larimerstreet

Larimer Street

I came into Denver on the train a little better than a year ago. From the train station I caught a bus to go up to Fort Collins. The bus route took me through the back side of Denver, the skid road. I was surprised and appalled at what I saw. There were 26 square blocks bulldozed out. It looked like a bomb had hit, like a desert. There was one clock tower left standing.
That used to be Larimer Street, the center of pioneer Denver, the main street where all the big shops used to be. Being the oldest part of town it became the skids. If you're ever in a strange town and wondering where the skids are, start walking down hill. You'll wind up at the skids, because towns are built up at the bottom of a valley where the river is, or at the lowest point where the railroad comes in.
To me the skid road is the most human part of a city. You can find the best and the worst in city people. You find people helping each other and hurting each other. They hate each other and they love each other. You find the working class bars, you find the cheap flophouses where the old pensioners living on $60 a month can find a room. They've got to have a place like that; there's no other place for them. That's where you find the hock shop, the neighborhood fence, where you can unload some stolen merchandise you've picked up and get yourself through the world a couple more days.
I wouldn't say the skids were a pleasant place, just that they are a very human place. It's as you move out from the Skid Road toward the suburbs that things begin to look the same. People look the same, they talk the same, they dress the same, they live in the same kinds of houses, and they do pretty much the same sorts of things. When the urban renewal and the model cities come in and they tear down the skids, I wonder where they think these people are supposed to go, these people whose skills have run out on them, who are just old and have been turned out by the system.
We live in a system that uses up all kinds of things. It uses up air, it uses up water, it uses up trees and minerals. Our politicians have a lot to say about that, especially if they want to get votes. They never talk about how this system uses up people, how it will take somebody and milk them for their sweat, for their energy, and for their skill, and as soon as they can't deliver any more, just chuck them out on the back side of town.
If we're going to talk about ecology, in terms of our natural resources, we ought to talk about ecology in terms of our people. There isn't any difference between a skid road Salvation Army soup kitchen, a transient barracks like the Harbor Lights, and the automobile graveyard on the edge of town, or a tailing heap by a mine, or a slag dump by a mill. It's all waste.

Old Maxie the tailor is closing his doors,
There ain't nothing left in the second-hand stores;
You knocked down my pawn shop and the big Harbor Lights
And the old Chinese cafe that was open all night.

You ran out the hookers who worked on the street,
And you built a big club where the playboys can meet;
My bookie joint closed when your cops pulled a raid,
But you built a new hall for the stock market trade.

These little store keepers they don't stand a chance
With the big uptown bankers a-calling the dance,
With their suit-and-tie restaurants that's all owned by Greeks,
And the counterfeit hippies and their plastic boutiques.

Now I'm finding out there's just one kind of war -
It's the one going on 'tween the rich and the poor;
I don't know a lot about what you'd call class,
But the upper and middle can all kiss my ass.

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