The neighborhood

Laurel Canyon

The city is at the bottom of the hill. The canyon is not.

The canyon

Never quite joined the city

Laurel Canyon runs north from Sunset, up through eucalyptus and oak, past houses built into the hillside on stilts and switchbacks. The roads are narrow and they wind.

That is the whole point. The canyon was never planned as a neighborhood so much as allowed to become one, and sixty years on it still resists being tidied.

A vintage pale-blue Ford pickup parked at the curb in dappled shade, against a wood fence and cactus — A pale-blue Ford left at the curb, half in the tree’s shade

Getting anywhere

Everything is downhill

Sunset is at the bottom of the hill. West Hollywood is a few minutes on from there, Beverly Hills a straight run west, and the studios sit over the ridge in Burbank and Universal City. Most of it happens without touching a freeway.

Aerial view of white hillside houses stacked down a Laurel Canyon ridge, switchback roads folding between them — Laurel Canyon

West Hollywood: 6min
Sunset Strip: 8min
Universal Studios: 13min
Beverly Hills: 14min
Warner Bros: 18min
Disney Studios: 18min
LAX: 40min

Off-peak. The canyon road is slower after rain.

The trade is the canyon road itself, which is narrow and slow and will not be hurried. Ten minutes of switchbacks buys a neighborhood the city cannot reach.

Nineteen sixty-eight

Cheap housing with good acoustics

Inside the Canyon Country Store, a man in a leather jacket plays an electric guitar among the shelves — The Laurel Canyon Store

In the late sixties the canyon filled with musicians who wanted rent they could afford and neighbors who would not complain about the noise.

Joni Mitchell and Graham Nash kept a house here, and Our House was written in it. Frank Zappa took the log cabin at Lookout Mountain. Jim Morrison lived just off the boulevard, on the street he wrote about as Love Street.

The Canyon Country Store is still on the boulevard, still selling coffee and sandwiches to people who have no idea what happened on that porch.

None of it was a scene at the time. It was cheap housing with good acoustics, and everyone lived close enough to walk over.

It was cheap housing with good acoustics.

Close by

Within a few minutes

The Country Store: Coffee, wine, and something for the hill
Runyon and Fryman: Both open early, before the heat
Ventura Boulevard: The Valley side; Sunset the other way

The canyon has no sidewalks to speak of, so most of this is a short drive rather than a walk. Two off-street spots at the house mean you are not circling for parking when you get back.

After dark

The part that doesn’t photograph

What the canyon actually gives you is the quiet. The hush once the last car has gone over the hill, eucalyptus after rain, and nights that end with crickets.