An Aria for L.A.’s Oldest Freeway
An Urban Opera About the Concrete River That Is the 110
“People are afraid to merge on the freeways in Los Angeles.”
That’s the first line from Less Than Zero, Brett Easton Ellis’ infamous 1985 novel of alienation that paints a grim portrait of L.A. When I read it, I thought, “Well, not on every freeway”; but when it comes to Pasadena’s Arroyo Parkway, Ellis has a point. You’d have to be nuts—or suicidal—to roll fearlessly from a stop sign at the end of an entrance ramp directly into traffic zipping by at 60 mph.
The Arroyo Parkway is the oldest section of …
