Lights, Camera, Bike Lane!
Photo: LA Eco-Village Blog
A new bike lane on Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles is making it difficult to use the street as a backdrop for movies:
That mile and a half of Spring Street turns out to be the most filmed stretch of street in town. Or rather, it was until about last November, when the green lane spoiled the shots that made Spring the perfect stand-in for Anytown, USA. It was the perfect street for car commercials, the perfect backdrop of stolid bank buildings, the perfect mix of marble columns and Art Deco spandrels, the perfect modern or 1920s downtown — until the wide green stripe appeared.
Apparently it’s not something even the imaginative minds of Hollywood can fix: “Bike lane green…is not digitally erasable Hollywood green.”
I was watching 30 Rock the other night and noticed a bike lane in the background of one exterior scene. It crossed this TV writer’s mind that New York’s new street designs could cause headaches for producers and directors; imagine shooting a movie set in Times Square in the 1970s or on — gasp! — Prospect Park West in 2009.
Does Gibson Dunn do entertainment law?
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Brooklyn Spoke 
It’s interesting to imagine that there were bike friendly cities back then – back to the future, so to speak. If this image became commonplace in the cinema, maybe those who cherish the status quo might not get so worked up.
The City has not looked “New York” for a while, (Thanks to Guiliani and all the Chain restaurants and stores allowed in on his watch) so bike lanes aren’t going to kill that anyway. And why can’t any town USA have an awesome bike lane on it? Or is it the car company that doesn’t want it in the frame, “Aww yeah, instead of one year of insurance, I could buy a sweet bike!”