In for a penny, in for a pound. After having seen the 340 ton boulder en route, I figured I should go all the way and watch it arrive at LACMA. Or perhaps I just wanted to prove that I could still stay up after 10PM, since it wasn’t set to arrive until the wee hours of the morning.
Maybe it was a slow news week, but this rock was getting quite a bit of coverage here in LA. It reached celebrity status. And the press wasn’t just limited to home, with people across the globe watching and tweeting as it traveled 105 miles in 11 days.
LACMA provided a good twitter feed of the rock’s progress. Unfortunately, I had to keep setting the alarm to go online and find out where it was. Let’s say it wasn’t a night of blissful slumber. At 2AM, twitter indicated it was at Wilshire and Wilton, so L and I hopped into the car to head to LACMA. As it turns out, it was to encounter some additional challenges on the final leg of its route, including some illegally parked cars that required towing.
So we had time to hang out on Wilshire Boulevard at 3AM. There was a festive atmosphere, with people arriving to see the homecoming. Some enterprising food trucks set up shop, and I had an early breakfast at Waffles de Liege.
It wasn’t until about 4:30 AM that the massive transporter pulled up in front of the Urban Light landmark at the museum. By this time, over 500 people had gathered, with news crews both on the ground and in the air. Though it still had a few corners to round to reach its resting place on the North Lawn of the museum, the stop in front of the museum counted as its completion for me. I had witnessed history – and now had some sleep to catch up on.
Saturday morning we stopped by to check out the site in the daylight. The work is designed so that viewers will descend in a slot and go under the rock, so that its mass appears to levitate in the air. The slot is in place, and over the next several weeks the installation will be completed. When it opens in late spring/early summer, I’ll appreciate the work all the more, having witnessed the fascinating effort to get it there.
Tags: LACMA
March 12th, 2012 at 1:23 pm
This is a little hard to believe … as you say, ONLY IN LA!!