Word: skid
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Shelter. To begin with, he is not typically an alcoholic. Of the Bowery's population, only one-third qualify as heavy drinkers-a category embracing but not restricted to the alcoholic-while another third are moderate drinkers. The rest either drink sparingly or not at all. Even in Skid Row's inverted social hierarchy-the farther they fall, the bigger they are-the alcoholic is something of a social outcast, scorned and rejected by Skid Row's characteristic drinking fraternity, the bottle gang...
...Brandeis University So-(1939) ciologist Samuel E. Wallace, who helped organize the most recent Bowery research program, "the fact that Skid Rowers share both money and drink is perhaps the most conclusive proof that most of them are not alcoholics; alcoholics would find it exceedingly difficult to exercise the control dictated by group drinking." The New York study also revealed that Skid Row is not the end of the road in the usual despairing sense. Its residents do not fall there, but actively seek it out because it has what they want: odd jobs without purpose or future, a community...
...inhabitants of Skid Row have been type-cast by police and rescue missions as dirty, diseased, indolent, iniquitous and unreclaimable men. In fact, they deserve only a part of this broadside indictment. The Skid Rower's prin cipal crime against the prevailing values of U.S. society is his stubborn refusal to accept them. On the Bowery, investigators found that 55% of the inhabitants had never married, one-third had never voted, two-thirds claimed no close friend either on or off Skid Row. One in four, asked where he expected to be a year hence, predicted that he might...
Adaptation. The Skid Rower's steady collision with the law-mostly involving repeated arrests for drunkenness or vagrancy-is misleading. He is peaceful to the point of passivity. Most of Skid Row's crime statistics are due either to zealous police sweeping public drunks off the pavement, or to "hawks"-the area's name for predators who come in from the outside, frequently to relieve a drunkard of his freshly cashed welfare check. His lengthy arrest record, says Sociologist Wallace, can actually be construed as "a fairly stable adaptation [to] a society that is willing to support...
Changing economics of urban life have doomed these passive protesters. In a time of full employment and of increased welfare benefits at every government level, it is no longer so necessary for psychological dropouts to take up the Skid Row life. "Skid Rowers don't last long," says Chicago's VanderKooi. "The community has to recruit to survive. Yet only the West Coast Skids seem to be attracting any younger men-drawn, in part, by the area's hospitable climate and by the availability of harvesttime jobs." The median age of Bowery residents today...