Road to Ruin

califincline01

Out in Santa Monica, there's a road called the California Incline. It leads down from the city streets to the Pacific Coast Highway. If you've ever been out there, you've been up and down it many times.

To us lovers of the movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, the California Incline has a special significance. A number of scenes in the movie take place at the top of it (like the one in the screen grab above) and a number take place on it or right below it on that stretch of P.C.H. Remember the moment where all the stars pile into two cabs and as they take off chasing Spencer Tracy, Jonathan Winters (actually, his stuntman) is hanging onto the door of one of them? That was shot on P.C.H. at the base of the California Incline.

I get a lot of messages from people who are fans of that movie asking me if they can visit shooting locations. The one I always send them to is the California Incline. I tell them it's one of the few that are easily recognizable from the film and it's utterly accessible. Well, it won't be for long. Around this time next month, they're going to tear it down and build a new incline in its place. This article will tell you what's going to happen and how this will cause many traffic headaches for more than a year. More details can be found over here.

As one who feels this nation doesn't spend nearly enough on infrastructure and fixing old roads and bridges and sewer lines, I can't very well object to this just because it was a location for a movie I like. But it'll be hard to see it go…

…and until Memorial Day of 2016 when the new one is expected to be ready for business, a lot harder to get to the beach.