LOS ANGELES—Interstate Highway 405 in Southern California usually fumes with car exhaust and the resigned temper of Angelenos who bake inside their barely inching cars.

But this weekend, a 10-mile stretch of one of the nation’s busiest freeways stood eerily empty as the city closed it off for construction work. While city officials and residents had worried of the closure’s impact on the rest of the city—250,000 motorists drive on the freeway each day—most drivers seemed to heed warnings and either stayed local or took other freeways.

LOS ANGELES—Amid taquerias, mom-and-pop shops, and fruit and taco stands at Boyle Height’s Mariachi Plaza Station in East Los Angeles, one store sticks out—a bookshop with rainbow-splattered bricks and a hand-painted yellow sign above the entrance that reads, “Libros Schmibros Lending Library.”

Inside, books cover one wall from floor to ceiling, and more books are piled on tables in the center of the room, where a gap-toothed man sits silently reading To Kill a Mockingbird.

LOS ANGELES - Wave a pamphlet listing depressing statistics about sex trafficking, and it will most likely end up in the trash. But blow out a full head of curls and strut in breezy satin, and heads will turn.