My little adventure chasing John Waters’ Baltimore
So, I got this idea stuck in my head a while back about John Waters. You know, the filmmaker. Always liked his weird movies, the stuff he did in Baltimore. I kept thinking about the city itself, the backdrop for all that craziness. I kinda started calling my little obsession project ‘River City One John Waters’, just a name I cooked up for my plan to actually go see those places.
It wasn’t super complicated. I started digging around online, trying to pinpoint spots from movies like Hampden in Pecker or maybe even find the vibe from the older, grittier stuff. Made a little list, you know, just scribbled addresses and neighborhoods on a notepad. Didn’t book anything fancy, just decided to drive down for a couple of days and wander.
Packed a bag, got in the car, and just went. The drive itself was pretty normal. Getting into Baltimore, though, I started looking around, trying to match things up with pictures I’d seen or scenes I remembered. My first stop was Hampden. Walked up and down The Avenue, 36th Street. It was… well, it was a street. Lots of shops, some cool, some just regular. It had a certain feel, sure, but it wasn’t exactly like stepping into a movie set. Some parts felt right, quirky, but others were just everyday life happening.
Then I tried finding some other spots, vague locations I’d noted down for stuff like Pink Flamingos or Female Trouble. That got tricky.
- Some places, turns out, don’t really exist anymore or look totally different.
- Other spots were just regular houses on regular streets. People mowing lawns, getting groceries.
- Honestly, a lot of it was just driving through neighborhoods, looking, not finding much that screamed ‘John Waters filming location’.
It wasn’t exactly a disappointment, more like a reality check. The city felt real, lived-in. Not a theme park of trashy cinema, which, honestly, is probably how it should be.
What I kinda realized, walking around, was that the magic wasn’t necessarily in the specific buildings or street corners. It was more about the overall atmosphere Waters captured, that mix of the bizarre and the totally mundane sitting side-by-side. You could see hints of it, maybe in a weird lawn decoration here, or an odd storefront there, but mostly it was just Baltimore being Baltimore. A regular city where some really wild movies happened to be made.
So, my ‘River City One’ trip wasn’t about finding exact replicas of movie scenes. It ended up being more about just experiencing the place, the actual city. Seeing the normal parts, the slightly weird parts, the parts that have changed. It grounded the films a bit, made them feel less like fantasy and more like stories pulled from a real, quirky place. Left feeling like I understood his work a little better, not by finding the exact spots, but by just seeing the environment they came out of. Just a regular trip, really, but it scratched that itch I had.
