Santa Monica Blvd. from Roxbury to Wilshire Blvd.

In a series of books made in the 1960s, Ed Ruscha produced deadpan visual lists that he called "a collection of 'facts.'" This photograph was included in his 1967 book Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles, for which he hired photographer Art Alanis to take pictures from a helicopter above downtown Los Angeles on a quiet Sunday morning. Although Ruscha instructed Alanis on which sites to shoot, he later said, "Those patterns and their abstract design quality mean nothing to me. I'll tell you what is more interesting: the oil dropping on the ground." Oil droppings reveal the desirability of certain parking locations in a city whose lifeblood is the car, thus offering a kind of sociological map of behavior patterns in Southern California.