UPCOMING EVENT:
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June 8, 11:30 am to 1 pm at the Sherman Library & Gardens in Newport Beach. Grab lunch in their exquisite restaurant and stay for the lecture! I'll be skewing my freeway presentation toward the history of freeways shaping Orange County. Tickets here.
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PAST EVENTS:
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It was an honor to present for the Architecture & Beyond series at Los Feliz Library. Thanks to Pearl, Lynne, Dora and the team, and to Skylight Books for partnering up and making available signed book copies.
After powering down blueberry pancakes, bacon and of course ham 'n' eggs, I had a blast presenting for the Los Angeles Breakfast Club, the nearly 100 year old social institution whose members included Walt Disney, Will Rogers and other L.A. glitterati.
Many thanks to Culver City's Village Well Books & Coffee (and wine and beer!) and moderator Josh Stephens for hosting a fun book event. Livestream watchable here.
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Thank you to Book Soup in West Hollywood for the livestream book event! Missed it? No worries... the Crowdcast video can be viewed in its entirety here.
Robert Petersen's Hidden History LA podcast consistently delivers thought-provoking interviews on LA's past. I was honored to return. Available on your favorite podcast platform or listen here:
Richard and Kim from Esotouric hosted a webinar called A Natural History of Los Angeles Freeways, where I delved into, among other things, L.A.'s deadliest freeway, the reconfiguration of the Figueroa tunnels for the Arroyo Seco Parkway, and the evolution of cloverleaf & interchange engineering. Tickets are available here to watch this virtual event at any time! Or visit Esotouric.com
Fox 11's Hal Eisner talks In Depth on L.A. Infrastructure, where I joined panelists to ruminate on the past, present, and future of Los Angeles freeways.
Many thanks to Gail and the team at Flintridge Books in La Canada Flintridge for a magnificent book event!
On KCRW 89.9 Steve Chiotakis' Greater L.A., I discuss the ill-fated Beverly Hills Freeway, how freeways develop their own personalities, and the racist policies baked into early freeway-building. |
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What does the Santa Monica Freeway's Diamond (HOV) Lane saga of 1976 have in common with anti-mandate/anti-vaxxer protestors in the era of Covid-19? More than you might think. My Op-Ed for the LA Times.
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LA Explorer takes a spin on the Terminal Freeway and says of the book: "Just like Haddad turned an everyday walk into a fun adventure in 10,000 Steps a Day he has proven that freeways are, in fact, rather fascinating in Freewaytopia."
Host Stefan of the LifeHacksLA Podcast asked THE most penetrating question of all: Why do Southern Californians put "the" in front of freeway numbers when no one else does??
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REVIEWS:
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The freeways of Los Angeles are so ubiquitous and functional that they’re easy to ignore. But every mile of elevated roadway was carved from lost landscapes worth knowing. And in his nimbly written, deeply researched, myth-busting book, Paul Haddad chronicles both the growth and what was taken away—most often from the Angelenos who had the least to lose—as the city reshaped itself in the service of cars, speed and sprawl. Recommended for transit policy wonks, local history lovers and anyone who has missed their lane in a complicated cloverleaf and wondered why they built it that way.
―Kim Cooper, Esotouric With verse and authority, Haddad loops you in in Freewaytopia, an encyclopedic, anecdotal and photographic history of Los Angeles County's two dozen freeways. Open to almost any page and you'll find a saga, a drama, a nugget to amaze your friends.
―Patt Morrison, journalist, Los Angeles Times Los Angeles freeways often get a bad rap, but author Paul Haddad finds the beauty in them. . . . The author’s affection is reflected in his knack for unearthing fascinating facts about people and cultural events related to the creation of highways across the Southland.
—AAA Westways A. Tarantola is "hitting the books"... and hits on Freewaytopia.
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Over the years there have been others like Joan Didion, Thomas Pynchon, David Brodsly, and Eric Avila that have also spotlighted Los Angeles freeways, but this book might be the most comprehensive in how [Haddad] examines the complete landscape.
