A bronze bust of Frank Zappa has been a tourist attraction for years in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius–and now it's coming to Zappa's hometown of Baltimore. The original–sculpted by Konstantinas Bogdanasby, a man whose bread-and-butter was making statues of Lenin before the fall of communism–was erected in 1995; one of the Lithuanian Zappa fans who commissioned the bust petitioned the City Of Baltimore to accept a replica for public display. The timing was good: Last year Baltimore declared August 9 to be Frank Zappa Day, and now it's agreed to shell out the $50,000 it'll take to transport and install the bust. "Like John Waters and a lot of artists we're proud of," said a spokesman for Mayor Sheila Dixon, "it's a big deal that Frank Zappa is from Baltimore."
And on a related note: