Robinson Crusoe of Concrete

ArroyoFest 2023 (Photo – Jared Matt Greenberg-Meza)

It was like seeing the world naked, without its cloak of bodies and cars.

By Garrett Rowlan

It was the morning of the ArroyoFest, and I woke early as usual, around five, hearing the familiar hum of traffic on the 110 freeway just over the hill from where I live.

I knew the freeway was going to be closed at six, and by that time I was dressed and had my morning coffee. I left the house.

When I reached the corner and turned down Avenue 60 toward the Pasadena Freeway, I expected to see at least a few people waiting to enter the onramp, which curled 100 yards to the three empty lanes, but there were no people except the crew putting up the barrier, and they quickly motored onto the freeway to establish the next guardrail, leaving me to walk alone to the freeway’s entrance.

Seeing a public thoroughfare without traffic was a strange sight, and walking on it was even stranger. It was like entering a cave or a dead giant’s gullet, a gaping aperture into nothing.

I felt faintly transgressive, and yet too like the last person on Earth, no one to judge me.

Farther on, the rumble of the “A” line train passing on the bridge above resounded. Seeing the train high above the emptiness was like watching a ghostly redeye express, sliding into oblivion.

The trickle of water in the LA River was audible. It flowed in darkness as if it were underground.

Past the train bridge, I saw a fire burning about fifty yards away. Two men couldn’t see me in the cloaking darkness and foliage. Their voices had an early-morning muted sound, domestic tones, but their warmth didn’t come from a vent but the burning of jetsam.

Farther on, I saw an apartment building just south of the bridge over York Boulevard. Seeing the tall, lit structure, but no people, I felt like I was looking at a giant brain or mainframe computer, quiet well past midnight, like the computers I remember from working data processing at a midnight shaft at JPL, many years ago.

The eerie feeling was getting to me, and so I climbed the median strip from the northbound to the southland lanes at York. There, a maintenance crew had parked and were getting ready to pick up trash before sunrise.

I felt like a Robinson Crusoe of concrete, seeing the arrival of people at last.

I walked up to the bridge at York and down Monterey Road to home. I slept past daylight and with nothing better to do returned the same way I had three hours before, only now there were people galore: bikers, hikers, skaters, selfie seekers, and a couple of musicians. It was all very festive but I had seen something else, the city without its clothes on.

I felt I had experienced something special.