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This 1958 Tourism Ad For L.A. Is Still Pretty Accurate
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This advertisement from the Los Angeles tourism board appeared in National Geographic in 1958, but how much of it is true today? Let's go to the text:
- "Visitors always remark how low and spread out Los Angeles is." — True
- "This means more fresh-air living." — Lol
- "Our one real skyscraper is the 32-story City Hall!" — It is now the 73-story U.S. Bank Tower, which rises 1,018 feet and was built in the 1980s
- "Everything seems different." — Deep. Is this tourism ad smoking one of those marijuana cigarettes?
- "A glass and redwood church stands alone atop a Pacific bluff." — Lloyd Wright's Wayfarers Chapel is still there.
- "At Civic Center you can lunch Chinese or Spanish style."—Sure, okay.
- "Minutes away find the police offices made famous by TV sleuths." — You can still find filming locations from Dragnet, including City Hall, but there probably aren't a lot of remnants at Walt Disney Studios.
- "At nearby Hollywood watch for stars at a drive-in." — Check-ish (there's one Downtown)
- "Drive past celebrities' swanky homes." — Yes, they still LOVE THAT.
- "Los Angeles is a botanist's dream. Instead of grass, geranium lawns! Backyards have fig, lemon or shiny evergreen avocado trees!" — Mmmhmm, when there's not a drought.
Here's the full text, which doesn't once mention the dingbats that were taking over the city at the time. Does everything seem different today?
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[via Reddit]
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