltimore in March.
But the annual “Baltimore Weekend” in the filmmaker’s hometown has become the largest ongoing gathering of John Waters fans other than the Camp, and this year was the biggest one to date. Waters is not involved in organizing it or putting it on. Last weekend was the first time it was held since he announced that Camp John Waters would end this September, nine years after it began.
What makes the Baltimore event different from Waters’ spoken-word shows and book signings is that those events only last a few hours whereas the Weekend gives fans more time and more ways to meet or catch up with each other. Fans this year traveled from California, Canada, Louisiana, Rhode Island, Maine and other locations. Their ages ranged from the 30s to the 70s.
And while Camp John Waters has featured celebrity guest counselors such as Mink Stole, Ricki Lake and Deborah Harry, the Baltimore Weekend takes place in the city where he made his movies and includes some of the original Dreamlanders who worked on them.
Saturday night’s dance party in Hampden was attended by four actors from John Waters movies who live in the Baltimore area and are considered Dreamland royalty — Susan Lowe, Mary Vivian Pearce and “the two Georges,” George Figgs and George Stover. They stayed throughout the evening to watch the performers and mingle with the crowd.
Filled with reminders
Waters wasn’t part of the festivities, which aren’t connected to Camp John Waters. He said in an email message before the weekend that he would be out of town but hopes everyone has fun.
While he wasn’t there in person, he was there in spirit. The weekend was filled with reminders of Waters and the worlds he has created through his films, books and visual art.
Friday started with a “Trailer Park Trash & Garage Dance Party” at the home of one of the organizers, including a barbecue, music by DJ Skizz (Skizz Cyzyk) and a contest for best outfit. That was followed by a Hampden Bar Hop, with stops at the Clipper Mill Inn (also called the Bloody Bucket); Melanie’s at Griffith’s Tavern; Ottobar and the Bluebird Cocktail Room.
Saturday began with “Coffee and Doughnuts with Divine” at Towson’s Prospect Hill Cemetery, the burial site of actor and Waters muse Harris Glenn Milstead, better known as Divine (1945 to 1988). It’s also where Waters and other Dreamlanders plan to be buried, an area the filmmaker calls “Disgraceland.” A second Dreamlander, Bob Skidmore, was buried at Prospect Hill Cemetery after he died in 2023.
In his 2019 book of essays, “Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder,” Waters calls his approach “a new concept in death. Who gets buried with their friends but us?”
One of the group’s rituals, besides serving coffee and doughnuts at the cemetery, is to leave a Pink Flamingo at Divine’s grave, and this year was no exception. (Note to Prospect Hill: Divine’s gravestone is getting defaced again despite a sign asking visitors to “preserve the dignity of this burial ground”; most of the markings are traces of lipstick where someone kissed the stone.)
After breakfast, fans visited the Senator Theatre, where many of Waters’ movies had premieres, and 3900 Greenmount Ave., where Waters and Mink Stole lived when they were filming “Pink Flamingos” and which Waters used in the film as the home of Connie and Raymond Marble. Following lunch at Chaps Pit Beef, fans took a walking tour of Fells Point, including bars and artist spaces frequented by the Dreamlanders and filming locations for “Multiple Maniacs” and “Female Trouble.”
The Lou Costello Room at Zissimo’s Bar in Hampden, named after one half of the Abbott and Costello comedy team, who performed there as a child, was the setting for Saturday night’s gathering. It was temporarily renamed The Polyester Underground. The activities, hosted by drag performers Delvis (Kelli McVey Chovan) and Carol Crash (Michael Dates), featured live music from PLRLS, burlesque from Ruby Rockafella and a dance party with DJ Pink Champale.
According to its online bio, PLRLS is a Baltimore band that includes “a disgraced nightclub owner (Ottobar); a shattered TV personality (Ace of Cakes); an ex-chauffeur and a has-been graphic designer” who “have made peculiar, colorful and angular music together since 2011.” At one point, Carol Crash brought the four Dreamlanders up to the stage for interviews.
Party-goers cut a cake bearing an image of Divine taken from a certain scene at the end of “Pink Flamingos” and some profane language. (The cake was made by Woodlea Bakery on Belair Road. “It’s always a challenge to find a bakery that will do something John Waters-esque,” Dates said. “We’ve been turned down.” “Woodlea will never say no,” Mack Nair said.)
