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In and in front of cheap saloons, cocktail lounges and lunch rooms, are tarts, reefer-peddlers and novelty salesmen whose chief stock in trade is “sanitary rubber goods.” Pistols are on sale at $20. The local law isn’t tough on gun-toters.

Though Washington’s legal liquor closing on weekdays is 2 A.M., this street, like all in the city, is deserted early. Long before midnight its habitués have already made sleeping arrangements or are snoring in the alleys, cheap overnight lodgings or hallways, paralyzed by alky or cheap domestic red wine.

Crossing 9th Street here, is D Street, known as Pawnbroker’s Row. But get this—hockshops are against the law.

When you see a shop with a sign reading “Pawnbroker’s Exchange,” don’t believe it. The window looks like any “Uncle’s” anywhere in the world, with a profusion of new and used articles ranging from mink coats to tin watches. But that’s the build-up. These exchanges are only second-hand stores which buy and sell uncalled for articles pledged in other jurisdictions, where the three balls of the De Medicis are legal.