Does anyone use these anymore besides me? The litmus test of whether you were an Angeleno used to be if you had a dog-eared copy of one of these lying around in your car.
To those who moved here in the last 10 years, you may not even know what these are. They were (I guess still are) really thick, detailed maps that took up hundreds of pages. They took a little getting used to, but were really outstanding maps - so precise in their depiction of every minute detail. Everyone had one sitting in the car, and many had certain page numbers memorized, for example page 634 was Downtown LA.
I am sure Thomas Bros. deeply laments the coming of the internet, on-board navigation, and Google Maps, which have essentially made these printed maps totally obsolete. I wonder if they are even still in business.
Of course since I use a cheap cell phone that is an actual phone (or actually don't use it really) I do not have any "smart" navigation or whatever, so I still will sometimes dig this out just like the old days, and it still sits in the back seat of the car.
On a recent trip to San Diego, I still did what I always do: brought my old San Diego one with me:
One day in a used bookstore, I found an old one from 1982. When you go back that far, you really see some changes. Entire towns did not exist at that time, and many of the road names or freeway names have changed. (The 110 for example was called the 11.)
