The restaurant/lounge and museum will stand in for Washington locations on the HBO pilot, which sounds a whole lot like Sex and a Different City. It will be produced by Sarah Jessica Parker and star Rachel Taylor, Amanda Walsh and Bitsie Tulloch.
"They were looking for something that would be bar/lounge space that was very hip," said Allison Parker-Abromitis, marketing director for the restaurant group that includes Pazo. "They looked in Washington and Baltimore. It's nice that Baltimore sort of won out over D.C. for that ultra-chic, cool space."
Pazo will close for filming one day early next month. Several servers, bartenders and kitchen staff will serve as extras, Executive Chef Michael Costa among them. Pazo food and drink could get cameos, too.
"Their prop guy has not told me which entrees he wants," Parker-Abromitis said. "I sent them our menu. We just launched a bunch of new cocktails, so we're hoping we'll get some cocktails featured."
As for the museum, it will stand in for some government building playing host to a party, said BMA spokeswoman Anne Mannix. Only exterior shots will be used.
"I think it's supposed to be kind of a swanky party, and there will be a long line of people trying to get in," Mannix said.
Mannix said she understood that the swanky party itself will be shot inside the Peabody Library. No one there, or with HBO, returned calls seeking comment.
We're still in this thing
And you thought nobody paid attention to blue, blue Maryland in the final days of the presidential campaign. The wonky electoral Web site FiveThirtyEight.com reported not one but two Baltimore-area references from a Barack Obama rally in Raleigh, N.C.
There was Sonja Sohn from The Wire, assuring the crowd that Obama would help people failed by all those Baltimore institutions they saw on the HBO series.
And there was former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, warning Obama supporters not to get too confident.
"Who was the most miserable person in the Olympics this year?" Kirk said. "It's the guy who thought he had the race won, and he lost by one one-hundredths of a second to Michael Phelps! We gotta be Michael Phelps!"
