Drives That Make the Scene

The Boulevards

Almost any L.A. street more than 15 blocks long travels through space, history and the city’s socioeconomic spectrum. Here are a few that do so spectacularly:

Wilshire Boulevard. Take it from its origins downtown all the way to the ocean and you’ll get a sense of how the city moved from the pueblo to the sea, with stops at the tar pits and Beverly Hills.

Western Avenue. From Los Feliz Boulevard to the cliffs overlooking San Pedro, Western is, according to Guinness, the longest “straight” street in the U.S. A drive down or up exposes the layers of L.A. like a knife through a wedding cake.

Mission to Huntington to Del Mar. A street that begins just across the river from the original pueblo, cuts through the urban neighborhoods of Lincoln Heights, El Sereno and Monterey Hills before cruising through semiprecious South Pasadena on its way to the moneyed mansions of San Marino. All in a half-hour drive.

Sunset Boulevard. Sunset begins in the leafy rim of the Palisades and wriggles along the top of Westwood, Beverly Hills and Hollywood before descending through Echo Park to downtown. Crossing the 110, it becomes Cesar Chavez, a seven-mile street created in 1994 from Sunset, Brooklyn Avenue and Macy Street, which shoots through downtown and into East L.A. until it hits Riggin just southeast of East L.A. College.

La Brea Avenue. From Inglewood into the Hollywood Hills, La Brea has great views of the vista variety (coming through the gap in Baldwin Hills, you can see the entire L.A. Basin on a clear day) and the cultural variety (the motor inns and small bungalows on the blocks that hug the 10 were built for the folks who came for work or a visit and decided to stay).

Topanga Canyon. It is possible, on a summer’s day, to exit the 101 in Woodland Hills onto Topanga under a sun so bright and brutal that the air above the road shakes with heat, and in less than half an hour slide into a chilly fog rising from the ocean just before Topanga dumps you onto PCH. At any time of year it is an absolutely gorgeous road, but if you have a tendency toward carsickness, stay out of the passenger seat.

Coldwater Canyon. Like Topanga, Coldwater runs from the Valley over the hills. But on Coldwater, the journey from thriving suburbia through sudden wild woodlands into placid Beverly Hills is a much more pronounced narrative arc.

Robertson Boulevard from National to Santa Monica is a short but interesting drive. It runs along the border of two distinct neighborhoods--Beverly Hills and West Hollywood--and clearly delineates the difference between them and the rest of Los Angeles.

Insider’s guide to getting across town from east to west: Los Feliz to Franklin, Franklin to Sierra Bonita, Sierra Bonita to Hollywood, Hollywood to Laurel Avenue to Fountain to Crescent Heights to wherever you were planning to go.

Scenic Freeways

As oxymoronic as it sounds, there are a few non-surface-street routes with poetic merit.

Pasadena Freeway (or the 110 from downtown to Pasadena). Famously the first freeway to be completed in L.A., it was intentionally made winding so motorists, sailing along at a majestic top speed of 35 mph, would not get bored. Anything but boring when traveled with those who do it daily, it offers an early, Studebaker-and-fedora version of a metropolis whose main arteries would be landscaped and filigreed with graceful bridges and innocuous on- and offramps.

Glendale Freeway (Highway 2). Beginning just north of downtown off Glendale Boulevard, this virtually raises the motorist up and out of urban sprawl and into the Verdugo Hills. Follow it as it becomes the 210 and heads through La Canada and into Pasadena, and you’ll understand the term “foothill community.” Traveling north to south, you will glimpse downtown, faraway and improbable, like the turrets of a fairy-tale castle in the forest. Yet you can be there in 15 minutes. Unreal.

The 105 East to the 110 North (carpool lane). It only lasts a few minutes, but as the carpool lane rises and hooks left like a ribbon pulled taut, all of Los Angeles is visible (on a semi-clear day). At sunset it is extraordinary. The perfect welcome for any visitor who fears all of Los Angeles will resemble the Tom Bradley Terminal. Continue on the 110 and, ducking under the various interchanges of the 10, you will see what a generation ago was considered a vision of the world’s future.

The 118 from the 405 to the 34. One minute you’re in Mission Hills, the next surrounded by a golden ruptured landscape right out of the Old Testament. This is Steinbeck country, where beauty is born of chaos and endurance. Even the “Welcome to Simi Valley” sign seems symbolic of humanity’s own upheavals.

Night Drives

These are drives that are more illuminating in the dark than in the day.

Pacific Coast Highway from the 10 up through Malibu. During the day, this stretch of road is often bumper to bumper and pocked with construction. Yes, the sea glitters dutifully and the sand beckons, but all the development--the restaurants and gas stations and oceanfront condos--makes it a bit tacky. At night, however, much of this blurs into darkness, and you are left with the moon on water, the pearly shine of the beach and a string of lights running up the coast like tiki torches at a party.

Mulholland Drive. Day or night, one of the best drives in the country, or the world, but you really must see it at night, when the Valley spreads out like a blanket of stars.

Melrose Avenue. By day, the infamously hip stretch between La Brea and Fairfax is beginning to show its age--a bit too yearningly commercial, a bit too made over. But at night it still blooms with Popsicle-colored neon, the light of cafes and window displays, and the hopeful beams of headlights.

The 10 to the 110 through downtown. For about three minutes (20 if there’s a Dodger game), Los Angeles looks like a dream city, like Metropolis after Superman has restored peace and justice. And then you hit the 5 interchange and it’s all over.

The 405 to the 101. Traveling in either direction, the stretch of the 405 between the 10 and the 101 is an adventure at night. (During the day, you might as well walk.) Coming south, the hills that separate the Valley from the basin make themselves felt as you hurtle through the darkness. But no matter how fast you’re going, everyone else is going faster. Heading north, you climb, but there are several minutes at the crest when you see that famous grid of lights and the 101 cutting through it, and it looks just like magic.