Sunday events included brunch at Papi’s on Falls Road; self-guided tours of Hampden, including Atomic Books, where Waters gets his fan mail and has local book-signings; a visit to the Mid-Atlantic Regional Moving Image Archive (MARMIA) on North Avenue; and dinner at Rocket to Venus. MARMIA is a non-profit that’s working to preserve the archives from 1950 to 2020 of WJZ-TV/WAAM-TV, the Baltimore station that was home to The Buddy Deane Show, the inspiration for The Corny Collins Show in “Hairspray.”
Also visited by many of the Weekenders: the suburban location used as Serial Mom’s house in “Serial Mom”; Palace on Dallas, the former residence of Dreamlanders Vincent Peranio and Dolores Deluxe in Fells Point; Edgar Allan Poe’s gravesite on Fayette Street and Poe’s statue at the University of Baltimore.
In addition to Mack Nair, Chovan and Dates, organizers of the Baltimore Weekend included Carey Stumm and Lacey McCann.
Mack Nair said most of the Baltimore Weekend revelers also go to Camp John Waters, and that’s where many of them first met. Some have been to every one.
Since 2017, Waters fans have paid hundreds of dollars to spend time at the Camp with him and a changing cast of guest counselors. Fans dress up as characters from his movies and quote memorable lines.
The club features swimming, zip-lining, hiking, biking, archery, water skiing, trampolining, yoga, meditation, and sailing. John Waters-related activities have included a costume contest judged by Waters; dance parties; fireside storytelling; a John Waters movie marathon; Hairspray karaoke; Bloody Mary Bingo; and drag lunches. This year’s campout will take place from Sept. 11 to 14 and the counselors will include Mink Stole and Ricki Lake.
‘Return to Dreamland’
Mack Nair said the Baltimore Weekend event came together because many of the Campers wanted a chance to meet up more than once a year and were willing to travel to do so. The first year, 2022, featured a panel discussion at Baltimore Soundstage titled “Return to Dreamland,” with three Dreamlanders reminiscing about early John Waters films, and the event grew from there.
The cost of admission last weekend wasn’t high – just $30 per night for the parties on Friday and Saturday. Fans covered their own expenses for travel, lodging, meals, drinks and transportation.
What do they get out of it? Why go if John Waters isn’t there?
Here’s the answer everyone gave: While John Waters is the reason they came together, and love and admiration for John Waters is what they have in common, they were also there to be with each other.
To be sure, there was plenty of chatter about Waters over the course of the weekend. Who was he with in the Instagram photo taken during his recent birthday trip to the Marquis de Sade’s castle in France? What’s his role in Season 13 of “American Horror Story”?
But the weekend wasn’t devoted to talking about Waters or watching his films. There have been more serious discussions about his work as a writer and filmmaker during recent forums at Northwestern University in Chicago and the 92nd Street Y in New York City. This wasn’t the weekend for a scholarly examination of his career.
What brought these superfans together was a chance to continue the relationships they’ve forged over the years. They’ve read Waters’ books, seen his movies, gone to his shows and his Camp. Now, in addition to honoring him, they want to build on the friendships they’ve made with each other.
John Waters is a multi-faceted artist — the ultimate multi-hyphenate. He’s a writer, a filmmaker, an actor, a visual artist, a storyteller. He has fans all over the world. Because he does so much and is so well known, he provides a giant umbrella for his fans to stand under, a wealth of ways to ‘plug in’ to him.
In the same way that Waters is multi-dimensional, so are his fans. Besides the Dreamlanders with their entertainment backgrounds, the group that gathered last weekend included a graphic designer, a college instructor, a TV assignment editor, a computer programmer, a hairdresser, a massage therapist, musicians — people from all walks of life.
Waters has described his core audience as “minorities who can’t even fit in with their own minorities.” He embraces his fan base as outsiders and eccentrics who don’t align with the rules of their own subcultures. Last weekend was a time when they could be themselves with no repercussions, no judgment, no need for explanations.
Some at the gathering have been John Waters fans for decades. Others became fans more recently. However it happened, they’re like-minded. They laugh at the same jokes, speak the same language. They have found each other, thanks to Waters, and they don’t want that to end.
‘The glue that holds us together’
Fans say they can tell how much they have in common as soon as they meet.
“He’s the glue that holds us together,” said Mack Nair, a consultant in Baltimore. “Without him, we may not have met. We connected because we’re John Waters fans.”
“It’s a feeling inside of us. It’s an innate understanding and a kinship,” said Michael Georgeson, a graphic designer from Philadelphia. “You’ll talk to somebody for five minutes and you’ll have a friend for life.”
“He’s what got us here,” said Jimmy Alicata, who was attending his second Baltimore Weekend with his wife Mychele Roberts, “and the people made us come back.”
“John Waters connected my partner and me when we first started dating because she loved his movie ‘Cry Baby,’” said Jake Burns, a software tester from Maine who was DJ Pink Champale on Saturday night.
Burns said they went to see Waters in person a couple of times, started getting targeted ads on social media about Club Getaway and Camp John Waters, and decided to go. “What’s the worst that could happen?” he said they figured. “We’d have a story to tell when we get home.”
Burns said he’s been to all of the Camps except for last year. Especially the first year, he said, “We just totally rolled the dice. We had no idea what to expect. Nobody else did.”
Walking around that first year was like being dropped off at a kids’ summer camp, he said. “I had no clue what’s going to happen. You end up meeting some of your best friends.” Nine years later, he calls it “the most amazing thing I’ve ever had the privilege to be a part of….It really is something that’s quite tremendous and wonderful.”
The sense of community and the sense of being on the same wavelength with others are what resonated for him about the Camp, Burns said.
“There’s different stuff about John,” he said. “Not only John’s movies. It’s John in general that brought people to Camp. It could be that you are a passionate DIY filmmaker and want to learn from it. Personally, yeah sure I like the camera but I love the music in John’s movies. He’s got incredible taste…It could be a million other things.”
Uninhibited and non-judgmental
Alicata, a postal employee from Philadelphia, said he and Roberts first went to Camp John Waters the year Johnny Knoxville was a guest counselor, after Knoxville had been in Waters’ 2004 film, “A Dirty Shame.”
“I said ‘Knoxville? We have to go, we have to go meet Knoxville,’” Alicata recalled. “I’d seen John three times prior to Camp. I had met John a couple of times. I still wanted to go to Camp because I love John Waters. But Knoxville got me to finally go. He’s like my hero. He’s my Number One guy. John Waters is my Number Two guy. Put the two of them together and I’m not missing that.”
What’s appealing about both Camp John Waters and the Baltimore Weekend, Alicata said, is that they’re uninhibited gatherings where people are free to be themselves.
“I never feel more open than when I’m around these people,” he said. “It’s a silly example, but I don’t like dancing in front of people. I’m like embarrassed. When we go to Camp, I will dance all night because I know nobody’s mocking me, nobody’s watching me. And I don’t feel like that anywhere else. We’re in a lot of different scenes and this is the one where I really feel like I can be loose and open.”
Waters’ fans don’t judge each other or put on airs, Mack Nair agreed. In the corporate world, “you have to conform. But not here.”
Waters and his films provide a starting point but there’s much more, Chovan said.
”It’s the friendship, having camaraderie of people who have the same passions as you,” she said. “It’s almost like a high you get,” being around “a community of mutual understanding. I’ve never found a group of people that I’ve felt this way about before.”
“We’re all kind of people that hate people…regular people,” Dates quipped.
“To get into a group of people who feel like you do about something that you felt you were alone in, it’s intoxicating,” Chovan said.
Gatherings such as the Baltimore Weekend are a good way to keep in touch with like-minded people, Dates said.
“It’s hard to make friends late in life, right?” he said. “When we all started going to Camp, I think we were in the demographic sort of like the mid-30s through all ages. To meet a lot of people who all have a similar sense of humor and similar [interests] late life is kind of rare…They’re worth keeping.”
‘We all like the same shit’
While Camp John Waters brought them together, Dates said, “we just felt like we didn’t want to wait another year to see each other” and starting exploring other ways to meet up.
A costume designer and theater instructor at Rhode Island College in Providence, R. I., Dates said he organized a weekend there when his college mounted a stage production of “Cry-Baby: The Musical” in 2024. Waters came to Providence the same weekend for one of his spoken-word performances.
“We did a whole weekend, like we did this weekend,” Dates said. “John, whether he heard about it and scheduled his birthday show in Providence that weekend, or it was coincidence, he ended up that Saturday night doing his show for his birthday in Providence, so we all went there. We did my show as a matinee…and then went over to John’s show and he was really cool and then we had a big party afterwards. I told him I’ve never had a wedding. It was like my wedding, I told him. I was so touched.”
