How We Spent Our First Anniversary: Touring Baltimore’s “The Wire” Filming Locations at Hu-Stiles

How We Spent Our First Anniversary: Touring Baltimore’s “The Wire” Filming Locations

There are a few Hu-Stiles “staples” — tokens or cultural symbols that have been important in our now-eight-year relationship. They include construction paper cards (that we made for one another every year), Radiohead (which brought us together) and The Wire (the best show on television ever). Stiles actually watched all five seasons of the cult-favorite as it was airing on HBO.

Suffice to say, during our four years of long distance dating, he basically FORCED ME to watch it. And I’m so much better off for it. So for our first wedding anniversary, we decided to do the self-guided Wire tour — driving to the many sketchy locations in Baltimore where the show was filmed. Here are some of the places we visited:

: This is a famous Baltimore crab cake place called “Fraidley’s” where McNulty got crab cakes for the cops looking for Wallace in Season One.

: The street where Snot Boogie was found dead in the series opener.

: “West Baltimore is where it all begins, right on Lexington and Fulton Ave where Snot Boogie, the man of unfortunate name and unfortunate life laid dead in the street.” – The Wire Tour

: This is the site of the church where Bubbles (Bubs) attended AA meetings.

: The McCulloh Homes, the housing projects that were used as the low-rises that dominated much of Season One. On the right of this photo you’ll see part of the harmonica and dance statues of a boy and girl, featured several times throughout the series.

: More of the McCullough homes, used as the low rises where D’Angelo plied his trade in Season One.

: A real life montessori school that was used as Tilghman Middle School in the excellent Season Four.

: The alley that Bubs called home during the time he was trying to sell goods out of his shopping cart.

: Boarded up rowhouses reminded me of the bodies that Chris and Snoop were hiding.

: Marlo’s hangout, where he held court. This was a rough neighborhood where we are warned by the written guide to be careful when getting out of the car.

: “Carlton C Douglas Funeral Services, which served as the West Baltimore headquarters for the Barksdale organization throughout the first three seasons.” – The Wire tour wikiguide

: It’s all overgrown and we didn’t get out of the car because cops were everywhere and giving us suspicious looks, but the written guide said the famous Hamsterdam was back there in that square.

: Northeastern Market, where McNulty had his kids shadow Stringer, then lost track of them…

: “he Saveland Food Mart on the left was used in a particularly disturbing scene, where Marlo stole a lollipop in plain view of the security guard, just to show that he could. The guard went to talk to him outside, asking him why he had to do that, to put his job in jeopardy for no reason. And for that act of bold honesty, Marlo later had him killed.” – The Wire Tour Wikiguide

: The Executive Inn, where Prop Joe’s co-op would meet to organize their “peaceful” drug trade.

: A Season Two location – “the so-called Port of Philadelphia (remember that all scenes were in fact filmed in Baltimore), a.k.a. the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard, where Sergei (with Spiros’ help) relieved a Turk (“Sailor” Sam) of head and feet,” says the written guide.

: This was “The Greek”‘s Diner. Scary.

: This became the headquarters of the Major Crimes Unit, starting at the beginning of Season Two. We got confronted by a security guard at this point in the tour. Matty refused to give up the camera and we almost got in more serious trouble. Whew.