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April 8, 2019 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

That Evening Sun is a photo-journal of life, love and interminable lasting on LA’s Skid Row
by Suitcase Joe

Rosay here has a purpose in Skid Row, she tells me: “Dealing with the rats.” She goes around filling up their holes with cement. One recent rat hole she plugged, went down 19 feet, and took her 12 bags of concrete to finally fill up. She says the rats are a constant problem in Skid Row and her theory is that beneath the streets there’s one big tunnel where all their holes lead down to. Rosay could very well be right about that. Beneath Downtown Los Angeles there are 11 miles of old tunnels that were once part of the old subway system and also used for bootlegging. Eventually all the entrances were closed off. I’ve looked for a way into them myself, and the closest I’ve come was a peek into one of the tunnels from the basement of an old Skid Row bar that is historically known for having had a speakeasy during prohibition.

Suitcase Joe is a Los Angeles photographer who lives anonymously in our amongst. His Instagram page is an important document of our times. @suitcase_joe

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