He put on his fedora and told my 4-year-old father, “C’mon, Butch! We’re buying a car.” On a Monday morning, Grandpa slid his checkbook into his back pocket. He soon came to loathe this commute and decided to make use of the region’s abundant parking. He landed a job in Santa Monica and relied on public transportation, riding the bus nearly 40 miles a day to weld for Douglas Aircraft. In Los Angeles, he abandoned his cowboy ways, becoming a factory worker. In Mexico, my grandfather had worked as a livestock inspector. They migrated from Mexico by train and moved into cramped public housing built during the Second World War. Billions were being spent to build the massive freeway system for which Los Angeles would become notorious, but my family didn’t rely on asphalt to get here. My grandparents settled in East Los Angeles in the 1950s, a decade when parking spots in Los Angeles County totaled a mere 6,000,000. Los Angeles is terrible at housing people. I faithfully keep my exit ticket in my sports bra, and so a subterranean garage has yet to swallow my car for good. Rescuing the love of one’s life from the afterlife, or one’s Honda from spot D-13, requires faith. He must trust that the Lord of the Underworld has honored his promise to release her from his grip. According to lore, Eurydice may leave the realm of the dead under one condition: Orpheus must not peek over his shoulder to verify her presence. Once I’m in my car, and we’re chugging toward the light, I fight the urge to look in the rearview mirror. Those I see wandering through the various realms - Level 1, Level 2, Level 3 - those are the damned. Down, down, down I spiral, plunging into the land of shadows in search of my recently deceased wife, Eurydice. When I descend to retrieve my Honda, which can be quite an ordeal (IT LOOKS LIKE EVERY OTHER HONDA), I pretend to be Orpheus, son of Apollo. For this reason, the parking garages of Los Angeles bring out my inner 12-year-old. That we often stash our cars underground implies infernal adventure. It is, however, fitting that this large novelty object peers toward Hades, suggesting that the subterranean is worthwhile, that it merits magnification. I’ve never seen this roadside attraction “in the flesh.” Why drive all the way to Venice to stare at binoculars that will show me nothing? That’s a little too "Waiting for Godot" for me. Its lenses point toward hell if you’re a cartoon Christian, toward the molten metals that swirl at the core of our planet if you’re a heathen. It looms like a practical joke, and one must drive through its telescopes to park. The sculpture, titled "Giant Binoculars," was designed by Coosje van Bruggen and Claes Oldenburg. Outside of a Venice parking garage sits the largest pair of faux binoculars on earth. The parking garages of Los Angeles bring out my inner 12-year-old.
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