Working People / The Flyer Guy : ‘I Guess I’m in the Lowest Form of Advertising Today’

By 4 a.m. every day except Sunday, about 75 men gather at 4th and Crocker streets on Skid Row in Downtown Los Angeles. Trucks from up to 20 flyer distribution firms circle, looking for workers to distribute the ubiquitous flyers that flutter from door handles all over Southern California. JAY KUBRIN owns one such flyer distribution company, called the Walking Man. He talked with TRIN YARBOROUGH about the changes he’s seen in the business in the last three decades.

Our flyer company is the oldest and one of the biggest city-licensed companies in L.A. My father, Samuel--he’s 91 and retired--opened the Walking Man on Bunker Hill in 1948. We subcontract to van owners who hire their own crews. What we sell is supervision, driving around and checking to be sure the workers are honest and efficient, not throwing flyers away or giving three to a house.

My father and my late older brother, Merwin, dragged me into this business kicking and screaming, and here I am more than 30 years later. I graduated from USC with a degree in advertising. I guess, in essence, I’m in the lowest form of advertising today. L.A. has more flyer business than any other city in the country. Sometimes our company puts out more than 200,000 in one day, from pizza flyers in Yucaipa to meeting notices in Beverly Hills. Once rock star James Taylor had us put out 10,000 lost-dog flyers, and after his dog was found he wrote a song and album, “The Walking Man.” I’ve had people spend thousands putting out more and more flyers to find their dogs. But flyers, like all kinds of advertising--phone calls, direct mail, commercials--are intrusive. And some people with nothing to do, after they get done worrying about the ozone layer, go on to worry about flyers and call and complain.

We moved to Skid Row in 1963. Until the 1970s, flyer workers were white and black winos. Many were writers and poets. I used to bring in the New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly and everybody would pass them around. There’s a famous poem called “Gravy Joe’s”--that’s what they call Skid Row’s Emmanuel Baptist Rescue Mission after its director, Joe Hill, who retired. It was written by the Irish poet Patrick R. Ryan, who worked for us sometimes, and goes: “Hired . . . by Walking Man . . . As a bag-bent Caliban . . . trudge torrid streets, every second one a hill . . . Humping sacks of printed swill” and so on.

Some of the workers were pretty odd. One guy got dog-bitten so much we called him “Gravy Train.” Another guy who often played an organ grinder as a bit movie actor was a real paranoid. He left notes in his native Greek asking kids not to leave bikes in the walkway, and parents who saw that foreign language figured he was a Communist and sent the FBI to see me about him. The FBI also came looking for Vietnam War deserters.

Nowadays most of our workers are here for political reasons, like war or upheaval in their own countries. Most are from Central America, and are more industrious, more honorable, more honest. They tend to come from poor neighborhoods like Westlake rather than Skid Row. I don’t know what’s happened to all the winos. Maybe the war babies never developed a taste for wine. Maybe they’re the guys at freeways holding signs.

About 20 years ago, so-called Skid Row Slasher Vaughn Greenwood worked here two days. But I’ve never had any incident with my workers. And a few rare times, guys who climbed to better days have even come back to see me.

I’m probably in harm’s way down here on Skid Row, but I’m oblivious to it. I see drug transactions, crimes committed right in front of the police station up the street. Recently someone got shot and killed half a block away. But in more than 30 years I’ve only had one incident. I was walking along 5th Street holding a hot cup of coffee and some guy took a swing at me and ran. All it did was slosh the coffee.

My philosophy is that trouble always comes out of left field. Two seconds after they discover a cure for cancer, a huge meteor will hit the Earth. That seems to be the symmetry of life.