Vroom! With a View

If you reside in Los Angeles, freeways are an unavoidable part of how you live. But for some inhabitants of this city, freeways are also intimately part of where they live.

You’ve seen their homes as you rocket past on the 110 or sit idle in traffic on the 405. They are the apartments and houses that overlook, abut, adjoin, lie alongside, are practically right on the freeways. For the people living there, the East Coast gripe about L.A.--”you’re always on the freeway”--is literally true. The freeways are at the edge of their front yard, just outside their living room window, in their face, within earshot. The ceaseless industrial din echoes in the bathroom, murmurs in the bedroom, bellows in the living room.

It can be stressful, having hundreds of tons of metal hurtling past your kitchen window every minute of the day. It’s hardly relaxing to be awakened regularly by the bellow of semi-trailers, the blaring of horns or the metallic shriek of a crash. Privacy becomes a relative thing.

While the living arrangements are often dictated by economics, there are some compensations. Some people enjoy the spectacle of the high-velocity parade. Some learn to like the noise--the ceaseless, sleepless song of motion, of rubber on asphalt, of steel rushing through air, of the freeway rolling by outside fast and steady and as powerful as a mighty river. Plus, you get front-row seats to high-speed car chases and, of course, easy freeway access. In this city defined by cars and traffic, these freeway-side dwellers are one with the cars and traffic--for better and for worse.