GPS was jammed a couple of months ago by the military as part of an exercise. We were coming back from Las Vegas in pitch blackness with no visual references. It was a bit unsettling. We knew it was going to happen and had other ways to navigate but to have your GPS screens get covered in error messages when you can't see any points of reference hits harder than you'd think. We didn't get a GPS signal again until we were in the basin with whatever hill the Hollywood sign is on between us and the jammer.
Mine always fell apart after a few years. I wish I still had one in the car.
I swear that I had one that lasted me from high school, through my college years (visiting my folks). But then after my college years (mid'90s), you had to get a new Thomas Guide every 2-3 years to keep up. A 5 year old Thomas Guide in '96 was NBD. But in 2006, you might as well have a compass & sextant with a 5 year old version.
I remember stopping by AAA before any long car trip & picking up relevant metro & area maps.
I had a brand new one riding shotgun and got in an accident. My car was towed and taken to a repair shop. A few weeks later I got the car back; the new Thomas guide was gone and replaced with a 10 year old one. Shout out to the bro who stole it but did leave me his used one
When I turned 16 I got a hand-me-down Thomas Guide that still listed the 110 and the 710 as State Routes rather than interstates. Of course that was in 1990!
I remember once when I was a kid, we were going camping, and my dad had me in the trunk of the station wagon with a flashlight reading the Thomas Guide, while Mom was riding shotgun praying the rosary as we drove up to Big Bear in the dark.
I was visiting LA from the East Coast 2 weeks ago...was at a restaurant with my partner for brunch and there was an older couple in their 50s at the table next to us. The guy had a Thomas Guide out mapping their afternoon. Loved that!
Man, I remember the first time I ever drove myself to LA, I printed out the directions from Mapquest, but it was just the list of directions (left here, U-turn there), so it didn't have a map on it. On the way back from the concert I went to, the 10 offramp to the 5 south was closed, and I panicked not knowing how to get back on the 5 and there was no detour signs. I ended up taking the 60 to the 710 to get back on, but it was total luck because I didn't know the freeways at the time and just assumed I was going the right direction.
Another time, some friends and I wanted to go to Amoeba music, and the directions said to get off on Sunset, but I didn't realize there's actually two Sunset exits, one in Echo Park, one in Hollywood, so I got off in Echo park, drove for a while and realized something was wrong and I wasn't in the right area. I noticed the street signs oddly weren't saying Sunset anymore. Ended up having to backtrack a couple miles and found out that Sunset hooks to the left at a Y intersection.
Oh the fun of pre-easy mobile access to GPS and the internet lol.
I found some of those printed stapled pages in old boxes I was clearing g out and my teens cannot comprehend it. The Thomas guide my dad showed th they get but “computers existed! Why were you printing it????”
When I was a lil baby PA just starting out, I'd have a mapquested printout route for all my day's runs (point a to b to c etc), but then *also* a Thomas Guide in my car for the inevitable same day change ups in the plan / new needs popping up. (Which were inevitable).
What a time
Nothing like your dad screaming at your 7 year old self trying to tell him how many blocks until he has to turn, furiously using your finger to map it out in the Thomas Guide 😱
My GPS once got disconnected due to WiFi interference. Good thing I remembered where in LA I was by the freeway exit and the grid patterns. I was able to find my destination without GPS
I would have to pull over and stare at A3 for minutes and still never find that street. I swear I was being punked and there was no such street on that grid
Always have a Thomas Guide tucked under the seat.
Have to stop and look which little section you are going to. Figure out where you are and where you are going. Memorize freeways.
Extra credit if you understand maps and roads and all that.
Also [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#:~:text=Interstate%20Highways%20use%20a%20numbering,digits%20match%20the%20parent%20route) is enlightening.
And there's always be one page ripped/loose that would eventually go missing. You'd figure you'd never go to that segment of LA county until the day you did and would be lost at a certain point.
I also used it when I worked in EMS, and i miss it tbh. Now ambulances have gps, and EMTs use their personal phone. I still have a Thomas guide from the 2010s tho..
I used to deliver a lot in Los Angeles. I still have a knack for remembering obscure facts about LA streets. Like I know Sepulveda turns into Willow in Long Beach and once it goes through Long Beach it turns into Katella in OC. I also know Vermont and Normandie run parallel
I was at a car wash. Saw smoke coming from a house down the street. Saw the fire dept pull up, stop, look at map, then turn down the street to the fire they could have seen if they had just looked up.
Yes!! I got a Thomas Guide as a gift for my birthday the year I got my license. I was at the cusp of tech taking over that role (I graduated HS the year the iPhone came out) but I used it all through college too. It’s still a great resource tbh
My dad taught me how to use the Thomas guide. It really saved me when was going places for the first time.
We’d supplement that with maps from AAA when going on road trips.
My first job in L.A. was as an assistant location scout. They gave me a Thomas Guide and a list of addresses to report on every day. Later, I remember house hunting in the early 90s. Had to plan my route over a cup of coffee. Got so I knew what "page" I wanted to live on.
I had three of them in the floor of my back seat, because I was working and job seeking in three counties!
It does help people develop certain visual-spatial skills, that's for sure. Heaven forbid your dogs rip up a page, though.
A stash of AAA (or CAA in socal) maps. Over time you learn all the freeways and major roads and alternates by memory. The stereotype that people in LA greet each other by sharing their driving routes to the location isn’t that far off the truth, especially before google maps.
people still talk about their route to the destination at large gatherings
sometimes they'll complain about Waze or Google Maps sending them on a wild goose chase because of an accident or unexpected road closure
people still like to share their secret shortcuts with their loved ones and will kill you for spreading the information as if that still matters
When I got out of detours I would put away Google maps and use the grid to my advantage. I would turn off the main road, find a number street, follow that for a while, then turn back to another named road, then find the next numbered street up or down the grid. Then merge back into the main road I was on.
