Skid Row

LOS ANGELES -- The early morning light revealed a "no loitering" sign and a half-dozen people sleeping beneath it in tents on the Skid Row sidewalk. A few men scattered as a police cruiser rolled up. But Glenda Caldwell wasn't stirring from beneath her filthy blankets . "Where do you want me to pack up and go?" Caldwell bellowed at the two officers and their sergeant. Starting this month, a beefed-up police force is arresting people who violate a daytime sidewalk sleeping ban. Plenty worse happens in a neighborhood that for decades has been virtually surrendered to...

NEW YORK - Every Sunday morning for three decades, the Rev. Maurice Chase would drive to the most desperate neighborhood in Los Angeles, where he would hand out crisp, new one-dollar bills, along with a handshake and a blessing. Clad in a Notre Dame hat and a red sweater over his clerical collar, Father Dollar Bill, as he was known, cut a hugely popular figure with the homeless of Skid Row. Hundreds would gather each week to await his arrival, forming a line that sometimes stretched four blocks.

NEW YORK - Every Sunday morning for three decades, the Rev. Maurice Chase would drive to the most desperate neighborhood in Los Angeles, where he would hand out crisp, new one-dollar bills, along with a handshake and a blessing. Clad in a Notre Dame hat and a red sweater over his clerical collar, Father Dollar Bill, as he was known, cut a hugely popular figure with the homeless of Skid Row. Hundreds would gather each week to await his arrival, forming a line that sometimes stretched four blocks.

SEATTLE - Jon Bon Jovi’s new tour is bringing the veteran rock star to venues he doesn’t usually visit on the road. A shelter for hardcore alcoholics in Seattle. A tour of Skid Row in Los Angeles. Perhaps a squatters village in Sacramento. That’s because this tour in support of Bon Jovi’s latest release, “The Circle,’’ is also a fact-finding mission. The singer plans on visiting as many homeless shelters and programs as time allows in hopes of getting ideas and inspiration to shape his own work with the Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation, a Philadelphia-based charity that...

LOS ANGELES -- Prosecutors filed criminal charges against a major hospital company, accusing it of dumping a homeless patient suffering from dementia on the city's crime-plagued Skid Row, the city attorney said yesterday. "They have violated every ethical obligation under which they operate, and they have also broken the law," Rocky Delgadillo said at a news conference. Police have long suspected that medical centers and law enforcement agencies from other areas were using the neighborhood as a dumping ground for the homeless.

LOS ANGELES - In a city teeming with out-of-work actors, John Malpede bypasses casting agencies and recruits for his performance troupe where other directors would do a double take - Skid Row. As head of the Los Angeles Poverty Department - the other LAPD - Malpede uses performing art as a tool to prick the public's social conscience about homelessness and other symptoms of chronic poverty. "This country doesn't have any social policies to prevent people from becoming homeless," he said.

SEATTLE - Jon Bon Jovi’s new tour is bringing the veteran rock star to venues he doesn’t usually visit on the road. A shelter for hardcore alcoholics in Seattle. A tour of Skid Row in Los Angeles. Perhaps a squatters village in Sacramento. That’s because this tour in support of Bon Jovi’s latest release, “The Circle,’’ is also a fact-finding mission. The singer plans on visiting as many homeless shelters and programs as time allows in hopes of getting ideas and inspiration to shape his own work with the Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation, a...

Former Skid Row frontman Sebastian Bach tweeted that he’ll be in Boston this week filming scenes for an online show called “Adults Only’’ that also features Vincent Pastore of “The Sopranos.’’

WATERTOWN — Perhaps not every production of the 1982 cult-classic musical "Little Shop of Horrors" conjures Shakespeare's Scottish play, but the one that's currently up at New Repertory Theatre most certainly does. The girl-group trio — Chiffon (Jennifer Fogarty), Crystal (Lovely Hoffman), and Ronnette (Ceit McCaleb Zweil) — are the Bard's three weird sisters; at the end, they don lab coats to report on the propagation of Audrey II. And like Macbeth, Seymour (Blake Pfeil)

LOS ANGELES — Police arrested a Pennsylvania couple yesterday in connection with the killing of a man who was cut into pieces and stashed in a backpack in a Skid Row hotel room, authorities said. Edward and Melissa Garcia were arrested by a fugitive task force, said Matt Brown, a supervisor with the US Marshals Service. They had been staying in an abandoned building in the Hollywood area and were living in squalid conditions. The couple from York, Pa., were charged with murder and the special circumstances of torture in the Thanksgiving killing of Herbert Tracy White...

LOS ANGELES - In a city teeming with out-of-work actors, John Malpede bypasses casting agencies and recruits for his performance troupe where other directors would do a double take - Skid Row. As head of the Los Angeles Poverty Department - the other LAPD - Malpede uses performing art as a tool to prick the public's social conscience about homelessness and other symptoms of chronic poverty. "This country doesn't have any social policies to prevent people from becoming homeless," he said.

LOS ANGELES -- Prosecutors filed criminal charges against a major hospital company, accusing it of dumping a homeless patient suffering from dementia on the city's crime-plagued Skid Row, the city attorney said yesterday. "They have violated every ethical obligation under which they operate, and they have also broken the law," Rocky Delgadillo said at a news conference. Police have long suspected that medical centers and law enforcement agencies from other areas were using the neighborhood as a dumping ground for the homeless.

LOS ANGELES -- The early morning light revealed a "no loitering" sign and a half-dozen people sleeping beneath it in tents on the Skid Row sidewalk. A few men scattered as a police cruiser rolled up. But Glenda Caldwell wasn't stirring from beneath her filthy blankets . "Where do you want me to pack up and go?" Caldwell bellowed at the two officers and their sergeant. Starting this month, a beefed-up police force is arresting people who violate a daytime sidewalk sleeping ban. Plenty worse happens in a neighborhood that for decades has...

We hear that former Skid Row frontman Sebastian Bach will be in town Wednesday for a party to celebrate the premiere of the Massachusetts-based Web series "Adults Only. " The show, which will be on YouTube, is helmed by Jason Burns of Plymouth Rock Creative. Bach is a member of Burns's cast, as is Brian Austin Green, of "Beverly Hills, 90210" fame. Green probably can't get to the premiere because his wife, Megan Fox, is out promoting her new film with Jon Hamm, "Friends With Kids. " . . . Also in town Wednesday to show off a project will be "American Pie" and "Little Fockers" director Paul Weitz,...