Earlier this month, Caltrans closed the 101 Freeway for the weekend to begin a nine-month long demolition of the historic Sixth Street Viaduct (which has "concrete cancer"; it'll be replaced with an "iconic" new bridge). Fears of snarled traffic east of Downtown LA even led officials to give the closure a catchy name, the 101 Slow Jam, and to release a video of LA's Mayor Garcetti cooing a sensual warning to avoid the area.
If Garcetti's smooth and sexy breaking of the news was too slow for you, Caltrans has sped things up a bit with this time-lapse video of the Sixth Street Viaduct demolition.
Caltrans may not have worked at the pace shown in this time-lapse, but they certainly had to hustle to get the job done: workers had just 40 hours to demolish and remove portions of the Sixth Street Bridge that crossed over the 101 Freeway in Boyle Heights. In the video we see the work done in just eight frantic minutes.
It's quite remarkable how quickly a landmark can fall after standing strong for nearly a century (the bridge dates from the early '30s). In the video, bulldozers crush through concrete day and night, leveling the historic and famous bridge with ease. As dawn breaks on Monday morning, workers sweep away the rubble from the 84-year-old landmark shortly before morning commuters drive past the ghost of the Sixth Street Viaduct for the first time.
Fast View of "101 Slow Jam" [Caltrans]
LA Mayor Garcetti 'Slow Jams' About This Weekend's 101 Freeway Closure [Curbed LA]
All the Details on February's Shutdown of the 101 in Downtown [Curbed LA]
· The Sixth Street Viaduct's 8 Greatest Appearances in Movies, Music Videos, and Video Games [Curbed LA]