Breakfasts with John Waters
at a Baltimore Greasy Spoon
Jimmie’s Restaurant
Around 1973, I started having breakfast with John Waters and other Dreamlanders (his talented artist friends) every Sunday morning at Jimmie’s Restaurant in Fells Point—a little “authentic” greasy spoon on the waterfront frequented by local bums, artists, and even the Mayor of Baltimore, William Donald Schaffer.
I met John when I worked as the sound man on his movie, FEMALE TROUBLE, and continued to help during the film’s edit The University of Maryland Baltimore County’s film department, where I had a full-time as the AV Technician. One of the students was helping John edit the film. I’d see John nearly every day for several months, and we got to know each other during regular chats—usually during lunch in the edit room. I discovered we both grew up in opposite ends of the notorious (for many reasons) Baltimore suburb, Towson, Maryland. We both had gone to private schools and college, and realized we had had mutual Towson friends at the time. We both loved movies, and I laughed at all of his stories, so we got along well. John invited me to hang out with him and his city artist friends at Bertha’s Fells Point bar. I had a ball, never having much time at artist dive bars. Soon, he suggested I also meet him and a few of his closest friends Sunday mornings at the little greasy spoon, Jimmy’s restaurant, in Fells Point, a historic 18th century village on the edge of the city with its own infrastructure of cheap row houses, neighborhood bars run by Polish and Russian immigrants, a movie theater, 100 year old food market, hardware stores, and East European bakeries, groceries and restaurants.
I still lived in suburban Towson, which was a 45 minute drive to Fells Point. John and the Dreamlanders and their city lives were a compelling change from suburban Towson, so, as a venturesome 22 year old I decided to try it. Only a few Dreamlanders came, because most couldn’t afford the couple of bucks for a short-order restaurant breakfast. Conversation was a rollicking round-table of snarky Baltimore commentaries and New York City gossip that John picked up from his many subscriptions to journals like Women’s Wear Daily, Variety, Andy Warhol’s Interview, and The Village Voice, etc. Sometimes, we’d see the Mayor sitting by himself in a corner having breakfast, and snicker at his slumming in this low-rent lunch counter- but how Baltimore!
Sunday breakfast at Jimmie’s was my entrée into Baltimore City’s microscopic Bohemian life. Between working every weekday on FEMALE TROUBLE, then spending every Friday night at Bertha’s , and closing Zeppie’s (a Polish neighborhood bar on the edge of Fells Point) at 2AM, I became pretty close friends with John and other artiste denizens of Fells Point. John and I started going to movies once or twice a week, usually a Russ Meyer tittie movie or a ‘70s blaxploitation flick at one of the big downtown black theaters where we were the only whites in the audience.
I finally decided to enter this new life completely, and moved from suburban Towson to a run-down 18th century Fells Point town house, which I bought for a $100 a month mortgage which Vince Peranio and Delores Deluxe helped furnish and decorate. I stayed in Fells Point maybe two years, before opportunities took me to New York City to broaden my filmmaking and cultural career. There I entered a new celebrity-spiced world, rubbing shoulders with Andy Warhol, Amos Poe, Jean-Michel Basquait, Debbie Harry, and many others, living in a Soho loft, and commuting by subway to a job at New Line Cinema’s Chelsea office. And it all started with breakfast at Jimmie’s.
Robert Maier is the author of the book, Low Budget Hell: Making Underground Movies with John Waters. He was Production Manager/Line Producer on Waters’ films Desperate Living, Polyester, and Hairspray. He now lives, researches, and writes in the Blue Ridge mountain village of Micaville, North Carolina.