Los Angeles Plays Itself

What once seemed like so much traffic and sprawl has suddenly become a close-knit and accessible city driven by culture and cuisine. ABBY AGUIRRE Wazes her way around town to discover how technology has rewired the way we experience L.A.

Along a winding stretch of Mulholland Drive between Malibu and Kardashian Country, packs of cyclists, Harley crews, and a Mustang car club rolling a dozen deep are all vying for space on this two-lane ribbon of blacktop. They are here to improve their times, to practice their S curves, and to perhaps be documented doing so against a classic canyon backdrop by Victory Jon, a photographer who has set up shop on the shoulder and who sells his pictures on the Internet. (highwayphotos.net, a banner screams.) But later, when they are finished, many will end up where I am going: a tiny roadside restaurant called the Old Place.

You might think it was an Old West movie set, built in the Disney spirit to look the right amount of ramshackle. Large antlers hang above the front door. Inside, pony tailed Malibu tweens in soccer uniforms mix with eccentric locals and canyon hipsters, ombré dye jobs peeking out from under felt hats. Customers crowd a 30-foot antique saloon bar or, if they’ve secured a reservation months before, into one of five wooden booths separated by doors salvaged from the Santa Barbara Mission. Moody paintings of Native American figures hang on the walls. As if on cue, overhead speakers begin to play the Oklahoma country-blues singer J. J. Cale’s rambling road song “Call Me the Breeze.”