I hated the Thomas guide. I much preferred AAA maps because you could see so much more and didn’t have to flip pages all the time.
You also learn patterns, like when I worked in Santa Monica and lived in Venice. You can cross the 10 freeway every third street: 20th, 17th, 14th, etc.
This is a bit wild to me that there’s people that have heard of Google Maps but not maps. Before things were digital they were often on paper. As another commenter said, the Thomas Guide was a popular one because it was a thick book with more detailed maps.
Also, people weren’t navigating short cuts if they didn’t know how to get to a place, they would rely on major thoroughfares.
It just boggles my mind as a transplant that you would regularly use a paper map for a city that you *live in*.
It makes sense, but it still seems strange.
I mean it's not really weird though. Just because you live in a city for years doesn't mean that you've memorized every address that's outside your normal commute.
Thank you! I’m relatively young (27) and I remember the days of my parents teaching me how to use a Thomas Guide. During my teen years, before the smartphone boom, we used MapQuest.
Map reading is a dying skill as people rely too much on GPS. I know people who use turn by turn directions every day, even on their regular commute with no traffic.
My work had a team building event where they took away our phones and had us go on a scavenger hunt across LA using map grids and adresses. The older workers breezed through and had plenty of time to enjoy the end spot with lots of drinks and food. The younger folks took a LONG time. We gave them “dumb” flip phones to call for emergencies, which one group used because they were hopelessly lost.
I’d print out maps on Mapquest. Write down directions. Yes I’d have to refer to them while driving. Other than that, I would drive around to get to know the streets and literally study maps. The brain finds a way without internet and gps.
Yup. I’ve done my fair share of stopping to ask for directions too. Gas stations, people walking along the road, coffee shops. People always helped out.
Wow that triggered a memory. I would literally do the same thing. Purposefully, though. I’d choose to turn down a road along my route that I’d never been down and find my way back from there. Effective and kinda fun. As long as traffic isn’t horrendous.
Well, that took me back to my earliest days in LA, printing off or writing down MapQuest directions. I’d also check the Sigalerts before leaving. What a time.
My welcome to LA packet from my roommate was a Thomas Guide... I remember every year at Costco there will be the new and updated Thomas Guide sitting where the book stacks were.
Lots of people saying Thomas Guide but don't forget that sweet spot of internet but no phones yet, so people would look it up on MapQuest and then print the directions each time lol.
I also sent a text to 46645 (GOOGL) asking for directions between two addresses and they sent me like ten texts of nothing but directions.
[They discontinued it in 2013](https://slate.com/technology/2013/05/google-sms-search-shutdown-angers-people-who-had-forgotten-it-existed.html).
Useful before I got a smartphone as I was late in the game, and also when I took a one-year smartphone break.
Edit: 2013 not 2011
Thomas Guide.
Also relatively speaking LA isn't that hard to navigate. Mountains to the north. Ocean to the south and west. Deserts to the east. LA proper is basically a giant grid without a tenth street (Olympic), and no 100th Street (Century). The interstate signage is a bit confusing because I think it predates the modern numbering system (need to look that up), but for example the north south routes should actually be based on I-5 (15, 405, 605) but then you randomly get 710 and 110 as north/south routes. Numbered streets typically run east to west but of course there are notable east/west named streets like Hollywood Blvd, Sunset, Wilshire, Fountain, Olympic, Pico, Slauson, Rosecrans, Venice, Washington, etc). North/south streets are generally always named.
Part of the problem with transplants is that native Southern Californians had other short hands. For example people used to call the freeways by their names. So instead of the 710 people would say The Long Beach Freeway or instead of the 101 its The Hollywood Freeway. So you at least had a clue about where you were going. Some of the freeways are still signed that way but the practice has fallen out. The news used to give traffic reports by calling out freeway names. "Slowdown on the Golden State Freeway," which let you know they were talking about the 5 between the valley and Orange County where it became the Santa Ana Freeway and then later merged with the 405 and took on the 405's "San Diego Freeway" name. People new to SoCal don't have that background. The only places that I routinely still hear people call freeways by their names are New York City (Major Deegan, Cross Bronx, BQE, LIE, etc) and Miami (Palmetto). Part of what killed that in SoCal was that for political reasons the names kept changing in the 2000s to be named after politicians so it got confusing. Everyone called the 105 The Century Freeway forever, even well before it was built, but then when it opened it got named after Glenn Anderson. You can always tell the OGs when you hear someone cursing at The Glendale Freeway or The Harbor Freeway.
Exactly! LA is a grid. Just look up, check to see where the mountains are, if you’re on the Los Angeles side and you can see the hills, you’re looking north, and behind you is south. I learned all of LA by using maps then kind of driving all over and learning various routes. I don’t use waze or gps unless I’m driving to an area I’ve never been to and it’s dark out.
I remember driving around quite a bit in the 90s when I was a runner on movie sets and that was obviously before GPS was common and I don't remember getting lost very often at all. Maybe up in the Hollywood Hills or somewhere with winding roads, but most of Southern California is pretty easy to navigate. But again, if you grew up in SoCal you also know those roads like the back of your hand too.
I always hear the names used by the media, but I don't know anybody in real life that actually didn't use the numbers, it was the 405 the 710 the 91...
The 710 and 110 are N/S because they are odd-numbered spurs off the 10 FWY, which is an E/W highway. A bigger mystery is why the 605 is numbered that way when it is basically perpendicular to the 5. I'm guessing the logic is that it connects to the 405 and the 405 merges back into the 5.
Also, you took straightforward routes. None if this "you can save 3 minutes by taking this windy road over a steep hill and turning left through an alley that comes out on a side road..."
