This postwar work of docufiction chronicles three days on New York’s Skid Row, the Bowery, a place known for low rents and cheap drinks. We meet Ray, a railroad worker who drifts onto the Bowery after a long bout of laying tracks. Ray enters the Confidence Bar & Grill and falls in with Gorman, an older man who likes to tell stories of his more successful bygone days. Gorman and his band of drunks help him spend all his money on muscatel and convince him to sell some of his possessions for cash. With extra money in hand, Ray and Gorman go back to the bar. Surrounded by fellow drinkers in advanced states of alcoholic decay, Ray buys them rounds of drinks. Dead drunk, he stumbles out to the street and blacks out. Gorman helps himself to Ray’s suitcase. Here begins Ray’s descent—and his hopes of escaping the Bowery one day.