Baltimore has a reputation as the provenance of quirky, resourceful people. We like to make stuff — steel, spices, crab dishes out of anything we see. We’re nostalgic and like references to things about our city. We don’t care if you get it. We do.

What I love is when my Charm City brethren and sistern go fun and local for Halloween. Forget store-bought Spirit Halloween costumes. I want to see some seafood-related expression. I want local legends rendered in the splendor of one’s closet, thrift store and favorite craft emporium. Show me your civic pride in the currency of Baltimore sports, eats and pop culture stuff no one remembers but us.

Drawing on that, I came up with a list of Baltimore-related costumes I’d like to see this year, with an assist from a few proud and wacky locals. Almost all of these fun ideas can be created from whatever’s lying around your house or Goodwill, a few good boxes and all those art supplies your kid only used half of for their last science fair. Let’s get Halloween-y, hon!

The Utz Girl

I actually dressed up as everyone’s favorite snack icon for a TV appearance a few years ago, wearing an oversized red bow while holding a bag of original Utz chips and winking. But Whitney C. Brown, Center Stage’s senior director of external affairs, went next level, suggesting an oversize cardboard rendering of the red, white and blue packaging with a space to stick your head through so it seems like you’re actually on the bag. Clever and crunchy!

Advertise with us

Lemon stick

Brown and the Center Stage staff’s idea is to become the traditional sweet-and-sour treat of half a lemon with a peppermint stick by wearing a full yellow skirt and a red and white top. This delighted me, so I took it wackier. I wrapped a small box with construction paper and cut a hole in the bottom to make the peppermint stick hat, and pulled the aforementioned yellow skirt up to my neck. Voila! It’s like the Mount Vernon Flower Mart all over again.

Waste collection wizard

Aurora Suryah is the director of Hampden’s SCRAP Creative Reuse Center, a treasure trove of donated material like yarn, fabric and paper looking for new and inspired use. One of Suryah’s favorite local-flavored costumes put together by a customer in the store was “Gandalf if he worked for the DPW.” Apparently, the “Lord of The Rings”-inspired patron made a staff out of materials at SCRAP, donned a cloak and then put his Department of Public Works vest over it. Suryah declared the wizarding get-up “iconic.” If you know the guy who wore it, we want photos.

Cute couples costumes with local flair

Brown and the folks from Center Stage had suggestions for how to get the whole crowd in the spirit, hometown-style. How about you and your honey dress as John Waters and Divine? Or for the natives in the know, “we have a set of maracas and an oven. And that would be Shake and Bake,” Brown said. She wasn’t invoking the chicken seasoning, but rather the famous Shake and Bake Family Fun Center on Pennsylvania Avenue where you can go bowling and rollerskating. “Our staff is so silly,” she conceded.

Being Royal down on the Farm

The silly Center Stage staff continued to shine with an idea for a family costume that’s delicious. It’s a four-person affair: someone dressed as a chicken box, another as a bottle of half and half, one person as salt and pepper and yet another person as ketchup. If you have another friend or kid, they can be the hot sauce.

Mr. Trash Wheel

To pay tribute to the patriarch of our favorite trash-gobbling nautical family, my idea was to use either a box or a smock, then glue or tape colorful ribbon and paper to it and wear a pair of googly-eyed glasses. Make your costume even more realistic by picking up candy wrapper detritus around your local neighborhood or at a Halloween party.

Advertise with us

A pothole

Because we have a sense of humor and can laugh at the good, bad and tire-destroying, why not make a sandwich board with two pieces of posterboard, paint or draw a road and cut a giant craggy hole in the middle? Then you could glue some Hot Wheels cars to a black shirt you have on underneath, showing the pothole has already consumed a few victims. Bleak, but funny.

Baltimore Halloween Hall of Fame

If your crafting skills are not so great, you can still get in on the fun by dressing like your favorite hometown hero. You could be Tupac, your favorite Oriole or Raven. How about getting a trench coat and going as Omar from “The Wire”? I was once former Maryland resident and O’s superfan Joan Jett.

The cool part about this is that there are no rules, just a bit of tradition, fun and a lot of goofiness. Let your costuming freak flag fly, as long as it’s not in a culturally appropriative, racist or blackface-related way. We don’t do that here.

Please take photos and submit them below. I want to know what weirdness we’ve inspired in the world. And I may republish a few.