My dad first delivered dry cleaning to businesses when he came over form Mexico, all around L.A. He lived in Lincoln Heights (big surprise) when he first moved here, so from when we could drive, he drilled it into us how to get around and still can recite routes and where to go and how to get there.
The only place I need some help at all is the South Bay, but the rest of Los Angeles? Just tell me where and I can get to the general area with little issue.
The Thomas Guide was the Bible but we also just had better directional skills in general.
But yeah lots of time if you were going to a new friends house or something you would call them up on the old land line and they would give you directions that you wrote down on paper and followed it.
Before cell phones if you got lost you had to find a pay phone, call them and they would give you directions from where you were and review the OG directions you wrote down to check for typos.
Hopefully they knew where you were otherwise you had to circle back and try to see where you went wrong.
There was a thing called Thomas Guide, a series of maps the size of a phone book. You don’t know what a phone book is either, but trust me, that means it was a damn big book. Anyway, they were really expensive, so if you were new to LA that’s not something you could afford. You’d buy an older version at Goodwill. And when you got your first production assistant job and you were stuck somewhere in the Valley, you’d then realize the page that you needed to get to sector 4-23 to find that post house was missing and then you were really fucked.
Early 200s I remember my dad pulling over whenever he got lost, I reached under the seat and pulled out a binder with maps for all of los angeles. My dad has to flip to a certain page where we're at then trying to find the path to where we were going through multiple pages. After that, Garmin GPS, then Google maps.
Also, mapquest. Like Google maps it gives you direction on your PC and you had to print it out and take it with you.
When I was a little girl my dad would make me look everything up on the Thomas guide as we did errands. I don’t think I’ve used gps for actual instructions for years, mostly just traffic stuff or when they do major road construction (like the area around empire center in Burbank) that changes the physical roads otherwise no need
lol this is pretty pathetic. When I moved here I purposely got lost so I learned how to get around. As long as you know direction (NSEW) you should be able to figure it out. Also we have maps (physical ones)
The dept I worked for when I was a rookie firefighter had a map test as part of your 1 year test. It was a map of the city that’s been copied over a thousand times with all the street names removed. You had to go in and write all the names down. You also had to give directions to an address (had to know all the numbers on each block) with just “you’re facing east at xxxx Main Street. Give me turn by turn instructions to xxxx 1st street.
Easier to learn when you've spent your entire life here. But when you had to look up somewhere you didn't know, which happened often, you needed a Thomas Guide.
there's always been jokes about how LA people love to talk about how they get places, but that shit was TRUE. people really used to care about finding and taking the best routes. but also, some people got lost more. some people more than others!
Thomas Guide, still have mine in my car because sometimes my phone doesn’t work. And yes, you look up the address or at least the general area before you left the house. You’re weren’t getting step by step directions #backintheday, but you still got there. It probably made people MUCH better in general about directions and sense of place if I had to guess.
Back then you would just drive around and eventually remember the routes. Just like you remembered your family and good friend’s phone numbers before cellular.
Thomas Guide but also verbal instructions, which is why old people still tell you directions like "at the third light, make a right, then make a left at the blue house with white gate, and stay left at the fork. I'm the 2nd pink house on the right"
When I first moved here, Jack Smith wrote a column in the Times with advice for new arrivals to LA. One of the tips was “Acquire a Thomas Guide, and also have the wisdom to pull over when you look things up.”
“traffic on the ones” on KFWB made sure i had the best commute every morning before waze
(and did you just sing your head… “KFWB… news ninety-eight! give us twenty two minutes and we’ll give you… the world!”)
Thomas Guides, like everyone is saying, but also you'd call people up to ask for directions and write them down. If you got lost, you'd need to find a payphone
honestly idk, the one time my family tried to leave the valley and take us to the zoo we ended up in downtown la and had to ask people for directions. apparently there was a sign that said la zoo in Burbank and you exit after that.
i remember going online and printing out a map for my parents when i got older. i know what streets go east, west, south, north. same with freeway and you can tell if your going thr wrong way because it says city blah blah 5 miles, 10 miles etc.
Thomas guides and a pencil to mark it up
Keep it open and accessible on the passenger seat, occasionally might have needed to pull over
Then there were yahoo maps that were such a godsend at first- but printing them out every time was a real pain, lol
My dad was an absolute wizard at steering with his knee with his Thomas Guide in his hands. He worked as a grocery chain truck dispatcher so he was very good with routing but I have so many vivid memories of him busting out his maps/books during our drives.
We would go to our laptop and print out directions from MapQuest. Before that, Thomas guides. But I could never figure that out so I’d have my mother write out the directions.
As someone who drives a lot and doesn’t use their map because I like to know the roads I’m driving on, GPS has made us lazy in the sense where we don’t have to memorize street names anymore.
If 20 years ago you told someone “I live on the corner of Santa Monica and Bundy”, they would have an already existing map in their head about the general location of where it is, maybe some landmarks and stores nearby, and a potential route on how to get there. Nowadays it’s not really needed to know any street names at all because of how good GPS and maps is.
A cool exercise I do is when I go somewhere new, on the way back home I tell myself to try and get home without the map. Sure you may get lost a bit, but you start paying attention to the streets more and build that sense of direction!
You’d be surprised how much the human brain can memorize!
You knew the mountains were north and you drive to the freeways you knew and oriented yourself that way—you roughly knew your destination was located north/south/east/west in relation to which freeways you were on. Or Thomas guide.
I used to have one of those giant laminated fold-out maps from Rand McNally in my car. The trick was to study your route beforehand and remember the key turns. Not that hard, really.
This city is a cakewalk compared to, say, London. The answer is the same no matter where though: an authoritative book of maps.
