Downtown Los Angeles by day looks like any other bustling metropolis. Merchants conducting business, people moving about laughing, eating, shopping with the Police ensuring security for all.

The Los Angeles Welfare Dept has a plan in place that when a homeless applicant is approved for assistance, they are placed in a Hotel (which is paid for 30 days) These Hotels are located throughout the LA downtown area known as “Skid Row”. I always thought that Skid Row was a street or boulevard; I was very surprised to find out that Skid Row is actually 50 city square blocks. Imagine all these homeless people peppered throughout this area.

Homelessness is caused by many things, economics, mental health issues or in some cases drug and/or alcohol abuse. There are cases where all three factors are present. Unfortunately, what I saw the most of were the crack cocaine users.

Imagine 50 square city blocks populated by crack addicts. On the first of the month, Welfare would distribute its assistance checks to all its recipients. I believe the amount was $300.00 some odd dollars. In LA the cheapest you can purchase crack is for $3.00.This amount would get you a thin wafer about the size of your thumbnail.
We will now take all these variables, add nightfall to the equation and you are now ready for a tour of Crack City USA.

Night has fallen and all the merchant shops are closed. The Police presence is gone and will be rarely seen until daybreak, there are no longer shoppers moving about. The people you do see are a far cry from the type seen during daylight hours. The atmosphere change is palpable; instinctively your guard comes up. The people you now see are hard to make out for they purposely keep to the shadows and never seem alone. Every once and awhile you catch a glint off metal, you realize that most of the people you see are carrying knives. Your night vision is interrupted by the intermittent flicker of lighter flames (like those of fireflies) in dark shadowy areas throughout your line of sight.

The Knife for some reason is the preferred weapon in this area. I bought a Marine Corps K-bar as soon as I got here because I too noticed that in one way or another, everyone was armed.
I thought these addicts animals, but I also had to come to grip with the fact that I was there too. I was also aware that I would not let myself be played with. God have mercy on the soul of whoever tried to hurt or steal from me. I would go down but, it would be fighting.
I thought myself different from all the rest, but yet, here I was. What was the difference? Did I think myself better because I could be a little more articulate? Here I was! Was I better because my clothes were cleaner? Here I was! Stupid me, I had to ask myself if I think them trash, then I too must be trash, because here I was, manipulated and controlled by the same substance. I found myself willing to cut whomever down for a piece of crack cocaine, just like everybody else here. My mind set is one of “I don’t give a damn”. I’m ashamed and humiliated by the depths I have sunk to. I find myself despairing,
maybe on these streets I can find what I am too much of a coward to do myself.

The difference between night and day is this, at night, those who have outlived their Welfare hotel stay now live in cardboard boxes in front of those very same business’s I mentioned earlier. They pull these boxes from who knows where and furnish them with blankets and candles. You can stand on any corner and look down the street only to see these cardboard condominiums lined up for as far as the eye can see. For heat they burn the trash contained within the city’s trash receptacles. It’s not uncommon to see men or women emerge from these flimsy shelters to relieve themselves on the curb in front of said dwellings. Pride is one of the first things to go. These people live to smoke crack cocaine, their numbers are so many that the City of Los Angeles has provided them with a Porta-Potty on every other corner. In essence the city has given them mini crack houses and copulation closets to keep them from brazenly doing it on the street (or so they had hoped)

This community’s economy is jumped started monthly by the Welfare check monies that are spent on crack and “strawberries” (west coast crack whores) by those that occupy the numerous hotels in the area. The rest make their living by any means possible, the goal is to smoke and keep smoking. There are a few religious organizations and rich “Bleeding Hearts’ that feel compelled by moral conviction or “show” to come down and give money away. They piss in the wind, so to speak.

Here in this City I saw many things, stabbings, inhumanities, and unspeakable horrors. The whole feel and look of this place at night was like what one would imagine a post nuclear holocaustic society to be. Everything was so surreal. It reminded me of a Mad Max movie. Everyone, living at their lowest most animalistic level.

Here God is Crack and Crack is God

I saw a “strawberry” pushed out a second floor window only to hit the ground, bounce up, spit some crack onto her hand and ask “anybody got a pipe?” (never mind her collar bone was protruding out her shoulder). She is now known as “Yo-yo”. Would you consider that insane?
Most People are so far removed from the reality of this world. Professionals study these things, they write their conclusions, get kudos from colleagues, get more grant monies but in the end, no one does diddily-squat. Putting people in jail/prison is not the answer either. The only time this social decay will be taken seriously is when this problem is in your face, with a knife at your throat, and you are being relieved of your purse/wallet.

Welcome to Crack City USA!