Steve Lopez on Nathaniel Anthony Ayers

Steve Lopez takes Nathaniel Anthony Ayers to San Francisco, where he is honored for helping decrease the stigma of mental illness.

The original Disciples of Beethoven Award honors the street musician who has touched so many hearts.

When a film crew hits The Times' newsroom to re-create a story from its pages, reality gets a little weird.

Of all our many adventures, the trip to the golf course in Griffith Park might be the most memorable.

Christmas came a couple of weeks early to the skid row apartment of a soulful gent who goes by the name of Nathaniel Anthony Ayers.

First Suite: The Apartment

I could tell something was bothering Casey Horan and Shannon Murray, and it wasn't hard to guess what. They're in the business of patience, and I've got very little of it.

Nathaniel was in a panic over what to wear.

The timing was perfect. I had just asked a Yale professor why there are no mentally ill people living on the streets of Norway, where he helped design some of the most progressive mental health treatment in the world. Then a colleague mentioned she was working on a story about Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies dumping a mentally ill man on skid row in downtown Los Angeles, where thousands of chronically ill people sleep on filthy, rat-infested streets.

I got the message while I was out of town. The owner of Little Pedro's said Nathaniel had flipped out while playing cello at the downtown Los Angeles club, launching into a belligerent tirade in front of his audience.

Alexis Rivera, owner of Little Pedro's Blue Bongo in downtown Los Angeles, was riding his bike to work one night when he saw Nathaniel Anthony Ayers playing violin near the mouth of the 2nd Street tunnel. Rivera stopped and listened for more than an hour before approaching Nathaniel with a proposition.

I know only part of his story. I know him playing the cello on a dairy crate in the morning sun, suspended somewhere between boy genius and lost traveler.

When I saw Nathaniel Anthony Ayers back in his usual location, I had to ask: How could he stand playing a crummy violin when he had a brand new cello waiting for him several blocks away?

Nathaniel was shy in our first encounter a few months ago, if not a little wary. He took a step back when I approached to say I liked the way his violin music turned the clatter around downtown L.A.'s Pershing Square into an urban symphony.