Navigation

It is a well known fact that when they were deciding on
where to put the streets of L.A., the planning
commission went down to the zoo, got a monkey, put it
on a map of the city and placed a highway where ever
the fleas fell. OK. While that may not be completely
true (they didn't get the monkey from the zoo), the
system here is very complicated. The funny thing about
L.A. streets is that, in some cases, they are extremely
long. Wilshire Boulevard goes from the ocean to
downtown, about thirteen miles. Santa Monica
Boulevard, Sunset Boulevard, and Sepulveda
Boulevard have this similar characteristic. Since they
span more than one neighborhood, when getting an
address it is very important to know in which
neighborhood that part of the street lies. Also,
depending on the street, they change names
depending where they are located and even have the
same name when they are not connected at all (Pacific
Coast Highway is one of these). Another common
occurrence with L.A. streets is that they share the
name of a neighborhood but stretch far outside it
(Burbank Boulevard is one example.)

Therefore, successful navigation is dependent on two
things:

Thomas Guide : A spiral bound group of maps of the
whole county.
GPS : A global positioning system.