The Third Life of the Hollywood Sign

The Hollywood Sign, which in First L.A. advertised a real estate subdivision, Hollywoodland, and in Second L.A. a globalized film business, now might as well be a billboard for the Third L.A. Residents and tourists make a kind of pilgrimage to the sign in search of a proper place to take a selfie and tag themselves as having been there. Those who take the pilgrimage encounter obstacles of technology — a Google maps itinerary that has been rigged by agreements between the city and Google to direct pedestrians to the terraces of the Griffith Observatory to see the sign — and of neighborhood opposition, as residents on the pedestrian routes to the sign complain that their formerly quiet sidewalks are now overrun. This is the Third L.A. — this mix of technology and obstructionism, these battles over access and shared space.