This steel boned, steel-gray pedestrian bridge spans the Amtrak rail line along the north side of Raymer Street between Kester and Van Nuys Blvd.
This is an industrial section of Van Nuys, not far from that hard-to-find Target hidden nearby in the maze of factories.
What seems remarkable to me in photographing this bridge, is the gruesome architecture of it. Graceless, complicated, hideous. It does not invite one to cross it but rather to run away from its police state cruelty. This crossing would not look out of place in Communist East Germany, or perhaps as a gateway to a Maoist re-education facility. Yet, even Hitler would have demanded something more comely.
In general, our American public environment stinks. We spend far less than we should on our own nation’s infrastructure, and we are left with a choice between crumbling beauty such as the 80-year old graceful spans across the LA River downtown, and the new gargantuan violence of constructed indifference (see photos).
Would anyone want their wife, or child or older parent to walk across this bridge alone, either at night or during the day? Is it stupid to expound upon the aesthetics of one forgotten bridge? Or does this forlorn moonscape of industrialism have something to say to us?
Here in Van Nuys 