Skid Row

I do not have the energy to write everything I observed/learned about Skid Row today, so I am going to make a list of things I need to remember to write about tomorrow.

1) Toy District
2) The Soloist
3) SRO, LAMP, Union Rescue Mission
4) Community
5) Gentrification

Edit 8/20/2009

Ok! I'm ready now.

I work in Skid Row. That sounds totally badass/terrifying, but allow me to explain!

Skid Row is an officially recognized district in L.A. and if you looked at it on a map you'd see a very well defined section of town. However, the Skid Row culture is not so well or easily defined. I'm going to refer to the officially recognized boundaries of Skid Row as "Skid Row" and Skid Row culture, i.e. the rampant homelessness and drug use as Skid Row, sans quotes. To edit my earlier sentence, I work in "Skid Row."

As gentrification happens at a rapidly increasing pace downtown, the homeless population moves further east. Main street, where my office is, has historically been the western border of "Skid Row." Basically, in Los Angeles, the further west you go the nicer it gets (hence Dangerous Minds is set in East L.A. All of my judgements about this city are based on Dangerous Minds or L.A. Story). My office, however, is part of "Skid Row" in name only (though I'm still glad I get out of there before the sun sets). Right now I'm catching Skid Row at an odd transitional period. We went on a tour of Skid Row/"Skid Row" (which felt a little like going on a tour of like, the psych ward or a disaster area, but it was for a good cause (i.e. helping all us white kids understand a little better the level of poverty we'll be working with)) and it was pretty weird. I often saw a beat up old van with people living in it parked in between a new Audi and a new BMW. There are loft apartments that go for 4 or 5 thousand a month on the same block as Single Room Occupancy housing. SRO housing is emergency shelter housing. Only good for 30 days, it's where many chronically homeless people will crash on occasion, when they're not in the streets. When I saw these types of housing next to each other the difference between "Skid Row" and Skid Row really hit me.

Anyway, the area still sucks. I have never seen so many people just living in the streets. Cars don't seem to drive through it much, so everyone is just in the street. It's dirty, full of trash and it smells terrible but, as I was told by my co-worker who has been around forever (and, incidentally, loves Star Trek) it used to be a whole hell of a lot worse. We toured some SRO housing, a few transitional/substance abuse housing/counseling programs and a mission. The mission was huge and cavernous. All of these programs seem great and the people that work there are like, superheroes. I mean, these places really are in the heart of Skid Row, and they do serious stuff like needle exchanges and mental health counseling and free clinics and HIV/AIDS work. It makes my job seem like a piece of crumb cake! Skid Row needs a Harvey Dent more than a Batman, I decided. But it could probably use a Batman, too. The level of urban poverty I saw actually did remind me a little of a Gotham City Narrows type scenario (which shows how little experience I have in the less pleasant areas of American cities).

Another weird thing is that the "Skid Row" area is also called the Toy District, or at least the two districts overlap. There are all these banners on streetlights that say "Toy District" in cutesy font with like a teddy bear and blocks, but they're hanging above the most sorrowful scenes I've ever witnessed.

My first celebrity sighting was "The Soloist." There was that movie that came out about him, that I didn't see because I thought it looked preachy/dumb and I got the idea from the preview anyway. Jamie Fox plays this guy, The Soloist, who lives in Skid Row and he plays the violin and he is kickass at it. But he is also crazy! Robert Downey Jr. plays a reporter from the L.A. Times who becomes interested in this guy's story and it turns out he went to Julliard (my boss told me this stuff). Anyway, I saw him playing the cello a few blocks from work and his cello was wearing a bra that had a bunch of crazy stuff written on it!