Ambulance|Crypto.com Arena Garage — Seventy Miles an Hour Between Pillars

A parking structure is the least cinematic room in any city. Low ceiling, sodium light, a forest of square concrete columns spaced close enough to keep a car honest. The garages under the arena at 1111 South Figueroa are exactly that, and Michael Bay put a chase inside one.

The drone crew flew it at sixty to seventy miles an hour. Pilot Alex Vanover has described threading between the pillars at that speed with no room to correct — an FPV quadcopter has no brakes worth the name, and a column takes it out instantly. That is the whole appeal. The camera moves like a driver's panic rather than a camera operator's plan, ducking, clipping corners, losing the ambulance behind a column and finding it again.

In 2021 the building was still Staples Center. It became Crypto.com Arena on Christmas Day of that year, three and a half months before the film opened, so the movie is a small time capsule of a name.

The garages themselves open for events and cost money. Star Plaza on the Figueroa side does not. Go on a night with no game, when the LED wall is dark and the plaza is nearly empty, and walk down the ramp mouth as far as the barrier allows. The pillars go back into the dark in even rows, and you can hear how much echo the place has.

Photo: "Los Angeles - DTLA: Crypto.com Arena" by Wally Gobetz, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 via Flickr.