SKID ROW WALKATHON ...Downtown Los Angeles

Going to The Skid Row Artists Festival at Gladys Park and 6^th Street on Saturday, October 18.

    

Not knowing where Gladys Park is, I took the Metro train to Pershing Square (as a downtown friend advised) and started walking south along Spring Street. It was about 1:30 in the afternoon and I was nearly to Sixth Street when I saw two bicycle patrol officers.  I asked the closest one, who was white, where was the Skid Row Festival. He was unaware there was one (only in its 5^th year) but when I asked for Gladys Park they both seemed to know where it was and pointed me back to 5^th Street. This led me gradually into the depths of an area where shops became shabbier and finally almost non-existent.

As I walked, I observed how the sidewalks gradually became occupied by a motley assemblage of people – men, women, even some children – either hurrying by or lying on the shady side of the street. After a few blocks, I was suddenly accosted by the same bicycle cops. Now they wheeled up to me and said the park I wanted was up ahead. However, both were clearly concerned and the black officer warned me not to go in there.

“There’s no sign or sound of a festival” he said urgently, “and it’s a dangerous park. Don’t go in. You’ll be attacked!”

Stubborn New Yorker that I am, I assured them both I had been to worse (thinking of Bryant Park back in the dark drug ages), so they reluctantly let me go off and off I boldly went. There were actually two parks at the corner they indicated. One was a gated plaza in front of the Union Rescue Mission building and within its stately metal fence elderly people sat at neat tables. No festival there. The other park, diagonally across the street was ominous. Hundreds of men in large groups, some at gaming tables, all huge and hulking, full of sound and energy. No festival but hardly a place for this skinny white female.

As I paused at the green metal gates no one paid any attention to me but, clearly, stepping inside was not advisable. I stood there in a quandary – where was this damn festival if this is Gladys Park. I looked up and lo! above me in large metal letters it blared “San Julian Park!” Hey, those silly cops had sent me to the wrong park. Ok. So where the hell was Gladys?

I crossed the street and asked a young woman sitting dully on a wall outside a church. She waved vaguely to the south so I soldiered on down there. Now the buildings all seemed deserted and the streets packed with tenants. Hundreds of people covered the sidewalks, with couches, chairs, mattresses, even some with canopies. They paid me no heed, preoccupied with their own interests, some holding court with neighbors, some muttering to themselves in a mad dream, some sleeping, some sharing take-out food. I walked another block. More people, no sign of a park.

I was at a corner and there sat an elderly black man in a wheelchair. He appeared to be nonchalant in this setting so I stopped and asked him,

“Excuse me, do you know how I can get to Gladys Park?”

His eyes were a gentle light blue, intelligent eyes in a kindly face. He half smiled.

“You have to go over to Sixth Street. Then go left and walk about four to five blocks and its on your right.”

A teenage girl, dark-skinned, in dungarees and crisp sweatshirt, was walking quietly by us and he called out her name. She stopped and smiled a warm greeting to him before walking on. I saw this man was no hobo, he had class and, in another world, we could have had a chat and a cuppa tea to discuss events of the day. But we were on Skid Row, and I was just a visitor from another part of town. So, explaining that I was on the way to a festival, where my actors were going to perform, I thanked him and walked on in the direction he pointed.

By now I had traveled over a mile through reams of sadness and waste and I was suddenly overwhelmed by the thought that perhaps I was searching for a myth. That there could never be a festival for artists amid this desolation. I felt angry that people, all of them real people, were left to languish in such desperate poverty. I was tempted to turn back, surely none of my actors would be there if I was unable to find the place. Maybe there was no such place as Gladys Park. 

I was way past San Pedro Street when I heard the music. Drums, gospel singing, an uproarious festival of sound. There it was, Gladys Park, and there they were – my beautiful dedicated actors sitting on a bench, waiting for me to arrive. I heard someone say, “There’s Morna!” and the celebration commenced.