High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A skid row or skid road is a run-down or dilapidated urban area with a large, impoverished population. The term originally referred literally to a path along which working men skidded logs. Its current sense appears to have originated in the Pacific Northwest. Examples are Pioneer Square, Seattle, Washington,Old Town Chinatown, Portland, Oregon, Skid Row in Los Angeles, San Francisco`s Tenderloin District, the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver.