The Long Fall of John Goodman

by Conroy

John Goodman on trial

If you’re intrigued by sensational courtroom drama involving the lurid details of the rich and famous, you’ll be fascinated by the recent trial of John Goodman, polo tycoon, founder of the International Polo Club Palm Beach, and popular playboy [1].

In the foggy dark early morning hours of February 12, 2010 Goodman was driving his $200,000 black Bentley along the quiet west county roads near Wellington, Florida. Driving recklessly in low-visibility Goodman ran a stop sign and violently struck a Hyundai driven by 23-year-old engineering student Scott Wilson. The impact was so violent that it knocked Wilson’s car from the road and into an adjacent canal. Wilson trapped in his car, drowned. His Bentley badly damaged from the crash, Goodman left the scene on foot.

He called 9-1-1, an hour later, from the mobile home of a nearby resident. The medical examiner noted that the long delay between the accident and the 9-1-1 call sealed Wilson’s fate. The recording of Goodman’s call (listen here), indicates that he (1) knew he had been in a car accident, (2) it was his fault, and (3) he sounds confused like he’s drunk but trying not to sound drunk. When he was finally arrested hours after the accident his blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit. A sensational legal battle was about to begin.

Goodman hired famed high-powered Miami defense attorney Roy Black, whose previous clients include physician William Kennedy Smith [2], radio host Rush Limbaugh, and actor Kelsey Grammer, and who’s frequently appeared on TV as a legal commentator. He pleaded not guilty to the charges of DUI manslaughter and vehicular homicide. Then, in order to shield his considerable fortune from the civil lawsuits that would surely be filed by the Wilson family, he legally adopted his 42-year-old girlfriend in the fall of 2011. He immediately gave her a portion of the $300 million trust he had set up for his two biological children. A family scrabble was bound the ensue, and sure enough his two teenaged kids filed suit in February attempting the have the adoption thrown out so they could maintain sole beneficiaries of the fortune.

Goodman's (top) and Wilson's (bottom) mangled cars

Once the trial began, Black presented the following defense. Earlier in the evening Goodman attended two events, the first at the White Horse Tavern and the second at the Players Club [3], where bar tabs show he ordered many rounds of vodka and tequila. According to the testimony of friends, including polo player Ignacio “Nacho” Figueras [4], he bought most of the drinks for others and was not intoxicated when he left the Players Club. Goodman then drove his car in search of a Wendy’s for a late night frosty. Approaching the intersection where the accident would occur, Goodman’s vehicle suddenly malfunctioned and despite his best efforts to stop the car it accelerated forward through the intersection. He then struck something, banging his head in the process. He didn’t know what he had hit and when he got out of his car to investigate he didn’t see another car or person. The accident had left him dazed and confused and his cell phone had died. So he wandered off in search of help and nursing an injured wrist and ribs. He soon saw a light down the road coming from an open barn door. He went inside in search of a phone, which he didn’t find but he did see a bottle of liquor. He drank from the bottle hoping the alcohol would alleviate his “excruciating [physical] pain”. Then he left the barn, spotted the light of a nearby trailer and called 9-1-1 using the owner’s phone. That was Black's explanation for the delay in calling 9-1-1 and the elevated blood-alcohol level.

On a believability scale with 1 representing the unvarnished as-God-is-my-witness recounting of events and 10 being a preposterously unbelievable fabrication, Goodman’s explanation of events rates at about a 13. The jury agreed and on March 23 of this year – more than two years after the accident – Goodman was found guilty of DUI manslaughter and vehicular homicide; he faces up to 30 years in prison [5]. Roy Black has claimed jury misconduct, but that charge has been rejected by the court, though further arguments on this point are set to be heard on April 30. Sentencing will likely occur in early May.

The Perfect Climate - Part 5

by Conroy

Rio, unsurprisingly, has one of the best climates in the world

I spent the first four parts of this series exploring my climate ranking system and applying it to American cities in search of the "perfect climate". Now it’s time to expand the rankings to the whole world. Below I’ve ranked 150 cities [1] using both my original formula, which favors warm places, and the alternative formula presented in Part 4, which favors consistently temperate locations.

