What I Learned Today

[glatt]

Today I learned that Skid Row is a real place, and not just the imaginary setting of a cautionary tale told by my teachers years ago, explaining where I will end up if I don't study hard. The teachers told tales of people sleeping in the gutter, with empty booze bottles still in hand.

How did I find it? I came across a link of old photos of Los Angeles, and even though I don't know Los Angeles well at all, I was looking through them. I went to Google Earth to see if any of these old buildings were still there. And as I zoomed in to the historic old section of LA, near city hall, I saw a red dot a few blocks away that said "Skid Row."

If you zoom in and enter Street View, this is what you see:



According to the Wikipedia page, it's got one of the largest stable homeless populations in the US, with 3-6K homeless.

It's amazing to me that it hasn't been gentrified. It's held the same role for over a century and is only blocks from the center of LA. I'd think it would be prime real estate that would be snatched up by developers and turned into office buildings and malls.