A Merchant Adapts on Skid Row

If you could cast Jack Simone in a role that suited him, he’d be behind the counter of a sweet-smelling country market, talking T-bone steak prices with his devoted customers and handing out sweets to their kids.

But life has its own ideas about casting. For 30 years, Simone has owned and managed Jack’s Market in downtown’s Skid Row. There are few fresh scents to be found there, and hardly anyone brings their kids by anymore.

Simone, a gentle-mannered man with half his hair gone gray, still gets to argue about the price of a T-bone steak now and then, it’s true, but behind every argument is a potential fight. For this reason, Simone, 55, keeps a .38-caliber revolver tucked into his meat cutter’s apron.

The Skid Row shopkeeper is in favor of the current effort to get homeless people off the downtown streets and restore some measure of peace to the neighborhood--not that he thinks it will work, though.

“Where are they going to go? What are they going to do?” he asked. “There’s no one answer. It’s got to be a lot of little answers that are going to smooth the thing over.”

East 5th Street was a red-light district when Simone purchased the vacant shop next to his father-in-law’s grocery store 30 years ago and opened a liquor store. His store has since moved down the block to 520 E. 5th and added lines of meats and groceries. But even when he first opened for business, the locals were a little rough. What mattered more to Simone was “the money was real.”

Most everyone paid in cash, so there was no need to fret about accounts payable. This allowed Simone to put his two kids through college.

Removes Watch, Wallet

Even when the homeless people began to move in, and with them, increased violence, Simone adapted. The first thing he’d do when he got to work was remove his Rolex watch and his wallet and put them in the safe, he said. If a fight broke out in the store, he’d shoo the offenders outside before they could destroy any merchandise.

It’s only with all the recent publicity, he said, that the homeless situation has truly gotten out of hand.

The streets outside his market are littered with old sofas, wooden boxes and makeshift shelters; there are potentially dangerous cooking fires burning near the store at all hours; and Simone’s customers are routinely frightened by coercive panhandling tactics, he said. For instance, a group of homeless men will spray paint a circle on the sidewalk and anyone who passes must throw money into the ring or risk a beating.

Simone forbids homeless people to camp right outside the store. If someone erects a shelter there, he or one of his handful of employees goes outside and asks them to leave.

He does allow people to congregate outside, however. At any given time, there may be 10 or more boisterous men and women seated on milk crates against the front wall of the store. Someone usually has a boom box, which blasts distorted music directly into the market.

In support of the new effort to clean up downtown, which was scheduled to commence today, Simone has contacted Mayor Tom Bradley’s office, among others, telling them what he has to endure as a Skid Row businessman.

Little Effect in Past

Although he’s hopeful that the city will eventually bring the situation under control, Simone has witnessed homeless sweeps in the past that had little permanent effect. He’s seen the clean-up crews come in and drag all the old furniture off the streets, followed by water trucks that wash away the human stench--and he’s seen the homeless move right back in again.

By 6 a.m., there’s usually a crowd of 50 or 60 homeless people waiting for Jack’s Market to open. Simone lets them in three at a time to cut down on theft. “They steal like crazy, but what are you going to do?”

Some want their “wake-up” wine. Others buy meat that they’ll cook on hot plates and campfires. Although Jack’s Market does a substantial business in beer and wine judging by the trade on a recent afternoon, it’s important to Simone--a teetotaler and nonsmoker--that people know he runs a true grocery, complete with fresh produce and a meat counter.

The meat department is popular among the homeless who can afford it.

“What do I want my hooker to cook for me tonight?” a compact man in a clean-white T-shirt asked aloud as he surveyed the meat counter. He joked with the clerk about buying pig’s feet because his companion doesn’t like them and there’d be more for him to eat.

Few at a Time

At the front counter, customers were buying two or three cigarettes at a time--7 cents each for a Chesterfield or a Kool.

There was an uninterrupted flow of customers. Most simply made their transactions and went on their way, but some were aggressively drunk; some who were not drunk were nevertheless crude and cocky.

A 30-year customer, Helen DuValle, said she once asked Simone how he is able to go home and talk nicely to his wife after listening to obscenities and verbal violence all day in the store.

When he goes home to Canoga Park at the end of the day, Simone answered, “It’s like shutting a door.”

For the eight hours he’s downtown each day, however, Simone is as much an inhabitant of Skid Row as any homeless person sleeping in a crate. He uses the same vocabulary as his customers; and he’s willing to respond to threats in any manner necessary.

The homeless, in turn, seem to respect this grocer who won’t let them camp on his step, but who will sell them a ham sandwich and a soda for 75 cents.