This is the fifth post in my “Perfect Climate” series. To check out the first four, use the following links: The Perfect Climate – Part 1 The Perfect Climate – Part 2 The Perfect Climate – Part 3 The Perfect Climate – Part 4 Also check out Conroy’s Perfect Climate Rankings page.

 As a reminder, warm cities are places with annual mean temperatures in the mid to upper 70s (or higher) and little seasonal variance. Examples include Miami, Rio de Janeiro, and Bangalore, India. Temperate cities are places with annual mean temperatures in the mid 60s (no higher) and little seasonal variance, and especially no really hot months. Examples include San Diego, Mexico City, and Cape Town, South Africa. I’m presenting dual rankings because these preferences seem to predominate when it comes to climate taste. For both approaches, cold cities fare poorly.

One thing to note regarding the “warm cities” ranking, in my original formula I assumed that the higher the annual mean temperature the better. I was examining American cities the warmest of which is Honolulu, Hawaii with an annual mean of 77.5 degrees. However, when I expanded my rankings to encompass all the world’s cities, I ran into a problem: much of the Earth is very hot. Many cities across Africa and Asia have annual mean temperatures that exceed 80 degrees. While I enjoy warm conditions, even I have to admit that there’s an upper limit above which the climate grows too hot. I decided to modify my original formula to penalize cities where the annual mean temperature exceeds 78 degrees [2]. This adjustment works the same as the temperature penalty applied in the alternative (temperate) climate formula for cities with annual mean temperatures above 65 degrees (see Part 4).

The World’s Climate
Before jumping to the actual rankings, I'll note a few general impressions from my review of climates for hundreds of places in all parts of the world.

Latitude and elevation combine to give Nairobi a pleasant climate

• Large portions of South America, Africa, and Asia are located at low latitudes but relatively high elevations. This combination of tropical locations perched well above sea level is a magic formula for a favorable climate. The tropical latitude results in consistent solar radiation throughout the year, which means little temperature variance, but the higher elevations moderate the temperature. Cities in these zones include Nairobi, Sao Paulo, and Bangalore, India. Each boasts a climate that would be far hotter (and far less bearable) if located near sea level.
• It’s surprising how few large cities are located in really cold places. Only six cities experience mean low temperatures in the single digits (F) during one or more winter months: Minneapolis, Minnesota, Ottawa, Montreal, and Edmonton, Canada, and Shenyang and Harbin, China. Indeed, Harbin (China's tenth largest city), in the far northeast of China right on the edge of Siberia, is the only major global city to experience mean low temperatures below zero (F) for any month of the year. It’s appropriately nicknamed the “Ice City”, and the winter cold there is worse than in Arctic places like Nome, Alaska. This relative paucity of large cities in places with harsh winters is another demonstration that the great majority of people the world over choose not to live in cold climates.
• Conversely, cities with average high temperatures above 100 degrees during one or more summer months are common across the American southwest, Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. The highest monthly mean temperature for any major city belongs to Baghdad, Iraq where the July high is a heat-stroke-inducing 111 degrees. That’s nearly as hot as Death Valley during high summer. Other "hot" cities include Phoenix, Riyadh, Delhi, and Khartoum. In fact, the capital of Sudan has the highest annual mean temperature of any major city at 85.8 degrees. (It's worth noting that I developed this climate system thinking of the U.S. where air conditioning is ubiquitous. That's certainly not the case through the "hot" world, so the warm rankings should be considered with that in mind; warm may not be so pleasant where it can't be escaped.)
• Perhaps the continent with the most consistently superb climate is South America. All of that continent’s major cities score well on both the warm and temperate rankings. And of all nations, Brazil’s big cities boast almost universally excellent climates. This is also true of the other large southern hemisphere country, Australia, where all of its large cities also have friendly climates. This is a major contrast to the large nations of the northern hemisphere that are either cold (Canada and Russia) or feature widely varying climates (U.S. and China).
• If you’re interested in finding unvarying temperatures, then follow the Equator. Quito, Ecuador, Manaus and Belem, Brazil, Male in the Maldives, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Brunei all lie on or near the Equator and are among the relatively short list of cities that have annual temperature variances of less than 3 degrees.
• Finally, it’s interesting to compare the most extreme climate on Earth to my climate rankings. Russia’s Vostok Station in Antarctica is renowned as the coldest place on the planet, the Pole of Cold [3]. The lowest ever measured surface temperature of -128.6 degrees was recorded there in 1983. The average August low temperature is -97 degrees, and it earns a climate score of -105. The temperatures at Vostok are comparable to the surface of Mars in winter. It puts things into perspective when evaluating the “perfect” and “terrible” climates across the globe. Harbin's climate is far closer to sunny Rio de Janeiro's than it is to interior Antarctica.

