Why I Drove 80 Miles Across Southern California on Surface Streets

The Road to the Inland Empire Is Paved With Good Memories—And Gratitude for Freeways

Don’t ever complain about freeway traffic, especially around my mother.

“You’re lucky to have freeways—when I was a kid, we didn’t have freeways,” she used to say.

But that didn’t stop my brother and me from whining about congestion on the 10 during long drives to see her relatives in Redlands. She’d respond to our complaints with the Southern California version of “when I was your age, I had to walk six miles through the snow.”

“I grew up in Hawthorne,” a working-class town near LAX, she’d remind us, “and when we went …

Where I Go: The ‘Meandering, Beautiful, Dangerous’ Angeles Crest Highway | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Where I Go: The ‘Meandering, Beautiful, Dangerous’ Angeles Crest Highway

This Pacific Crest Trail Gateway Is Southern California’s Most Accessible Scenic Byway—When It’s Open, That Is

The Angeles Crest Highway winds thousands of feet above the Los Angeles basin, a meandering, beautiful, and dangerous road that leads to the hiking trails of the Angeles National Forest …

Chasing the Sun’s Medicinal Rays | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Chasing the Sun’s Medicinal Rays

At the Turn of the 20th Century, Southern California Became a Testing Ground for Healthy Living

Southern California has long attracted those seeking a mild climate, a healthy lifestyle, and sunshine. According to Lyra Kilston, author of Sun Seekers: The Cure of California, the origins of …

L.A. Is Too Good to Host the 2024 Olympics

The Olympic Movement Is Relentlessly Corrupt, so Why Should Southern California Help Save It?

Los Angeles should drop its bid for the 2024 Olympics—before it gets chosen.

It’s true that Paris has long been the favorite to be awarded the games during an upcoming vote …

Does Blink-182 Know Something California’s Governor Jerry Brown Doesn’t?

While Politicians Keep Trumpeting the State’s Success, This Summer’s Songs and Films Sound Skeptical

How is California doing these days? The answer may depend on whom you believe: Governor Brown or Blink-182.

This summer has exposed a divide in perception of California, between the political …

Southern California, 2001

Rain won’t affect bamboo’s determination
to flower. The sand has no choice of where
it will blow, on what night, into which barrio,
whose eye. Nothing is certain. (To know …