We just heard about the new HBO series, “Gentlemen of Leisure,” over the weekend, and are awfully intrigued. The show will feature a fortysomething pimp trying to get out of the game, but the allure of the life keeps sucking him back in. And yes, it’s set in Oakland. Now, the Trib reports, Mayor Ron Dellums is afraid that the series will present Oakland as, um, a hotbed of crime and prostitution. “The people of Oakland have come too far to have our city’s name trampled upon in the name of entertainment,” Dellums chief of staff David Chai told the Trib. And while many people hope that the show will treat Oakland with the same complexity as The Wire did with respect to Baltimore, at least one blogger, OakBook founder Alex Gronke, is ambivalent about the enterprise.
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