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In Sacramento, the problem has exploded from a few hundred “inebriates” in flophouses to thousands in tents and encampments.

Most of them, a few hundred in all, lived in flophouse hotels.

“These are old, turn-of-the-century buildings. They used to be flophouses. It’s not an ideal living situation for a chronically homeless person to be in.”

For almost every character, the film is one hardship after another: late buses, empty wallets, a basement flophouse, capricious bullies.

The film captured the city’s most explosive bands tearing up their stages and flophouses, making Spheeris the poet laureate of disenchanted young Los Angeles.