A Visit to Viva House Soup Kitchen

A soup kitchen featured in the final season is actually a real place-and a rather special one. Marc visits Viva House, a Catholic Worker soup kitchen on the west side of Baltimore.

I have a lot of friends from out of town who love The Wire. I always kind of feel sorry for them because I feel like they aren’t getting the whole picture. Only someone really familiar with Baltimore can get all the inside jokes, references, and cameos that pepper the series. But sometimes the reference is arcane enough that not even Baltimoreans quite get what they are looking at. For example, how many people know that the soup kitchen Bubbles worked at in season five is a real place?

My co-producer Justin brought that up, and we decided that it would make a great podcast to go down and talk to the people who run that soup kitchen and learn about their experience being featured on The Wire. Their names are Brendan Walsh and Willa Bickham. They play themselves on television (well, sort of…listen to the podcast to find out more!) They are wonderful people and they have a lot of great things to say about Baltimore, social justice issues, and of course, The Wire.