Labor Day weekend, Baltimore will zoom.

Our first Grand Prix ever will turn the Inner Harbor west into a racetrack. If you’re unclear about it: the name derives from the French grand, meaning humongous, and prix, meaning collision.

In an event made for Baltimore, a cadre of international pro drivers will imitate the average rush hour commuter on double espresso.

Promoters estimate the event will bring $60 million to the city’s hotels, restaurants, stores, museums, souvenir kiosks, strip joints, and our own Formula One drivers: cabbies.

While good for Baltimore business, it’s a little like taking your kids to a Bad Habits Exhibition. “See how fast that man in his little racer can take that corner? That’s called burning rubber.”

Some people are skeptical of rubber hitting the road on Labor Day Weekend.

Me, I’m for getting people to wear orange and purple t-shirts printed with “Baltimore Volunteer Citizen.”

Volunteer Citizens would give visitors directions, answer questions, do talks on local history and defunded cultural sites, and otherwise welcome out-of-towners to their Grand Prix stay. Like mayoral candidates, only without the hallucinations.

Unpaid—but with tipping encouraged—Volunteer Citizens will be asked to please refrain from displaying firearms. These “goodwill ambassadors” will help dispel the noir TV drama image of Baltimore drug kingpins going for their MBAs.

Another way to capitalize on Grand Prix fever is to—when the racing ends—leave the track in place. Having a permanent, world-class auto racetrack in the heart of our downtown tourist district would put the lock on Baltimore’s becoming a vibrant, modern, 21st century metropolis. That and space aliens landing.

What better way to tell the world that Baltimore is no longer, as poet-novelist James Dickey might have said, “the land of the nine-fingered people"?

And who knows? We might even attract NASCAR (when the Orioles are out on the road, of course).