It is officially a trend in Los Angeles for highways and traffic related spaces to be the grounds for larger than life performances. In no other city does a giant rock caravan through town and a highway’s closing become cause for a holiday. Los Angeles has drivers organizing to make art and commutable performance spectacles: we’ve turned the lemons of highways into spectacular lemonade. The arrival of Endeavor and its parade through Los Angeles is the latest entry in LA roadside attractions. Unlike the other street happenings, Endeavor got the LA Times involved and the result is a stunning time lapse of the space shuttle commuting through Los Angeles.

The video is a near three minute long capturing of the twelve mile, multiple day trek Endeavor made from LAX to the California Science Center in Exposition Park. The video shows Endeavor going from neighborhood to neighborhood and how a vehicle of this kind needs a lot of attention in order to move anywhere. There is never a moment where the shuttle is left unattended–moreover there is no moment when it isn’t being tinkered with.

Seeing a space shuttle in place of where cars usually drive is fascinating enough but the real joy of this time lapse is how it interacts with Los Angeles–and how we interact back with it. Like Levitated Mass‘ trip through town, it gathered an audience. It got people out of their homes to see a once-in-a-lifetime event. You see lots of people taking photos and lots of people following the shuttle and lots of oohs and aahs surrounding it. It’s also funny how the shuttle had to do some very fine choreography in order to make some tight squeezes through neighborhoods and in order to dodge some natural elements. The video does a good job of portraying all of the joys and dramas associated with a grounded space shuttle’s locomotion.

You may have already seen the video as it “went viral” earlier this week. We wanted to take the time to share it and celebrate this trend of the streets being the new stage for performance art in big ways. You can get more information on the video here.