Holiday in an Empty City

On a holiday weekend, Downtown L.A.’s economically destitute can wander for blocks without meeting a soul who is not in similar circumstances. Stores, banks, law firms and restaurants are deserted, their employees retreating to the outskirts of the city for family gatherings.

The Times asked three residents of Downtown--two homeless and one who has just found temporary housing--to record their Christmas Day on the streets of an empty city.

Using disposable 35-millimeter cameras, they snapped shots from morning until dusk Saturday and returned with the photographs on this page.

* Debra Gross, 43, is a native of Ohio. In 1991, she lost her job as a cook for a USC sorority. She has been homeless ever since. “I sleep wherever I end up,” she says. Her Christmas night was spent in a cardboard hut on 5th Street.

* Larry Hoberg, 45, has been homeless for six years. He once worked cleaning and tending yards. Now he spends his days on Broadway, between 2nd and 3rd streets, pushing a baby carriage filled with his possessions. He sleeps in a crude shelter on a lot west of the Harbor Freeway. His family is in Seattle, where he grew up. He hasn’t talked to them in two years.

* Michael Dorsey is 38 and a Los Angeles native. He says he is trained as a camera technician and has worked as a law enforcement photographer. Occasionally, he works for a business owned by a relative. For now, he lives in a room in a Downtown hotel.

Times staff writers Gary Libman and S.J. Diamond contributed to this project.