A fairly popular type of auto history post includes photos of street scenes from the past. Readers tend to focus on naming the cars. It’s good, clean fun if you have nothing better to do.
As a case in point, Curbside Classic recently displayed photos of southern California during the 1960s (Baron, 2024). I grew up there so was curious as to whether I would feel nostalgic about places I recognized.
The main thing that struck me was how the photos often highlighted ugly strip development. This reminded me of how the parts of the Los Angeles basin that I frequented were relentlessly flat, featureless landscapes overlaid with a boring grid of streets dotted with nondescript buildings. And cars, cars everywhere.
James Howard Kunstler has criticized suburban sprawl as a vast wasteland that disconnects people from each other. There is little sense of community, and the anonymous quality of the place leads people to not care about it. This is why he has argued that the modern suburb does not have any soul (Humphrey, 2017).
Escape from flatland
Southern California is a good example of suburban sprawl run amok. As a young adult I couldn’t articulate very well what I didn’t like about it, but I did try to escape the place as soon as I could. I gradually made my way up the coast until I ultimately settled in western Washington. This region has some of the Los Angeles basin’s suburban vibe, but its character can also be quite different.
For one thing, Washington has more complex geography that includes inlets, islands and lakes. The terrain is more rugged and is covered with trees you’d never find in the arid flatlands of southern California.
Our local architecture is also more eclectic because it wasn’t mostly built after World War II like much of Los Angeles. One can find modernist buildings next to lovely victorians from the 19th Century.
Sure, you can point to examples of suburban wasteland, but they don’t tend to overwhelm the region like they do in southern California. At least not yet.
The banner photo is a lake that I stop by during my morning walk. It’s about 10 minutes from Indie Auto’s world headquarters. If I were still living where I grew up, I would have to drive at least an hour to find similar beauty.
Driving isn’t everything
Someone once quipped that in Los Angeles you had to drive to go to the bathroom. It was only a slight exaggeration — I thought that it was normal to get into the car to do almost anything. Indeed, my parents would frequently drive up to the Sierras or the Bay Area — roughly 300 miles in each direction — for a weekend getaway.
That’s a good 16 hours of me sitting in the back seat, desperately trying to keep myself amused. No wonder I fixated on learning the make, model and year of every car that drove past.
In my retirement years I have tried to avoid driving so much. That’s partly why I live in a place where I don’t have to go very far to find the things that make my day enjoyable. Like watching the sun rise over the lake.
Of course, the banner photo for this story doesn’t have a car in it . . . and this is a car blog. But you could imagine a young man in a Model T who once tried to drive across this lake back when it still froze over during winter. The car broke through the ice and has been sitting at the bottom of the lake ever since.
At least that’s what my elderly neighbor says.
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RE:SOURCES
- Baron, Rich; 2024. “Vintage Snapshots: Southern California in The 1960s.” Curbside Classic. Posted May 30.
- Humphrey, William S.; 2017. “A Synthesis of James Howard Kunstler’s Themes of Urbanization and the Impending Oil Crisis in The Geography of Nowhere, Home from Nowhere, The City in Mind, and The Long Emergency.” Tenor of Our Times: Vol. 6, Article 12.
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