Answer Man: Charmed, I'm Sure

I 'd like to know how Baltimore got the nickname "Charm City."

Norma Courlang, Silver Spring

"Charm City." It sounds like it's been around forever, doesn't it, since the days of Edgar Allan Poe or H.L. Mencken?

In fact, it's been around only since 1975, when then-Mayor William Donald Schaefer asked some Baltimore ad execs to come up with a snappy moniker for his blighted burg.

We say "blighted" because Balmer had fallen on hard times. This was before Harborplace and the National Aquarium, before "Hairspray" the smash Broadway musical and even before "Hairspray" the cult movie. Baltimore didn't have a lot going for it, remembered Bill Evans, the copywriter who coined the phrase. But what it had, said Evans, was an indefinable little quality called charm.

Originally, Evans intended the charm connection to be quite literal, not just figurative. Schaefer had opened a downtown visitors center that he wanted people to visit (that being what visitors centers are for). Evans's idea was to give tourists a bracelet to which they could add charms (geddit?) that they would pick up at different Baltimore attractions.

"My premise was that if you give a woman an empty charm bracelet -- they were big at the time -- she would not leave town until she filled it with charms," Evans wrote in an e-mail.

Thus was born "Charm City." The metal charms ended up being too expensive for the city to spring for, but the slogan was a success. Evans thinks it was because reporters and headline writers liked having another thing to call Baltimore besides, uh, Baltimore.

Evans, 72, is now retired and lives on Kent Island, where he writes a column for the local paper and ghostwrites his dog Bob's advice column. He -- Evans, not Bob -- had a long and distinguished career in advertising, working on such campaigns as Colt 45 malt liquor and National Bohemian beer ("from the land of pleasant living").

Evans said creating a campaign for an alcoholic beverage is a piece of cake compared with selling a city.

"You're promising people that they'll enjoy themselves," he said of the challenge. "That's a big promise because you can't control the environment. A cabdriver can [tick] them off, and they'll go home and say it's a terrible city."

It struck Answer Man that Washington doesn't really have a snappy nickname. Sure, we have the abbreviated: the District. We have the blandly accurate: Federal City, Nation's Capital. We have the blandly civic: All-American City. We have Chocolate City, a term popularized by the funk band Parliament. And we have one most people wish we didn't: Murder Capital.

We also have what is known as a brand. Victoria Isley of the Washington D.C. Convention & Tourism Corp. said it's "Washington, D.C.: The American Experience." That slogan appears on every taxicab in the city and on the sleeve of every D.C. police officer. (It replaced "Celebrate & Discover," which is what license plates said before "Taxation Without Representation.")

"Washington, D.C.: The American Experience" is pretty good. But Answer Man wondered if you had a better idea. Wouldn't it be cool to be known as the Bill Evans of Washington?

Send your nicknames/slogans/brands to answerman@washpost.com. Please put "Nickname" in the subject field and include your phone number and the city in which you live. Or mail them to: John Kelly, The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071. The deadline is April 26.

I'll print my favorites in a future column and pick one lucky contestant to treat to lunch.

The tall buildings on the west side of the Silver Spring Metro stop have discs about four inches in diameter on many of the windows. What are they?

Jonathon McCool, Silver Spring

Answer Man has noticed these discs himself. They're affixed to about every eighth window and run up the side of the building in a vertical line. He was convinced they had something to do with window-washing crews. That shows you how little Answer Man really knows.

Pete Piringer, spokesman for Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Services, said the discs let firefighters know which windows are made of tempered glass. "If broken, [tempered glass] will shatter into small pieces, as opposed to plate glass, which will break into big pieces," Piringer said. "Breaking the glass is usually for ventilation or rescue purposes."

And if you're a firefighter hanging from a ladder or a gawker on the sidewalk below, it's better to get hit by small pieces of glass than large ones.

Steaking a Claim

Another quest for the Answer Man Army. Reader Robin Aiscowitz of Egg Harbor Township, N.J., recalls a restaurant on Rockville Pike, near Rollins Avenue, that she visited in the 1980s. It was either a steakhouse or a place where beef was featured prominently.

"It was within walking distance of the then-Holiday Inn," wrote Robin. "The decor was clubby leather banquette seats. I had a birthday dinner there in 1986, and I cannot for the life of me recall the place."

One thing she's sure of: It was not Phineas.

Do you have the name stored in your memory banks? If so, send it to answerman@washpost.com, with "Steak" in the subject line. Or to John Kelly, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071.

Researcher Alex MacCallum contributed to this report. Have a question about the Washington area? You may find the answer in the Answer Man Archives. Visit www.washingtonpost.com/johnkelly.