Baltimore: It’s Not Just The Wire

Part of the reason I write Pigtown*Design is to show people that Baltimore isn’t just what you see on The Wire, and in fact, I am giving a lecture on that topic in October. When I first started writing this blog, a guy in England was just beginning to write a blog about The Wire, a television show filmed in Baltimore. As he would write bad things about Baltimore, I’d write back and refute his suppositions. We would go back and forth and try to convince each other that we were right in our assertions.

I have to admit here that I’ve never seen one minute of The Wire. I was of two minds about it – I didn’t want to know what was going on around me, and I already knew too much of what was going on around me.

A few years later, he wrote a book on The Wire. (Click the image to order… I just did!) So when Steve Busfield came to Baltimore this weekend, he knew to call me and have the “real Baltimore” tour! But since my real Baltimore and his Wired Baltimore only intersect on the most narrow of planes, we did a bit of each piece of Baltimore.

We met up at Camden Yards for a baseball game – in fact, this was his and his two girls’ 18th ballpark they’ve visited, which is about 17 more than I’ve been to!

We watched the Orioles beat Boston 6-0 and had a great time checking out all of the interesting sections of the ballpark, including walking the length of the warehouse that makes up one side of the stadium.

On Saturday, we met up at the 200+ year old Lexington Market for some local food.The younger of the girls and I partook of the delicacy known locally as a Chicken Box. It could have easily fed a family of four for several days, and we had to walk away without finishing it. We did manage to have a Burger Cookie or two as well. Click here for an explanation of our lunch.

From the market, we headed over to pay homage to Edgar Allan Poe by visiting both his gravesite and his house.

From there, we cruised around the neighbourhoods where much of the action in The Wire takes place, and then headed over to Fort McHenry. We were lucky enough to arrive in time for an afternoon military tattoo, which is last orders at a military post. I’ve been to a number of these and they’re always impressive.

Heading out from there, we checked out a few of the hotspots on The Wire tour, including the infamous Greenmount Cemetery, which I wrote about here.

Of course, I couldn’t let Steve and the girls think that Baltimore’s just The Wire, so we swung by The Book Thing to let the girls pick out some great books they could read on their trips to visit all of the baseball parks. We also drove through some of Baltimore’s more beautiful neighbourhoods to give them an idea of the beautiful architecture here.

We also checked out some of Baltimore’s rather attractive jails, here

and here.

All in all, I think I did enough to dispel Steve’s idea that all of Baltimore is The Wire. It’s not. It’s much much more.