Spring Street

When Los Angeles painted a 1.5-mile strip of Spring Street neon green last year, it was hailed as a major step in the city's effort to have cars and bicycles share the road. But now, the bike lane has become a symbol of how hard it can be to reserve room for cyclists in a city dominated by the car. The green lane has been criticized by the film industry, which frequently uses the stretch of Spring Street, in the heart of old downtown, as a stand-in for other cities and eras.

When Los Angeles painted a 1.5-mile strip of Spring Street neon green last year, it was hailed as a major step in the city's effort to have cars and bicycles share the road. But now, the bike lane has become a symbol of how hard it can be to reserve room for cyclists in a city dominated by the car. The green lane has been criticized by the film industry, which frequently uses the stretch of Spring Street, in the heart of old downtown, as a stand-in for other cities and eras.

They called Ray Post the Mayor of Spring Street because he knew everyone around and kept a sense of order in the area just south of 6th, where order isn't always easy to keep. As doorman to a residential building called Premiere Towers, Post chased away junkies, asked winos to move on and sometimes gave homeless people a couple of bucks to get something to eat. Bums called him "Mr.

Los Angeles has a bike plan, and it's a fine idea. We have quite enough cars and quite enough drivers, thank you very much, and the counter-stereotypical truth is that we also have thousands and thousands of bicyclists who would gladly leave the car in the garage (or not buy one in the first place) and take to the pedals if only we could make enough room for them on the pavement. That's the idea behind the mile-and-a-half or so of green-painted bike lane that runs along Spring Street downtown.

I hurry past the intersection of 4th and Spring streets on my downtown walks these days: There is no reason to slow down any more. An old friend died at the southeast corner earlier this year, and I don't even want to think about it. The friend was a store, an 80-year-old camera store called Earl V. Lewis Cameras.

The Spring Street complex known for years as Title Insurance & Trust headquarters and more recently as the Los Angeles Design Center, has been sold to a partnership with offices in Santa Monica for an estimated $25 million. Twin Springs & L.P., Delaware Ltd. Partnership was the buyer. Principals are Larry Bond, Al Ehringer and Kirk von Meeteren. Ehringer said "no comment" when asked about a rumor that actor Arnold Schwarzenegger is also an investor.

Cheering and tossing papers into the air, traders on the Pacific Stock Exchange on Friday celebrated the exchange's final closing at its 54-year-old location at 618 S. Spring St. On Monday, the exchange will begin operations at its new $5-million facility in the Beaudry Center II building at 233 S. Beaudry Ave.

I took a guided walking tour of the old Spring Street financial district the other day, and was reminded that Los Angeles was never the cultural wasteland it was alleged to be. The financial palaces of south Spring Street were a solid architectural achievement, and to this day the buildings that remain give the street beauty, strength, unity and dignity. It was a fine day, bright and wind-washed.

Aside from the usual battles of the buck all theaters have to wage, the Los Angeles Theatre Center has had to combat its downtown location. From the start everyone connected with LATC knew that Spring Street was a tough area. When the Community Redevelopment Agency helped establish the LATC complex in 1985, it counted on the presence of the theater to help tame the neighborhood. It has, and it hasn't.

Spring Street, known in grander days as the Wall Street of the West, has had a hard struggle over the past decade to regain some vestige of its former respectability. Bordered by Skid Row, divided from the new, largely Anglo, Bunker Hill commercial center by Latino Broadway, Spring Street still limps along, despite an infusion of $50 million in public money by the Community Redevelopment Agency.

The city put an emerald road outside my office. Well, it's more of a radioactive green, to be honest. But there it was, greeting me last week upon my arrival at the Times building downtown: a six-foot wide strip of paint running inside the traffic lanes on Spring Street. It's the city's newest bike lane, an inspiration that comes to Los Angeles via the Netherlands, where the people love getting around their cities under their own power so much, they're constantly giving bicycles more of the road.

The latest bicycle lane in Los Angeles has an interesting twist: It's bright green. The color is aimed at reducing collisions and to help cyclists feel safer on their north-south commute on Spring Street through bustling downtown, where two-wheeled travel is on the rise. At 1.5 miles long — from Cesar Chavez Avenue to 9th Street — the lane is the first in downtown and the first full-color lane in the city. "The really exciting thing with this bike lane is it goes right past City Hall.

The Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk will likely never return to the days when perhaps 100 people strolled among a dozen galleries on Spring and Main streets one evening each month. Seven years after gallery owners and business leaders had the idea that Angelenos would promenade a block from Skid Row, the event now draws up to 30,000 visitors, beckoned by four dozen galleries and numerous bars, restaurants and food trucks. It has both spurred the revitalization of downtown and grown with it. But some patrons seem more interested in carousing than browsing — let alone buying — art. Bitter squabbling among business owners and Art Walk organizers has, at times, threatened to dissolve the event altogether.

The balmy summer evening and a chance to patronize art galleries, shops and restaurants had drawn hundreds to the Downtown Art Walk on Thursday. Much of the crowd was shoulder to shoulder along Spring near 4th Street where dozens of food trucks had congregated. Among the masses were Jimmy and Natasha Vasquez of Montebello. In a stroller was their son, Marcello, barely 2 months old. His aunt, uncle and four cousins were nearby. About 9:15 p.m., a silver Cadillac DeVille crept down Spring and driver tried to park in front of the El Dorado Lofts on the left-hand side of the one-way street.

A transient who was fatally shot by an undercover police officer during a confrontation on a downtown street Tuesday afternoon was armed with a knife, Los Angeles police said. The shooting occurred about 12:20 p.m. near 5th and Spring streets. It was initially reported that the man was shot during a robbery. But police now say detectives were walking in the neighborhood when they saw the 35-year-old man cutting up what appeared to be narcotics. The detectives confronted the man and attempted to take him into custody, police said.

Preservationists have convinced Los Angeles engineers to take a broader view of a narrow bridge over the Los Angeles River that officials want to widen and renovate. Members of the City Council's Transportation Committee said Wednesday that alternatives will be sought to what conservationists have warned would be the "destruction" of the 82-year-old North Spring Street bridge near Chinatown in a widening and seismic-upgrade project. The iconic viaduct, built atop graceful concrete arches, is one of 14 Los Angeles River crossings that have been designated as historic bridges by the city.

The stages are set. Now it's just a matter of weeks before the Los Angeles Theatre Center will open at 514 S. Spring St. Spring Street? Where once-fine buildings stand feebly like old warriors, unable to fight the battle against time and the elements? Look again. There has been talk for years of redeveloping this deteriorating downtown corridor, but at last the efforts are becoming visible.

Along with the many things that Michael Leko and Will Shamlian got right about Spring St., their new beer-centric pub in downtown's historic core, there was one small detail they got wrong. It's a point of decorum for bars centered around exotic stouts and IPA's to offer at least one option for good 'ol American watery beer. Leko and Shamlian went with Busch for theirs. Turns out they overestimated downtowners' appetites for anything less than serious ale. "We put it on the menu for the PBR crowd, but we can't sell it," Leko said.

In downtown Los Angeles, it wasn't unusual to walk down the street and see ruins and old dustbins and people milling about aimlessly. Occasionally, slicing through this emptiness, there'd be the thumping bass of a boombox. A dozen or so years later, change and gentrification have taken away much of the ruins and dust, and people mill about with more purpose. As for that unexpected noise: On Thursday, "Unsilent Night," an ambient piece by composer Phil Kline for crowd, cassette tape and boombox, debuts in downtown L.A..