Sid, take a look at the "third street prominade" at these links to Santa Monica City's website.
http://www.downtownsm.com/
http://www.seeing-stars.com/Shop/ThirdStreetPromenade.shtml
http://www.thirdstreetpromenade.com/bvisitors.html
This is the irony. Santa Monica is a very very expensive Ritzy neighborhood. I took all these shots on "Third Street Prominade" which is several blocks that are blocked off to cars and allows only pedestrian traffic. It is filled with upscale and trendy shops. It is filled with "Hollywood" entertainment industry types. Young thin women and old women with cosmetic surgeries trying to look young roam the streets. Tourists actually love this area for it's neat trendy people and the shopping. You are more likely to be hit by a silicone breast than by a flying fist.
The irony that I try to catch is that among all this wealth and glamour are these homeless folks in their mist standing in front of expensive and trendy stores begging for money. If you look at most of the tourist shots from this area, you'll not see one homeless, just expensive stores and trendy young people. Most from this area that look at my photos are shocked that I shot these at third street prominade b/c it usually looks nothing like this in most others shots. Among brand new ritzy building and beautiful fake people, I'm trying to find some intimate moment of a person who's really down and out. Just go to smugmug.com and do a "Santa Monica, CA" search and you'll see how nice this area is. That to me is the irony. I go there at all times of the day, mostly during weekend days. The place is full of locals and tourists as they carelessly pass many homeless folks as if they don't even exist. Such dichotomy.
Now for some real dangerous stuff, I goto downtown Los Angeles, near "Skid Row." Even I'm too scared to goto actual skid row in LA. It's something like the city from the movie "Blade Runner" except it's not as nice. I goto a street called "Broadway" in downtown, near skid row. This was the original theatre district at the turn of the 20th century, but now it's turned into an immigrant city with immigrants mostly from Mexico. The immigrants have shops or just sell stuff in middle of the sidewalk. When you walk through this place on a weekend, it feels more like Mexico City than Los Angeles. At night, the street vendors goes away and the homeless from skid row migrate over, all under the facade of decaying grand old movie houses from nearly a century ago.
Here are some shots from Broadway. Whole gallery is here.
http://tomyi.smugmug.com/gallery/1196989
My friend, Gary used to be a staff photographer for the Los Angeles Times Newspaper and he also has a really gritty collection of shots from Broadway from the 70's.
Take a look here.
http://garyayala.smugmug.com/gallery/665480/1