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Short Stuff: Skid Row (not the band) · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is short stuff.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Another short stuff, this one a bit crusadie and I
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: think important.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: That's right, because if you have ever driven through downtown
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Los Angeles, there's a good chance you may have, maybe
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: on purpose or maybe accidentally, turned into the heart of
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: skid Row, which is a fifty city block area roughly
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: in the heart of downtown. That is something that happened
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: to me when I lived there, and I had heard
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: of skid Row, but I had never seen it, and
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden I was in the middle of it,
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: and I was like, wow, I didn't quite know it
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: was like this down here.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we stayed nearby too, and I don't know if
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: we made it all the way there, but you could
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: tell it was very close by. And the hotel Cecil,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: which was made very famous by the death of Elisa Lamb,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: is right there in the midst of skid Row, and
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, it's been turned into housing
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: for the people who live on skid Row, and skid Row,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: we should say, finds his origin the term here in
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles. Los Angeles is like, there's skid rows in
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: just about every town, that's what they call them. But
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: the original skid row is in Los Angeles and it's
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: been there essentially as long as Los Angeles has.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sort of, I mean LA was there, but it
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: wasn't that LA.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: We know, yes, but okay, so it followed so quickly
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: on the heels of the establishment of LA that it's
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: practically part of it forever.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Well, it's definitely a part of it, fair enough. So
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: what is going on in skid Row is on house.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: People are living there as many as ten thousand, eleven thousand.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: It's kind of hard to get an exact number because
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: it fluctuates. A few thousand of those live in tent city,
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: the rest live in shelter, some live in SRO hotels,
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: single room occupancy hotels. The ones who are really lucky
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: are living in newer many apartments that have been constructed
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: by nonprofits. And that is what it's going on. About
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: twenty percent of them are US military veterans. Most are
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: black males, but there are people of all stripes on
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: skid row.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and like I said, it's been around a very
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: long time, but it's under threat actually, which you might
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: be like, well, isn't it always under threat? No, it
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: was actually protected for decades. We'll talk about the impending
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: threats and whether it's going to go through or not,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: but let's talk a little bit about the original history
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: of the thing, shall we.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think I see what you were saying
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: now about skid Row being there as long as LA
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: has been there, Thank you, But I just don't agree
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: because skid Row skid Row really was in nineteen thirties,
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: and LA started to become a thing at the turn
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: of the century. You know what I'm saying.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: We're going to hash this out one way or another
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: over the course of this episode of Calm.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: So in the eighteen seventies, LA at San Francisco is
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: getting all the California love with in terms of infrastructure
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: and stuff like that, namely railroads going in there, and
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: so LA was like, Hey, what about us down here,
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: We could use a railroad. So they said, yeah, it's
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: a good idea. So they built that railroad down to California,
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: and where that railroad ended is what is now right
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: in the middle of skid Row.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so, like you said, it wasn't skid Row yet,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: fair enough, I can agree with you on that, but
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: it has always been a bit of a rough and
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: tumble area.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: So the skid Row area that we know and love
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: now is actually a remnant, a relic of the area
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: that grew up around those railroad yards to house and
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: entertain the workers, almost entirely single young men who came
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: to Los Angeles along with the railroad to unload railcars,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: to load railcars, to box citrus, just do all the
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: things that you need to do around the rail yard.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: And some of them started hanging out around there, and
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: that's where the neighborhood that is now skid Row finally
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: started to develop.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: That's right. And because they were young men, basically there
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: were you know, bars and saloons and brothels, and they
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: had those single resident hotels. Very early on, oil came
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: to LA and that brought even more people. The automobile
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: industry really brought a lot more people in the film
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: industry brought more people in. Basically, you know, people were
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: migrating westward in great, great numbers, and this area where
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: that train ended just became overrun. You know, there weren't
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: enough jobs. All of a sudden you had people sleeping
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: in hobo encampments. You had people sleeping on the rail
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: yards and in the cars, and some of them if
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: they were lucky enough to get into one of those
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: you know KREDI SI our own hotels, did so. But
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: the nineteen thirties is when I mean it basically became
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: the skid row that we know it now, a permanent
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: underclass living there.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so I mean it was already the downtrodden.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: We're already starting to accumulate in skid row. But it
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: was not helped at all by the depression and the
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: dust bowl that pushed migration further west and made people
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: even more destitute. So that kind of sealed the deal.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Like you said, from the nineteen thirties onward, skid row
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: as we understand it today was born. And I say
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: we take a break and we come back and talks
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: more about skid row. Let's do it, okay, Chuck. So
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: the skid row population was greatly added to during the
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Second World War and the Korean War because Los Angeles
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: was a port of exit and entry back to the
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: United States for soldiers that were shipping out, and some
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: of them came back and were not prepared to go home.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: They had PTSD, they had developed drug addiction, they had
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: developed alcoholism, and they stuck around LA and they just
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: inevitably would migrate to skid Row. That's just kind of
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: where people have always been funneled. And as part of
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: urban renewal in the fifties and sixties, a lot of
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: other cities were like, we're just going to build a
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: highway through skid Row and that's how we're going to
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: get rid of it. In Los Angeles, the people leading
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: the city at the time said, we're not going to
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: do that. We're actually going to preserve this area for
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: the people who need it.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: That's right. That was in nineteen seventy six. They said,
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: you know, there needs to be a place for people.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: I think they labeled them extremely low income, but in
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: most cases it was probably no income. And you know,
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: there's a couple of ways to look at this, and
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: one way it was a more humanitarian policy than demolishing
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: it and building a highway through it. And another another
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: way to look at it is that it was a
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: part of a containment strategy, which is like, hey, don't
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: leave this fifty square block area, this is yours. It's
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: basically like escape from New York down there. But as
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: long as you stay in that area, then you know,
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: it's sort of like the not in my backyard thing.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: We just you know, stay in that area and everything
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: will be okay.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: I think Escape from LA would be more appropriate, don't
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: you the sequel?
