Too Good Not to Post

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — I ran across this in a Times article from December of 1986, talking about Figueroa and Flower completing their conversion to one-way operation:

Stretches of Figueroa and Flower streets in the downtown area became one-way Saturday, completing a three-phase conversion of the streets that began two weeks ago.

Flower is now exclusively southbound between 3rd Street and Washington Boulevard, while Figueroa carries only northbound traffic between Olympic Boulevard and 3rd.

Police said downtown was so congested with Christmas shoppers Saturday that it was impossible to tell if motorists were having difficulty adjusting to the changes.

“Traffic is so damn heavy out there that if you had a gorilla driving a cement truck the wrong way up one of those streets it wouldn’t hurt anybody,” said traffic Lt. Marvin A. Kilpatrick.

Nothing like a little color in the paper.