You Gotta Keep The Devil Way Down In The Hole

Images from The Wire and Wire locations made into a slide show From the Baltimore City Paper: " Vince Peranio agreed to design a short driving and walking tour of some of his favorite locations used in The Wire, which recently finished shooting its fourth season. The tour, which meanders through the neighborhoods of Oliver, Broadway East, and Middle East, before ending up in Greenmount West, features long stretches of barren, blighted, and crumbling rowhouses. The primary commercial activity appears to take place on street corners. It’s grim. But for Peranio, a Baltimore native, these streets are a source of constant wonder. “It’s in the way a house looks, or the vacant lots just strewn with every type of toy and the last 50 years of effluvium,” he says. “I think you see much more of people’s lives here, exposed and raw.” Simon says Peranio’s gift is his ability to see hope where others see despair. “In every neighborhood, Vince has been able to find elements of beauty and power with which to tell a story,” writes Simon in an e-mail. “He knows the city as someone who loves the city and he finds grandeur in unlikely places.