LAist Returns (And Here's a Post About the Thomas Guide to Prove It)

June 22, 2018 10:14 AM

Remember late last year when the jerk new owner of Gothamist and DNAInfo shut down his string of hyperlocal news sites? The one in LA has been resurrected (LAist) and today it reminds us of the book all Angelenos of a certain age owned.

The regenerated site is run by one of the local public radio stations (KPCC), which has been doing a LOT of cross promotion on air. KPCC bought the site last February "after two anonymous donors provided funds for it and other public radio stations to buy LAist and other sites in the Gothamist network. WNYC in New York will run the flagship Gothamist site, and WAMU in Washington is taking over DCist."

Gothamist and DCist are back online, now, too.

But who were the anonymous donors?

posted by notyou (22 comments total)

Chicago's DNAinfo has been restored too, though in a new form after a successful crowdfunding venture: Block Club Chicago.
posted by alphagator at 10:22 AM on June 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

Not just Angelenos, pretty much anyone in Southern California relied on the Thomas Guide. As a pizza delivery driver, I may have been a bit of a special case, but we used it a lot in my architecture firms too. Not just to find places - we'd also copy of scan it for use as a vicinity map on the cover sheets of our plan sets.
posted by LionIndex at 10:25 AM on June 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

Mod note: fixed book link, carry on
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:28 AM on June 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

I bet Anonymous was Ted Danson.
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 10:33 AM on June 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

When I first moved to the SF Bay Area, the people I was moving in with gifted me with a Thomas Guide (well, I assume it was that brand, it was the same big spiral bound style.) It actually still lived in the side pocket of the elderly car I donated to charity in 2014, but I hadn't looked at it in years and years. Like video stores and rotary phones, it's the lists of things that will mystify people born after 2000.
posted by tavella at 10:36 AM on June 22, 2018

I assume the Thomas Guide lived in hearts and back seat floorboards here the same way MAPSCO did in Dallas in the pre-digital age, when garage sale and small business ads would include their MAPSCO page number.

I'm really excited about LAist coming back. It was a frequent read for me when I first moved to California.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:39 AM on June 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

Those Thomas map books were indispensable. I had one in my car (backseat; they didn't fit in the glovebox), and it was stolen by either the police or the tow truck operator when my Datsun sedan got towed away near UCLA in 1973.

Also wonderful were the maps distributed by the Automobile Club of Southern California in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Very precise cartography and fine graphics of natural features, wholly unlike the crude schematic gas-station maps.
posted by lathrop at 10:47 AM on June 22, 2018

One of my college roommates photo-copied every page in his LA/Orange County edition of the Thomas Guide and wall-papered two walls of his room with it, in order -- even the door. When he wanted to go somewhere he'd plot it out on his wall map first.

I hope this project succeeds and that it can happen in other places -- and that it won't require anonymous donors, either. I also think this is a good fit for Public Radio as a way to seek out new audiences without expending a whole lot of additional resources.

(Thanks for fixing that link -- I didn't check, obviously. How'd I mess it up, anyways?)
posted by notyou at 10:56 AM on June 22, 2018

The King/Pierce/Snohomish Thomas guide was my constant companion back in the day. While I love gps in my phone, I do miss thumbing back and forth through the pages plotting routes.
posted by calamari kid at 11:21 AM on June 22, 2018

I still have a Thomas Guide in my car just in case.
posted by mogget at 11:47 AM on June 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

Also wonderful were the maps distributed by the Automobile Club of Southern California in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Very precise cartography and fine graphics of natural features, wholly unlike the crude schematic gas-station maps.

I credit the AAA's Freeway Map for my visual understanding of our freeways and where things are, generally. It was pink, and a cardstock trifold and lived in my parents glove box, and no one yelled at me if I opened it and looked at it (unlike the Thomas Guide and other big maps). I used to trace the lines of the different freeways with my finger while waiting in the car running errands. To this day I can picture it perfectly, though I can only find a decent pic of one side of it posted with an ebay auction.

I still have a Thomas Guide in my car just in case.

Me, too. Though I should probably get one that includes the 105, and the 210 extension.
posted by ApathyGirl at 12:33 PM on June 22, 2018

Yep, always kept a Thomas Guide close at hand in my car (between the seats, it also prevented spilled food from getting down there), going back to the green-cover version of the 1970s. My various homes and workplaces in the San Fernando Valley, Burbank, West L.A., Airport Area, South Bay, Long Beach and Pasadena made comprehensive area maps totally necessary. And when I left the L.A. Thomas Guide area and moved up the coast in 2005, I acquired the much-thinner San Luis Obispo County edition, and kept it with me when I gave up driving in 2015.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:46 PM on June 22, 2018

Literally the first thing I did when I got my first car was drive to the bookstore and buy a San Diego Thomas guide. Blows my mind that this isn't a universal experience.
posted by potrzebie at 1:09 PM on June 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

The Houston equivalent is Key Maps and they're still in operation. I have an older edition in my car trunk.
posted by mrbill at 1:44 PM on June 22, 2018 [4 favorites]

I moved to LA in 1996. The relocation agent hired by my company handed me a folder of places we were going to look at and a Thomas Guide. That damn thing stayed wedged in the car until probably 2010. It was a weapon if nothing else.
posted by drewbage1847 at 3:14 PM on June 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

Moved to LA 20 years ago. I still remember going to a bookstore (prob Borders) and asking if there were local street maps. “Like a Thomas guide?” the employee asked. They led me over to a rotating stand of them. They were glorious. I got three so I had most of SoCal covered.

I’m glad LAist is back via KPCC. We need better local news coverage. So much of consequence happens here, and it’s tough to find out about it.
posted by persona au gratin at 4:06 PM on June 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

Why not call it Chicagoist in that reincarnation?
posted by persona au gratin at 4:08 PM on June 22, 2018

I left California four years ago and just removed a 2004 Thomas Guide from my truck a couple months ago when I sold it.
posted by LionIndex at 6:48 PM on June 22, 2018

Seconding calimari kid... the Thomas Guides were indispensable on the eastern shores of Puget Sound in the pre-GPS era. We no longer have our copies, but other flat-folded local maps still crowd our glove compartment.
posted by lhauser at 7:32 PM on June 22, 2018

Me: (reads the fpp) Hmph. How presumptuous to say all Angelenos would have one book --
(reads the article in a happy shout of recognition) The Thomas Guide! Of course everyone had one of those!

Me, I made heavy use of those as a ride-along with officers of the Pasadena Humane Society. Learned my city by hunting for the locations of dead squirrels and escaped potbelly pigs.

I am delighted that public radio stations made bids for those sites. Any way we can get DNA Info back too? And their vital beat reporters?

Much good has come out of KPCC. They're also the birthplace of Dr. Demento.
posted by gusandrews at 9:33 PM on June 22, 2018 [4 favorites]

When I had my first car in high school, my parents made sure that it contained a roadside emergency kit, an AAA membership card, and a Thomas Guide. (With my local area's pages flagged for quicker reference.)

(Santa Clara, tho. Nowhere near LA.)
posted by Tailkinker to-Ennien at 7:41 PM on June 23, 2018

Late-breaking followup: Chance the Rapper has purchased the Chicagoist and will relaunch it with a new focus on "amplifying diverse voices and content."
posted by Iridic at 7:39 AM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]