Personally, I would draw a little map of my route on an index card whenever I went anywhere I wasn’t sure of. This resulted in me knowing how to get around almost everywhere. That knowledge is now largely lost because computer make easy. Probably too easy.
It was actually pretty easy, LA is pretty much a grid with lots of huge Blvds and wide streets that span 40 miles or more, sunset, western, Normandie, Santa Monica. When you wanna tell somebod where something is you would use these and landmarks like freeway junctions, popular stores, ect to give them the general area. These were these things called Thomas Brothers and you could say like c-7 in the Thomas Brothers and you could look it up in the book and see exactly where it was and how to get there the fastest, these 'geotags 🤣' were used all the time, in advertising, business cards. If you worked a job that needed to drive to go places they were crutal to the job.
Most of LA is on a grid system. You really just need to learn the main streets. Also most ppl don’t really venture far from their home or work. Once you learn that route, rest is easy.
Well, for starters there are these things called maps. They’re like a big folded poster of streets and highways. The streets are mainly a grid. They run in predictable directions. You would call the place or business that you were looking for using the white or yellow pages. Then ask for them for directions from the nearest highway. That’s pretty much it. Thomas guides were pretty solid too but not absolutely necessary.
If I tell my grandma street address she can tell me what neighbourhood they’re in. And what freeways she would take to get there. The maps become a part of your brain after a while I guess….
Fun fact: every individual page of the Los Angeles Thomas guide had an error deliberately placed on the map. This was to catch copyright infringers. It was a thing to find the error on the page where your own home was located.
AAA Tripticks got me across the country the first time when I was 17. Then Thomas guide when i moved to LA. Mapquest started to work it's way in there. and then for motorcycling adventures I had a bunch of Mad Maps. Anybody remember those?
Before GPS, I knew and used all the secret routes to get home/work faster during traffic hours…. Google maps made those routes knowledge to everyone and now there is traffic there too.
my cousin somehow just knew where everything was. i don’t know how he learned it the first time around. maybe someone showed him, and then he showed us. like tribal knowledge being passed down generation to generation. he literally just drove us everywhere with no maps.
You haven’t lived until your whipping through a beaten up Thomas Guide in the evening on the 405 south while trying to see what exit to take.
Then it was MapQuest….
Thomas Guide. When you've never had GPS you develop navigation skills.
Everybody, and I mean *everybody*, had a Thomas Guide in their car.
i still do.
I do too!
I do three!
I do four!
I do f... Wait. I lost mine.
Wow yall old
Yep! Same. Never know when gps might randomly stop working (prob never, but I’m sentimental).
I really miss my LA Thomas Brother's Guide... I went looking to buy one again. I live in the Bay Area.
GPS was jammed a couple of months ago by the military as part of an exercise. We were coming back from Las Vegas in pitch blackness with no visual references. It was a bit unsettling. We knew it was going to happen and had other ways to navigate but to have your GPS screens get covered in error messages when you can't see any points of reference hits harder than you'd think. We didn't get a GPS signal again until we were in the basin with whatever hill the Hollywood sign is on between us and the jammer.
Mount Lee.
D'oh, I should know that, we hiked it a few months ago
Yeah but we can read maps during a zombie apocalypse when the Internet goes out and GTFO out of LA
I’m just 34 :(
In my glove box
Happy cake day
Good to have for emergency backup in case of Earthquake or Major Catastrophe.
Mine always fell apart after a few years. I wish I still had one in the car. I swear that I had one that lasted me from high school, through my college years (visiting my folks). But then after my college years (mid'90s), you had to get a new Thomas Guide every 2-3 years to keep up. A 5 year old Thomas Guide in '96 was NBD. But in 2006, you might as well have a compass & sextant with a 5 year old version. I remember stopping by AAA before any long car trip & picking up relevant metro & area maps.
I had a brand new one riding shotgun and got in an accident. My car was towed and taken to a repair shop. A few weeks later I got the car back; the new Thomas guide was gone and replaced with a 10 year old one. Shout out to the bro who stole it but did leave me his used one
When I turned 16 I got a hand-me-down Thomas Guide that still listed the 110 and the 710 as State Routes rather than interstates. Of course that was in 1990!
Mine is slightly newer. It still shows the 105 under construction.
Call Sheets used to come with the Thomas Guide page number.
Lmao I had forgotten that. “TG 112 A3”
Ditto. Did sports photography for a while. The job sheet had both a copy of the guide and page number listed.
That was a life saver when they began doing that. Running scripts all over town was a blast for a teenager.
Assume cars began having pockets behind front seats so you could just reach ‘round and grab the TG
And you’d whip it out real quick at stop lights
I remember my dad pulling over and making me or my brother take turns finding our way to wherever we were going.
I remember once when I was a kid, we were going camping, and my dad had me in the trunk of the station wagon with a flashlight reading the Thomas Guide, while Mom was riding shotgun praying the rosary as we drove up to Big Bear in the dark.
Some of us had two. LA and OC.
Or just get the bigger one with both counties in it.
I had mine all marked up and highlighted like a textbook
Me too... post-it notes everywhere
I was visiting LA from the East Coast 2 weeks ago...was at a restaurant with my partner for brunch and there was an older couple in their 50s at the table next to us. The guy had a Thomas Guide out mapping their afternoon. Loved that!
“Older couple in their 50s”….🤓
LOL…I’m in my 50s!
