Southern California Beyond the Freeway
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
So much of the original roads, and the communities served by them, still exist. Most of what we’re considered highways in the past are now major boulevards with stop lights at every intersection, while the nearby freeway is laid on top of the original traffic grid and neighborhoods.
This is part of LAs notoriety for its “shortcuts”. As folks jump off the congestion of the freeways onto the local streets. An ability now obsoleted by modern navigation apps.
Lived here most of my life. LA is not kind to its past. We tear down the old to make way for the new all the time. But they can’t flatten all of it, several active history and preservation societies doing their work. Some wins, some losses.
But a lot of TV show’s were filmed here, and act as an ad hoc window to the past. I like watching shows like Colombo, and looking up the locations they used. (Colombo’s suspects lived in some VERY expensive homes.)
Similarly, in my neighborhood are brand new homes behind a 40 year old church that sold their backlot to a developer. But the church is across the street from a 100 year old farmhouse. Barn and all. And there’s a mix of others nearby.
Outside of the Master Planned communities of Southern OC, there’s still a lot of this interface of old and new all around SoCal.
I think the SNL skit, The Californians, is supposed to be derogatory to Los Angelenos but we love it because we love checking the traffic math in shows.
Toggle "avoid highways" in the settings.
So my trip lead me to stay a night in Palm Springs. From there I headed out to Las Vegas. I wanted a stopp near Barstow to visit Peggy Sue’s Dinner one more time with my family. My Navigation wanted me to take the route via San Bernardino but I saw an alternative route on the map via Yucca Valley. Man that was such a good decision. The Highway 247 makes a beautiful turn through the Johnson Valley. I made a point to use shorter D Tours on the whole trip like using state Route 66 in Arizona instead of the shorter 40 to Flagstaff and back to Vegas.
First thing the author started in Calabasas, which is on the edge of Los Angeles County and a significant distance from the City of Los Angeles.
Second, this region in particular - between say, Malibu and San Luis Obispo is notable for its general lack of freeways. There are two in that general vicinity the 118 (east/west) and the 101 (north/south). The reasons for that are complex, but largely because they only started to develop only after Los Angeles was done with its freeway building craze - and freeways are not politically popular - particularly in that region, which is either agriculture or wealthy enough to want no change to the area. Freeways still bring development.
That all said, when I have the time, I always take the two lane highway, just to see what there is to be seen - America is so much prettier and more diverse than the gas stations and food places near the freeway exit, go out and explore, there is a whole world - often in your back yard, that you didn't even know was there.
This is wrong. The city of Los Angeles is right up next to Calabassas. Most of the San Fernando Valley is actually the city of Los Angeles, regardless of what people put on their postal address.
For example, Woodland Hills is part of the city of Los Angeles.
We might put down more specific towns and cities for our street address, but geopolitically the whole damn region is Los Angeles.
If I'm taking to another Californian, I'm not gonna tell them Los Angeles, I'll tell them Long Beach, if I'm talking to a Southern Californian, then that becomes Los Alamitos.
Los Alamitos is not in Long Beach. It's not even in the same county. It's in Orange County, and most locals would say they are from Anaheim, aka the home of the world-famous Disneyland.
Especially when you were growing up, Los Alamitos locals would not have said they were from Long Beach, since Long Beach had a huge crime problem back then nobody would have voluntarily associated themselves with that cesspool.
From the front door of the apartment we lived in, I could see buildings in the City of Long Beach whereas Disneyland was 9.5 miles east. Most nights I could hear the airplane testing at the blast wall McDonnell Douglas - very rarely if the wind was just right I could just barely hear fireworks from Disneyland.
Technically to people, I didn't say "in Long Beach" I said "near Long Beach" when I explained where I grew up, but thats a quibble that would not be otherwise heard by most people.
It's ironic you mention crime, because it always confounded me, East Long Beach and North Long Beach (where the crime was) were different enough that they might as well have been different planets.
Also, in my opinion, Los Alamitos/Seal Beach are culturally more affixed to Long Beach (we shared an area code) than the rest of Orange County.
I moved to Atlanta pre-pandemic and I’m still amazed that some people won’t drive 15 minutes to come visit me. I live “outside the Perimeter” (we have a ring freeway) and culturally it’s as if I live in Lancaster and they’re coming from Downtown LA. Acquaintances originally from New York and Miami have noted the same thing and we all get a huge laugh out of it.
As a native when someone tells me they live in Los Angeles, that means Los Angeles, no one from San Pedro or The Valley would tell you Los Angeles.
I grew up near Long Beach, but I live in Fort Worth now, when I first moved to Fort Worth, I settled in the furthest east portion of the city near DFW airport, so I'd tell folks I lived in Euless or Irving, even though I had a Fort Worth address, because if I told them Fort Worth they think, something west of 820.
Within the sprawl it’s important to share the neighborhood, lest you keep someone guessing on which of the 43 miles of Sepulveda Blvd you’re referring to.
