LACMA Rock

How quickly this spectacle was forgotten when the Endeavour tore through town.
The LACMA Rock, which would later be stuck in place as their «Levitated Mass» and now sits mostly forgotten unless a herd of tourists wants to stand in front of it and take one of those corny perspective pictures of themselves trying to lift or push it, came through Southern California on surface roads.
Avoiding freeways because it couldn’t fit under bridges or overpasses, it had to go this slow, winding path from Riverside County.
Well, the rock, wrapped up in white plastic like a frozen Butterball turkey, stopped for the night around the corner from my house.
Honestly, Levitated Mass is far less interesting than the drama it was watching the rock get to LACMA.
I ended up going out the night before to watch the damned thing turn a corner in La Mirada. There were 100 people already gathered.
City vehicles were around to take down the street lights and make sure the wires were high enough, while police and paramedics parked their cars in the middle of the street to watch.
One parked in front of a corner with a big group of on-​lookers already standing there. An elderly lady, whose high-​pitched voice occasionally rung out, «IS IT HERE YEEEET?!» started screeching from her lawn chair, «EXCUSE ME! We were sitting HERE. You’re blocking my view!!» and proceeded to throw her bedroom slippers at the ambulance.
Then there was some drama with a stretch limo trying to come through the closed intersection and the police getting on their loudspeakers to tell it to move, to the roars of the crowd.
While we waited for the rock to show up, got to talking with some of the people hanging around. Apparently this wasn’t the first time a lot of them had seen the rock, with a few of them saying they’d been following along since Riverside. So yeah, the rock had groupies.
It shows up with the biggest rig imaginable, with one truck pulling and two pushing. The rig was really long, with dozens upon dozens of tires.
A low hanging tree ended up cracking and snapping as the branches got caught on the rock and ripped out.
People ooh’d and ahh’d and then got in their cars to watch it make the next scheduled turn. I went home.
Got up the next morning to get some cough syrup, still in my pajamas, and there it was next to the CVS with countless people from all around there to gawk at it as cars went by slowly, one at a time, since the traffic was cut down to one lane. Lots of impatient honking from people trying to get to the 605.
It’s sort of funny. Was this supposed to be performance art? It sort of inadvertently became such.
It seemed like a bigger headache to get the LACMA rock around and yet people complained more abhorrently when the Endeavour came through in less than half the time.
Can’t wait for the next gargantuan thing a museum acquires for the betterment of the city’s people to come rolling through to the tune of everyone’s complaints and broadcasted yawns. Good grief.

I went to see the 340 ton rock on its way to the museum. I went on Friday and couldn’t find it at the place it was supposed to be. It turns out they were 2 miles behind schedule and I just missed it when I got off the 71 freeway. On Saturday I found it and enjoyed seeing the truck it is on, but the rock is covered with an enormous trash bag. The museum has staff there passing out bookmarks with rock facts printed on it. Duane Johnson has nothing to do with it but it would be something to have their pictures together, eh?