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A skid row or skid road is a run-down or dilapidated urban area with a large, impoverished population. The term originally referred literally to a path along which workingmen skidded logs. Its current sense appears to have originated in the Pacific Northwest.¹ Examples are Pioneer Square, Seattle, Washington,² Skid Row in Los Angeles, San Francisco's Tenderloin District, and the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver.

Origins

The term 'skid road' dates back to the 19th century, when it referred to a corduroy road made of logs, used to skid or drag logs through woods and bog.¹ The term was in common usage in the mid-1800s and came to refer not just to the corduroy roads themselves, but to logging camps and mills all along the Pacific Coast.³ The source of the term as an urban-landscape reference is heavily debated, and is generally identified as originating in either Vancouver or Seattle.¹

Seattle

Seattle's historic Skid Road district (now better known as Pioneer Square) centers on Yesler Way. This road is often said to have been a "skid road" in the literal sense serving a saw mill owned by Henry Yesler, though this seems unlikely to be the case as the topography at the time was unsuited to such use.³

Murray Morgan, in his 1951 book Skid Road, described how the loggers spent the summers in the mountains cutting down trees and how the winter snow and mud hampered operations. The out-of-work loggers would hang out on Skid Road hoping to find work and would often run out of money, sleep on the streets, and find themselves reduced to begging. This is where the connection between the operation of skidding logs and being poor and unemployed originated.

However, the term in its modern sense did not become locally popular until the early 20th century, when the Rev. Mark A. Matthews, popularized (and possibly originated) the current sense of the term "Skid Road" in his sermons.³ The Seattle-area Presbyterian minister and ardent prohibitionist regularly used the term in his sermons, and was explicit about his etymology: "Yesler Way was once a skid road down which logs were pushed to Henry Yesler's sawmill on the waterfront. Today it is a skid road down which human souls go sliding to hell!"⁴

"Skid row" is most likely a corruption coming from areas outside of the term's region of origin.^{citation needed}

Vancouver

The 100-block of East Hastings Street in Vancouver, British Columbia, the heart of that city's "skid road" neighborhood, lies on a historical skid road. The Vancouver Skid Road was part of a complex of such roads in the dense forests surrounding the Hastings Mill and adjacent to the settlement of Granville, Burrard Inlet (Gastown).⁵

The city began as a sawmill settlement called Granville, in the early 1870s.⁶ By at least the 1950s, "Skid Road" was commonly used to describe the more dilapidated areas in the city's Downtown Eastside,⁷ which is focused on the original "strip" along East Hastings Street due to a concentration of single room occupancy hotels (SROs) and associated drinking establishments in the area. The area's seedy origins date back to the early concentration of saloons in pre-Canadian Prohibition (1915-1919) and its popularity with loggers, miners and fishermen whose work was seasonal and who spent their salaries in the area's cheap accommodations and public houses.

Opium and heroin use became popular early on; Vancouver was for many years the main port-of-entry for the North American opium supply. During the Great Depression, the railway right-of-ways and other vacant lots in the area were thronged by the unemployed and poor, and the pattern of social decay became well-established. In the 1970s, the endemic alcohol and poverty problems in the area were exacerbated by the expansion of the drug trade, with crack cocaine becoming high-profile in the 1980s as well as a reconcentration of the prostitution trade in the area because of the relocation of hooker strolls in conjunction with city policy for Expo 86.

A portion of Vancouver's Skid Row, Gastown, has also been gentrified; however it is in a difficult coexistence with the nearby impoverished Downtown Eastside along East Hastings Street. Downtown Eastside is infamous for its open drug trade, drug-related deaths (Vancouver's Skid Row has the highest per capita heroin-related deaths in the entire North American continent), prostitution and the highest rate of HIV and Hepatitis C infection in North America.^{citation needed}

The poorest urban area in Canada,⁸ it is wedged between Downtown, Chinatown and Gastown. These areas are frequented by tourists, and East Hastings Street is a major thoroughfare. These avenues of exposure make the Downtown Eastside a highly visible example of a skid row. The Downtown Eastside (sometimes abbreviated D.T.E.S.) is also home to Insite, the only legal intravenous drug safe injection site in Canada, part of a harm reduction policy aimed at helping the area's drug addicted residents.

