340 Ton Rock Has Arrived in Long Beach in Bixby Knolls. LBReport.com Had LIVE Webcast This Morning, Here Are Events Planned By BKBIA For Today...And Webcast Host Will "Walk With the Rock" Thru Central & Downtown LB Tonight

(March 7, 2012, updated 10:15 a.m.) -- The 340-ton boulder (which will become a "Levitated Mass" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) has arrived in Long Beach...and it's now in Bixby Knolls on Atlantic Ave. between 36th-37th Sts. by 5 a.m.

LBReport.com carried a LIVE webcast this morning from the site provided by WebcastLongBeach and hosted by Dan Halverson.

Below are screen saves of the webcast (actual live feed looked even sharper),

And today from noon till 7 p.m., the Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Ass'n plans festivities including live music live artists, river rock decorating, photo ops, and other fun things throughout the day...and a DJ will be playing songs with "rock" in the title.

Staring at 11 p.m. tonight (Weds. Mar. 7), the rock will head south into downtown LB, then back up Magnolia to PCH, into WLB...and out of here.

A City Hall release says: "Atlantic Avenue will remain open on Wednesday, but traffic delays are expected between 36th and 37th streets, as only one lane of traffic will be open on either side of the parked trailer during the day."

The rock is scheduled to arrive in central LA on Friday night, heading up Figueroa (past Exposition Park and USC), then through West Adams, up Western Ave, then west on Wilshire Blvd. through the Miracle Mile to the museum.

LACMA describes the "Levitated Mass" artwork as "comprised of a 456-foot-long concrete-lined slot constructed on LACMA’s campus, upon and at the center of which is placed a 340-ton granite megalith. As visitors walk along the slot, it gradually descends to fifteen feet deep, running underneath the megalith before ascending back up."

LACMA says "this is possibly the largest megalithic stone moved since ancient times [but] not the first time heavy transport has occurred in Southern California. Just last year Southern California Edison shipped a 350-ton steam generator from the San Onofre nuclear plant to a nuclear-waste disposal site in Utah. A similar transporter was used -- 400 feet long! -- traveling slowly at night over the course of nineteen days, without incident.)

The "megalith" is scheduled to become part of artist Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass, displayed above a 456 foot long trench...in which people can walk and see the 340 ton mass "floating" above them. (Don't try this at home"). Public viewing is expected to start in the late spring/early summer.

Who's paying for this? LACMA says:

Emmert International, a company that specializes in transporting large-scale objects such as buildings, nuclear reactor components, and missiles [is transporting the rock.]

...Levitated Mass was made possible by private gifts to Transformation: The LACMA Campaign from Jane and Terry Semel, Bobby Kotick, Carole Bayer Sager and Bob Daly, Beth and Joshua Friedman, Steve Tisch Family Foundation, Elaine Wynn, Linda, Bobby, and Brian Daly, Hanjin Shipping Co., Ltd., Richard Merkin, MD, and the Mohn Family Foundation, and has been dedicated by LACMA to the memory of Nancy Daly. Transportation is made possible by Hanjin Shipping Co., Ltd.