Talk:Skid row

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WHat is there apart from the band? -- Tarquin

The original meaning of the term -- the place where logs roll down a hill and into the water for lumberjacks to move them down to the mill. Or the second meaning of the term -- the bad part of town. -- Zoe

That would be skid row. --mav

This is the same as red dwarf(stellar object)/Red Dwarf (television)(scifi sitcom) and quantum leap(physics term)/Quantum Leap(scifi drama). --mav

I don't see that at all. Skid Row would have two capital letters no matter what the context. -- Zoe

Why? The other contexts are not proper nouns but just regular nouns. --mav

They're place names. -- Zoe

You misunderstand - they are place name types. For example one can talk about the skid row in Los Angeles (note lower case). But the proper name of the place would be Los Angles Skid Row, not just Skid Row. --mav

I disagree, but I'm not going to press it since we haven't had to deal with it up to this time. I'm sure it WILL come up. So, what about the original one, in Seattle? -- Zoe

IMO opinion when somebody writes Skid Row (note caps) they almost always are talking about the band. Therefore dominant usage wins. The name of the skid row in Seattle would be Seattle's Skid Row in the same way as there is a San Francisco's China Town. Make a disambiguation block at the top of this page. --mav
Mav is right, "Skid Row" is the title or formal name of a spacific place, while "skid row" is a type of place that could be named something else. Jake b 04:13, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I have never heard of the band.. sorry. For me the dominant usage is the run-down area and the Little Shop of Horrors song! Zargulon 08:51, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

I concur with Zargulon and Zoe, and I disagree with mav. Yes, skid row refers to the generic concept of a run-down area for homeless people, but Skid Row in caps, as used by most journalists, usually refers to a well-known particular Skid Row. The largest and most well-known Skid Row is Skid Row in Los Angeles. The band is obscure, as are most metal bands, due to the fact that most of them lack street cred, as opposed to people with genuine issues to sing about, like 50 Cent. It's true that the band is the first thing that comes up on Google under "skid row," but most of those Web sites (including the band's own Web site) would fail to qualify as reliable sources as to its popularity or notability.

As a better measure of the band's notability, I ran a search on the 46 million articles in InfoTrac OneFile, which your local public library should have access to unless your local library is a total joke (most English-speaking North American public libraries have InfoTrac access). Nearly all the 2,114 hits were about Skid Rows (with capitalization) in Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, and New York. And we're talking about articles in well-established publications, like U.S. News and World Report, Time, Newsweek, Variety, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, etc. If this Skid Row band is getting any media coverage, it must be in metal-specific magazines so tiny that they aren't even carried by InfoTrac (which carries the full text of every major magazine in North America back to 1980 plus most smaller ones). --Coolcaesar 07:21, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Skid Row, the band.

Skid Row is also a band, fronted by Sebastian Bach. Classified as 80's hairmetal, but also loved by every genre from classical rock, to punk.

[edit] The Real Skid Row is located in Downtown Los Angeles

You can read the hell we go through at http://Robertocarbajal.itgo.com Hope to never see you there.

This isn't a pissing contest as to which Skid Row is the "real" one. LA's may be horrendous, but until you've seen East Hastings Street Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (one of the two original Skid Roads, with Seattle's Yesler Way) don't presume that LA's is any worse. I've had visitors to the city from New York and Chicago express amazement at the highly-visible conditions in "our" Skid Road/Row. LA may have borrowed the name Skid Row, as have countless other cities across North America as the term is now idiomatic in English, as is its derivative "on the skids". But LA wasn't even a twinkle in Cecil B. deMille's eye when Vancouver's and Seattle's residents coined the name Skid Road for the back-end of their rough little settlements (1860s, roughly). And BTW the form "Skid Row" is decidedly a Britishism, as a "row" is a British term for a street lined by houses/rowhouses, or perhaps situated on a path along a hedgerow; its original form would appear to have been Skid Road, after the method of building "roads" out of logs to skid freight over the surface of; and the Skid Row adaptation of that is likely British Columbian in ultimate derivation because of the heavy British flavour of Vancouver's dialect, especially from 1885-1914 (the opening of the railway to WWI) when the city's 4/5 male population was decidedly British-majority, and among that overwhelmingly Scots. I can't see the "row" adaption emerging in American English by itself, except perhaps by consonantal laziness dropping the final 'd' off 'Road'.Skookum1 22:35, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Sad how canadians will argue about anything to pretend their silly little country has any usefulness.Djgranados (talk) 06:46, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

