Motoring: Steer by the stars

02 November 2014 - 02:04 By Thomas Falkiner
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LA has more than one road named Mulholland - but the most famous one is not the best. By Thomas Falkiner

Above the smog, running through the hills is where you will find it. A twisting ribbon of tarmac that, like so many things in Los Angeles, rides a tall wave of celebrity. Mulholland Drive. Its ugly sunburnt face is cracked and wrinkled, webbed by spider veins of heat-sticky bitumen. And yet it is infinitely more famous than the pretty actress I spied walking through the corridors of LAX.

Mulholland Drive is an institution; a name that has embedded itself in popular culture since it was opened on December 27 1924 to connect the city to its rural outskirts. Since then everybody from Tom Petty to Michael Stipe has sung about it. David Hockney painted it. And for good reason, too.

This road - named for an early Los Angeles civil engineer, William Mulholland - has a rebellious streak, a dark side that speaks to the shadowy depths of the human psyche. For decades, Mulholland Drive has been associated with the world of illegal street racing. Its serpentine bends sing like sweet sirens to the souls of those obsessed with speed.

Many would heed the call and triumph in modified Porsches or roaring American muscle cars junked-up on supercharged big blocks. But others would quickly meet The Reaper after overshooting corners like Dead Man's Curve. Today the crevasse beyond its shoulder is a steel-strewn graveyard - a haunting assemblage of rusting corpses afforded no coffins.

Mulholland Drive. A road of ghosts that meanders lazily through the hills and past addresses associated with some of the biggest names in cinema. Marlon Brando. Warren Beatty. Jack Nicholson. David Lynch still lives nearby. He's a chain-smoker and fan of the place. So much so that he even named one of his films after it: that affecting neo-noir about a twisted nightmare in this city of dreams.

"It's a mysterious road," he once told an interviewer at Filmmaker Magazine. "It's rural in many places. It's curvy, it's two lanes, and it feels old. It was built long ago, and it hasn't changed too much.

"And, at night, you ride on top of the world. In the daytime you ride on top of the world too, but it's mysterious, and there's an air of fear because it goes into remote areas. You feel the history of Hollywood in that road."

Indeed you do. Soon after taking a right off Cahuenga Boulevard, I can see why so many people - Hollywood types, racers, ordinary folk - were drawn towards Mulholland.

It snakes and loops with all the verve of a Disneyland roller coaster. Which is welcome relief in a city laid out with the geometric precision of a Mondrian painting.

It also brings a strange feeling of relief. There's a disconnect, a detachment from the frantic hubbub below that makes you feel sane again. And then you notice the views. The Hollywood Bowl. Downtown. Universal City. Pretty much wherever I stop I feel like the Midwestern boy in that Bob Seger song, wondering if I could ever go home.

But before I do, I need to experience what gave those street racers of old such an addictive kick.

Unfortunately, it just doesn't seem to exist anymore. Mainly because, thanks to tourists like myself, Mulholland Drive is permanently awash with dawdling red tour buses. The traffic is thick and the going is slow. If you do catch a clear patch, you'll discover the cars of today are too big, too ungainly to fully exploit the curves ahead. You need to use both lanes, all of the road all of the time. Impossible.

So I keep driving. Drive on in the hope that the coaches and the pickup trucks and the Toyota Camrys will all magically evaporate.

They don't, but the road does. Apparently I've hit what is known as Dirt Mulholland - a lengthy stretch of gravel that winds past an old Cold War missile silo and is open only to hikers, mountain bikers and the fire department. Get bust up here in an automobile and you are going to be handing over $1250 - minimum.

So I take a messy detour through the suburbs of Encino, Tarzana, Woodland Hills. And it's here that I finally find what I have been looking for.

Mulholland Highway pipes through the wild Santa Monica mountains and spills out onto the Pacific Coast Highway. It is everything its cousin Mulholland Drive is not. There is no traffic, no sign of the police - just 80km of rural driving nirvana.

Every now and then a leathery skeleton whips past my wing mirrors on a wailing Japanese superbike. Other than keeping an eye open for the next one, I'm free to carve the empty canyon roads at my own pace; revel in sections like The Snake with curves so tight it feels like you are riding a bicycle between your living room furniture. It is terrifying and challenging and invigorating all at the same time. And when it gets too much you can pull over at The Rock Store: a halfway biker bar where speedsters exchange half-truths and grease their chins with burgers and fries.

It's true that Mulholland Drive will forever bask in a Technicolor glow of glamour and fame. Thanks to the city vistas and the endless pop references, it shall remain the default choice for millions of Los Angeles day-trippers. Above the eerie blanket of smog you may still feel the magic, sense the rebellious grit of a misspent past. But if you actually want to live it, experience what Steve McQueen once did behind the wheel of his Jaguar XKSS, then you need to make the effort and tackle Mulholland Highway.

Forgotten by the masses, celebrated by the few, it is one of those beautifully old-fashioned relics that has somehow managed to survive the nannying touch of the 21st century system.

So go drive it before you die. LS @TomFalkiner111

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