Baltimore v New York

In this scene, from a cross-over episode between Homicide and Law and Order, Detective Logan brings an extradited prisoner, played by native Baltimorean John Waters, from New York to Baltimore and hands him over to Detective Pembleton. An exchange ensues comparing New York to Baltimore. Pembleton has only been living in Baltimore for ten years, having grown up in New York, and yet he defends his adopted city like the native Waters. This exchange is reminiscent of the criticism leveled against New York by native Baltimorean, journalist and social commentator, H. L. Mencken in the essay Totentanz in the series Prejudices: Fourth Series (1924). "Compare [Washington Square] to Mt Vernon Square in Baltimore: the difference is that between a charwoman and a grand lady."

Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler's Baltimore is different from the sharp edges of David Simon's. It is predominantly White, predominantly middle class, predominantly suburban but her characters are not unscathed by life. Life is fragile and fleeting and her characters employ different methods to deal with this.
In Saint Maybe, the principal character Ian has to deal with the suicide of his older brother Danny that results directly from Ian's revelations about Danny's wife. The picture perfect life of the Bedlow family is not as perfect on the inside.

"On Waverly Street, everybody knew everybody else. It was only one short block, after all-a narrow strip of patched and repatched pavement, bracketed between a high stone cemetery wall at one end and the commercial clutter of Govans Road at the other. The trees were elderly maples with lumpy, bulbous trunks. The squat clapboard houses seemed mostly front porch.
And each house had its own particular role to play. Number Nine, for instance, was foreign. A constantly shifting assortment of Middle Eastern graduate students came and went, attending Johns Hopkins, and the scent of exotic spices drifted from their kitchen every evening at suppertime. Number Six was referred to as the newlyweds', although the Crains had been married two years now and were beginning to look a bit worn around the edges. And Number Eight was the Bedloe family. They were never just the Bedloes, but the Bedloe family, Waverly Street's version of the ideal, apple-pie household: two amiable parents, three good-looking children, a dog, a cat, a scattering of goldfish."

The Accidental Tourist

In The Accidental Tourist, Macon and Sarah's marriage falls apart after their only son, twelve year old Ethan, is shot in the head in a burger joint his second night away at camp. Macon Leary, like his brothers, Charles and Porter, and sister Rose, and like their grandparents who had raised them, had always lived a buttoned-down existence, using order and routine to ensure that nothing unexpected happened.
"There was something about the smell of a roasting Idaho that was so cozy, and also, well, conservative, was the way Macon put it to himself. He thought back on years and years of winter evenings: the kitichen windows black outside, the corners furry with gathering darkness, the four of them seated at the chipped enamel table meticulously filling scooped-out potato skins with butter. You let the butter melt in the skins while you mashed and seasoned the floury insides; the skins were saved till last. It was almost a ritual. He recalled that once, during one of their mother's longer absences, her friend Eliza had served them what she called potato boats-restuffed, not a bit like the genuine article. The children, with pinched, fastidious expressions, had emptied the stuffing and proceeded as usual with the skins, pretending to overlook her mistake."


In this scene Sarah tells Macon she is leaving him and he reacts in the typical uber-sensible Leary manner.

In an out-of-character move, Macon begins to date and then moves in with Muriel, a single mother who lives in a poor neighbourhood of Baltimore with her son Alexander. In the end, it is this out-of-character move that ultimately saves him.

Nina Simone and Randy Newman sing Baltimore

The song Baltimore was written by Randy Newman and is track 8 on his 1977 Album Little Criminals. It has been covered by Nina Simone and The Tamlins.



Beat-up little seagull
On a marble stair
Tryin' to find the ocean
Lookin' everywhere

Hard times in the city
In a hard town by the sea
Ain't nowhere to run to
There ain't nothin' here for free

Hooker on the corner
Waitin' for a train
Drunk lyin' on the sidewalk
Sleepin' in the rain

And they hide their faces
And they hide their eyes
'cause the city's dyin'
And they don't know why

Oh, Baltimore
Man, it's hard just to live
Oh, Baltimore
Man, it's hard just to live, just to live

Get my sister Sandy
And my little brother Ray
Buy a big old wagon
Gonna haul us all away

Livin' in the country
Where the mountain's high
Never comin' back here
'til the day I die

Oh, Baltimore
Man, it's hard just to live
Oh, Baltimore
Man, it's hard just to live, just to live

Good Morning Baltimore

This song from the musical Hairspray is a stylized representation of a 1960s White working-class Baltimore.

John Water on Hairspray

Twenties Dance: The Baltimore