Los Angeles

Los Angeles's Skid Row, in an area of Downtown Los Angeles, formally known as Central City East, has a stable population of transient persons (homeless) in the United States.^{citation needed} Informal population estimates range from 7,000 to 8,000.^{citation needed} L.A.'s Skid Row is sometimes called "the Nickel", referring to a section of Fifth Street.⁹

Several of the city's homeless and social-service providers (such as Weingart Center Association,Volunteers of America, Frontline Foundation, Midnight Mission, Union Rescue Mission and Downtown Women's Center) are based in Skid Row. While downtown Los Angeles has experienced a recent revitalization, developers have mostly neglected Skid Row.^{citation needed} Between 2005 and 2007, several local hospitals and suburban law-enforcement agencies were accused by Los Angeles Police Department and other officials of transporting those homeless people in their care to Skid Row.¹⁰¹¹

The name Skid Row is sufficiently official that the fire apparatus at LAFD Fire Station # 9, the fire station that serves the neighborhood, have historically^when? had "Skid Row" emblazoned on their sides.^{citation needed} On 1 June 2006, the Los Angeles Times reported^{citation needed} that fire officials plan to change the legend on the vehicles to read "Central City East". Many residents support the change, but it is opposed by firefighters and some residents who take pride in the sense that they live in a tough place.¹²

In recent years, the Safer City Initiative set to clean up Skid Row was enacted by the city and police department and has resulted in dramatic changes in the area.^{citation needed} Los Angeles residents dispute the effectiveness of such efforts. Skid Road is said to be America's only 3rd world city.

San Francisco

O'Farrell Street in the Tenderloin section of downtown San Francisco, near Union Square

The Tenderloin neighborhood is a small, dense neighborhood near downtown San Francisco. In addition to its rich history and diverse and artistic community^{citation needed}, there is significant poverty, homelessness, and crime.^{citation needed}

It is known for its immigrant populations, single room occupancy hotels, ethnic restaurants, bars and clubs, alternative arts scene, large homeless population, public transit and close proximity to Union Square, the Financial District, and Civic Center.^{citation needed} The 2000 census reported a population of 28,991 persons, with a population density of 44,408/mi² (17,146/km²), in the Tenderloin's 94102 Zip Code Tabulation Area, which also includes the nearby Hayes Valley neighborhood.¹³

Musical usage

• The term was memorialized in the song "Skid Row" from the musical Little Shop of Horrors. In the 1960 original motion picture The Little Shop of Horrors are featured cinematic shots of Fifth Street with many interior scenes filmed on soundstages.^{citation needed}
• "Skid Row" is the name of a country song performed by Merle Haggard.
• "Skid Row" is the name of an American Heavy Metal band formed in New Jersey.
• "Skid Row" is also the name of a Dublin, Ireland-based blues-rock band from the late 1960s and early 1970s that included such musicians as singer Phil Lynott and guitarist Gary Moore both who later were part of Thin Lizzy. The Heavy Metal band's name was inspired by this group.
• Kurt Cobain playing in a band that at the time had no name came up with the name "Skid Row" to put on the marquee at a gig on the spur of the moment. That band's name would change frequently after that. He would later go on to form Nirvana.¹⁴
• 'Skidrow' is the title of a playable multiplayer map in the videogame Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Its design takes a very similar appearance to a typical skid row.

See also

• Stingaree, San Diego
• Skidder
• Homeless dumping
• Deinstitutionalisation

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Holbrook, Stewart H. (1961), Yankee Loggers, New York: International Paper Company .
• Newell, Gordon (1956), Totem Tales of Old Seattle, Seattle: Superior Publishing Company .
• Morgan, Murray (1960), Skid Road, Ballantine Books  (revised edition; first edition was 1951).

External links

• Some Seattle history
• Pioneer Square history
• Guardian Article