Screw college. Nelson Algren learned all he needed to know at the Rainbo.

Back then, the Rainbo was a strip bar, gambling joint and jazz club — most likely Mob-run — that served a working-class clientele. The people at the Rainbo and bars like it were instrumental to Algren’s classics like “The Man with the Golden Arm,” “A Walk on the Wild Side” and “Chicago: City on the Make.”

Algren, born in Detroit in 1909, grew up on Chicago’s South Side. Son of a garage mechanic and grandson of a Swedish immigrant, Algren left for Albany Park in the 1930s and settled in Wicker Park a few years later.

It was there that he created his most memorable works, won the first-ever National Book Award for fiction and carried on an affair with French writer Simone de Beauvoir.

Bill Savage, a visiting professor and co-editor of the 50th anniversary edition of “City on the Make,” says Algren knew that stories of the slums were the key to observing the human condition.

“Skid row tells us more about the Gold Coast than the Gold Coast tells us about skid row. (Algren) saw his job as giving voice to the voiceless.”