Having recently cited Harry Nilsson’s “Coconut” as one of her all-time favorite songs, maybe it should come as no shock that Lana Del Rey has sampled herself un petit peu de Nilsson for the latest song in her repertoire, “Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.” Note that it’s not a question, so much as a statement of fact—because Del Rey has little time to endure people without at least some cursory knowledge of L.A. geography (remember, her body is a map of L.A.). So yes, once more turning to her great muse, California, the Ocean Boulevard alluded to is the one in Long Beach. And the tunnel in question is the Jergins Tunnel, built in 1927 to connect to the Jergins Trust Building, in addition to providing safe pedestrian access for those who wanted to get to the beach without being run over by the barrage of cars Los Angeles County is known for.
Within that tunnel, the amount of foot traffic was great enough to warrant vendors setting up shop there (calling it the Jergins Arcade) to pluck business from some four thousand visitors an hour crossing the intersection of Ocean and Pine on the weekend to get to the beach. But, as is the way with big city infrastructure, some poor decisions were made vis-à-vis preservation and, around 1967, the tunnel was closed. Twentyish years later, in 1988, the Jergins Trust Building was demolished, signaling what many rightly believed was the total demise of Long Beach’s once flourishing Downtown.
But maybe, with Lana’s Midas touch when it comes to drawing attention to things, the Jergins Tunnel might get its day in the sun, so to speak, anew. Moved by people and architecture of the past, Del Rey combines her nostalgia for both in this first single from her album of the same name (which still doesn’t give “hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – but i have it” a run for its money in word length). Indeed, an opening line from a 1992 Los Angeles Times article about the tunnel could just as easily fit right into the song—with journalist Suzan Schill remarking, “Waiting to be restored or sealed forever, a long-forgotten Art Deco pedestrian tunnel lies beneath Ocean Boulevard at Pine Avenue.” And yes, Lana also has a song called “Art Deco,” so really, the Jergins Tunnel touches on all her inspirational kryptonite points.
Plus, her affinity for Long Beach was already established on 2019’s “The Greatest,” which opens with the line, “I miss Long Beach and I miss you, babe.” And apparently, the Long Beach she misses is the one of yore. Just like most of the bygone icons and aesthetics she has tried to keep alive by embedding them consistently into her work. This includes rather regular allusions to The Eagles (as she mentioned on 2015’s “God Knows I Tried”), who come up again in the lyrics, “Thеre’s a girl that sings ‘Hotel California’/Not because she loves the notes or sounds that sound like Florida/It’s because she’s in a world preserved, only a few have found the door.” “The door” to that closed-off tunnel under Ocean Boulevard, a portal to the past. When surfer dudes and dudettes only worried about getting high by the beach and working on their tan as they languished on the sand or even headed to the Pike, an “amusement zone” that Lana would probably liken to Coney Island.
Alas, in yet another instance of poor decision-making by Long Beach city council, the consensus was reached not to renew the amusement zone’s land leases, prompting total demolishment of the beloved area in 1979. Eventually, it became retail outlets (ergo rebranded as the Pike Outlets) with shit like H&M and a Nike store to numb the memory. Making it very easy to forget about what it once was indeed.
Which is why the entire concept of this particular time period in Long Beach history is so ideal to make the analogy, “Don’t forget me/Like the tunnel under Ocean Boulevard.” However, now that Del Rey has canonized it in song form, there’s no doubt the Jergins Tunnel will probably, at the very least, finally get an official Wikipedia page (and maybe even some love from LBC hometown hero Cameron Diaz). Shit, it could even galvanize the “China-owned, Seattle-based developer” known as American Life that’s been slated to open a massive hotel on the property since seemingly “forever.”
As though speaking from the perspective of the tunnel itself, Del Rey demands, “When’s it gonna be my turn?/Don’t forget me/When’s it gonna be my turn?” Of course, she is also talking about herself in terms of finding a real love, everlasting. Prompting her to then get extremely 2012/2013-era Lana with the demand, “Open me up, tell me you like it/Fuck me to death, love me until I love myself.” If that isn’t a line straight out of an L.A. girl’s mouth, then nothing is. To be sure, Del Rey has proven herself a more bona fide resident of that town than even the ones born and bred there (*cough cough* Billie Eilish). This comes complete with the poetic ode, “LA Who Am I To Love You.”
No stranger to mentioning other L.A.-loving icons in her lyrics, Del Rey adds Nilsson’s moniker to the likes of James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Billie Holiday, Dennis Wilson, Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell. All names that have the commonality of twentieth century nostalgia. Nilsson himself gets name-checked when Del Rey croons, “Harry Nilsson has a song [“Don’t Forget”], his voice breaks at 2:05/Somethin’ about the way he says, ‘Don’t forget me’ makes me feel like/I just wish I had a friend like him, someone to give me five.” It all speaks to Lana once saying that everyone she ever looked up to or admired was dead. Dead as the Jergins Tunnel. “Handmade beauty sealed up by two man-made walls,” as Del Rey bemoans (using a similar conceit of herself as a human extension of L.A. that she did in “Arcadia”—this time by saying, “Mosaic ceilings, painted tiles on the wall/I can’t help but feel somewhat like my body, mind, my soul”).
In that aforementioned Los Angeles Times article that could also occasionally double as Del Rey lyrics, Schill concludes, “To the distress of historians, the empty passageway remains neglected, silently awaiting its fate.” One can now add, “To the distress of historians, Lana Del Rey and LDR stans…” to that sentence. Whatever happens to it next, its beauty being perpetually masked from the world feels like an all but assured enduring phenomenon. And yet, thanks to Del Rey’s roving track, even those who have never been to Long Beach can get a sense of this tunnel’s entrancing effect in all its yesteryear glory.
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