Throughout reading “Down, Out, and Under Arrest” I have found my mind gravitating back to a central theme of the class: community. Upon being asked what community was during one of the first classes of the semester, I was immediately perplexed and I have kept circling back to that question. I have been intrigued by the complicatedness and variety of definitions of community, and when I sensed a seemingly unlikely community in crime-ridden Skid Row, I posed the following question to see if my classmates sensed this as well:

“Community” has been an overarching theme all semester, and there is definitely not one clear definition for it. How do Steel and his crew represent a paradoxical idea of community, given that they congregate with each other to stay out of trouble, but in an “effort to set themselves apart from the ‘typical’ Skid Row resident” (Stuart 128-129)? Can a “Purgatory” or “halfway point” truly be a community? What other paradoxical ideas does Chapter 3 present regarding how residents perceive and think about Skid Row once they live there as opposed to before they did?

The discussion around this question tied in with other topics of the lecture offered a variety of viewpoints and responses. In one way, Steele and his crew defy community because they aim to separate themselves from the rest of the geographically concentrated group of people in Skid Row. In another way, however, they create their own community within Skid Row by choosing to group up together by working out together to stay out of the way of the police and harm’s way. Even though Skid Row is described as a “purgatory” where people don’t typically choose to reside, once they are there, by choice or not, key aspects of community form through groups like Steel’s. Community is typically thought of as a place people choose to be, but parts of “Down, Out, and Under Arrest” challenge common notions and bring to light different ways in which community can be formed.