Skip to main content
Sunday, November 15, 2026Nov 15
Subscribe
All Sections
Search
More

Saving lost souls on Skid Row with karaoke songs and coffee

In this Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2015 photo, sporting a red velvet jacket, 63-year-old Skid Row resident Vincent Washington sings a song at karaoke night at the Central City Community Church of the Nazarene on Skid Row in Los Angeles. As people harmonize on Beatles songs, they begin to lock out the ugliness outside, where a misdirected look can launch a knife fight in a second. Where across 50 square blocks on the edge of City Hall and other landmarks that represent the rich and powerful the streets reek with the smell of urine. Where some 1,700 people bed down on filthy sidewalks every night. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
In this Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2015 photo, sporting a red velvet jacket, 63-year-old Skid Row resident Vincent Washington sings a song at karaoke night at the Central City Community Church of the Nazarene on Skid Row in Los Angeles. As people harmonize on Beatles songs, they begin to lock out the ugliness outside, where a misdirected look can launch a knife fight in a second. Where across 50 square blocks on the edge of City Hall and other landmarks that represent the rich and powerful the streets reek with the smell of urine. Where some 1,700 people bed down on filthy sidewalks every night. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

By Associated Press 4 min read

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Darkness is falling on another long, depressing night in one of America’s most marginal neighborhoods.

For the 200 or so battered souls lining up outside the aging street-corner edifice housing the Central City Community Church of the Nazarene, however, this one will seem neither quite as long nor as harsh as the others.

This is “Karaoke Night” on Skid Row.

There will be break dancing, waltzing, even an impromptu conga line, as people sing everything from country to rock to R&B. The music locks out the ugliness outside, where a misdirected look can launch a knife fight, where the streets reek of urine, where some 1,700 people lay their heads on dirty sidewalks every night to sleep.

“It’s a little bit of a return to normalcy in an area that’s just absolute chaos,” says Andy Bates, who heads Skid Row’s Union Rescue Mission and says he’s seen the power of these weekly songfests to bring joy and even change lives.