Stuck In Traffic From The 10 Freeway Fire Closure? There's A T-Shirt For That

Last Sunday afternoon, while much of Los Angeles was blissfully unaware of the traffic nightmare that awaited them the next morning, Bill Wyatt was seeing the fuzzy outline of an opportunity.

The 63-year-old had just returned to his Los Feliz store, Y-Que Trading Post, from a longer-than-expected coffee run and was joking to his customers that it was because traffic in downtown was a mess.

"Then people started asking me about the freeway closure, like I really had done that, and we just kind of gone, 'Wait a minute, this is a big deal!'" he said. "We started paralleling it to Carmageddon."

Being that Y-Que Trading Post actually sells T-shirts designed by Wyatt to capture the cultural zeitgeist — like those inspired by #Hurriquake, or ones emblazoned with former president Donald Trump's mugshot — he and his customers started throwing out ideas.

"We just started going, 'It's gotta have a name, or it needs a shirt, or [it needs something] commemorative,'" he said.

What they came up with is a design featuring open flames with the words "Highway Through Hell" burning underneath an Interstate 10 sign.

"When there's a shared event or things that a lot of people kind of are experiencing, it's kind of fun to do a design for it," Wyatt said.

They called the latest offering, "The Ten Ferno."

The 10-Ferno

Last Monday, Wyatt printed about a dozen of Ten Ferno shirts and hats, hung a couple up in his store, and drove the rest to the eye of the storm — the very site of the fire that has closed down the 10 Freeway between Santa Fe Avenue and Alameda Street in downtown, at least until next week.

"I went to hit the traffic crowd that's kind of stalled through," Wyatt said. "Because you could sell people sitting in the cars, you know."

He ended up posting up in a spot about a mile away, around Washington Boulevard and Soto Street.

"It was a great spot. The weather was great, the traffic was moving a little bit, but good enough that I could run across three lanes of traffic and sell a T-shirt to a taco truck, or a UPS driver," he said.

He sold out his inventory in about two hours. At $10 a shirt (he sells them for $20 at his store), Wyatt was able to cover his cost.

Wyatt says he's heading back out on Monday with a fresh batch of items.

"It's fun to sell to the people as a light moment for them to have a commemorative event because they're the ones that are really suffering here and experiencing the fallout of this local traffic disaster," he said.