Curious Coast
Curious Coast: One listener’s personal connection to City Hall
A few weeks ago, Curious Coast set out to investigate a question of your choosing and followed your lead to a particularly iconic Los Angeles structure: City Hall. The question…
By Emily Mae Czachor • • 1 min readA few weeks ago, Curious Coast set outto investigate a question of your choosing and followed your lead to a particularly iconic Los Angeles structure: City Hall. The question was submitted to us by Fabian Mejia, a Los Angeles native who’s been wondering about the goings-on of the building’s top floors for a while.
“I thought, ‘What happens up there?'” Mejia said. “Are the floors still in use?” For those who’ve been wondering the same thing, check out our answer to Mejia’s question. We learned a lot!
Born and raised in the South Central area, Mejia remembers zooming past City Hall on his skateboard as a teenager. He and his friends were looking for the perfect staircase to practice their “ollies” — an airborne skateboarding trick. “I remember seeing the stairs in front of City Hall and thinking, ‘Oh, that’s impossible,'” he said. Mejia didn’t attempt the ollie, but remembers glancing up at the looming 454-foot tower above and thinking, “Man, is that thing going to fall?”
The tower’s famousseismic retrofit of the late 90s ensured that’s not going to happen. But Mejia’s creative theories about the building’s upper floors persisted for another few decades.
“I always imagined old, classic goings-on up there,” Mejia said. “Like a courtroom.” But, he he said he knew “that’s probably not what happens.” As a former LAPD officer with firsthand knowledge of the California court system, Mejia’s insights are pretty on-point.
Interestingly enough, the first time Mejia saw the City Hall building wasn’t in person. He saw it on TV. “I remember looking at [City Hall] and becoming familiar with it for the first time watching old television shows,” Mejia said.
If you’ve ever had a question like Mejia’s (or totally unlike it; that’s great too!) but thought it too obscure to look into, redirect your inquiries to Curious Coast! Of all the SoCal-related stuff we love to investigate, the goings-on of some of the city’s coolest buildings is just one of them.