Ice sculptures in Harbin, the world's coldest big city

Now on to the rankings.

The Perfect Climate - Part 4

by Conroy

Do you prefer the weather of warm Miami or...

Ask yourself this question: What city has a better climate Miami or San Francisco? Anyone that’s read this blog and in particular my earlier posts analyzing “the perfect climate” will know that I favor the heat and sunshine of South Florida over the consistent cool of Northern California. However, I was in Florida last week, first in Orlando and then in Fort Lauderdale, and in keeping with what has been a remarkably warm 2012 for the eastern two-thirds of the United States, it was summer hot with highs at or above 90 and more humidity than is normal for early April. I was on vacation and glad for the summery temperatures [1], but as I sweated under the afternoon sun I did have to ask myself whether summer at Easter is really how I would define my perfect climate.

...temperate San Francisco?

And judging by the many comments I received on my three previous Perfect Climate posts, I’d say there is a strong sentiment regarding this topic. I defined what I considered the perfect climate, but many readers have different preferences (see a sampling of reader comments below).

This is the fourth post in my “Perfect Climate” series. To check out the first three, use the following links: The Perfect Climate – Part 1 The Perfect Climate – Part 2 The Perfect Climate – Part 3

Fortunately, one of the benefits of the climate ranking system I developed is that it can be adjusted for different tastes. I’d like to examine one such adjustment, one that addresses the question I posed at the beginning of this post. But first, a review of my ranking system.

Conroy’s Perfect Climate
Most people have their preferences for what makes a perfect climate, but as I explained in Part 1 I feel that temperature is the key factor and dominates humidity, and other elements like sunshine, wind, and precipitation. When it comes to temperature there are four variables to consider:

• mean annual temperature, the higher the better [2]; 
• the variance between the hottest month and the coldest month, the lower this difference (the less extreme the seasonality) the better [3]; 
• the mean temperature for each month of the year, the more “comfortable” the monthly mean the better (or stated another way: How comfortable is it at any given time of the year?) [4]; and 
• the mean diurnal temperature differences by month (the difference between daily high and low), the lower the better because a comfortable daily mean doesn’t mean much if actual daily temperatures vary greatly [5].

I use historical temperature data [6] for a city and apply it to a formula I developed [7] that yields a climate score [8]. The higher the climate score, the better the climate. I computed the score for nearly 500 places in the United States. The top three climate scores are associated with Hilo, Hawaii, Honolulu, and Key West. The three lowest scores belong to Nome, Fairbanks, and Barrow, Alaska. I doubt that many people would quibble with these results. The ranking of climate scores for the 30 largest U.S. metropolitan areas is provided in the table below. For a full discussion of how I used the four temperature variables to quantify the perfect climate, read The Perfect Climate – Part 1 post, and for commentary on the rankings see The Perfect Climate – Part 2.

Climate Rankings for the 30 Largest Metropolitan Areas
Rank	Metropolitan Area	Climate Score
1	Miami, FL	44.9
2	Tampa, FL	37.8
3	Los Angeles, CA	37.1
4	Orlando, FL	36.4
5	San Diego, CA	36.0
6	Houston, TX	29.5
7	San Francisco, CA	27.9
8	Riverside, CA	25.3
9	San Antonio, TX	23.9
10	Sacramento, CA	22.4
11	Phoenix, AZ	21.0
12	Dallas, TX	18.0
13	Atlanta, GA	16.6
14	Seattle, WA	14.2
15	Portland, OR	13.9
16	Las Vegas, NV	13.0
17	Baltimore, MD	9.9
18	Washington, DC	9.0
19	Philadelphia, PA	5.7
20	New York, NY	4.3
21	Cincinnati, OH	3.8
22	St. Louis, MO	3.6
23	Kansas City, MO	3.3
24	Boston, MA	2.5
25	Chicago, IL	1.3
26	Detroit, MI	0.1
27	Pittsburgh, PA	0.1
28	Cleveland, OH	-0.2
29	Denver, CO	-0.4
30	Minneapolis, MN	-12.6