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but that was so not good, was it?
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: I've never seen it?
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: Strangely a garbage movie considering how great a filmmaker Carpenter
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: was and how great Escape from New York was?
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Well? Was it because he substituted Kurt Russell with Hillary Swank?
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: That was it.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: I was wondering, you're gonna I was wondering what actor
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: was gonna come out of your mouth when you started
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: that sentence? Not what I expected.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: So that was the seventies. So that was pretty cool.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, yes, it depends on how you look at it.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: It was either a ruthless strategy or a humane solution.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: I think it's kind of both. Do we have to
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: think in such black and white terms?
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Agreed?
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: But this area now contained meant that the other area
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: of downtown could be refurbished and open for business, because
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: skid Row, as you might have imagined, chased the businesses
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: out of downtown but now that the people who lived
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: in skid Row were like, this is your spot, you
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: have to stay here. We're going to develop around you,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: and the area became gentrified. But the people were from
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: skid Row actually benefited from that because those single room
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: occupancy hotels that had been built over the last like
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: fifty sixty, seventy years or longer, we're starting to get
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: really down in the heels and threadbare. So they demolished
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: some of them, or they refurbished them, and they did
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: it for the residents of skid Row. They essentially gentrified
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: skid Row for the residents of skid Row in the
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: eighties and nineties.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they tried the Cecil Hotel in fact was I
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: think they finally finished it, but they were I think
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: they were refurbishing it and then it was shut down
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: because of COVID, and I think they eventually finished it.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: Even though the Cecil Hotel property is now up for
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: sale and there's a lot going on now. You know,
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: is skid Grow going to look this way in ten years?
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: Probably not. There are three big developments that are going on,
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: one of which is those SROs that you were talking
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: about from the eighties and nineties. That they helped build
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: back up, earn a lot of trouble financially and just
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: liveability goes because they're not putting the money into it
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: to keep them up. They were just built new and
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: have kind of become more dilapidated over the years. The
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: biggest of these providers, the skid Row Housing Trust, went
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: into a receivership last year, so that's not a good
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: sign of things to come.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: No, and there's a group called the AIDS Healthcare Foundation
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: that is trying to take over the skid Row Housing
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Trusts properties to keep them going, but apparently their own
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: single room occupancy building as they're having so much trouble
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: running it that the city actually stepped in to be like,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: we don't approve this deal. We don't want this deal
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: to happen. So it's not clear how this is going
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: to happen, but there does seem to be a progress
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: or a progression toward knocking down some of those buildings
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: and building up the high rises that again are being
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: built for the residents of skid Row, and if that happens,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: they're going to be much better off than they are
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: now because a single room occupancy hotel room is it's
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: a room, there's a bed, there's a desk, there's room
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: enough for you. There's no bathroom. There's a bathroom down
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: the hall. What they're building instead are many apartments to
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: where like, this is your home. This is your unit.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: You can stay in here and you don't have to
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: go out if you don't want to at all. There's
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: no shared bathroom. It's your spot. That's what they're trying
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: to build now, and if everybody can get it together,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: that's what they're going to have, like you said, in
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: the next ten years.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know, if you've ever visited la and
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: you went to the sort of newly crowned downtown arts
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: district which is now booming with bru pubs and restaurants
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: and mind bars and theaters and all the things that
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: you would expect in a gentrified downtown situation, and if
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: you're like, why this arts district is great, you may
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: not know that the skid Row was literally right next
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: to you. I don't know if you saw that show
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: on Apple TV, Platonic with Seth Rogan and Rose Byrne.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: No friend of the show, Janet Varney's also in it,
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: by the way, Okay, it's The whole thing basically is
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: earlyst seth Rogen and his brewpub is in the Arts
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: district and a lot of the filming takes place right there.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: So if you've seen that show, just blocks away, are
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: you know, ten thousand some people living on the streets.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: So it's just something to remember when you're being a
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: tourist in that town.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I hope to get to make it to a
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: group hub someday, I'll take you.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: We'll have a have a nice hoppy I PA.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: That sounds great.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: I wonder if they'll have one.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe there to dream. Yeah, you got
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: anything else about skid Row? I guess the main message
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: here is wait and see and cross your fingers and hope, hope, hope.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: That's right?
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, Well, then that's it for the short Stuff everybody,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: and that means short Stuff is out.
• 12:40
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• 12:43
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• 12:47
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