jwer's Profile

I live in the Reservoir Hill neighborhood of Baltimore, and I can't help but roll my eyes at the hand-wringing about The Wire's portrait of the city.

Yes, parts of it ARE that bad, and because of the patchwork nature of the city, a sketchy neighborhood is almost always a short walk away. The REALLY sketchy neighborhoods are less common, but they're more desolate than dangerous. Baltimore should be a city of 1 million , but there are about 650,000 people here. Since it is impractical for individuals to try to rehab houses in the middle of 10-square block vacant/rundown areas, we tend to nibble away at the edges of those areas instead.

Regardless, the thing that no one ever seems to remember is that the first season was about half ghetto and half West Side Redevelopment/CenterPoint, and the second season was half Locust Point, and the third was half Inner Harbor...