Ah Beaudry, I concur with ethereal, that last photo you posted is really a great one! I'd like to think that possibly that panel truck was an LA County Coroner's vehicle on its way to the Hall of Justice.
I thought this was an interesting article from the
LA Times from last year. It shows that Angelenos were so in love with their cars from the very beginning that even the City Council didn't want people to have to pay for parking on city streets.
L.A. THEN AND NOW
The city that loves the car was slow to pay for parking
LA Times
By Steve Harvey
Los Angeles lays claim to being the birthplace of such phenomena as drive-in church services (Emmanuel Lutheran, North Hollywood, 1949), hang-gliding (Dockweiler State Beach, about 1960) and the Cobb salad (the Brown Derby, 1937).
But the city was no pacesetter in the category of parking meters. Oklahoma City was the first to install the coin confiscators in 1935, and more than 60 other municipalities followed before Los Angeles joined the crowd in 1949. Even Fairbanks, Alaska, beat L.A.
Three times -- in 1940, 1942 and 1946 -- the City Council rejected the notion, much to the delight of The Times, which scoffed that it would be "just as fair to install turnstiles for sidewalk pedestrians."
When a nickel-an-hour rate was first talked about in 1936, The Times warned ominously that "the autoist using the space for only a few minutes would have to pay as much as he who uses it for the full period."
The newspaper also asserted that the number of parking spaces would be reduced because they "must all be long enough for cars with the largest wheelbase."
And what of the technological challenge facing autoists?
"Can a stranger, or even a forgetful homebody, be mulcted for a fine if he doesn't know how to work the contraption?" asked Times columnist Chapin Hall in 1940. "Even the mechanics of dropping a nickel in a slot is a major problem for some."
But others pushed for the gadgets, including council members searching for new sources of revenue, lobbyists for the meter manufacturers and merchants who wanted to eliminate that early 20th century villain known as the "parking hog."
Finally, in 1949, the City Council gave in and installed 400 of the 5-cents-an-hour devices on an experimental basis on Lankershim Boulevard near the present site of the Metro Red Line station in North Hollywood.
[...]
Read the rest by clicking on
THIS.