DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — From a 1987 LA Times article titled, "You can walk outside. It's incredible."

The result, for example, in notorious "Crack Alley"--a trash-strewn walkway between 6th and 7th streets linking Broadway and Spring Street--is that "the selling (of narcotics in the alley) is about gone," said Ronald Rubacher, an officer on patrol there.

Hey... That's my alley. The one they're loudly power-washing as I type this.

A different article says that these drug-dealing problems are what led to the alley being fenced in. Now the only pests down there are the film crews that appear poised to be shining lights outside my window tonight.