Santa Monica Blvd. from Roxbury to Wilshire Blvd.

<p>In a series of books made in the 1960s, Ed Ruscha produced deadpan visual lists that he called &quot;a collection of 'facts.'&quot; This photograph was included in his 1967 book <em>Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles</em>, 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, &quot;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.&quot; 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.</p>