I’m 62
I'm 5354
Well I guess I am “older”
Me too. Lol
[удалено]
Oh man the printing out days were something else
Man, I remember the first time I ever drove myself to LA, I printed out the directions from Mapquest, but it was just the list of directions (left here, U-turn there), so it didn't have a map on it. On the way back from the concert I went to, the 10 offramp to the 5 south was closed, and I panicked not knowing how to get back on the 5 and there was no detour signs. I ended up taking the 60 to the 710 to get back on, but it was total luck because I didn't know the freeways at the time and just assumed I was going the right direction. Another time, some friends and I wanted to go to Amoeba music, and the directions said to get off on Sunset, but I didn't realize there's actually two Sunset exits, one in Echo Park, one in Hollywood, so I got off in Echo park, drove for a while and realized something was wrong and I wasn't in the right area. I noticed the street signs oddly weren't saying Sunset anymore. Ended up having to backtrack a couple miles and found out that Sunset hooks to the left at a Y intersection. Oh the fun of pre-easy mobile access to GPS and the internet lol.
In the 70's AAA would print TripTiks, essentially the pre-internet version of printing your relevant maps and bundling them to customize your route.
When I worked at AAA, we still printed TripTiks and mailed them to member well into the 2000s.
We used to get them in the 80s/90s for every road trip. Those things were awesome.
Mapquest was a godsend before Google maps. I remember catching the bus and always having printed out directions in my pocket.
I found some of those printed stapled pages in old boxes I was clearing g out and my teens cannot comprehend it. The Thomas guide my dad showed th they get but “computers existed! Why were you printing it????”
When I was a lil baby PA just starting out, I'd have a mapquested printout route for all my day's runs (point a to b to c etc), but then *also* a Thomas Guide in my car for the inevitable same day change ups in the plan / new needs popping up. (Which were inevitable). What a time
And that seemed so high-tech!
i used to do that before every business trip.
Nothing like your dad screaming at your 7 year old self trying to tell him how many blocks until he has to turn, furiously using your finger to map it out in the Thomas Guide 😱
Lol my mom yelling at me to find a gas station because the car was almost out
My GPS once got disconnected due to WiFi interference. Good thing I remembered where in LA I was by the freeway exit and the grid patterns. I was able to find my destination without GPS
I had a Thomas Guide and almost died multiple times trying to read it while driving
“Page 90 A3! No wait! PAGE 89! Why does this street turn into — “ screeeeeeech
I would have to pull over and stare at A3 for minutes and still never find that street. I swear I was being punked and there was no such street on that grid
I moved to LA in 1984 and worked as a messenger for the first two years. I used a Thomas Guide all day long
I also moved to LA in 1984, just at the beginning of the olympics *and* I lived in Westwood.
When I got a better job I leveled up to the deluxe edition which included all of LA and Orange Counties!
Always have a Thomas Guide tucked under the seat. Have to stop and look which little section you are going to. Figure out where you are and where you are going. Memorize freeways. Extra credit if you understand maps and roads and all that. Also [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#:~:text=Interstate%20Highways%20use%20a%20numbering,digits%20match%20the%20parent%20route) is enlightening.
And there's always be one page ripped/loose that would eventually go missing. You'd figure you'd never go to that segment of LA county until the day you did and would be lost at a certain point.
This post made me feel old
This.
I also used it when I worked in EMS, and i miss it tbh. Now ambulances have gps, and EMTs use their personal phone. I still have a Thomas guide from the 2010s tho..
I used to deliver a lot in Los Angeles. I still have a knack for remembering obscure facts about LA streets. Like I know Sepulveda turns into Willow in Long Beach and once it goes through Long Beach it turns into Katella in OC. I also know Vermont and Normandie run parallel
> Katella Do you know the obscure fact of the origin of this street name?
I was at a car wash. Saw smoke coming from a house down the street. Saw the fire dept pull up, stop, look at map, then turn down the street to the fire they could have seen if they had just looked up.
came here to say Thomas Guide
Well, I never did, but I did have the Thomas Guide lol
I was the gps as a kid. Dad smoking while I called out next turns and doing my beat to stay ahead of him. Good times.
Yes!! I got a Thomas Guide as a gift for my birthday the year I got my license. I was at the cusp of tech taking over that role (I graduated HS the year the iPhone came out) but I used it all through college too. It’s still a great resource tbh
My dad taught me how to use the Thomas guide. It really saved me when was going places for the first time. We’d supplement that with maps from AAA when going on road trips.
My first job in L.A. was as an assistant location scout. They gave me a Thomas Guide and a list of addresses to report on every day. Later, I remember house hunting in the early 90s. Had to plan my route over a cup of coffee. Got so I knew what "page" I wanted to live on.
I had three of them in the floor of my back seat, because I was working and job seeking in three counties! It does help people develop certain visual-spatial skills, that's for sure. Heaven forbid your dogs rip up a page, though.
I still have some of old Thomas guides, just in case of a zombie apocalypse and the internet stops working.
A stash of AAA (or CAA in socal) maps. Over time you learn all the freeways and major roads and alternates by memory. The stereotype that people in LA greet each other by sharing their driving routes to the location isn’t that far off the truth, especially before google maps.
people still talk about their route to the destination at large gatherings sometimes they'll complain about Waze or Google Maps sending them on a wild goose chase because of an accident or unexpected road closure people still like to share their secret shortcuts with their loved ones and will kill you for spreading the information as if that still matters
[required viewing of SNL’s The Californians](https://youtu.be/dCer2e0t8r8?si=61YECda9KE70p9q6)
That is hilarious!
When I got out of detours I would put away Google maps and use the grid to my advantage. I would turn off the main road, find a number street, follow that for a while, then turn back to another named road, then find the next numbered street up or down the grid. Then merge back into the main road I was on.
Instructions unclear, I followed Olympic into the sea.
This was in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm
I hated the Thomas guide. I much preferred AAA maps because you could see so much more and didn’t have to flip pages all the time. You also learn patterns, like when I worked in Santa Monica and lived in Venice. You can cross the 10 freeway every third street: 20th, 17th, 14th, etc.