Honolulu is the number 1 big city in my original rankings

After tweaking the formula, computing the climate scores, and analyzing the rankings, I was pleased. The rankings more or less reflected my view of the perfect climate. In particular, places in the hot and humid South and Southeast ranked high, as did temperate California, and then places in the baking Southwest. The lowest ranking places were (of course) freezing Alaska and the highly variable Northern Great Plains.

After I published these rankings I reviewed where Americans have chosen to live over the last half century and the results seem to validate my thinking. People prefer warm winters to cool summers. People will endure high summer heat to avoid freezing winter cold. See The Perfect Climate – Part 3 for more details on the correlation between climate and American demographic trends.

However, as pleased as I was at these results and despite how Americans seem to have (and continue to) vote with their feet for the climates they choose to live in, I received many critical comments on my system and the rankings, including:

“I see that San Diego rates really high, and having spent a lot of time in "America's Finest City", I can attest that it has an almost ideal climate. I much prefer the dryer conditions there than the sticky humidity in Florida.” – CT, Eugene, OR

“Wow! Having escaped Houston's oppressive humidity and 100º heat even in June for Denver's 300+ sunny days/year, I gotta pick my subjective observations over your methodology for picking a place to live!” – Nowitall, Denver, CO

“Ill have to be honest with you about the Florida climate. I've lived in Florida for about 12 years (in the Tampa area) and the climate is nothing to strive for. The summers are absolutely brutal. April- October you have to deal with temps above 90F with a lot of humidity. It’s not the heat as much as it is humidity. Every summer morning I always walk my dog. In the morning it’s about 86F with usually 90 percent humidity. 5 minutes outside and you’re pouring with sweat.” – Anonymous, Tampa

Safe Water

by Conroy

Gathering unsafe water in India

I’m fond of saying that the modern world started when indoor plumbing, fresh water and modern sanitation, became widely available. Not only did these innovations make conditions far more sanitary but it also promoted better hygiene [1]. For the United States, this happened in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries [2], and by the decade after World War II most urban and rural areas of westernized nations had modern plumbing; clean water was delivered to the house and dirty water carried away.

This development had a profound effect on public health. Cholera, dysentery, and typhoid fever were among the common epidemics suffered in London, New York, and other major western cities before what I’ll term the safe water infrastructure was in place. Now those diseases are largely unknown in the west. I’m guessing that for most readers of this blog, safe water is taken largely for granted, as it was by our parents and even our grandparents. In fact, a resident of New York or London probably thinks that the word cholera is quaint and foreign, when as little as 100 years ago it would have caused mortal dread.

Unsafe Water
This isn’t the case everywhere though. Cholera still afflicts millions of people worldwide each year, and a major outbreak occurred in Haiti after the massive, crippling 2010 earthquake. This is because even now, in 2012, billions of people across the globe still lack access to clean drinking water and modern sanitation. Here are a few eye-opening statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO):

• 900 million people lack access to drinking-water from improved water sources (13% of the world population);
• 2.6 billion people lack access to improved sanitation facilities (37% of the world population);
• 2.2 million children die worldwide each year from unsafe water.
• Unsafe water is a major risk factor for diarrheal disease, which is the second leading contributor to the global disease burden.

Here are a couple of maps, taken directly from the U.N.’s 2010 Global Annual Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS) report that illustrate the current safe water crisis (click on them to enlarge):

The top map shows the state of improved sanitation. The pink colored countries are where less than 50% of the population has access to improved sanitation; the light green colored countries are where less than 75% of the population has access to improved sanitation. The first category includes the great majority of sub-Saharan Africa as well as south Asia. The second category includes China, the world’s most populous nation. Less than 90% of the populations of Brazil, Russia, Argentina, and Mexico have access to improved sanitation.

