So I spent a large part of this evening in my car. I was heading up to the Musso & Frank Grill in Hollywood (a great place to dine) to meet my friends Bob Ingersoll, Thom Zahler and Roger Price for a post-con dinner. I was driving up Highland at about the time the riot broke out at Grauman's Chinese Theater. Here's a quick summary from the L.A. Times…
Los Angeles police set up a "mobile field jail" in Hollywood on Wednesday night to help corral an unruly crowd that crashed the Electric Daisy Carnival Experience, a documentary about one of the nation's largest electronic music festivals.
As the event got out of hand, large crowds spilled into the street around Grauman's Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, with some people throwing bottles at police. Witnesses said others were dancing on a police car, taunting police and "planking" — lying down in the street. Fights among people in the crowd also broke out sporadically. Police in riot gear shut down streets around the theater, while dozens of police cruisers responded to the disturbance.
Multiple people were detained on suspicion of throwing objects and failure to disperse. Police said they used force in multiple instances to tame the crowd, including firing nonlethal bean bags.
Hollywood and Highland shut down on both directions…as there I was, trying to drive up Highland to Hollywood and then take Hollywood to the restaurant. It usually takes twenty minutes from my house. It took an hour and twenty, and I'd still be en route if I hadn't found a way to pull off Highland and take back streets. They were also jammed but not as jammed.
The thing that struck me was that the local news radio channel, KNX, was largely useless, at least before I finally got to the restaurant. There were a half-dozen helicopters hovering over the scene and police cars zooming about…but the folks at KNX couldn't tell us what had happened other than that there was some sort of "police action disturbance" at Hollywood and Highland and we should "avoid the area." Uh, which area, guys? If I'd known which surrounding streets were involved, I might have been able to plot a good alernate route.
I'm finally home. The same may not be true for Bob, Thom and Roger. They're staying at Hollywood and Highland.