Dates said he may organize another gathering in Providence to take advantage of the group’s shared interests.
“We all like the same shit,” he said. “We like John Waters” and “people who were influenced by John Waters. A lot of [Hedwig and the Angry Inch] fans. I think we’re going to try to organize another one around that.”
Dates was involved in planning the first Baltimore Weekend, when the Dreamlanders spoke at Baltimore Soundstage about early Waters films.
“It was done as a one-off thing,” he said. “But people liked it and we were like, well, let’s do it again. Then having the addition of becoming friendly with the Georges and Bonnie – Mary Vivian Pearce – and Sue, it adds just such a cool element. And they hang out with us…It’s fun getting to know them.”
There’s a common thread that draws John Waters fans together, he said.
“That’s what makes it fun when we’re planning a party, and that’s why they’re always successful,” he said. “We all like the same kind of music, very eclectic and different music…Everyone has a wide interest.”
Puppet show days and The Twilight Zone
Stover, who had a memorable role in “Desperate Living” among others, has known Waters longer than most.
“I met John in the eighth grade,” he said. “We were in Homeroom together at Towsontown Junior High School.”
Stover said they both watched The Twilight Zone on Friday nights and came to be friends because of that shared interest. “On Monday mornings, we would talk about the episode of The Twilight Zone that came out on Friday night.”
Stover recalls that was when Waters was performing puppet shows at kids’ birthday parties, before he started making films. Besides “Desperate Living,” he said, he appeared in “Female Trouble,” where he played the prison chaplain, “Polyester,” “Hairspray” and “Cry-Baby.”
During his on-stage interview with Carol Crash, Stover told a story about the filming of “Desperate Living” that shed light on Waters’ foresight as a filmmaker. His character, Bosley Gravel, was killed when his maid, played by a very heavy Jean Hill as Grizelda Brown, suffocated him by sitting on his face. Stover said Waters filmed all the other scenes he had in the movie before he filmed the murder scene with Grizelda.
“John shot that scene last,” he told the audience, “so if she really did kill me, he would have anything he needed in the can.”
Looking ahead
Many of the Baltimore Weekend participants are planning to go to the final Camp John Waters in September. Some say they aren’t happy that the event is ending but they respect the decision and are looking forward to the final one.
“There’s absolutely a bittersweetness to it,” Burns said. “I’m sad. I will probably get a little choked up, a lot choked up, perhaps the whole weekend.”
“I have mixed feelings about it,” Chovan said. “Bittersweet is the best way to put it. But you know what? It’s ending on a fantastic note.”
The fans say nothing will ever replace Camp John Waters, given what it offers and the memories made there. One highlight is that Waters always previews the new spoken-word show that he’ll roll out later in the fall, using the Campers as his test audience to see what gets a response. There are plenty of other times when he and the guest counselors interact with the Campers throughout the weekend.
But the existence and growth of the Baltimore Weekend shows that there are other ways for John Waters fans to stay in touch with each other and also honor the filmmaker.
“The fact that we can all still get together without a camp setting, it’s great for me,” Alicata said. “It’s the people I care about…These are the people we spend the entire time with. It’s who we want to be with…Watching John Waters is the icing on the cake. The people that we’re with is the reason why we’re there.”
“Having events like this and being connected now in the way that we are, in ways large and small, it will never be over,” Burns said. “Maybe being together in tents will no longer happen, but that will never be over. That exists forever now.”
Mack Nair said the group is already looking to hold another Baltimore Weekend in 2027, most likely in late spring again. She and Dates, two of the original Campers, said they think more of Waters’ fans may be interested in going to the next Baltimore Weekend, given that the Connecticut event is ending. “I think next year is going to be probably pretty big because we won’t have the Camp,” Dates said.
Mack Nair said her group is already thinking about locations for various activities.
For gatherings such as the Friday and Saturday night parties, she said, “I think we’re going to need a bigger space.”
Is there a mailing list to be notified about the next one?
“We all like the same shit.” That says it all, doesn’t it? What strikes me about this gathering is how intentionally Baltimore-rooted it was — not just nostalgia tourism, but fans understanding that the city *is* the work. You can’t really separate the two. Love reading about the King of Camp, the Pope of Trash. I covered this in today’s quiz at dailydispatchquiz.com if you want to test yourself.