The bottom map shows the state of improved drinking water. The pink colored countries are where less than 50% of the population has access to improved drinking-water; the light blue colored countries are where less than 75% have access; and the medium blue colored countries are where less than 90% have access. The first and second categories include the great majority of sub-Saharan Africa. The third category includes India and China, the world’s two most populous nations. Not surprisingly, all of these nations, including India and China, fare very poorly in the U.N.’s Human Development Index, which attempts to quantify overall quality of life by country [3]. This is hardly surprising; it’s difficult to imagine human development being high where safe water is a luxury.

Prometheus and the Alien Saga

by Conroy

This past weekend there was quite a bit of buzz emanating from the WonderCon [1] convention in Anaheim as revered director Ridley Scott revealed more details about his upcoming movie Prometheus. There have been rumors for years that Scott was working on a “prequel” to his landmark 1979 movie Alien, a much-loved, critically-hailed, and very influential film. But Scott and his creative partners have been rather coy about their plans to revisit the Alien “universe”, and so fans were left to wonder whether Prometheus would be a true prequel or only tangentially related to the original. The jury, even after WonderCon, is still out. Scott indicated that Prometheus is definitely related to Alien (“in the same universe”) but it asks different questions and focuses on new themes. At the same time he debuted the film’s trailer [2], which allowed audiences their first glimpse at the actual film. I’ll leave it to others to dissect what can be learned from the two-minute trailer, but suffice it to say it does appear to be both related to and different from the original movie.

I’m a huge fan of both Alien and its first sequel Aliens (more on this below), so Prometheus fills me both with excitement and hesitation. On the one hand, we have an accomplished director revisiting a universe he shaped with the promise of answering questions that have been asked by fans for the past 33 years, along with adding to the mythology of a celebrated movie franchise. This has been done successfully, consider how Francis Ford Coppola expertly fleshed-out the rise of Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Part II. On the other hand, we may get a movie that tacks on a backstory that detracts from the original. Just look at the execrable Star Wars prequels to see how wrong revisiting earlier movies can go.

Still, Prometheus can’t help but kindle anticipation because even a generation later, the first two Alien movies remain deeply compelling. Not only have they been influential, but they stand out for their intelligence and fundamentally as excellent examples of filmmaking craft. They’re great movies.

The Alien Saga
I’ll assume that if you’ve read this far you’re at least somewhat familiar with the Alien movie franchise. But here’s an overview. As noted, Alien was released in 1979, the sequel Aliens, directed by James Cameron, was released in 1986. Alien 3 [3] came out in 1992, and was followed by Alien Resurrection in 1997. There are also two crossover movies, Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (2007). These last two don’t exist in the same movie universe as the first four. [4]

Alien is set sometime in the future in deep space. The crew of the commercial spacecraft Nostromo is awakened prematurely from suspended animation during their return voyage to Earth to investigate a signal from a nearby moon. There they find a derelict spacecraft and a cargo hold full of live pods, or eggs. One crew member is attacked and incapacitated by an alien parasite. Later, back on their return voyage and after the parasite dies, the crew member, Kane, appears to have recovered. However, he is soon violently killed as an organism bursts from his chest. The creature escapes, grows rapidly, and kills other members of the crew. Finally, as the survivors become more desperate it is revealed that Ash, the science officer, is in fact an android and has been ordered to ensure the survival of the alien for the profit of “the company” (the ship’s owners), Ripley (Weaver) leads the remaining crew in abandoning the ship. However she’s the only one who makes it off the ship alive, and is forced to confront the alien a final time as it has taken surreptitious refuge in the escape shuttle.

This is a horror movie with sci-fi trappings; a monster movie on a spaceship. But it’s executed masterfully: from its measured pacing; setting in space on a large ship full of dark corridors and cavernous mechanical spaces, a murky planet, and a mysterious alien craft; the juxtaposition of light and shadow; a great cast [5] and the let’s-just-get-the-job-done-so-we-can-go-home attitude of their characters; and its hostile and half-seen alien whose lifecycle is truly terrifying. It is without doubt one of the best horror movies ever made.

