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Rafael Alvarez
A lifelong Baltimorean, born on Bob Dylan's 17th birthday, Rafael Alvarez has spent the last 35 years writing about his hometown -- and when he can get away with it -- nothing else. The author of the epic "Orlo and Leini" stories, he is about to finish a history of The Tuerk House, a pioneering drug and alcohol rehab in Baltimore that was one of the first facilities for the poor when alcoholism was decriminalized in 1968.
Alvarez wrote for each of the first three seasons of the HBO drama, " The Wire," and was especially involved in season two, which focuses on the Baltimore waterfront. His book about the show -- the encyclopedic "The Wire: Truth Be Told" -- was published by Grove/Atlantic and was nominated for a 2011 Edgar Award.
His influences include the great Johnny Winter, Isaac Bashevis Singer and the art of Henry Ossawa Tanner.
Number of posts: 13
Email address: email
Facebook: Facebook
Posts by Rafael Alvarez:
Parts West
Silver State Summer Vacation 2012, Part 2
“The view was always fascinating, bewitching, entrancing. The eye was never tired of gazing, night or day, in calm or storm …” —Mark Twain
All sorts of things stand out on my 2012 Nevada summer vacation (more spider webs and dragon flies at the desolate and shimmering Walker Lake than I’ve ever seen in one place) from Las Vegas to Carson City and back again by way of Convict Lake and U.S. Route 395 in California.
Eating to Carson City
Feeding Your Face on Vacation in the Silver State
I recently returned to vegetarianism—not super strict, seafood allowed, the occasional cheat—after a 15 year glut of barbecued ribs, cheeseburgers and fried chicken, often as late as 11 p.m.
Diet and its exacting drill sergeant—exercise—have long been the last outposts of self-preservation. I long ago gave up this and shortly thereafter forsook that. But at 54, with a penchant for Pop Tarts and gas station hot dogs along with an aversion to vegetables, this new asceticism didn’t come a moment too soon.
It preceded by a fortnight a 4th of July road trip from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to Carson City…
Two Cents Worth
A Fistful of Pennies
I can’t imagine this happening in Baltimore.
Around the Fourth of July, I was drinking a “Blood Transfusion” cleanser shake (Thai coconut blended with spirulina and coconut water) and watching the hipsters line up outside of the Upright Citizens Brigade theater in Hollywood when a hail of pennies flew past my head.
The coins landed in the gutter outside of Real Raw Live at 5913 West Franklin Avenue, where I had purchased the drink for $5 and was enjoying it in a plastic chair next to the glass doors.
Discovering Choices
One Too Many
It’s sum-sum-summertime.
The cookouts and fireworks of July (hope you didn’t eat those deviled eggs that were left in the sun too long) have given way to the box-fan-in-the-window dog days of August.
It’s a time when lifelong memories are made, some beautiful. Others will forever stain that beauty like ink on your favorite blouse.
Covering the Waterfront
I Me Mine
“I always wrote about me when I could … ” — John Lennon, 1970
I’ve been fighting this fight a long time, from my earliest days as an unpaid rookie on Russell Smith’s fledgling City Paper in 1977 to a recent impasse with a Wall Street Journal editor.
If it happens to me, I think you should read about it. That’s how I make sense of the world.
The Voyage Home
Tinseltown Cab Fare
“I hate drunks, they are so obnoxious. I should know, I used to be one …”— Mary Carol Reilly on the fundamentals of being a cabbie.
She used to lie in bed at night, a 10-year-old kid imagining that one day she’d be a movie star. Though she never quite got the role—getting just close enough to feel the heat of the kliegs—the Mary Carol Reilly bio-pic is epic.
“The dreams helped me get to sleep,” said Reilly, a native Baltimorean whose family was riddled with alcoholism, mental illness, condescending haves, and subservient have-nots.
The Meat Man
Front Yard Barbecue in the Mississippi Delta
“Catch a cannonball, to take me down the line …” — The Band
Clarksdale, Miss. – First, a moment of silence for the soul of a great American, the Arkansas drummer and singer Levon Helm, dead of cancer on April 19, 2012.
Here in the upper Delta – home to the country’s finest blues museum – I began cruising for early afternoon ribs. I’d passed the morning some 75 miles north at Graceland, taking photos and buying postcards at the King’s Memphis manse and then headed south on the highway little Bobby Dylan revisited so well.
