At the corner of Conkling Street and Eastern Avenue in Highlandtown, a head looks over the neighborhood like a bodiless sentinel.
The olive-toned, mustachioed bust takes in a colorful panorama: a pizzeria to the north and a pawnbroker to the west. Starting this weekend, when you hock that gold watch or grab a quick slice of pizza, Frank Zappa will be watching.
Two years after Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, donated a $50,000 bust of the Baltimore-born rocker to Charm City, it will be installed Sunday at the Southeast Anchor Library in a daylong celebration. The audience, which organizers expect to number in the thousands, will include Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Zappa's widow, Gail, and one of his sons, Dweezil, who'll be performing with his tribute band, Zappa Plays Zappa. Rawlings-Blake will designate Sunday as Zappa Day, Gail Zappa will host a Q&A; and the Creative Alliance at the Patterson will throw an afterparty.
Some 70 years after Zappa grew up here (he lived for a time in the 4500 block of Park Heights Ave.), the dedication caps a series of events that started a decade ago in Lithuania. There, a Zappa fan club wanted to honor a 30-year career that included some 60 albums and a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The fan club erected a statue of Zappa and raised money to donate a replica to Baltimore. The city considered several locations for the bust, including Fells Point and Mount Vernon, but settled on Highlandtown.
When asked where the bust should be placed, Gail Zappa said she picked a library because her husband was a self-taught man who loved libraries.
"He always said, 'If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want to learn, go to a library,'" she said.
For Zappa's family members, who have a tenuous connection to the city, the monument is a long-delayed acknowledgment of the rocker's musical legacy.
"What is surprising is that a small town in Lithuania would want to have a public statue of Frank before the city where he was actually born," Dweezil said.
Gail added, "Aren't we all a little tired of walking around and seeing statues of people who marched in the Civil War? Don't we want see someone who was more recent? If you're a 12-year-old, you can see this statue and then go buy that guy's record."