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But first let us tell you about 9th Street—NW, natch—and specifically where it crosses Pennsylvania Ave.

Stand on one side of the avenue and you are in the shadow of the great marble structure which houses the forces of law and order. This is the Department of Justice Building, and the corner we’re standing on is the entrance to the F.B.I.

Cross Pennsylvania Avenue and walk into 9th Street, and you are an intruder in the most publicized Skid Row of the three—they call it the Bowery here, to distinguish it from the others. As such thoroughfares go, this is pretty classy-looking. It is wide. All Washington streets are kept clean, so neither rubbish nor drunks litter the pavements—anyway not by day. By nightfall, topers rendered hors de combat on smoke and cheap wine pile up in the doorways.

This part of 9th Street is packed solid with “play lands,” featuring pin-ball machines, peep show movies and souvenir stands which sell composition statuettes of the White House and Washington Monument, and embroidered pillows tastefully lettered with “Love to Mom from the Nation’s Capital.”