Moving On

Wherever you live, there are reasons why you may not be able to go to a particular place where you mean to run an errand. There might be traffic, or you may find they don't have what you need. The place may even be moved away or closed, and this may come as a surprise to you if you don't have reason to go there often. In LA there is an additional reason for being unable to patronize a place, and it does not surprise anyone here. I mean of course the sudden specter of filming underway.

Usually you do get notice. Sometimes the front of my own apartment building bears notices for filming some brief time in the future. Sometimes you don't get notice, as I did not when I went to the library the other day. It is a picturesque one, and probably quite appealing to the filmmaker. In this case, the library served as a location in what I gather to be a spec commercial. This is when someone makes a commercial out of their own pocket for a company that may certainly reject it and leave them holding the bag. I don't much see the sense in it, but if people are doing it then it must work.

When one is new to this town, there is an excitement in seeing filming happen, or in seeing the streets closed for a film premiere or award show. That ends. I had gone to that library in order to drop some things off and pick some more things up. I also was looking to glance through a newspaper. I was not looking to traipse around town, but that became a regrettable necessity when I decided I had no interest in negotiating this set in order to get inside and conduct my business. Instead, I found my way to a different branch some ways off. I'm not entirely sorry I wound up there.

Even so, I struggle to balance my keen interest in such a thing as a film shoot (which falls within my field of work) and such other matters as getting done my own affairs. I liked very much that a previous branch near an old apartment of mine sometimes played host to 'Reno: 911'. I liked even better that when they used it it remained entirely open and easy to access. This small-time commercial maker ought to learn a lesson from that.