Even Disneyland, which is very solidly in Orange County, is “in Los Angeles” to non locals. This gravitational pull lead to the silly renaming of the Angles baseball team to “Los Angeles Angeles of Anaheim.” This is roughly as silly as moving the Mets to New Jersey and naming them, “The New York Mets of Hoboken.”
A lot of Los Angeles’ neighborhoods are exactly that. The names come and go with whatever planning mechanisms exist. North Hollywood was formerly “Lankershim” after the founding company and before that “Toluca.” Functionally “North Hollywood” was a marketing campaign for the area due to the rise of the completely non-bordering Hollywood. At most these neighborhoods get to form councils to promote the area. They have little authority and autonomy outside of helping grow a farmers market here and a cultural event there.
And when I went to Italy, I was from Miami. "Oh, I've been there. It's very nice."
In both cases when describing where I live to a local I use the actual location. When talking to someone further away I default to the city name. If they then express some reason why they may know the area a bit I zoom in to my location.
Yeah, but to people within southern California, we would expect you to say you are from The Valley.
As a native of Los Angeles, when someone tells me Los Angeles, that means they live somewhere south of Ventura and north of San Diego. I've had other SoCal natives tell me LA when they actually live in Pasadena, or Long Beach, or Irvine, or Chino Hills, or Rancho Cucamonga, or a plethora of other cities that aren't even in LA County. LA natives don't usually start with their neighborhood unless it's contextually appropriate to the conversation, such as when talking to another LA native/local who would actually understand the geographic reference. Outside of a few well-known neighborhoods like Hollywood, non-Angelenos wouldn't know what you're talking about if you said "San Pedro" or "Boyle Heights."
On a pedantic note, "the Valley" usually refers to San Fernando Valley if you're in LA County, but is also used to refer to Santa Clarita Valley by locals there, and to San Gabriel Valley if you're east of LA in Pasadena, San Bernardino County, or Orange County. In Ventura County, "the Valley" means Simi Valley.In Riverside County, "the Valley" refers to Jurupa Valley and Moreno Valley depending on which side of the county you're in. Using "the Valley" to refer exclusively to San Fernando is a Hollywood thing and signifies that the speaker is either from San Fernando Valley (which is usually already apparent from their accent) or isn't an LA native and doesn't know any better.
Having grown up in Los Alamitos, where I tell people I grew up depends on where they're from, I'll break down the rules -
From outside the US: Southern California or "LA Area"
From the US but not the California: "LA Area" or Southern California
California: "Near Long Beach" or North Orange County
Southern California and Adjacent: North Orange County or Los Alamitos
Orange County: Los Alamitos
Here’s a relevant documentary about Chandler’s relationship to LA: https://youtu.be/-MYY4CxG_GQ?si=4soVWY0UOwQMUwaR
I would nevertheless agree with the parent to whom you are replying that they are the exception, not the rule, and much of rural America is depressed or just a whole lot of nothing, at least from the perspective of charm. Most places there, too, are built at automobile scale, and lack sufficient sense of placehood or definition to qualify as anything like a hamlet in the European sense. It's just a ZIP code with a Circle K, a church, and a some houses scattered over an obscenely large area that can only be traversed by car. Sometimes, boarded up historical relics are included, although you may have to drive quite a bit from the civic centre (the Circle K) to find them.
Food deserts, in which the Circle K feeds a massive radius (along with perhaps a Dollar General), are the norm. Getting from the Circle K to the Dollar General requires a car. In between, there's not much.
There are some delightful exceptions, and I love to visit and capture their splendid sights and sounds. They are few and far, and I find the parent's generalisation highly valid, at least as the Sourheast goes. I grew up in the Midwest and had a similar sense there. Perhaps the West Coast and New England are quite different, and it sounds like they are. "Flyover country" has little to recommend it in the whole, however, and there's a reason they call it that.
But one of the elements of "charm" is narrow, walkable streets, and _those_ are rare in the US outside of New England. Where they once existed they've often been bulldozed.
https://www.strongtowns.org/ talks a lot about what makes towns great and as it turns out those characteristics also tend to make them charming.
I live in a college town (Athens, GA). It's okay, if you're 19 and like drinking.
The country is full of places like this. Sure, there is blight and both urban and rural decay, but there is also much to like.
California especially has a large number of these.
Driving along the coast in Maine would be a really long trip
Visit a hamlet in the UK some time, tell me what you think then.
Prefacing each freeway number with "The"
Sigalerts
short cut culture - they are like secret snow skiing powder stashes
Hollywood definitely contributed to this with shows like CHIPS and movies like "Speed" - it's interesting how life in SoCal really does revolve around freeways more than anywhere else in the United States.
SoCal had the first freeways, and they weren't numbered back then. They were named after the areas they traversed, such as "The Arroyo Seco Parkway" or "The San Diego freeway" and so on. When freeways started to get built nationwide the naming convention was changed to a numbering system, and California adopted it to go alongside the existing names (we still have the freeway names on most of our signs).
So in reality, California adding "The" to the front was always correct, every other state is just doing it wrong :)