The 6th Street Viaduct, spanning Los Angeles’ historic Boyle Heights on the east and the downtown Arts District on the west, is not just another bridge.
The structure, which opened in July 2022 as a replacement for the span that was built in 1932, won a national award in 2023 as the year’s most outstanding engineering achievement. It features 10 pairs of sculptural 30-and 60-foot concrete arches that can be illuminated with multiple colors.
But the iconic, Instagram-worthy site also enjoyed by pedestrians, bicyclists and roller skaters has been treated rudely. Initially, police had to chase off motorists who would take over the bridge to perform illegal maneuvers.
And now, the source of civic pride has suffered another indignity: Thieves have stolen the valuable electrical copper wiring from parts of the “Ribbon of Light,” apparently to sell it as forgettable scrap, plummeting parts of the bridge into darkness.
“The Grinch stole all the Christmas lights in Whoville. In LA, our Grinch stole the copper wire off the 6th Street Bridge — turning out its decorative lights — and causing excessive damage in the process,” an indignant Los Angeles Police Protective League wrote in a social media post.
Brenda Martinez, vice president of the Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council, which acts as a liaison between the community and the city, said her group met on Wednesday to discuss the vandalism and sent photos of the damage to the office of City Councilman Kevin de León, whose District 14 includes the 3,500-foot-long bridge, the longest in the city.
“That is definitely a shock in the sense that I thought we were going to have more respect because it’s new and it’s a big thing right now,” Martinez said Friday. “The majority of the people in Boyle Heights love the bridge, the fact that they have the lights.”
She said the council hopes that the lights will be repaired soon and that deterrents, possibly in the form of protection for the electrical…
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