Looking Back: One Year Ago

Eric Richardson

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — I get really interested in the stuff that comes up via the "on this date" function in the righthand sidebar. Over the past few days two have come up that I thought were worth mentioning, both from last year.

Aug 19th: I can't believe it was a full year ago that new lights were installed on the Canadian Building at Main and Winston. I remarked then how clear the newly-lit sidewalks were late at night. By my recollection that's still the case, and the situation's been made even better with the opening of Blossom. You can contrast that against the situation in front of the LA Garage that I posted about a few days ago. There the sidewalk is reasonably lit, but I think there's just so little around that the people hanging there simply don't care.

Aug 21st: One year ago today I wrote that the Downtown wayfinding signage needed a tune-up. I included a picture of one particularly bad sign that mentioned the "Spring St Hist/Fin" and "Broadway Th District". Today those signs look much better.

I don't remember noticing when the offenders got changed out -- or if all of them did, for that matter. Wording like this is so much clearer, though, that it makes you wonder what in the world the consultants on this project were thinking the first time.