1954. Smog prevents airplanes from landing and ships from docking for three days.

The setting sun burned the sky pink and orange in the same bright hues as surfers' bathing suits. It was beautiful deception, Bosch thought, as he drove north on the Hollywood Freeway to home. Sunsets did that here. Made you forget it was the smog that made their colors so brilliant, that behind every pretty picture there could be an ugly story.

It's a symptom of the new divide in housing costs between the expensive, congested, urbanized states such as California and New York and newly sprawling suburban states on both coasts. This whole half of the decade, housing has been an issue. ... The question is: Will it continue?

You never really write the obituary on smog days,

I read the Life magazine articles about free love and free dope in California. At age 20 I drove to Los Angeles.

When I go to an art gallery and stand in front of a painting, I don't want someone telling me what I should be seeing or thinking; I want to feel whatever I feel, see whatever I see, and figure out what I figure out.