The Things You See Wandering Downtown

Eric Richardson

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — I was walking around tonight talking to a reporter about Downtown. We had been talking about the blog, and I had told her that the best way for me to find things is just to wander around and see what's out there.

We were walking up 5th toward Grand when we saw that Grand was blocked off with cones. I said that it must be a film shoot.

Turns out actually an unmanned Fedex truck glanced off the library and took out a tree on the sidewalk.

That was unexpected.

The story I gathered is that the driver must not have set the brake well on the truck, and it made its way down Grand without him. I didn't see any debris from other cars, so somehow it made it across Grand safely before scuffing up the pictured corner of the Library wall. The scuff is really low, so I'm not sure exactly what part of the truck hit. In any case, it didn't look to be anything too bad. They'll need to touch up the paint job there, but the Library will be just fine.

The truck then struck this (former) tree, probably with its front left corner. That's at least where the damage was on the Fedex truck. It must have hit it at a brisk pace, 'cause there's not much left where the tree used to be. It broke it off straight from the ground.

I don't know what brought the truck to a stop. If I had to guess I'd say the tree had something to do with it. In any case, Grand was reopened by the time I passed again at 7:30pm.