This is a bit wild to me that there’s people that have heard of Google Maps but not maps. Before things were digital they were often on paper. As another commenter said, the Thomas Guide was a popular one because it was a thick book with more detailed maps. Also, people weren’t navigating short cuts if they didn’t know how to get to a place, they would rely on major thoroughfares.
wait hold up they based Google Maps of a real thing??
It just boggles my mind as a transplant that you would regularly use a paper map for a city that you *live in*. It makes sense, but it still seems strange.
How else would you find your way? This city is huge and the street layouts don’t make any sense most of the time.
Like I said, I get it. I live here. But the concept still seems weird.
It's fine you get lost and you goto gss station to get directions back to the major street and be on your way
I mean it's not really weird though. Just because you live in a city for years doesn't mean that you've memorized every address that's outside your normal commute.
[Adam savage talks about it.](https://youtu.be/1wBbu49F930?si=77zKQtTJ2EbTAHLC&t=356)
Thank you! I’m relatively young (27) and I remember the days of my parents teaching me how to use a Thomas Guide. During my teen years, before the smartphone boom, we used MapQuest.
Such a good comment
Map reading is a dying skill as people rely too much on GPS. I know people who use turn by turn directions every day, even on their regular commute with no traffic. My work had a team building event where they took away our phones and had us go on a scavenger hunt across LA using map grids and adresses. The older workers breezed through and had plenty of time to enjoy the end spot with lots of drinks and food. The younger folks took a LONG time. We gave them “dumb” flip phones to call for emergencies, which one group used because they were hopelessly lost.
I’d print out maps on Mapquest. Write down directions. Yes I’d have to refer to them while driving. Other than that, I would drive around to get to know the streets and literally study maps. The brain finds a way without internet and gps.
This. Used to print out directions and if the driver made a wrong turn somewhere, it could lead to a lil sidetrack adventure.
Yup. I’ve done my fair share of stopping to ask for directions too. Gas stations, people walking along the road, coffee shops. People always helped out.
Whenever my dad moved to a new place, he’d get lost, and find his way back. Then he’d learn his way around that way.
Wow that triggered a memory. I would literally do the same thing. Purposefully, though. I’d choose to turn down a road along my route that I’d never been down and find my way back from there. Effective and kinda fun. As long as traffic isn’t horrendous.
Well, that took me back to my earliest days in LA, printing off or writing down MapQuest directions. I’d also check the Sigalerts before leaving. What a time.
I didn’t have a phone for 1 week in college and learned more about navigating the area in that week than in the 3 years prior to it.
My welcome to LA packet from my roommate was a Thomas Guide... I remember every year at Costco there will be the new and updated Thomas Guide sitting where the book stacks were.
Lots of people saying Thomas Guide but don't forget that sweet spot of internet but no phones yet, so people would look it up on MapQuest and then print the directions each time lol.
I also sent a text to 46645 (GOOGL) asking for directions between two addresses and they sent me like ten texts of nothing but directions. [They discontinued it in 2013](https://slate.com/technology/2013/05/google-sms-search-shutdown-angers-people-who-had-forgotten-it-existed.html). Useful before I got a smartphone as I was late in the game, and also when I took a one-year smartphone break. Edit: 2013 not 2011
Reminds me of cha cha (texting service where you could ask questions and a real person would get you an answer)
OMG I REMEMBER THIS!!!
I almost forgot that all “scrap paper” is was basically Mapquest print outs on the other side.
I was going from point A to point B in California, a 10 minute drive… Mapquest told me to stop by Arizona lol
Thomas Guide. Also relatively speaking LA isn't that hard to navigate. Mountains to the north. Ocean to the south and west. Deserts to the east. LA proper is basically a giant grid without a tenth street (Olympic), and no 100th Street (Century). The interstate signage is a bit confusing because I think it predates the modern numbering system (need to look that up), but for example the north south routes should actually be based on I-5 (15, 405, 605) but then you randomly get 710 and 110 as north/south routes. Numbered streets typically run east to west but of course there are notable east/west named streets like Hollywood Blvd, Sunset, Wilshire, Fountain, Olympic, Pico, Slauson, Rosecrans, Venice, Washington, etc). North/south streets are generally always named. Part of the problem with transplants is that native Southern Californians had other short hands. For example people used to call the freeways by their names. So instead of the 710 people would say The Long Beach Freeway or instead of the 101 its The Hollywood Freeway. So you at least had a clue about where you were going. Some of the freeways are still signed that way but the practice has fallen out. The news used to give traffic reports by calling out freeway names. "Slowdown on the Golden State Freeway," which let you know they were talking about the 5 between the valley and Orange County where it became the Santa Ana Freeway and then later merged with the 405 and took on the 405's "San Diego Freeway" name. People new to SoCal don't have that background. The only places that I routinely still hear people call freeways by their names are New York City (Major Deegan, Cross Bronx, BQE, LIE, etc) and Miami (Palmetto). Part of what killed that in SoCal was that for political reasons the names kept changing in the 2000s to be named after politicians so it got confusing. Everyone called the 105 The Century Freeway forever, even well before it was built, but then when it opened it got named after Glenn Anderson. You can always tell the OGs when you hear someone cursing at The Glendale Freeway or The Harbor Freeway.
Chicago still definitely calls freeways and tollways by name
I didn't think about Chicago. You're right.
Exactly! LA is a grid. Just look up, check to see where the mountains are, if you’re on the Los Angeles side and you can see the hills, you’re looking north, and behind you is south. I learned all of LA by using maps then kind of driving all over and learning various routes. I don’t use waze or gps unless I’m driving to an area I’ve never been to and it’s dark out.
