5th & Main

One block from where I live is an intersection known to locals as "the Nickel". The rest of the world knows it as Los Angeles’s "Skid Row". When I first moved to downtown, if you had to walk through the Nickel you did it as quickly as possible doing your best to avoid eye contact with anyone. As you hustled through this open-air drug market on your way to anywhere but there the sites and sounds were astounding. People pissing and shitting in the street. Thirty to forty destitute men sitting against a wall openly smoking crack or speed. Sometimes shooting heroin. Mentally ill men and women screaming at the top of their lungs at everyone and no one. Pimps, hookers, gangsters, dealers, addicts, homeless, black, white, brown, old and young all doing whatever it is you do when you've hit rock bottom and see no way out. It's hard for anyone who hasn't experienced the Nickel firsthand to really comprehend or believe that a place like this exists in a city as wealthy as Los Angeles.
So my good friend and local artist/poet Richard McDowell and I decided that we'd take my 4x5 Linhoff down the block and see who we could meet. We set up against an old wall and waited. The dealers stared at us from across the street with curiosity and a bit of menace. Several aggressive addicts walked by yelling "mother fuckin police" or politely smiled saying "good day officers". Then the woman in this first image came up to us acting really nervous asking us what we were doing. We said that we were just making portraits of anyone who would let us photograph them. She said "you can take my picture for a dollar." It really wasn't in my plan to pay anyone but said, "Sure I'll give you a dollar". She was really nervous, obviously a crack addict and probably a prostitute. I shot about 4 sheets of film before she stepped away from the camera and asked for her dollar. She took the dollar quickly and took off just as quick. It felt illicit, like she had just turned a trick and wanted to get away as fast as possible in case the cops were around. We made a few more portraits of some folks that were curious but I was so nervous that we were gonna get jumped I didn't make any images that were that good. Then the guy in the second image came up and stood in front on the camera. He didn't look at us or say anything to us but he was talking or mumbling. Whatever it was I couldn't understand a word. He was high, really dirty, and ill. I loaded a film holder into the back of the camera and began shooting. On the third or forth sheet I began to hear what he was saying. Like a mantra, over and over he was saying, "fuck you white man, fuck you white man, fuck you white man, fuck you white man, fuck you white man" and grimacing into the camera. I just kinda looked at him and listened for a bit not shooting. Then, as suddenly as he showed up, he turned and walked off.
At that point I decided that my nervous system had had enough and we packed it up.
Not long after that the city decided that they were going to "clean up' skid row which meant that the rapid gentrification that had been happening around downtown had made it's way to 5th and Main and that this little piece of hell on earth was soon going to be worth something. Cleaning up basically meant arresting everyone or pushing them farther east toward the river. In the last year The Nickel has changed a lot. It's now full of art galleries and cafes, and you can walk on through with relative safety…even at night. It still has an edge and some sketchy characters, but it's nothing like it was when these pictures were made a few years ago. A long conversation could be had about this place and this experience and it could go in all sorts of directions but I've written enough.