Aliens is set 57 years after the first movie. By fortune Ripley is rescued after having having passed the decades in suspended animation. She learns that LV-426, the moon from the first film, is now in the process of being terra-formed. Not long after her awakening, contact with the terra-forming colony is lost and a rescue mission, led by colonial marines and including Ripley is dispatched. Once on the moon they find the colony abandoned. The marines are routed by a horde of aliens. Eventually Ripley, again left nearly alone, confronts an alien “queen”. This is an action movie with sci-fi and horror trappings. The sequel uses the first movies visual style and measured pacing. The cast is again superb [6] (Sigourney Weaver was nominated for Best Actress for her role). The change from one hidden alien to many quick-moving, visceral aliens is a great contrast to the first movie, as is altering the basic structure from horror to action. Indeed, Aliens is one of the best action movies ever made.

Here are some details that illustrate why these movies are so good:

"Bus Good, Train Bad"

by Conroy

Rendering of a "future" high-speed rail train in California

Sometimes exciting ideas are bad. Take the title quote, which I read in a recent Bloomberg article by Edward Glaeser the accomplished Harvard economist [1]. These four words, according to Glaeser, sum up the accepted wisdom gleaned from 40 years of transportation economics at Harvard. And they are directly at odds with one of the long-held – and long out-of-reach – goals of many American transportation planners: true high-speed rail (HSR in planning and transit lingo).

High Speed Rail in America
For many decades (if not longer) there has been a desire among transit advocates to connect America’s cities with a web of efficient, clean, fast trains. This transit mode would act as an environmentally friendly alternative to the automobiles that crowd urban highways and dirty the air, and to expensive, polluting planes. Advocates point to the successful HSR systems in Western Europe and Japan [2] and models for a future American system. Indeed, HSR does offer advantages over other transportation modes, but only under the right conditions. Those conditions include densely populated areas along the train route, relatively underdeveloped highway infrastructure, high gas prices, existing heavy passenger rail use, and relatively short distances. These conditions are needed because HSR becomes economically feasible when ridership is high. And ridership will only be high if it’s more cost effective for people to use HSR than it is to use other modes, or borrowing terms from economics, if the combination of cost (the price of a ticket) and duration (the time the trip takes) are lower than competing modes (road and air).

In Japan, where there are 65 million people living tightly along the 250 mile corridor between Tokyo and Osaka, HSR is an ideal solution. Similarly, the densely packed corridor in France between Paris and Lyon is a prime location. In Japan and France gas prices and population densities are high, intercity freeways are less extensive, and major urban areas are closely spaced. And even in these locations, HSR like other transit modes isn’t self-supporting. It requires government investment to fund the capital expense and support the high operating costs [3]. This investment is justified because of the high value of time saved by moving so many riders.

If you look at the United States, the conditions for HSR are far less favorable. Gas is cheap [4], the interstate highway system is vast, and excepting the Northeast Corridor between Washington and Boston [5], population centers are widely spaced across the continent. Today, on a national level, only about one half of one percent of passenger trips are made by train of any sort and just one tenth of one percent are taken on intercity rail. The Northeast Corridor is the most heavily used intercity passenger train route, but Amtrak’s semi-high-speed Acela train [6] deployed on that route only accounts for about three million trips annually. A number dwarfed by automobile trips on Interstate 95, the parallel freeway.

Despite these realities, the political support for HSR has grown in recent years. In 2009, as part of the much-touted, mid-recession American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, Congress included, at the President’s urging, $8 billion for intercity rail, with an emphasis on HSR. Since then the Federal Railroad Administration and many state-level transportation agencies have been studying potential routes all over the country. The furthest down the track in these efforts is California, which rather fancifully expects to start the building an HSR line later this year. Unfortunately for HSR advocates, numerous studies (prominent examples here and here) have demonstrated the massive flaws in California’s plan. Given the huge costs and time to develop HSR, and that funding and grass roots support is largely absent, HSR is likely to go nowhere in California or anywhere else (with the lone potential exception of the Northeast Corridor).

Baltimore on Screen

by Conroy

This week Grantland.com, ESPN’s self-styled “sports and pop-culture” offshoot, is hosting Smacketology [1] an interactive March-madness-style tournament where readers vote on matchups of 32 of the most memorable characters from the acclaimed HBO series The Wire. This tournament exists, I suppose, as a pop-culture anticipation of the upcoming NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament [2], but also because so many of the Grantland senior staff are semi-obsessed with the show, which to be fair, does boast an undeniably impressive roster of realistic, interesting characters. Why else invent this completely meaningless tournament based on a show that’s been off the air for several years?

