Photos: Boarded-up stores from Figueroa Street to Rodeo Drive speak to an anxious election day across L.A.

The sound of tension could be heard from Rodeo Drive to Santa Ana in the rattle of compressors and the thwack-thwack of nail guns. Thick plywood was going up over shop windows and doors, just as it was in San Francisco and San Diego, Philadelphia, Washington, Miami and Dallas, as if the entire nation were bracing for a single enormous hurricane.

A man walks past stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame outside a pharmacy boarded up a day before election day.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

A worker walks along a boarded-up Rodeo Drive before election day.

(Genaro Molina /L os Angeles Times)

Workers board up a store at the base of the steps to Via Rodeo in Beverly Hills.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Workers board up a store along Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Preparing for possible unrest, workers from RDG Construction build a plywood wall at Planet Fitness on South Broadway in downtown Los Angeles.

(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Rodney Masjedi, owner of DTLA Bikes on South Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, will be using multiple ways to keep intruders out of his store, including boarding up the front of his location in preparation for possible civil unrest.

(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Silversmith Adam Quri of El Sol Jewelry, on South Broadway in downtown L.A.’s Jewelry District, talks about boarding up the front of his location in preparation for possible civil unrest.

(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Samuel Lopez works on boarding up a storefront on Hollywood Boulevard the day before election day.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)