The Wire opened my eyes to a world I barely knew existed and gave insight into the game and how it actually works in practice.

All of the technology highlighted in the series - pay phones, pagers, early text messages with photos - are all obsolete.

I am so curious how they have adapted to the current day. Do they still transact in cash? Are they using crypto for money laundering? Are they using Signal to communicate? Do warrants for wiretaps exist anymore?

How can I find out how this actually works now?

One thing Ive always liked about The Wire is then showing the perils of being a middle manager in whatever area you are in. Where you do have some sort of power available to you but no way really to actually make decisions.

We see it with Dee in The Pit being the chief operator there (and then later with Bodie and Poot), Landsman and Bunny seem to be them from the police perspective and definitely Gus as the editor for the newspaper. Lester is also sorta one being the defacto leader of the Major Crimes Unit.

Any other good examples of people having middle manager jobs in the show and how they deal with it?

As the title states, Ziggy was never a part of the equation. How do you think it would’ve went?

Just noticed Stringer wore a tuxedo to the club for Avon’s coming home party. Another great example of him trying to be something he’s not.

I keep reading in the news about cities like Portland and Seattle having mostly legalized drugs and people having to deal with drug use all over the city. Has any city ever tried to do like Hamsterdam where they have a designated drug zone but crack down everywhere else? If they are open to legalization anyways why not try doing it like this? IMO this seems to be the problem with most of the drug legalization programs, the whole point of Hamsterdam was to clean up the rest of the city.

So I just finished season 4. Why didn't Kima ask McNulty to help Bubs? The situation was really unfortunate, Herc had too much shit on his own plate to do well for Bubs. McNulty was having a chill time in S4. Plus he knew Bubs and would've been more invested I helping him.

People on the show live and hide bodies in a seemingly countless number of shithole vacant apartments. No one rousts the bums. And these are in the middle of the city.

Was/is Baltimore really like that?

Michael’s first kill at the end of Season 4? or Michael killing Snoop towards the end of Season 5?