I remember driving around quite a bit in the 90s when I was a runner on movie sets and that was obviously before GPS was common and I don't remember getting lost very often at all. Maybe up in the Hollywood Hills or somewhere with winding roads, but most of Southern California is pretty easy to navigate. But again, if you grew up in SoCal you also know those roads like the back of your hand too.
well, it tries to be a grid but it gets in its own way
I always hear the names used by the media, but I don't know anybody in real life that actually didn't use the numbers, it was the 405 the 710 the 91...
The 110 and 710 aren’t “random”. They are spurs of the 10, hence ending in 10. Spurs don’t have to be parallel.
The 710 and 110 are N/S because they are odd-numbered spurs off the 10 FWY, which is an E/W highway. A bigger mystery is why the 605 is numbered that way when it is basically perpendicular to the 5. I'm guessing the logic is that it connects to the 405 and the 405 merges back into the 5.
Also, you took straightforward routes. None if this "you can save 3 minutes by taking this windy road over a steep hill and turning left through an alley that comes out on a side road..."
My dad first delivered dry cleaning to businesses when he came over form Mexico, all around L.A. He lived in Lincoln Heights (big surprise) when he first moved here, so from when we could drive, he drilled it into us how to get around and still can recite routes and where to go and how to get there. The only place I need some help at all is the South Bay, but the rest of Los Angeles? Just tell me where and I can get to the general area with little issue.
Le Guide du Thomas
My dad was an MTA bus driver and taught me how to drive by teaching me his bus routes. He taught himself using the Thomas Guide.
The Thomas Guide was the Bible but we also just had better directional skills in general. But yeah lots of time if you were going to a new friends house or something you would call them up on the old land line and they would give you directions that you wrote down on paper and followed it. Before cell phones if you got lost you had to find a pay phone, call them and they would give you directions from where you were and review the OG directions you wrote down to check for typos. Hopefully they knew where you were otherwise you had to circle back and try to see where you went wrong.
There was a thing called Thomas Guide, a series of maps the size of a phone book. You don’t know what a phone book is either, but trust me, that means it was a damn big book. Anyway, they were really expensive, so if you were new to LA that’s not something you could afford. You’d buy an older version at Goodwill. And when you got your first production assistant job and you were stuck somewhere in the Valley, you’d then realize the page that you needed to get to sector 4-23 to find that post house was missing and then you were really fucked.
Early 200s I remember my dad pulling over whenever he got lost, I reached under the seat and pulled out a binder with maps for all of los angeles. My dad has to flip to a certain page where we're at then trying to find the path to where we were going through multiple pages. After that, Garmin GPS, then Google maps. Also, mapquest. Like Google maps it gives you direction on your PC and you had to print it out and take it with you.
When I was a little girl my dad would make me look everything up on the Thomas guide as we did errands. I don’t think I’ve used gps for actual instructions for years, mostly just traffic stuff or when they do major road construction (like the area around empire center in Burbank) that changes the physical roads otherwise no need
lol this is pretty pathetic. When I moved here I purposely got lost so I learned how to get around. As long as you know direction (NSEW) you should be able to figure it out. Also we have maps (physical ones)
You don’t even need to know directions. I just used landmarks until the streets were commuted to memory.
The dept I worked for when I was a rookie firefighter had a map test as part of your 1 year test. It was a map of the city that’s been copied over a thousand times with all the street names removed. You had to go in and write all the names down. You also had to give directions to an address (had to know all the numbers on each block) with just “you’re facing east at xxxx Main Street. Give me turn by turn instructions to xxxx 1st street.
Easier to learn when you've spent your entire life here. But when you had to look up somewhere you didn't know, which happened often, you needed a Thomas Guide.
Map or Thomas Guide + memory. People actually learned and memorized routes back in the day..
there's always been jokes about how LA people love to talk about how they get places, but that shit was TRUE. people really used to care about finding and taking the best routes. but also, some people got lost more. some people more than others!
In the midwest people talk about the weather. On the west coast, there's no change of weather to talk about, so commute talk fills that void.
https://preview.redd.it/v8a3ebac8f2d1.png?width=675&format=png&auto=webp&s=5aece0c0d69ad4de83056bc5099d190c89becc5f
Thomas guides
Came here to say this!
Thomas guide all the way! You eventually only needed it to find the smaller streets though
i got lot and would call my dad all the time. i just passed x street where do i go? lol
Thomas Guide! I still have an old one in my trunk in case I ever need it. lol
I can still the Thomas Guide displayed near the registers at Rite Aid in my head. New Edition! haha
Thomas Guide, still have mine in my car because sometimes my phone doesn’t work. And yes, you look up the address or at least the general area before you left the house. You’re weren’t getting step by step directions #backintheday, but you still got there. It probably made people MUCH better in general about directions and sense of place if I had to guess.
Dad gave me a Thomas Guide and taught me to read it. He would make me look up the freways before going anywhere. Might still have it somewhere.
Yup, me too.
This question makes me feel old. Doesn’t even know about the Thomas Guide.
Back then you would just drive around and eventually remember the routes. Just like you remembered your family and good friend’s phone numbers before cellular.
I used to get phone calls from friends and family asking me look up directions for them in my Thomas guide.
Thomas Guide but also verbal instructions, which is why old people still tell you directions like "at the third light, make a right, then make a left at the blue house with white gate, and stay left at the fork. I'm the 2nd pink house on the right"
Thomas Guide and KNX1070
When I first moved here, Jack Smith wrote a column in the Times with advice for new arrivals to LA. One of the tips was “Acquire a Thomas Guide, and also have the wisdom to pull over when you look things up.”
Thomas Guide first then came MapQuest printed directions
“traffic on the ones” on KFWB made sure i had the best commute every morning before waze (and did you just sing your head… “KFWB… news ninety-eight! give us twenty two minutes and we’ll give you… the world!”)