And just to be clear, because nobody on this talk page has spelled it out; the caps version Skid Row, derived from Skid Road, was yes originally Yesler Way in Seattle and, near-simultaneously (dates are uncertain) it was what is now the 100 block East Hastings in Vancouver - still the "heart of darkness" in that city, and notoriously so as explained previously just above. Even Angelelos are shocked, but that's not the point. The real Skid Row/Road(s) were/are Yesler Way (although Pioneer Square-1st Ave @ Pine is "the skids" now) and, to this day, Hastings Street. The name comes from corduroy roads that logs were "skidded" on - dragged over, basically, or in the case of Yesler or Hastings, the slope would be used to roll them down. For some reason at both locations is where a lot of bars and hookers and "bachelors hall" SRO-type hotel accommodations concentrated, and set the model for elsewhere (no kidding); in the old days it was injured/retired loggers and miners mostly into booze, sometimes opium; now it's.....well, hell, I guess.Skookum1 06:39, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
That's interesting. I've always heard that the original Skid Row/Road was West Burnside in Portland, Oregon because it was the way the logs cut in the West Hills were skidded down to the Willamette. And the neighborhood below NW 14th was very raw as recently as 35 years ago, before Powell's Books was more than Just Another Used Book Store. I'll have to find some cites beyond pointing the incredulous to read Stewart Holbrook's numerous publications, or mentioning Portland's other claim to fame -- a seaport notorious for Shanghaiing sailors. -- llywrch 16:28, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] disambig

I'd prefer a disambig page for all the Skid Row related articles. I came here looking for the band (with both caps) and was redirected to this one with the small r. Let's just make the first page disambig since there are so many uses for the term. For some of the users here it's a certain street, but for me it's always been the band. *shrug* So let's disambig it. Mithridates 12:26, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I completely disagree. Skid Row (heavy metal band) has way less hit results than this article of Skid Row. Even if you deduct the number of hits from Skid Row (heavy metal band) from Skid Row its still considerably more. Skid Row appears in many dictionaries including the Oxford English Dictionary. I would say an historic article with more popularity should take president over a popular culture article. The Disambig link is very clear at the top. Furthermore if you do a google test the search results are very clear as to which is the most talked about on the internet. Mkdwtalk 06:21, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Erg, let's see, the band gets its name from the concept of Skid Row, but that's not as important as the band itself? When a phrase meaning something becomes a name for a product, you know the end of the world has come....Must be a generational thing...no offense, Mithridates, but think about it; the primary meaning is what the band was meaning when they chose their name; as far as I've heard they haven't trademarked the phrase (?? perhaps in incorporation name, I guess, but...). Skid Row/Road means one certain thing to a whole bunch of people who've never heard of the band; but they have heard of the wrong side of the tracks, the place where the bums and the junkies call home, "the skids". I know the band had heard of it when they chose their name, if only as a common phrase and not for its history.Skookum1 06:27, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vancouver BC vs Vancouver Wa.

It does not seem to me that the discussion about the origins of "Vancouver" are particularily relevant to the definition of "skid road". It is fine to have a link from the first (or all) "Vancouver"s to the article about that city. Vancouver Washington (a smallish city across the Columbia River from Portland Oregon) does not add any content to this article.

  steve --129.128.25.4 06:47, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
Well actually the origins of the phrase is more important in an encyclopedic sense. As per WP:NOT if this article was simply a definition it would be deleted on site. "Wikipedia is not a dictionary." Vancouver, Washington adds a huge amount to this article as its likely the place of origin for the term. An encyclopedia article about a single phrase is usually primarily about its term, usage, and relevence to contemporary times. I couldn't see any other direction this article could go with out being either deleted or off-topic. Mkdwtalk 11:12, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm amazed no Canadian has seen this thread. Vancouver, Washington has nothing to do with this word; IIRC, 19th-century Vancouver was surrounded by farmland, & the nearest mills on that side of the Columbia would have been in either Camas/Washougal or Kelso. The Vancouver referred to in the article is the much larger city -- and major Canadian seaport -- far to the north of this suburb of Portland. Someone needs to keep this embarassing confusion out of the article. -- llywrch 16:34, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tidying

I removed the Vancouver, Washington reference which ahd snuck its way in here, and have tried to tidy up the place/logic references, although still much to be done to keep the article from rambling back and forth; as with many articles esp re the Pacific Northwest there's a tendency for Americans (ahem) to overbuild their sections or as in the VAncouver WA case start adding out-of-context items (which is obviously why the confusion re Vancouver WA as had been added). In ref to one item I don't have time to either find a cite (or a cite-fix for, 'cause I think it's wrong):

Murray Cromwell Morgan, in his 1952 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.[citation needed] 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 beg for food or money. This is where the connection between the operation of skidding logs and being poor and unemployed originated.[citation needed]

