IT'S become a familiar sight for all of us: Unending road work and unforeseen lane closures on the freeways or major surface streets we require daily to take us from one post in our lives to another.
It's frustrating, to put it mildly.
I was off to meeting the other night and, of course, even by scheduling a little extra time all parties were a bit late. But surprisingly, we all arrived about the same amount of time late -- a first. And a typical L.A. qualification. What did it? The 405, as usual, was a mess. One-mile-per hour for long, long stretches. I'm so used to traversing the 405 at night that I hadn't really noticed the work that has been done on the "retaining wall" -- on the northbound side just beyond Westwood. I was struck by the materials they have used. Rather than a cinderblock eyesore made pretty by some sort of standard-issue ice-plant, these walls are made to look as if this behemoth of multilane road was simply cut out of the earth's core. I didn't have my camera at the ready to shoot but the walls looked something very much like this:
Seeing it just made me think what sort of story will be carved out of this new wrinkle in the city's physical profile, what myth will grow up around this fast-road that pushes along side the old Sepulveda Pass--some history someone will invent based on what they may perceive to be something old, some antique stretch of road.
-- L.G.
top photo: the 405 @ venice, targophoto, via flickr creative commons
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