LEIMERT PARK : From Skid Row to 5th Street Dick’s

Richard Fulton remembers well the days when he couldn’t afford a cup of coffee, much less think about owning a business.

“I had no caring, no will left in me,” said Fulton, 47. “All I could do was watch the life spill out of me. When you’re down like I was, you die on a daily basis. I aspired to absolutely nothing.”

Fulton was referring to the three years he spent as an alcoholic on Skid Row, a world away from his current life as proprietor of Fifth Street Dick’s Jazz Coffeehouse in Leimert Park.

Fifth Street Dick’s--so named because Fulton frequently hung out on Downtown’s 5th Street in his Skid Row days--is a two-story establishment on 43rd Place, just around the corner from the World Stage jazz club and other black-themed shops and galleries.

With its relaxed atmosphere and the smell of brewing gourmet coffee, Fulton said the shop has attained the “vision of love” he dreamed of creating in his darkest hours.

“I was saved from the streets at the hands of people who I rejected,” he said, “so I wanted to give back the caring that had been given to me.”

Fulton, a native of Pittsburgh, said his problems started after being discharged from the military in 1974 when a lifelong drinking problem became a debilitating disease. “All my life, I felt I was a click behind things,” he said. “I really never wanted to achieve anything. The military gave me a structure, some meaning. But it all came apart.”

The following year, only three months after arriving in Los Angeles, Fulton had become a Skid Row transient, living from one drink to the next and leading what he calls an “animal existence.” One day in 1978, when Fulton said he had no will left, not even to drink, he was picked up by an Alcoholics Anonymous recovery wagon.

“Suddenly, there was no more horrendous pressure to just survive,” Fulton said. “Slowly, they gave me back my ability to love. I mean, I was raggedy, smelly, funky--but they loved me back into existence.”

Fulton is still heavily involved with the alcoholic support group, chairing meetings of the Crenshaw Al-Anon Nonprofit Organization every week. He takes pride in saying he has helped sober up about 60 homeless alcoholics who used to live in Leimert Park, a stone’s throw from his front door.

Fulton is also proud of how his dream of owning a business came together after 12 years of working various jobs, including one as a receptionist for a Vietnam War veteran center.

“I saw this space two years ago,” he said. “I didn’t have any money, but I knew I wanted it.”

Suddenly, things clicked for Fulton as they never had before: The owners of the building were willing to negotiate on rent and friends donated carpet, wood, lighting, furniture and elbow grease in generous amounts. Not wanting to forget his humble beginnings, Fulton painted clouds on the ceiling--”a tramp’s view of the world, lying on his bed outside,” he said--and made his logo a homeless man pushing a cart full of rags.

Fifth Street Dick’s opened two days before the April-May riots, but Fulton said the timing couldn’t have been better.

“People actually worked to save it,” he said. “I felt I was really part of the community. I was accepted in. People really make a place, and my place felt made. It felt like it was home.”

Jimmy Dodson said he is a regular customer at Dick’s because of its homey atmosphere. “There’s no place like it,” said Dodson, a Crenshaw resident and construction supervisor. “It’s scenic, and it has a richness. It’s great for relaxing with a cappuccino, which you can’t get anywhere else around here.”

Artist Mark Bradford said he comes simply because he loves cafes: “It’s a social place, but not a bar or a disco. The jazz context is right. It’s not structured or sterile.”

Fulton, for his part, is content with how things are right now. “I’m locked back into life,” he said, breaking into one of his frequent, illuminating smiles. “I can feel friends around me. If this place collapsed tomorrow, I couldn’t ask for no more.”