—Mike Sonksen, L.A. Taco The 2021 L.A. Taco Book Guide: 34 Books to Read, Gift, and Get Inspired By Freewaytopia deftly connects dreams, politics, new suburbs, and white privilege to tell the stories of L.A.’s freeways. Hostile to communities of color when they were built and loathed today by gridlocked drivers, the freeways still reveal a rough grandeur in their overpasses and interchanges. When the road ahead is unexpectedly open, L.A.'s freeways can be poetic. Paul Haddad has caught their vital rhythm.
―D. J. Waldie, author of Becoming Los Angeles: Myth, Memory, and a Sense of Place In his latest book, Freewaytopia: How Freeways Shaped Los Angeles, author Paul Haddad takes readers on a whirlwind tour through the history and lore of Los Angeles' sprawling highway system.
—Engadget.com Endlessly absorbing and a joy to read. Paul Haddad knows Los Angeles inside and out and his love of the area shines forth in this book.
—LA-Explorer.com Wildly informative... Read this book, it's fascinating. ―The Los Angeles Book Club |
Paul Haddad’s Freewaytopia is a marvelous civic history of 12 essential routes that belt the urban expanse, all creations of the bikini and slide rule era. Haddad writes with the love and skepticism of a native Angeleno, mining the archives for the distinctive news items that function as collective folklore: the streaker who interrupted the opening of the Hollywood Freeway. The accident victim flung from his car to the top of a green reflective sign. The sulfur spring at the stack of the 110 and 101 where the frontier city’s gallows used to stand. The legend of the buried treasure near the Wonder View neighborhood in Cahuenga Pass. The regular filming of CHiPs on a section of the unfinished Foothill Freeway near Tujunga.
Along the way are intriguing glimpses of the local machers who made it happen or stood in the way: Kenneth Hahn, the acerbic young county supervisor; Vincent Thomas, the boxer-politician with a heart of gold; Marilyn Jorgensen Reese, the Whittier housewife who happened also to be the chief architect of the graceful 405-10 interchange with flyovers that don’t need a single tap on the brakes; Adriana Gianturco, the Caltrans official nicknamed “Diamond Lady” who took a rush hour of heat for championing the first HOV lanes on the Santa Monica Freeway.
Haddad’s prose shines. “If freeways are L.A.’s cathedrals,” he writes of the dreaded 405-101 junction, “then this meat-grinder interchange is the Church of Perpetual Congestion.” The frequently changing Caltrans maps contain “broken lines resembling the diagrams of a drunk football coach.” He also has an eye for local goofiness: the egomaniac Griffin J. Griffith who donated land for his namesake park always makes good copy... Freewaytopia is an easy read that packs a factual wallop.
―Tom Zoellner, Los Angeles Review of Books
Along the way are intriguing glimpses of the local machers who made it happen or stood in the way: Kenneth Hahn, the acerbic young county supervisor; Vincent Thomas, the boxer-politician with a heart of gold; Marilyn Jorgensen Reese, the Whittier housewife who happened also to be the chief architect of the graceful 405-10 interchange with flyovers that don’t need a single tap on the brakes; Adriana Gianturco, the Caltrans official nicknamed “Diamond Lady” who took a rush hour of heat for championing the first HOV lanes on the Santa Monica Freeway.
Haddad’s prose shines. “If freeways are L.A.’s cathedrals,” he writes of the dreaded 405-101 junction, “then this meat-grinder interchange is the Church of Perpetual Congestion.” The frequently changing Caltrans maps contain “broken lines resembling the diagrams of a drunk football coach.” He also has an eye for local goofiness: the egomaniac Griffin J. Griffith who donated land for his namesake park always makes good copy... Freewaytopia is an easy read that packs a factual wallop.
―Tom Zoellner, Los Angeles Review of Books
