LOS ANGELES — This is why LA can’t have nice things.
Last weekend, vandals in Los Angeles painted a massive “F–K TRUMP” message on the 6th Street Viaduct: a half-mile illuminated bridge that local leaders have touted as the greatest new landmark in town.
But while originally hailed for its striking look, the $588 million structure — dubbed the “Ribbon of Light” for the color-changing spotlights that set its flowing, modern-style architecture aglow — has become a darkened crime-ridden eyesore.
Time and again, thieves have stolen the copper wire for the lights as drag racers turn it into a private derby track and vandals wallpaper it in graffiti.
The ill-fated span replaced a Depression-era bridge that had appeared in dozens of Hollywood films — including “Grease,” “Terminator 2” and “Transformers” — before it was demolished in 2016 because of structural concerns with the concrete.
When the Ribbon of Light was completed in 2022, journalists likened it to the Brooklyn and Golden Gate bridges, and the mayor called it a “love letter to the city.”
But the City of Angels’ half-billion-dollar halo has lost its shine: Looters stripped a full seven miles of electrical wiring from the bridge as it also has fallen victim to street takeover mobs and influencers who scale its 60-foot arches for likes — including a teen who plunged to his death in 2023, according to the LA Times.
“I feel like we can’t have anything nice,” said Alyssa Mendez, who works in a cafe near the bridge entrance. “When anything good happens in Los Angeles, people don’t know how to behave.”
Mendez said the Viaduct was meant to be the crown jewel of a new arts district that grew out of the warehouses and factories east of downtown.
The city even threw a “Bridgefest” event in which the structure was closed to traffic and decked out with food trucks, open-air markets, concert stages and a beer garden.
The annual event lasted only two years. Mendez believes it was canceled because of drunk festival-goers trying to climb the arches and causing trouble for local businesses.
“People would come trashed down the street,” she said.
In the weeks after the viaduct’s grand opening, the city workers were spending an average of 21.5 hours scrubbing away 1,244 square feet of graffiti every single day, according to ABC 7.
LAPD posted patrol cars at the bridge, though they mainly served to nab ordinary commuters such as Mel Keedle, who said he was slapped with a $500 speeding ticket for just following the flow of rush-hour traffic.
“They were pulling over everyone. That speeding ticket felt like they were just trying to pay off the bridge,” Keedle said.
But for the city, nothing has been more embarrassing than the plunder of the electrical wire, which hasn’t been replaced a full year after the last of the bridge’s lights winked out — prompting one vandal to spray-paint, “Fix the lights you lazy f–ks” on an arch.
Officials claimed the bridge was a target of organized gangs of copper bandits looting lamp poles and power cables throughout the city, and last year, the LAPD established a copper wire task force to hunt them down.
Joyana Kemper, who works in a ceramics studio near the bridge’s west end, doesn’t buy that narrative.
“We’ve got roving gangs like Victorian London stealing copper wire?” Kemper asked sarcastically. “The root cause is that people are poor and hungry so they’re going to steal wire. …I’m not surprised we’re missing the lights across that bridge.”
Though the city hasn’t fixed the lights, it has invested in an under-construction park project that spans the roughly half-mile area below the Viaduct.
Manny Romero, who works in a nearby coffee shop, is happy for the park, but he said it’s only a matter of time before it, too, succumbs to vandals and looters.
“That’s definitely LA for you. No matter what it is, they’ll find some way to mess it up,” Romero said.
