Brady Westwater Invites Steve Lopez
To a walking census of LA's Skid Row. Here's his invitation below. And here's his blog post from this morning on this:

In (this) story, Steve Lopez, a recent arrival from Philadelphia who pens a column claiming to be about LA for the Times, stated he spent five nights on Skid Row. He also made the statement 10,000 people sleep on the streets of Skid Row every night.

That last statement is...preposterous.

It is time we, the citizens of this city, do something about the LA Times' inability to get even the most basic facts about our city correct.

I therefore challenge Steve Lopez to spend one night with me on Skid Row. During that night, we will not tour Skid Row in a police car or in an ambulance. We will actually...walk... every street and alley on Skid Row.

We will also personally count the number of people sleeping on the streets of Skid Row. Mr. Lopez can also have Dean Baquet and a channel 5 news crew accompany us to verify our count.

If we find anything near 10,000 people sleeping there, I will remove my blog LA Cowboy from the web, issue a formal apology to the LA Times and never say another word about the LA Times, ever.

If we do not find anything near 10,000 people sleeping on the streets of Skid Row, Steve Lopez and the LA Times will issue a written apology, Steve Lopez will immediately return home to Philadelphia and he will never write another word about Los Angeles.

I am not afraid to stand behind my statements.

The question is - will Mr. Lopez have the courage to stand behind his words?

My number and e-mail are below. I await his response.

Here is my comment from Brady's blog:

I guess Mickey was wrong about the value of copy editors!

I just looked up the capacity of Staples Center:

"The seating capacity at the Staples Center is 19,000 for basketball and 16,000 for ice hockey. "

If we had a skid row population equivalent to over half of a packed Staples Center laying around downtown every night...! What do the police do, come around at bedtime and stack them in piles 50 feet high so they don't block traffic?