His Curbside Service

In a way, Calvin was a landlord.

For months, he set up his cardboard condos each evening on Towne Avenue between 6th and 7th streets, then rented them by the hour or by the night. In the morning, he broke them down to make way for the city’s street cleaners.

Calvin’s entrepreneurial bent didn’t stop at housing. Displaying his flair for fashion, Calvin designs and makes clothes for Skid Row prostitutes, and he does hair too. He gets much of the fabric he uses from the trash, but since he’s based near the garment district, some of the store owners save bits and pieces of material for him. The same goes for needles and thread.

And until he got a room in a nearby hotel, Calvin used to make elaborate meals for his neighbors, tenants, and any one else who was hungry and happened to wander by.

None of this is to say that living on Skid Row is easy. It is dirty and it is cruel. But maybe Calvin and a few others make it a little better.