The Wire is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, shows
on TV ever. Its examination of the post-industrial American city, and the way
different social forces interact within it, serves as an inspiration for this
blog and this set of trips we’ve been doing. Actually, if it weren’t for The
Wire, this tour and this blog might not exist at all. Because it started when we went to
Baltimore, to see where The Wire was filmed.
We started the day, a sunny summer Saturday, at the corner
of Fulton and Lexington, paying our respects to Snot Boogie, who lay dead on
this corner in the show’s first scene. Then, we continued onto Lexington
Market. I’m not sure if it was ever a filming location, but it is a must-eat
spot in Baltimore. Had some crab cakes, cod cakes, raw clams and beer for
breakfast. You eat the coddies between saltine crackers, with mustard. I wish
all my days started like this.
From there, we proceeded to walk up Pace Street, to Druid
Hill Avenue, to the McCullough Street homes. These are the projects where much
of Season 1 was filmed. We walked through them, past the “Pit.” There was no
orange couch in the courtyard. Walking down one of the streets nearby, we got
what would turn out to be the only offer to sell us drugs we would get on our
jaunt – Percocet though, not spider bags or WMD.
Now, some people would say it’s not a great idea for two
white guys from another city to walk through a neighborhood best known to outsiders for its portrayal on a TV show about the drug trade and inner-city violence. People forget
that these places are neighborhoods,
where people live out everyday lives and raise families. Would we have done it
at night? Probably not. But in the middle of the day on a weekend, there are
kids out playing, families and friends hanging out on their stoops. The same
stuff you see anywhere in America.
We proceeded up McCullough Street, passing many boarded-up
rowhouses with “If Animal Trapped, Call ....” written on the boards covering the
doors. After a while, we got to Carlton C. Douglas Funeral Services – the
funeral home that served as the Barksdale organization’s headquarters after
Orlando’s strip club. Then, we walked over I don’t know how many blocks to Charles
Street, leaving behind the gritty feel of that area of the West Side for what
seemed to be a more polished neighborhood.
We stopped at Brewer’s Art, the bar where Marlo met Devonne,
and had a couple drinks at the bar as we looked back at the cavernous seating
area that Marlo first eyeballed her from. Slightly fortified, we continued up
Charles Street, past Penn Station, where Marlo went to see if the police would
track him there. Then, we made a right, and went over a couple blocks to
Tilghman Middle School, the school from Season 4.
We kept going. By now, we were in a grittier neighborhood,
and one with a different feel than the West Side neighborhood we had been in
before. That place felt rough, but it felt lived-in. This place felt abandoned.
We passed a couple blocks of bombed-out houses, and walked up to Bodie’s
Corner, at Lanvale and Barclay. On the side opposite Bodie’s, the corner appeared to be in
use, occupied by a group of young men in white T-shirts. Until
seeing them, we felt like we were the only people left on the planet.
We continued on up toward North Avenue. We went down an
alley where Bubble’s Garage was supposed to be, but either we had made a wrong
turn or the garage we passed had been renovated to such an extent that it was
no longer recognizable as Reginald’s humble abode. We continued on foot to the
East Side, looking for Marlo’s hangout and for Hamsterdam.
The neighborhood we were going through now didn’t feel
dangerous so much as desolate. We would walk down blocks with 20, 30 rowhouses
on them, with only two or three giving any evidence of still being inhabited.
The rest were boarded up. A few were actually collapsing, or looked like they’d
been gutted from fires. One or two even had trees growing in them. Every so
often, we’d pass an old person or two sitting on a stoop, but other than that,
the place was empty. The neighborhood was blocks and blocks away from the more
inhabited areas we’d seen around Charles Street. We wondered what it must be
like to live in a place where this is your world, where you feel so isolated
from everything else in the city and everything is abandoned and nobody is
around.
We walked through Marlo’s hangout, and got a few cell phone
photos of the concrete park where he would meet with his lieutenants and decide
who was going to die today. Then, we went through the Hamsterdam area. I think
the actual block that was used in the filming may has been razed, but
everything else around you looks and feels like Hamsterdam, anyway. By now,
we’d worked up a bit of an appetite, so we stopped in the first business
establishment we had seen in a while. The little store had a couch in it, some
half-empty racks with dusty snacks on them and a little cooler. It felt more
like somebody had converted their living room than it did like a real store. I
got a soda and a bag of chips. We kept walking, back toward Charles Street. On
the way, without even having really planned on it, we walked past Greenmount
Cemetery, where Omar met McNulty for the first time, where Stringer met Colvin,
and where D was buried.
One of the things I was looking forward to in Baltimore was
trying lake trout. Still hungry, and by now getting into a slightly less
desolate area of the East Side, we stopped at a carryout joint. I got a lake
trout, James got some chicken, I think, and we found an abandoned rowhouse and
sat on the steps. For those of you that have never had it, lake trout is a
large piece of fried and breaded fish (really it’s whiting, not trout), with
the spine still in it, on a piece of white bread. You can get something similar
at soul food places elsewhere. I like it with hot sauce. Excellent stuff. Our
stomachs full and our desire to see the places where our favorite TV show was
filmed satiated, we continued back to Charles Street.
If you’re ever in Baltimore, I recommend you do something
similar. Most people I’ve read about who visit The Wire filming locations do so
in a car. I think you miss out on some of the feel for a city, seeing it
through safety glass as you roll by at 20 mph. There’s something to be said for
feeling the concrete under your feet.
