Los Angeles – This is why LA can’t have fun things.
Last weekend, Vandals in Los Angeles painted a huge “FK Trump” message on the 6th street viaduct: an illuminated half -mile bridge that local leaders have advertised as the largest new monument in the city.
But while he was originally praised because of his striking look, the structure of $ 588 million-it was called “ribbon of light” for the color-changing spotlights who made his flowing, modern architecture Aglow and darkened by the crime in the bending.
Time and time again thieves have stolen the copper wire for the lights while drag racers make it a private -derby -track and wallows vandals in graffiti.
The fateful spanner replaced a bridge with depression era that appeared in dozens of Hollywood films, including “Grease”, “Terminator 2” and “Transformers”-this was demolished in 2016 because of structural concerns with the concrete.
When the Light ribbon was completed in 2022, journalists compared it with the Brooklyn and Golden Gate bridges, and the mayor called it a ‘Liefde letter to the City’.
But the Halo of the Halo of half the billions of the city of Engelen has lost its luster: looters stripped a full seven miles of electrical wiring of the bridge, because it has also become the victim of street takeover Mobs and influencers who have his 60-foot bows scales for a teenager who dived according to his death in 2023, According to De La Times.
“I feel that we can’t have anything nice,” said Alyssa Mendez, who works in a cafe at the entrance of the bridge. “When something good happens in Los Angeles, people don’t know how to behave.”
Mendez said the viaduct was intended as the crown jewel of a new art district that grew from the warehouses and factories east of the center.
The city even threw a “bridge festival” event in which the structure was closed for traffic and dressed with food trucks, open -air markets, concert phases and a beer garden.
The annual event lasted only two years. Mendez believes it has been canceled because of drunk festival -goers who try to climb the arches and cause problems for local companies.
“People would be thrown away through the street,” she said.
In the weeks after the major opening of the viaduct, the city workers spent an average of 21.5 hours scrubbing 1,244 square feet of graffiti every day, According to ABC 7.
LAPD placed patrol cars at the bridge, although they mainly served to grab ordinary commuters such as Mel Keedle, who said he was being beaten with a $ 500 speed violation card to follow the stream of peak traffic.
“They crossed everyone. That speed ticket felt like they just tried to pay off the bridge, “said Keedle.
But for the city, nothing has been embarrassing than the looting of the electric wire, which has not been replaced for a full year after the last lights of the bridge wink and spray a bandally, “fix the lights you lazy f-ks” on an arc.
Civil servants claimed that the bridge was a target of organized gangs of copper bandits that plunder lamppales and power cables in the city, and last year the LAPD founded a copper wire task force to chase them.
Joyana Kemper, who works in a ceramic studio near the west end of the bridge, does not buy that story.
“We have roaming gangs such as Victorian London who steal copper wire?” Kemper asked sarcastically. “The cause is that people are poor and hungry, so they start to steal thread. … I am not surprised that we miss the lights over that bridge. “
Although the city has not determined the lights, it has invested in a project with substructure park that includes the approximately half miles area under the viaduct.
Manny Romero, who works in a coffee shop in the area, is happy for the park, but he said it is only a matter of time before it also collapses for vandals and looters.
“That’s absolutely LA for you. Whatever it is, they will find a way to mess it up, “said Romero.
