Griffith Observatory Evening Lawn Countdown Timer

Everybody comes up here for the view. The lawn is an afterthought. But look at it. Three wedges of grass, a white obelisk with six astronomers carved around the base, and the building waiting at the end of the paths like a set that has been struck and rebuilt so many times it forgot it was ever fake. James Dean stood on this lawn in Rebel Without a Cause. So did half of Hollywood, in one film or another, and the place has never shaken it. The light was going, which is the only time this building looks right. By day it is a white bunker. At dusk it lifts. Somebody's kid was running laps around the monument while his mother called him in two languages. A tour group formed up near the entrance and immediately dissolved. Two docents in matching jackets were arguing about whether to close the west door yet, and losing. I put the camera down for a while and sat on the low wall with my hands in my sleeves. Then the doors opened, light spilled out onto the steps, and about forty people went in at once to look at the sky through a telescope.