Skid Row: Where Did All the People Go?
My blog is a day late because yesterday we moved our offices from Hollywood to a production facility across the 110 Freeway from downtown Los Angeles. Conveniently, at lunchtime, when Tania Rashid and I were looking to shoot some test footage, we drove over to Skid Row, now less than half a mile away. If you saw that 2005 piece that Max and Jason did with Tracey Chang and me, you’d know that LA’s Skid Row traditionally has been the largest in the US, a teeming, tumultuous locale.
When Tania and went down there a couple of hours ago, we were expecting that it would be even more packed, given that California is the one of the states hardest hit by America’s economic hard times, and here in southern California we’ve been hit particularly hard. But when we got there, the place looked much less populated than in years past. Maybe everyone was at a matinee of New Moon---mid-day last Friday, Grace Baek and I pulled into a small town up in the series for a shoot and saw a huge line outside the local movie theater, not something that you usually see in that environment. But more likely, they were somewhere else. The question is where? Since we were just shooting a test, we didn’t do a follow up investigation.
But there’s a question. Homelessness seems like something that increases with hard times. But searching on-line just now, I found an editorial from today’s Los Angeles Times that says that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority reports that homelessness in LA County is down 38% from 2007—when economic hard times began.
So here seems to be another example of why sometimes journalists are needed to investigate: There doesn’t seem to be a readily obvious explanation.
Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- There goes the neighborhood - Mitch Koss
- Eating on the run with Vanguard - Joanne Shen
- What Came Through the Wall - Mitch Koss
- Does porn have the answer? - Christof Putzel
- What world have we entered? - Mitch Koss
- Hey Electronic Arts, when you going to do a pirate video game? - Kaj Larsen
When Tania and went down there a couple of hours ago, we were expecting that it would be even more packed, given that California is the one of the states hardest hit by America’s economic hard times, and here in southern California we’ve been hit particularly hard. But when we got there, the place looked much less populated than in years past. Maybe everyone was at a matinee of New Moon---mid-day last Friday, Grace Baek and I pulled into a small town up in the series for a shoot and saw a huge line outside the local movie theater, not something that you usually see in that environment. But more likely, they were somewhere else. The question is where? Since we were just shooting a test, we didn’t do a follow up investigation.
But there’s a question. Homelessness seems like something that increases with hard times. But searching on-line just now, I found an editorial from today’s Los Angeles Times that says that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority reports that homelessness in LA County is down 38% from 2007—when economic hard times began.
So here seems to be another example of why sometimes journalists are needed to investigate: There doesn’t seem to be a readily obvious explanation.
Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- There goes the neighborhood - Mitch Koss
- Eating on the run with Vanguard - Joanne Shen
- What Came Through the Wall - Mitch Koss
- Does porn have the answer? - Christof Putzel
- What world have we entered? - Mitch Koss
- Hey Electronic Arts, when you going to do a pirate video game? - Kaj Larsen
-
- groups:
- vanguard blog
-
- tags:
- Recession, Los Angeles, Unemployment, Homeless, 8 more
