This afternoon, I was over near the Beverly Center, a very large indoor mall here in Los Angeles. The Beverly Center is eight stories high so it's a pretty big building. One side faces La Cienega Boulevard and they had much of that busy street blocked off for construction. I couldn't tell exactly what they were doing but it looked like they were blocking off one half of it to begin digging it up to put in a new sewer line or storm drain…or something. They're digging up a lot of major L.A. streets to extend subway lines but I don't recall any plan that had a subway going north and south on La Cienega.
Anyway, as I walked by, I saw the most amazing machine. It was a crane — a very big crane that reached way, way into the sky. It reached up taller than the Beverly Center by at least three or four stories. The top 20-30 feet of it looked not unlike the fire ladder in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World but I didn't see Spencer Tracy — or anyone — dangling from it.
That was my first thought: The Mad World recollection. My second, because the thing didn't look that sturdy, was that if that thing came crashing down, it would destroy quite a few buildings, cars and human beings. (A smaller but still formidable crane did crash down on that street two years ago injuring two workers.)
And my third thought — and the one I'm hoping some reader of this can help me with — is why do they need a crane that tall to dig up the street? (I tried to take a picture of it, by the way, but it was just too big. I couldn't find an angle that would give you any sense of scale.)
One metal cable came down from the peak of the crane. It was connected to, and seemed to be lifting up or placing, a large flat piece of metal. It was the kind that they put down over holes in the street so cars can drive over them. Clearly, they hadn't brought in this huge crane — the "truck" part of it was half a block long — just to move around steel plates and pipes.
Other people were staring at it the way you'd look up at Godzilla if you weren't worried about him stepping on you. We started asking each other, "What are they doing here that they need a crane that can reach up to (at least) the height of an eleven story building?"
Right across from the eight-story Beverly Center is a five-story mall called the Beverly Connection. You could use that crane to put the Beverly Connection on top of the Beverly Center…but I don't think that's what they're doing. I think they're digging up the street and for the life of me, I can't figure out why they need a crane that big. Does anyone reading this know what they're doing there? (I looked online and couldn't find anything.) Does anyone know why a crane that size would be needed to excavate a boulevard…or even for construction amidst already-built buildings? I'm mystified.