No; on what is now Hastings Street it was because of a concentration of bordellos, bars, loggers employment services, and other amenities for the working population; the begging thing didn't come along until the Depressions of the 1900s-10s and was accelerated in the 1930s; until the Great War that area had been part of a vibrant downtown, and as those of us old enough to remember remained so until the 1960s; "skid row/road" then applied more to areas north of it, towareds the water; the whole of the area had been skid roads, by the way, in the logging sense. It had begun its decay into SROs and the attached bars (because of BC liquor licensing for hotels) as the shift from loggers and miners coming in looking for a place to drink and slut and sleep slacked off and also becaue the area where injured/retired loggers and other workers would settle becvause of the SROs; the specific assocation of Skid Row with Hastings is a later development, although supposedly it was the skid road there that cause the word to be coined (although as noted, again, skid roads were the norm in everywhere but Gastown- which was built on boardwalks, if anything); not sure what citatiosn to use here other than Major Matthews (see Gastown refs section) and other main Vancou efr histories; Cromwell Morgan's logic is off to me; recounting hte past in terms of current paradigms never works, and his analysis is particularly shallow, and misses the hobo jungles of the '30s completely (which spanned the area along hte CPR cut, which now diagonal alspace —Preceding unsigned comment added by Skookum1 (talk • contribs) 18:19, 27 July 2007

First, did you finish writing your post, Skookum1?
Second, some of those facts must be wrong -- or incomplete. Setting aside where the term "Skid Row" originated, William Speidel in his Sons of the Profits (an irreverent history of the making of Seattle) furnishes proof that "Skid Row" was applied to Yesler Street by 1880 (p. 300). That would mean if the term originated in Vancouver, then it was before 1880 -- not the 1st decade of the 20th century. There was a settlement in the Vancouver (as in BC) area at least as the early as 1860s, so Speidel's reference does not exclude the word from originating in Vancouver. But it needs more evidence to prove. -- llywrch 05:17, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I've done my best to clear up the mess. Doubtless more could be done, but I think the article is now unembarrassing. - Jmabel | Talk 02:23, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

To Llywrch: Vancouver's beginnings are in the mid-1860s with the foundation of the Hastings Mill, which was moved from Brockton Point (where currents made docking difficult for ships) to the north end of Dunlevy, and "officially" Gastown was born on September 1, 1867, when Gassy Jack Deighton rowed around into the inlet to found his bar at what is now Maple Tree Square at Carrall and Water/Powell. Other entrepreneurs quickly followed and the "town" was in its beginnings by the spring of 1868; the townsite formally wasn't laid out until about 1870 when it was dubbed "Granville, B.I." (Burrard Inlet, a designation shared by Moodyville and Barnet and a few other spots) by the post office and the govt survey crews; Hastings Street from Carrall to Cambie was part of the townsite, and it was the location of the original bordellos - rough cabins and tents in the woods; the low hill from what is now Main Street down to Carrall was not a surveyed road, but the "skid road" in question, and that's still the core of the hard-core. But yes, when the term came into use is not known specifically, and it may be that Seattle's usage is older, and became translated to Gastown/Vancouver's equivalent; Granville/Gastown mushroomed in the early 1880s and the extended streets beyond the townsite (all six blocks of it) were created around that time, including Hastings east of Carrall (Carrall is the 00-block between East and West Hastings); so it's hard to say exactly if Seattle is first or Vancouver is, unless maybe there's a provenance in early provincial newspapers (most published in Victoria and New Westminster; most likely the term might show up in the New Westminster paper(s)). Might be a chicken-and-egg thing, or the usage might have been "in common" at the time, i.e. the loggers knew both towns, and the term might have evolved in parallel; in Gastown's case the jurisdiction of the erstwhile constable's powers didn't go past the townsite, or there was little reason/initiative to do so, so the 00-block and 100-block East, the skid road (then still largely forest on both sides) became the new concentration of sin; not that Gastown itself wasn't - mostly saloons, y'see - but the dicier stuff, including gambling and whores, seems to have been relocated to East Hastings (not named as such yet, pre-1885) from the 100-200 block West when the townsite was laid out, or at any rate got higher airs about itself; later they moved to Dupont Street (now East Pender), which in the 1890s became Chinatown (until the 1885-86 winter riots Gastown had been entirely mixed; the Chinese went at first to the southeast corner of False Creek in the wake of the riots - an area still called China Creek, at least to people long-time in the area (roughly Broadway and Clark area) and they moved into Dupont Street, which was mostly the bordellos which had had to move again farther away from Gastown's new self-conscious respectability. In either case, Seattle or Vancouver, it's decidedly a Pacific Northwest-origin term.Skookum1 (talk) 20:40, 3 January 2008 (UTC)