The unofficial mayor of Hampden is running for higher office.
Will Bauer, far better known by his alias Lou Catelli, announced Saturday — at a bash celebrating his 10th anniversary of coming to Hampden — that he’ll be running for mayor in 2020.
“Now I’m ready to give back,” Bauer/Catelli (or should that be Catelli/Bauer?) says in a video post to his “Mayor Lou Catelli” Facebook page made Saturday afternoon. “We have to bring Baltimore the love it deserves and keep moving forward. We are the greatest city and the greatest town, the greatest neighborhood on the face of the Earth, ever. We want to bring the joy back.”
Dressed in his trademark shorts (he rarely wears long pants) and sporting a black T-shirt with the Natty Boh logo winking from a Maryland flag, the candidate is greeted by a chant of “Lou! Lou! Lou!” from a crowd of about two-dozen well wishers.
“Be ready,” he urges the crowd.
In a telephone interview Monday morning, two days into his nascent campaign, Catelli/Bauer reiterated his theme of bringing the joy back to Baltimore. If the whole city works together, he said, there’s nothing the people can’t accomplish.
Hampden, he said, with its quirky character and high spirits, is an example of what all of Baltimore could be like. “We want to spread joy throughout all our sister and brother neighborhoods throughout the town,” he said,
Catelli/Bauer, a member of the Hampden Village Merchants Association and a board member and former vice president and treasurer of the Hampden Community Council, has been a distinctive presence in the neighborhood for years, riding his adult-size tricycle, volunteering for odd jobs and generally helping out wherever and whenever he can.
(When his trike LouCille was stolen last year, residents scoured the neighborhood looking for it. It was eventually found and returned.)
He “has built a reputation for his quirky style, jovial disposition and jack-of-all-trades know-how in the North Baltimore neighborhood,” according to a July 2017 profile in The Baltimore Sun.
Catelli/Bauer, a native of Highlandtown, says he won’t be filing officially as a Democratic candidate until after this month’s primary election. Although he had speculated before about running for City Council, he says his respect for incumbent Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke made him reconsider. “She’ll be getting my vote for City Council every time she runs,” he says.
He also said he was inspired by former Mayor William Donald Schaefer, whom he hopes to emulate in office. “The joyousness, you could see the love that he shared with everyone around,” the candidate said.
But even if he becomes mayor, Catelli/Bauer insists his disdain for long pants will remain.
“I have some ceremonial black corduroy shorts that I can use for formal events,” he says. “I don’t want to deprive Baltimore city of seeing my beautiful legs.”
