Oh, Carmageddon: Up Yours

If you follow anyone who lives anywhere near Los Angeles in any fashion on this big bad internet (or, from what I understand about signs up North, anyone on the West Coast in general) then surely the phrase “Carmageddon” has not escaped your virtual ears. Maybe even your real ears, if you watch the news.

Here’s the deal: Back in the Chinatown days, when Los Angeles was full of water-thieving gangsters, the oil companies shut down the LA trolley and public transport system and replaced it with a series of interwoven “Freeways,” as the conspiracy theorists tell it.

You’ve heard the song, you know what happens next.  NOBODY WALKS IN LA.

 

Cut to like a hundred years later – or like eighty seven, whatever – and those fun little freeways can no longer accommodate the TEN MILLION PEOPLE that live in this Sheen-Forsaken town.   Oh, did I not mention? The population when the freeway system was implemented was roughly four thousand, so you see where we would have a problem with 2500 times as many folks trying to squeeze their smog-farting cars on to an already ill-conceived freeway system.

So, long long long eighty-seven year story short, some smarty-pants in the city planning office decides to SHUT DOWN THE MAIN VEIN OF THE CITY FOR 72 HOURS STRAIGHT as part of a plan to expand the 405.

Cue mass panic and street corner T-Shirt Vendors touting the coming of Carmagedon.

And of course, no LA alarmist emergency would be complete without the LAPD thanking celebrities for their help.

But this is LA, you guys. Los Angelinos do not f*ck around.  These people do not need a reason to get the hell out of dodge.  This is a town full of baseball fans famous for leaving in the seventh inning.  Christmas Day this place is like a ghost town, and Carmaggedon, it seems is no different.

Still, we planned a weekend of low-key family time, and we’re sticking to it. We may have more visitors than we expected as the sheer and total panic starts to fade away, but Carmaggedon or no, we’re doing some hard-core bonding.

Tomorrow I think I may take my toddler for a stroll on the 405.

Are you hanging around Lalaland this weekend? What’s your Carmageddon look like?