Jean-Luc Godard’s French Film
Classic "The Week End" (1967):
Plot Summary (if you have not had the pleasure of seeing this film): "A
supposedly idyllic weekend trip to the countryside turns into a never-ending
nightmare of traffic jams, revolution, cannibalism and murder as French
bourgeois society starts to collapse under the weight of its own consumer
preoccupations."
Angelinos, and those soon destined to visit the fair city of
Lost Angeles, are in for a rare experience this coming weekend. The 405 will be closing Friday
night, July 15 to take down one bridge that crosses over the freeway and put up
another. Then, after one of the most insane traffic weekends ever anticipated
for the West Side of LA, it will magically re-open ‘early’ Monday morning, July
18 – in theory, anyway, if all goes well.
If it does not re-open Monday morning July 18, as scheduled, well . . .
. all hell will surely break loose here
in the City of Angels, and all bets for a happy ending will be off.
Even the famous Hitler rant from the movie Downfall was used effectively to express
the concern and frustration about this potentially cataclysmic event. (Warning:
Strong language ahead.)
What we all here call "The 405," by it’s proper name,
Interstate 405, is actually, (sez Wikipedia), "the busiest and most congested freeway in the United States."
Annual daily traffic between exits 21 and 22 on the 405 in Seal Beach reached
374,000 in 2008 – this makes it "the highest count in the nation."
What
a fine and dandy time to close the 405 through West LA, then?!? Who thought this one up? Somebody who does not have to wage daily war
with West Side gridlock, no doubt.
Somebody who has not spent, seemingly hours, fighting to cross intersections
whose lights turned green, but which are filled with cars with nowhere to go.
And,
whatever happened to the days when Traffic Cops would be sent, whistles in
white-gloved hand, to these overloaded intersections to keep everybody from
truly losing their minds watching the green/red/green light sequence a half
dozen times before struggling across major intersections? The driver feels like
a soldier crawling across a minefield with incoming artillery shells blasting
things all around to smithereens, or, sometimes, in truly dark moments, feeling
like maybe you should have mounted that machine gun on your front hood after
all.
Yes,
the closure will be from the 101 junction in the San Fernando Valley, clear
down to the 10 junction in West LA – all part of the Billion-Dollar "I-405
Sepulveda Pass Improvements project." In
case you were wondering, the SFV 101/405 Exchange, and the 10/405 Exchange to
the south, both consistently rate right up there with the five most congested
freeway interchanges in these whole United States.
You
can go on the Metro website
for detailed information (including, the all-important closure times, for those
who will inevitably try to ‘thread the needle’ this coming Friday night). There, you will find what they are calling
the "Typical Freeway Closure Schedule"
– leaving the requisite wiggle-room to change it all, and really, truly screw
things up – a real-life FUBAR situation, for those who understand the true
military meaning of the acronym. You can
(and probably should) link your email, FB, Twitter, or what have you, to the Metro
website for updates, as things develop further – unless you love being
clobbered by the unexpected, of course.
Under normal circumstances (whatever passes for
normal these days in Los Angeles) the traffic congestion on the 405 running
through West LA is so bad that it led to the joke that this stretch of Interstate got the number
"405" because the traffic moves at only "four o’ five" miles an
hour. And, on some days, that would be a positive development, as
we sit, idly, in our cars, 5, 6 or even 7 lanes across, and sit . . . and sit . . . . and sit some more . . . .
Not since the now infamous ‘freeway chase’ of OJ,
televised internationally, on the
afternoon of June 17, 1994, has the 405 garnered this kind of attention. Not since the 405 was first designed in
1955, during the Eisenhower Administration as part of Gen/Prez Eisenhower’s
great dream of an American interstate highway system, so impressed was he
during WWII when he saw the German Autobahn, has it all been shut down, except
for OJ’s chase, and then only in parts.
Construction
began in 1957; the first section opened in 1961, mostly north of LAX,
originally called the SR-7. It has been
since the Kennedy Presidency, therefore, that motorized vehicular traffic has
whizzed, nonstop, up and down the 405, 24/7, holidays included, except for the
OJ Chase night, until this coming weekend, when all will grind to a perilous
(and, dare I say, ‘insane’) halt.
I
have heard the usual terror-filled predictions of lines of traffic stretching
30-50 miles in length, have listened to health care and other civic authorities
openly wondering how on earth this will all work out, and corresponding
highway, construction, and traffic officials reassuring us that this indeed
will all work out. I wish them a lot of
luck . . .
If
you are brave, you can find out. Me, I’m
staying home next weekend – after fully provisioning my living quarters. I shall not turn on my engine until the
Monday morning all – clear- has been announced, meaning they got the bridge off
and the new bridge on, and they really did re-open Monday morning, as promised.
Well, in the end we can all plan on staying home,
entertaining friends, barbequing huge meals (always the best antidote to
cannibalism), and enjoying old movies, like "The
Week End." Who knows? Staying home for the weekend might catch on,
and become a trend . . . . . But, if you do venture out, the patience of a
saint is strongly counseled.