Monday, December 6, 2010

Omaha flophouse

Skid Row Omaha once lined Lower Douglas and the King down there was a white-suited Japanese immigrant named Joe Watanabe who ran the Uptown Cafe at 13th and Douglas Streets.

By my time that was all Central Park Mall and Gerald Ford Expressway I-480 but there were still a few places downtown for those down on their means. That included the recently razed Aero Rooms on Cuming.

  That's from the Douglas County site and if they don't like it I'll gladly take it down.

Otherwise there was the Irwin by the Greyhound Station and the Delmar on South 24th.  The Delmar was featured in a movie that won an award at Cannes, Sean Penn's The Indian Runner, and is best seen here at 9:03 and 9:23 and in the next clip as well. The owner called it a landmark when the city razed it and the site remains a vacant lot to this day.



 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_UIwsRc0qE&feature=related

I don't have any pictures of the Irwin, which I was actually inside.
 

2 comments:

  1. more exterior of Delmar at 7:30

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2crDiKRXe_c&feature=related

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  2. Hey Big Muddy, thought I'd let you know that I wrote an article about Courtland Beach. There were surely some flophouses down along Locust Ave in C.L. back then, but I didn't go into all that. Instead, I wrote this - http://northomaha.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-waterfront-boardwalk-in-north-omaha.html

    Thanks for reminding me it existed!

    ReplyDelete