GOOD Magazine: On Skid Row, Part 1 - Introduction

This is the lay of the land on Skid Row in Los Angeles. I wrote a series of cover stories for the LA Weekly after moving to a loft there. The fifty block area in downtown that police chief Bratton told me was "the worst social disaster in America" is also a community of people in an accelerated transformation. Some are recovering from deep wounds. Some are too far gone. The healing takes on many forms... sometimes death. There are a lot of layers to the geography that reveals itself to be microcosmic of American society in many ways. There's a lot of suffering in the shadows of skyscrapers of the financial district in the "human zoo" that exists in down town Los Angeles. Welcome to Skid Row.

For more information about Sam and his "Skid Row" video series, be sure to check out his MySpace profile. Also, read his recent interview with the AWEARNESS Blog, in which he describes the true scope of the homelessness problem on Skid Row.