Fretless's post above citing Bradbury's The Pedestrian [1951] + some of his own & his friend's experiences from the 60s, makes a point that has been ticking in my mind as I have read thru this thread:— in contradiction of several posts above which claim it 'wasn't like that in the old days, my parents used to walk everywhere', it has always been known over here in the UK that walking in LA was a no-no. In the early 1930s, P G Wodehouse, working then as a studio scriptwriter, placed on record how eccentric he appeared to his colleagues, & how suspicious to the police till they got used to him, for his insistence on walking the several miles each morning from his Beverley Hills {I think} home to his Hollywood workplace thru the streets of Downtown Los Angeles, & back again in the evening. It would appear that not much has changed. My own experience of LA has been that, tho one can walk freely within the quarter one happens to be in, it is impossible to cross the freeway-network into another part of the city on foot.