Three (Weeks of) Strikes
And we're (still) in
The other day I headed out for a few hours to picket, planning to go to the as-yet unexplored Warner Brothers line. I exited the 101 and cruised down Barham Boulevard, a road that moves as elegantly as a ski slope when unencumbered by traffic. Before you reach Warner Brothers and its uniform sand-colored gates, you pass the back of the Universal lot—the end of one kingdom, the beginning of another. While paused at the stoplight between the two, I saw my friend Dan picketing Universal, so I changed my plans and headed there.
The neighborhood that populates the space between these lots feels safe and suburban, a midcentury relic. I parked in front of a cheery, modest ranch house that probably is now worth one billion dollars.
On my walk along the main drag I noticed one of those electronic road signs that can be programmed to warn you about everything from not driving drunk to the fact it’s raining to the information that the road you take to work every day will be closed for seven to seventeen months. Today, it carried a scolding warning that “EXCESSIVE HONKING VIOLATES LOCAL ORDINANCES” which was clearly directed at the auditory support the strike has been receiving from passing vehicles. Oops!
I found the check-in tent, where you give your name and a union representative duly records your service. The tables are stocked with bulk snacks and beverages and occasionally foods gifted from agencies or celebrities.
The main task at this gate was to walk back and forth across the entrance, which was long enough that you could only cross it once during a walk signal. It was pretty quiet. Less than ten cars passed through it in the time I was there, but to be fair it wasn’t startin’ or quittin’ time which is when cars tend to be at their most active.
I said hi to Dan and some other friends who turned out to also be there but were much less noticeable from my car. We chatted and marched until my child’s invisible hunger cues reached me from across the valley (I had left her home for this jaunt) and I headed out. I found, to my surprise, I was absolutely drenched with sweat, since it is spring in Los Angeles, which means when you leave home you’re cold and by the time you return you’re heat-stroking.
I made my way back to my car, which has felt too small since the baby was born, and back to my apartment, which I’m sure will feel the same way eventually, saying a silent goodbye to the neighborhood of adorable, unaffordable houses.
Yes, it really is! And the price is why writers need to make more moola boola!!!
But the landscaping is PERFECT!