A Space Shuttle Is Retired

Onlookers watch the space shuttle Endeavour as it moves east on Manchester Boulevard in Inglewood. (Wally Skalij / Courtesy Los Angeles Times)

Endeavour creeps down Manchester Boulevard toward a stop at the Forum on its way to the California Science Center. (Irfan Khan / Courtesy Los Angeles Times)

Traymond Harris, left, and Ryan Hudge play basketball as the space shuttle Endeavour passes by on Crenshaw Avenue in Inglewood. (Wally Skalij / Courtesy Los Angeles Times)

In October of 2012, the retired space shuttle Endeavour, which was largely built in Palmdale and during its active NASA service touched down regularly at Edwards Air Force Base in the Antelope Valley, moved in a boisterous, slow-motion parade through the streets of Los Angeles, on its way from Los Angeles International Airport to a new permanent home at the California Science Center in Exposition Park. Huge crowds gathered at every turn as the orbiter pushed east on Manchester Boulevard, north on Crenshaw Boulevard and east again on Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard. The parade, for all its novelty, seemed a natural expression of L.A. character and history. In a city that can seem most clearly legible when we are moving through it and where spectacle itself is often mobile—where we have always shown off on skateboards or in muscle cars—Endeavour seemed to fit right in.●

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PAST DUE: Report and Recommendations of the Los Angeles Mayor's Office Civic Memory Working Group

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This website is typeset in three typefaces by two generations of Angeleno type designers. Headlines are set in Maria of Los Angeles (MOLA) by Roberto Rodriguez. Rodriquez took inspiration for MOLA from the ubiquitous murals of our Lady of Guadalupe in Los Angeles. Rodriguez began photographing sun-faded and graffiti-tagged murals across various neighborhoods, including Boyle Heights, Wellington Heights, and East Los Angeles.

His research led him to lettering on the 1811 battle flag of Mexican Revolutionary Miguel Hidalgo Bandera whose inscriptional lettering references Catholic missions and Barrio walls in palimpsests of tagging. MOLA pays homage to murals that are honorable pieces with a cultural connection from the past to the present day LA.

Cahuenga and Fabriga, both designed by Greg Lindy of LuxTypo, are used for body and navigational type. As Rodrigeuz's mentor and teacher, Lindy is also interested in expressing LA's history through typography. Lindy chose Cahuenga, which carries an Indigenous name, as “emblematic of many who make their way via car through the Hollywood area of Los Angeles. As in many parts, the driving route is convoluted to get from point A to point B. However, it seems more often than not that when in the Hollywood area, one usually ends up on Cahuenga Boulevard at some point.”

The type system is completed by Lindy's typeface Fabriga—a structured and warm typeface that uses a visual ensemble metaphor. According to Lindy, ”Fabriga sets out to take a supportive role as a font family, understanding that one of its great strengths is through its diversity in application and composition.” The integrated trio of typefaces speaks in a call and response to the layers of the historical and contemporary in Los Angeles.