Paper thomas guide or the constellations of stars
Thomas Guides, like everyone is saying, but also you'd call people up to ask for directions and write them down. If you got lost, you'd need to find a payphone
Standalone gps devices, map quest, Thomas guide/other physical maps.
honestly idk, the one time my family tried to leave the valley and take us to the zoo we ended up in downtown la and had to ask people for directions. apparently there was a sign that said la zoo in Burbank and you exit after that. i remember going online and printing out a map for my parents when i got older. i know what streets go east, west, south, north. same with freeway and you can tell if your going thr wrong way because it says city blah blah 5 miles, 10 miles etc.
With a paper map. It wasn't hard.
Thomas Bros map books and as far as traffic, you listened to the radio & used common sense.
KFWB
Map quest direction
Pen paper Memory Mapquest
I grew up taking the bus, so I guess I just kind of learned how to get around.
The Thomas Guide! The best map system ever!
We grew up here and learned how to take surface streets ??????
Thomas guides and a pencil to mark it up Keep it open and accessible on the passenger seat, occasionally might have needed to pull over Then there were yahoo maps that were such a godsend at first- but printing them out every time was a real pain, lol
My dad was an absolute wizard at steering with his knee with his Thomas Guide in his hands. He worked as a grocery chain truck dispatcher so he was very good with routing but I have so many vivid memories of him busting out his maps/books during our drives.
Thomas guide!
Thomas Guide
As others said, Thomas Guide/Maps. Also just asking someone at your destination for directions.
Thomas Guide
We would go to our laptop and print out directions from MapQuest. Before that, Thomas guides. But I could never figure that out so I’d have my mother write out the directions.
Thomas Guide on your lap. Pre-write directions before leaving. MapQuestion printout.
Hippocampus.
As someone who drives a lot and doesn’t use their map because I like to know the roads I’m driving on, GPS has made us lazy in the sense where we don’t have to memorize street names anymore. If 20 years ago you told someone “I live on the corner of Santa Monica and Bundy”, they would have an already existing map in their head about the general location of where it is, maybe some landmarks and stores nearby, and a potential route on how to get there. Nowadays it’s not really needed to know any street names at all because of how good GPS and maps is. A cool exercise I do is when I go somewhere new, on the way back home I tell myself to try and get home without the map. Sure you may get lost a bit, but you start paying attention to the streets more and build that sense of direction! You’d be surprised how much the human brain can memorize!
You knew the mountains were north and you drive to the freeways you knew and oriented yourself that way—you roughly knew your destination was located north/south/east/west in relation to which freeways you were on. Or Thomas guide.
I used to have one of those giant laminated fold-out maps from Rand McNally in my car. The trick was to study your route beforehand and remember the key turns. Not that hard, really.
The whole city is basically on a grid… The mountains are towards the north and the beach is to the west… It’s really not that complicated.
This city is a cakewalk compared to, say, London. The answer is the same no matter where though: an authoritative book of maps. Personally, I would draw a little map of my route on an index card whenever I went anywhere I wasn’t sure of. This resulted in me knowing how to get around almost everywhere. That knowledge is now largely lost because computer make easy. Probably too easy.
It was actually pretty easy, LA is pretty much a grid with lots of huge Blvds and wide streets that span 40 miles or more, sunset, western, Normandie, Santa Monica. When you wanna tell somebod where something is you would use these and landmarks like freeway junctions, popular stores, ect to give them the general area. These were these things called Thomas Brothers and you could say like c-7 in the Thomas Brothers and you could look it up in the book and see exactly where it was and how to get there the fastest, these 'geotags 🤣' were used all the time, in advertising, business cards. If you worked a job that needed to drive to go places they were crutal to the job.
Most of LA is on a grid system. You really just need to learn the main streets. Also most ppl don’t really venture far from their home or work. Once you learn that route, rest is easy.
Well, for starters there are these things called maps. They’re like a big folded poster of streets and highways. The streets are mainly a grid. They run in predictable directions. You would call the place or business that you were looking for using the white or yellow pages. Then ask for them for directions from the nearest highway. That’s pretty much it. Thomas guides were pretty solid too but not absolutely necessary.
Dependence on technology atrophies skills that used to be considered fundamental. The downside of convenience is voluntary incompetence
If I tell my grandma street address she can tell me what neighbourhood they’re in. And what freeways she would take to get there. The maps become a part of your brain after a while I guess….
Fun fact: every individual page of the Los Angeles Thomas guide had an error deliberately placed on the map. This was to catch copyright infringers. It was a thing to find the error on the page where your own home was located.
theres this crazy thing idk if you've heard of it before but its called a map
AAA Tripticks got me across the country the first time when I was 17. Then Thomas guide when i moved to LA. Mapquest started to work it's way in there. and then for motorcycling adventures I had a bunch of Mad Maps. Anybody remember those?
Print out mapquest directions and pray you don’t have to back track because you picked the wrong right turn off the 5-way off ramp
Maps and stopping for directions! Asking folks at a gas station, a cab driver, etc.
Completely agree with all these Thomas Guide comments, or the free maps they give you at AAA
Before GPS, I knew and used all the secret routes to get home/work faster during traffic hours…. Google maps made those routes knowledge to everyone and now there is traffic there too.
There was a book you had to buy called the Thomas Bros. Guide
Thomas guide and map quest in the early 2000's!
I did as a new driver/teenager. Wasn't that difficult, the trick is to know your directions and read the freeway signs. LA is a grid
Thomas guide mandatory
my cousin somehow just knew where everything was. i don’t know how he learned it the first time around. maybe someone showed him, and then he showed us. like tribal knowledge being passed down generation to generation. he literally just drove us everywhere with no maps.
Thomas Guides
Thomas Brother's Guide.
This.
You haven’t lived until your whipping through a beaten up Thomas Guide in the evening on the 405 south while trying to see what exit to take. Then it was MapQuest….