Behind the Story: The Bridge Los Angeles Loves Too Much

LOS ANGELES — A couple grinned at each other as they glided on bicycles across this city’s newest landmark, a glistening concrete bridge that connects the downtown arts district to the working class neighborhood of Boyle Heights.

A man wearing a suit rode an electric scooter down its length. Drivers reached out of their car windows to snap photos of the arches that form the Sixth Street Viaduct, as the bridge is officially known.

Six years after demolition began on its seismically unstable predecessor, the new Sixth Street Bridge opened earlier this month, and Angelenos love it. Maybe a little too much.

As my colleague Shawn Hubler and I reported this week, the long-awaited $588 million bridge has proved irresistible to Los Angeles residents, including all kinds of troublemakers.

Within 24 hours of the bridge’s celebratory opening, graffiti artists had tagged concrete surfaces. Illegal street takeovers have covered the bridge’s pristine lanes in skid marks. Skateboarders and climbers are trying to scale the arches. A barber even commandeered the median to give haircuts one evening.

The mischief has led Los Angeles police to repeatedly shut down the bridge. The city is now considering installing speed bumps, a concrete median barrier and climbing deterrents.

“Look, unlike the Brooklyn Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, this is the first major bridge to be built in the social media era,” said Councilman Kevin de León, whose district includes both the bridge and the communities that bookend it. “Folks are trying to get their virtual fame and go viral.”

On an afternoon in Boyle Heights this week, four police cars parked at the entrance to the bridge and officers poured out into the sidewalk. Nearby, customers buying cut mango and pineapple from a fruit vendor gossiped about problems at the new viaduct, drawing arches in the air with their fingers.

Darcy Gomez, who works at a 7-Eleven in Boyle Heights next to the bridge, told me that its opening had transformed the block. From her storefront window, we spotted teenagers skating the bridge and pedestrians with cameras embarking across the sun-drenched expanse.

Gomez, 25, said the officers circling here were no longer novel. And crowds of pedestrians and cars typically begin gathering around sundown to flood the bridge, sometimes making it hard for her to leave at the end of her shift, she said.

The problems with the bridge have chipped away at her initial impression of the project: that it’s a perfect, beautiful expanse to traverse, especially with your car windows rolled down.

“It’s nice to drive on and relax, but once you think about all the things that go on there when you’re not there, it’s like, ‘Ouch,’” she said.

Where we’re traveling

Today’s tip comes from Mona Patel: “My favorite place to visit in California is Encinitas — lovely beaches, gorgeous gardens and less touristy than other coastal parts of San Diego County.”

Tell us about your favorite places to visit in California. Email your suggestions to CAtoday@nytimes.com. We’ll be sharing more in upcoming editions of the newsletter.

Tell us

What California stories, big or small, do you want us to cover? Send your tips to CAToday@nytimes.com.

And before you go, some good news

Step into Video Wave, in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood, and you’ll find stacks of DVDs and VHS tapes piled high. Around since 1983, the business is the city’s last full-service video rental store.

Its owner, Colin Hutton, offers personalized film recommendations that outdo the algorithms of streaming services, The San Francisco Standard reports. He has 27,000 films in his collection.

“I’ve been able to stay around and I probably shouldn’t have been,” Hutton said. “It’s really the community and their support that are why I’m still here.”

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back on Monday. — Soumya

P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: ___ firma (5 letters).