Of course, just because it’s meaningless doesn’t mean people don’t have strong opinions. From who will prevail (the odds-on favorite [3] is Omar, the homosexual street vigilante), to who was “snubbed” (no Ellis Carver or Rhonda Pearlman?!), to how each character was seeded (Jimmy McNulty is just a “3” seed?). For me, this tournament is nothing more than a curiosity, but I do have one beef. It seems that the tournament committee (or whoever at Grantland put this thing together) made one massive, unforgivable omission, the biggest character of all, the show’s beating heart, the city of Baltimore.

Place as Character
And that leads me to two separate but related thoughts. First, the idea of place, of setting, as a principal character. The Baltimore shown in The Wire is as inseparable from the show as the main criminals and cops. We see the decaying underbelly of the city. The characters inhabit it; they create and are the products of its devitalized social milieu. Dirty streets, boarded-up houses, depressed stores, corners surrendered to thugs and drug dealers. We see the violence that rots the city’s poor (and largely black) neighborhoods. We see the effects of the corruption and bureaucratic malaise, the numbing inertia of large institutions that are incapable of arresting the long social and economic decline of huge parts of the city. This may all seem rather bleak, but the show is vibrant because of its universe of characters and because all those characters lived in a “real” place. A great deal of the show takes place outside, on the city streets, at the port, on rooftops, at neighborhood bars and parks. If the city plays a central role it’s because the show was almost entirely shot on location [4]. David Simon, a former Baltimore Sun writer and the show’s creator, knows Baltimore and its criminal street scene intimately. That realism is transferred to the screen. This is only one view of Baltimore, the saddest parts of the city, but what’s seen on the screen is more or less true.

Joyce immortalized in his Dublin

This reminds me of the way other places have been used to emphasize and enliven great art. A prime example is the Dublin of James Joyce’s stories and novels; Dublin is as much a character in Ulysses as Leopold Bloom or Stephan Dedalus. Joyce famously said, and I’m paraphrasing, that if Dublin were to vanish from the Earth he hoped it could be reconstructed brick-by-brick from the pages of his book. Just note the intricacy of how the Dubliners traverse and inhabit the city in the novel. Even if you’ve never seen Dublin, as I hadn’t when I first read the book, Joyce’s prose renders powerful images and especially powerful impressions in the mind; in the end, the story is inseparable from the place. Joyce’s stories and characters are universal, they convey the human condition, but they’re grounded in a time and place. They’re intertwined with the Dublin of the author’s youth. There are countless authors who, like Joyce, create character from setting, Faulkner’s Mississippi and Dickens’ London are a couple of prominent examples.

Jumping to a different medium, think of Martin Scorsese’s best films, they take place in New York, from Taxi Driver, to Raging Bull, and Goodfellas. And it’s not the glamorous high-rises of Wall Street or midtown Manhattan or the wealthy neighborhoods of the Upper West Side, but working-class sections of the Bronx and Queens; the rough, lonely night streets. His characters are New Yorkers. It’s hard to imagine Travis Bickle, the anonymous taxi driver, prowling the streets of any other city, and of any other city being as hostile and hard on him as 1970s New York. And as Henry Hill says in Goodfellas, “We grew up near the airport [5], it belonged to us.” Indeed the mid-level crimes and heists of Hill and his gangster friends never rise above or beyond the streets of their neighborhood.

Baltimore on Screen
But this leads me to my second thought. As effective as The Wire is in incorporating Baltimore into the story, it shows a pretty grim side of the city. My hometown appears simultaneously dysfunctional, dangerous, and genuinely soul-crushing. Realistic or not, it’s not really how I want the image of the city conveyed to the rest of the world. I admit to a certain possessiveness and defensiveness in how Baltimore is depicted in the media. I suspect this is true of a great many people who take pride in their cities but who live in places that are only sporadically shown in the mass media. Some cities are used so commonly as settings for shows, movies, novels, any fiction, that you can gain a fair appreciation for the nuances of the place: New York and Los Angeles most obviously. Other common settings include Chicago, Washington, Miami, Boston, and San Francisco. London and Paris are popular international locales.  But for cities like Baltimore, such exposure is intermittent and shows like The Wire cast an incomplete perspective.