Federal Hill Park in Baltimore
In spite of everything, if you have seen the series and you are a fan, you will like to walk through one of the locations where Omar, McNulty, Stringer Bell, Bubbles, Bunk and company were in action. What who are these? You have to watch the series. Already! You will not regret. It is recognized by many critics as the best series in history ahead of The Sopranos and It is already studied in American universities yes
To do the route that we are going to propose you will have to bring a car with a full tank of gasoline , as there is a surprising lack of gas stations in this city. In addition, the car is essential for other reasons: it is a long distance, there is not a good public transport service and in some places like East and West Baltimore it is safer than walking.
Let's go there.
STARTING
Head north to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. There at Paca St Entrance you will find Faidley's , where they serve best crab cakes in town , recommended in any guide. And, Jimmy McNulty is also a fan of them as he appears eating them on more than one occasion in the series. They cost $18 each. So if you want a cheaper option you can buy a sandwich for two dollars. It is always good to start the day eating to have energy for the rest of the route.
And now, having breakfast, let's go West.
Faidley's: The Best Crab Cakes in Town
THE WEST, WHERE IT ALL STARTED
At the intersection of Lexington and Fulton Avenue is where he was found dead. Snot Boggie in the first sequence of the series. The drug trafficking plot TheWire takes place in West Baltimore, but only the first season was shot in the West, since the directors found more facilities in the East. Returning to the location of the initial sequence, once there, if the weather is good, pay attention to see if you find a man selling fruit in a horse cart. He is quite an institution in the neighborhood.
Not far from there Viva House _(44 S Mount St) _, the house where Bubbles serves food to the homeless and people in need when he is drug free and rehabbed.
Near Lexington Avenue you can also find Union Square , with the source of Mencken . Known as the Wise Man of Baltimore, he lived north of the square at 1524 Hollins Street for 67 years. This is the best kept and safest area in West Baltimore.
On Amity street you can run into the Edgar Allan Poe House-Museum ( poe-house ). In the series there is a curious anecdote, since a tourist asks a boy from the street about this place and the young man understands that he is asking about Poe-Home , which is where William Gant worked, who is killed in the first episode and sets the wiretapping plot in motion. The house can be visited from April to December . You just have to knock on the door and pay a small fee.
If you continue down Lexington Avenue you'll come to Lafayette Avenue and there you'll bump into the church where Bubbles used to attend rehab talks. It is unmistakable with its bright red painted doors.
Afterwards, it would be advisable to go for a drive r Pennsylvania Ave . It is one of the nerve centers of African-American commerce and culture. It is still recovering from the devastation of the 1968 riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King . In recent years things have been slowly improving.
Visit the Edgar Allan Poe House-Museum from April to December
Drive your car up to Preston Street, to get into McCulloh Homes , the state houses where most of the drug trafficking plots of the first season were filmed. And it really is as the series shows, a place where hustle and bustle is the order of the day, almost admitted by the citizens as one more feature of the neighborhood. The majority of the population is black and lives a vital reality linked to the day to day , because it is better not to think about the future. Precisely on McCulloh Street, in the same neighborhood as the houses, there is the statue of a boy and a girl dancing that appears so many times in the series.
And also on this same street you can find the funeral services of Carlton C. Douglas, which served as headquarters for the gang of Avon Barksdale , one of the main mobsters in the series.
Before you leave West Baltimore, you should pay a visit to the small neighborhood of Bolton Hill , which, despite not having been shot in The Wire, is the most beautiful area in the western part of the city.
Two famous basketball players, like dontaye draper (former Real Madrid) and Carmel Antony (of the Knicks), grew up in West Baltimore and they admit that sport distanced them from the other destiny life would have brought them: drug trafficking.
Scene from The Wire at McCulloh Homes
The North
On Charles Street you will find Brewer's Art , probably the best place for dinner and drinks in the city. If you want to call it preppy, you can. . This is where Marlo is seduced by Devonne in The Wire. You may want to come back here after dark.
Although speaking of food, you can also go to ** Sterling's Seafood ** _(401 W 29th St) _ which, although it does not appear as a location in the series, it is mentioned by most of the gangsters during the first season as a place to have delicious coddies ( cod sandwiches ) . Perhaps it is lunchtime when you arrive and you can approve or disapprove of this opinion.
On Guilford Ave, near the junction with North Ave, you'll find the alley with Bubbles' garage in recent seasons. Continuing down the same street, past Lanvale, you will come across Tilghman Middle School , the school of the fourth season of The Wire.
Not far from there is the Greenmount Cemetery that appears in numerous sequences of the series, such as the funeral of D or the meeting between Stringer and Colvin in which the former betrays his boss Avon, facilitating his whereabouts to the police. The churchyard is open for cars from Tuesday to Sunday.
The Brewer's Art: if you want to call it preppy, you can
THE EAST
As was said before, many sequences of the series were shot here pretending to be the West part. This is the case of Bond Street, one of the most popular locations in TheWire . Precisely in this street we can find a square where Marlo hung out while he did his business unethical. A walk through this entire area will make everything extremely familiar to you, like that near the intersection of Bond Street and Lafayette Avenue , better known in the series as Hamsterdam. A place where a police experiment allows drugs to be legal for a time in the series.
On Patterson Park Avenue you will find Collington Square Park , where the basketball game between East and West in the series is played. Further east, in Ellwood Avenue you will see the park where it was proposition joe , first with Vondas and then with Marlo, to talk business.
HEADING SOUTH
Afterwards, we recommend you head south to Federal Hill Park, a large green space full of real and fictional history in TheWire . There you will find the best views of the city. It is the place chosen by the character of Carcetti, aspiring mayor, to take long walks, get away from politics and clarify his mind. Also down this hill McNulty fell half drunk after failing in a chase after some kids.
At the corner of 1400 Jackson Street you can go Delore's Bar , the place where the longshoremen of the second season used to meet.
Speaking of places that can be visited, we recommend you go to the Wine Market, on Ludlow Street, a place that is part restaurant, part wine shop. Here Senator Clay Davis met with Stringer Bell to discuss the status of the situation.
Undoubtedly, these are not all the locations that appear in the series, as you might imagine, since it lasted five seasons in natural settings, but you can get an idea of the atmosphere that David Simon created in his work. If you are a fan of the series, without a doubt it will have been worth it.
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