THE WIRE AND ME

So I called into WYPR today during the Mark Steiner show. It's only the second time I've ever been a participant on a call in radio show. It's a weird experiece.

They were talking about the tv show THE WIRE. A slight aside before I get to the real point of this post.


Just the other day we got this flyer from our community association president, saying he was going to do something about all the parking problems that were being caused by the taping of the show in our neighborhood. This was news to us, since we had been oblivious to the fact that this was even going on.

A few days later we got a photocopy of a letter from Congressman Cummings promising to do something about the horrible problems being caused by parking from production and filming of the WIRE. Again, who knew there was a problem. But at least someone was trying to deal with these interlopers from Hollywood. (Althought actually I think David Simon is from Baltimore;-))

Ok, what was my point? Ah yes..Mark Steiner.

So it was a pretty heated discussion between the producers of the show, David Simon, an actress on the show and someone else I can't remember. Most of the African Americans who called in were furious with the show and everything about it.

My sweetie and I haven't watched it until recently because it shows such a dark and scary world of Baltimore. Not that we don't think that is part of the picture.

So I called in simply to ask if they paid some of those guys who hang out on Pennsylvannia Avenue selling goodies on the corner to be extras. I mean a lot of the visuals in the show look a heck of a lot like what I see when I drive from the Postoffice to MLK and why make someone act when there are guys who could make some legal money from portraying themselves doing what they're really doing. (Although this idea alone gets kind of twisted if you think about it too much. They could get paid to pretend to do what they would get tossed into jail for doing in real life.

The guys from the show didn't really understand my point. And I tried to clarify that I wasn't really calling to ask them whether they caused parking difficulties but rather to understand how they actually used the community resources that were there, I got cut off. Such is the experience of a caller to talk radio.


They did say some of the guys from the upton boxing center which just opened across from our postoffice will be featured in future episodes.




Anyway, enough rambling, this is obviously going to have to be edited.