Update 2:57 pm: While everyone's fretting about the 405 shutdown on July 16 and 17, Prince William and Kate Middleton's royal visit to Downtown, Hancock Park, and Beverly Hills this weekend could become the sleeper traffic event of the month. Here's what you need to know about the impending British Invasion:
Friday early evening: The Duke and Duchess get in in the early evening and are scheduled to head to the Beverly Hilton for some gathering of very rich people and techies (the Venture Capital & New Media Summit, if you really need to know).
Friday night: The couple will attend a reception at the British Consul-General's residence on June Street in Hancock Park. They'll also be staying at the 1928 Wallace Neff house.
- TMZ reported back in June that two LAPD officers and a member of the State Department were going door-to-door in Hancock Park warning residents to be on the lookout for paparazzi.
- The LAPD has gotten no-trespassing letters from HP neighbors, so they'll be able to arrest any paparazzi who accidentally or on purpose stumble onto private property while trying to get photos. One "veteran Hollywood photo pro" tells the Chicago Sun-Times "You'd think we were working in Red China, not America!"
- Tabloids have made "lucrative offers" to the neighbors, but "have not gotten any takers in the immediate area," according to the LA Times.
Saturday: After a day of polo in Santa Barbara, the royals will hit a black tie BAFTA event at the recently-reopened Belasco Theatre Downtown.
- The Sun-Times reports that paparazzi had struck deals "for prime shooting sites in houses and buildings" near the party, but according to that veteran photog, authorities "swooped in and told the [building’s] owners to cancel those deals."
Sunday: K&W will visit the Michael Maltzan-designed campus of Inner-City Arts in Skid Row, where they'll do some painting and ceramics with underprivileged kids who attend the program. They'll also see a dance performance by a troupe of teenagers.
- Monocles are dropping all over the place at the thought of royals on Skid Row. The AP sets the scene: "As twilight sets in on a recent afternoon, the sidewalk fills with locals swigging beer out of paper bags and smoking marijuana cigarettes." Meanwhile, some kids didn't even know who the Duke and Duchess were, and a 19 year old dancer says "This is what's going on outside their castle. They're going to get a taste of what life is like for us."
Update: Also Sunday: From Downtown, the couple will swing over to Culver City to attend a job fair for returning servicemen at Sony Pictures Studio.
All weekend: According to TMZ, the royals will be watched over by the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the LAPD Elite Metro division, private security, plainclothes police, and CHP for escorts.
And the New York Times celebrated the upcoming visit by getting a London-based reporter to haul out some exhausted old LA tropes, like so: "[Angelenos] really do hope you have a great day. They really are psyched to be here. If they work in Hollywood, they really do think that their latest project is fantastic, that they have a huge hit on their hands, that their new breasts are hot and that their bespoke Porsche is more expensive than yours." Although somehow they managed not to mention our constant, crippling traffic.
· A statement by Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, Private Secretary to The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge about the visit to California, USA [Clarence House]
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