Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/07/20/1988-home-video-of-driving-on.html
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No KROQ? For shame…
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The lack of congestion may be due to the time of day. I distinctly remember opening the door of my Datsun 200SX and placing my foot on the intersection of the 405 and 101 during a typical rush hour standstill in the mid-80s and yelling “it’s outrageous I can do this on the busiest highway exchange in the country” (I was a teenager, what can I say?).
I actually find L.A. traffic a bit more bearable when I visit now, but maybe that’s because I avoid rush hour as much as possible.
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Los Angelenos sure seem to love their freeways. All the hate-talk about the freeways is just evidence that they love talking about them. I guess the freeways are just a major factor in everyone’s life there?
Looking at maps of LA, it appears that the city (and county) is defined by them. I need to go out there and see for myself. Personally, I don’t really find the video entertaining, though I dig the audio.
LA is a great big freeway…
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In Feb '88, the dad unit bought me a white '87 Mustang GT. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but it must have looked like a space ship compared to some of those things on the road. Not to mention the awesome sound system I had installed (dual tape and CD decks with removable face plates, which I guess was some sort of security thing, as the decks wouldn’t be attractive to sell without the face plates?).
Then on the back end of that experience, I sold it and my niece was sad because it was months away from qualifying for ‘historic plates’.
Then I just felt kinda old like all the other cars in that video. In a good way. 
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LA is definitely worth visiting and if you want to go, do some planning. Pick some area that you want to explore and stick to that neighborhood. If you try to see as much as possible, you’re going to spend a lot of time commuting and that’s not much fun.
Even some of the cheesy tourist stuff is fun. On my first visit I begrudgingly went on a van tour of the stars homes and it was a blast. The guide was very funny and when we toured by Richard Simmons’ house, he came running out and was exactly who you would expect. We ended up going for dinner with the guide and one of the other families that were there and it was a highlight of the trip.
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Since LA is confined to the LA valley basin and not a peninsula like SF or an island like Manhattan it’s been able to sprawl out in every direction. Also, I think it being earthquake country has led to lower buildings in general. In any case - because of the sprawl, freeways are a fact of life, as you say. It’s impossible to get anywhere - 20 min to downtown (without traffic) from the ocean and then another 20 to the other side of the city (without traffic) if you go by freeway. Or 3 hours with traffic.
Regardless of the highways, it’s a great city I called home off and on for a number of years. It has it’s downsides - the sprawl makes the heart a bit harder to find. And instead of one flavor, there’s a dozen different downtowns and little towns and pockets of awesome. With a lot of sprawl in between. Worth the visit if not the stay.
And the superficial people are just as superficial as everywhere else, they’re just better looking while doing it. 
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Pretty much any big city/metro area in the west is like that. I live in San Diego and we talk about them the same. Grew up in the bay area, also the same. Also similar when I go to PHX for work.
On another note, I moved here 17 years ago and I refuse to say “The X” freeway. I grew up just saying 101, 280, 17, etc…
If we put “the” in front, it was mostly when the name was used. Usually by the traffic and weather guys on KGO “traffic is moving slow on northbound 880 - The Nimitz between Brokaw and Dixon Landing”
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I grew up in and still live in the rural Midwest, so I don’t identify with the freeway aspect of it (other than that I have driven on them) but my God, seeing traffic from the late 80s makes me nostalgic.
At 5:19, there’s a Grand National changing lanes:
It’s basically the hotrodded Buick version of a Monte Carlo or Olds 442.
My dad always said that nobody would be nostalgic for 80s cars. He’s mostly right, of course.
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Friend of mine had one of those. Still ugly, but ugly cool.
IMO, BMW and Mercedes made the best looking sedans and coupes in the 80’s.
I think the E28 BMW is a timeless classic and I’d really like one. But I’d first want to have a convertible E30.
Missed a shot for a super bargain earlier this year for an alpine white one not too far from me that needed a little love, but was otherwise in good shape.
That smog though. I remember driving through LA with my family in the late '70s. It was horribly smoggy and gave us all sore throats.
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