Monday, March 28, 2011

LA: Then and Now

Alright, here it is: I'm pretty much a huge, unashamed postcard collector.

I have a few vintage Los Angeles postcards, and this plan to find the locations and try to get as close to the same shot as I can, for a sort of now version.  Today I tracked down these two on Hollywood Boulevard:



In the postcards, you can see the electric rail tracks on the road.  LA used to have this pretty expansive electric railway set-up, but there was I guess a big corruption/scandal and by 1963 all the tracks were torn up, and buses/cars replaced the trolleys!  It's all part of the Great American Streetcar Scandal, where car, tire and oil companies teamed up and ran the railroads out business to increased car sales.  Who Framed Roger Rabbit? alluded to the situation, when the big wigs were attempting to sell toontown in order to make room for a freeway.

Anyway, Thanks GM for my 45 minute, 8 mile bus ride...I wish I took a streetcar to work.

4 comments:

Camille said...

These are so cool! I love that you tracked these intersections down. It's crazy to see how much has changed, yet somehow stayed the same.

Jacie Saltzman said...

yeah those pictures u took are seriously rad.

Kimberly said...

Thanks guys! Maybe the best part is rummaging through the weird antique stores in LA looking for postcards, so crazy. But tracking the places is cool too!

Jeff S Paul said...

Hollywood & Vine is supposedly haunted by some old Hollywood ghosts. It was the center of the film and LA radio universe in the 1920s through the 40s or 50s. Many of Charlie Chaplin's movies were conceived and written in the Taft Building on the right.
The intersection is also the center point of the Hollywood "Walk of Fame," but that wasn't started until 1958, after the first postcard photo in your series.
Cool hobby, Kim.

p.s., you need to pay your photo assistants and driver.