Photo updated 4:38 pm: La Brea and Rodeo in the aftermath of the 1963 Baldwin Hills Dam Break via Baldwin Hills Village
A great fictional flood is coming to wash the palm trees out of the ground and sweep them into the Hollywood Bowl to float like vegetables in a giant, fetid bowl of soup. It's the LA Flood Project, and this weekend the first parts of its "Rashomon-style multi-POV locative narrative" will unfold at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. The Project, which can be followed by phone or online, is made up of real oral histories about Los Angeles in crisis (eg during the Northridge earthquake or the 1992 riots), fictional stories from participants and Twitter users, and a flood simulation. Whoa, details on that last one please. The Festival of Books is at USC this year and the demonstration will be USC-based; there are already several narratives from around the campus up on the Project's website.
Here's a sample from faculty dining room Town and Gown (this part is during Stage 2, as the waters rise):
It's like a scene out of "Duck Soup." The faculty, from assistants on up to full professor's have stepped out of Town and Gown and into what has become a swimming pool. In their suits, pants, skirts, and silk blouses they sit, elbows resting on the sidewalk, glasses of wine a their side, discussing Fulbrights in the Mediterranean. Compare and contrast with Woody Guthrie's account of the 1934 Crescenta Valley flood in "Los Angeles New Year's Flood."
· LA Flood [Official Site, via LAObserved]
· LA Flood Project [Twitter]
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