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My neighbors’ children haven’t seen the inside of a classroom since spring. The book I checked out from the UCLA library to research this March column is still in my bedroom, gathering dust. Not even the drop-off return box is open. We haven’t eaten inside a restaurant or entered a museum, library or theater since March. They’re all shut down. This isn’t New York, with its delightfully uncrowded museums.
Los Angeles has endured nine months of a shutdown more extreme than most of the country’s—or the world’s. In the beginning, the city even closed the parks. You still can’t enter the Venice Beach boardwalk except to pick up takeout food. No walks, bike rides or fishing on the pier.