On Wednesday night in Los Angeles, two famous Baltimoreans — a rising comedy star and a pop-culture luminary — finally met.

Stand-up comedian Stavros Halkias and the multi-hyphenate “Pope of Trash” John Waters were two of the featured guests on “Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney,” Netflix’s new live talk show.

“How come we’ve never met?” Waters asked Halkias.

“You’re the man,” he told the “Hairspray” writer-director. “I used to see you at Club Chuck.”

“OK, that’s where I still go,” Waters replied.

Ahh, the Smalltimore effect playing out on live TV. It’s hard not to love it.

The strange-for-strange’s-sake variety show had the feel of a series only in its fourth episode — “What is happening here?” asked Wanda Sykes, another comedian with Maryland ties, after Halkias speculated on public masturbation in the Supreme Court — but the moments between Halkias and Waters were the highlights. Here are three quick takeaways.

1. Waters showed a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer a night in Baltimore they wouldn’t forget.

When Halkias’ hometown neighborhood of Greektown came up, Waters lit up.

”The best lesbian bar was there. The best, scariest one ever called the Port in the Storm,” he said.

“I took Debbie Harry there,” Waters said of the Blondie lead singer. “She said it was the scariest bar she had been to in her life.”

2. Of course, Mulaney couldn’t help but bring up “The Wire.”

“Stavvy, you’re very ‘Wire’ Season 2,” the host said, referring to the stevedore-centric season that featured the shadowy organized crime leader, the Greek.

Though Halkias was just a teenager when that season aired on HBO in 2003, he had a personal connection to the production.

“They literally shot it in the restaurant where my mother was a waitress in,” he said. “I had a lot of crab cakes and calamari from there.”

3. Waters has a thing for anarchists.

The theme of the episode was squatters, those who illegally occupy someone else’s property, which led Mulaney to ask Waters if he’s “pro-landlord.”

“Well, I dated a squatter once,” the “Serial Mom” director said. “Somebody was walking down the street and said, ‘John Waters, can I live with you?’ I said yeah.” (Another fun detail: Waters mentioned he has an electric chair in the front hall of his home.)

There was one catch: “He couldn’t spend the night, though. He only could go squat. He couldn’t sleep in a building unless he broke in. He was an anarchist, so he was fun,” Waters said, to Halkias’ delight.

Then came the punchline: “Like Antifa, they have good outfits,” Waters said of anarchists’ appeal. “All the black, and the trash can with duct tape on it. They look kinda good.”