Wilshire Boulevard

March 27, 2006 1:16 PM

Curating the CityA Flash exhibition exploring the past and present urban landscape of Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles. A modest topic explored in depth - which is perhaps what makes it so fascinating. The site includes a pdf guidebook, in case you want to check out the bricks-and-mortar version.
posted by carter (8 comments total)

This is very cool. I'd like to see this done for Sunset Boulevard, too. Thanks for the post, carter.
posted by soiled cowboy at 1:47 PM on March 27, 2006

Thanks, carter - very interesting.
posted by jonson at 8:12 PM on March 27, 2006

Neat.

Wilshire is kinda cool, but Figueroa Steet is much more interesting. (from personal experience. Oh, and Huell Howser. Thanks, Huell! (God I'd love to buy that big doofus a beer.))
posted by loquacious at 8:24 PM on March 27, 2006

Fanbloodytastic, thanks carter.
posted by tellurian at 10:41 PM on March 27, 2006

I'm with loquacious. Gimme Fig any day of the week. Matter of fact, I'll take dirty old labyrinthine downtown over anything you've got in the LA basin.

But God do I love Los Angeles. I'm only working on my fourth year here, and I can think of living nowhere else . Of course, buying a house is another matter entirely...


I really wish more historical sites would adopt this phenomenal interface. It's so nice to just drag around a map and click on landmarks well-furnished with information.
posted by quite unimportant at 12:08 AM on March 28, 2006

Yeah, I love the interface, and Wilshire *is* interesting if you discount most of the luxe apartment condos and most of museum row, but there's many more fascinating, historic and nearly sexually exciting dangerous streets in LA. Pico? Crenshaw? Alameda? Olympic? Come now.

I willfully exclude Melrose, Sunset, and Rodeo. Especially Rodeo. Holy crap that street sucks, especially when you have to go there to actually do business like visit a bank or something, not just to go shopping and burn benjamins like so many glittery-yellow rocks. Wilshire, to me, fits well in this catagory. At least the modern version of Wilshire. It's like a major migratory path for that lumbering species of cellphone-talking-driving SUV clad media-industry yuppie whorebeasts. And these poor, confused people say Crenshaw is "dangerous". Heh. If it keeps 'em out of the rest of LA, fine, so be it.
posted by loquacious at 12:42 AM on March 28, 2006

Just read this today: "Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles is an example of one grand exercise after another in superficially contrived distinction, for several miles of of innately monotonous office buildings" - Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Maybe Jacobs was a bit too pessimistic ...
posted by bcveen at 1:16 AM on March 28, 2006

Neat. I live about a block off Wilshire. I've meaning to get this book, which just came out last year: Wilshire Boulevard: The Grand Concourse of Los Angeles.
posted by FlunkedFlank at 7:19 AM on March 28, 2006