Route 66: A Personal Reflection in Today’s Context

“Travel my way, take the highway that's the best”
—Bobby Troup, “(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66”

The centennial of Route 66 falling on the eve of the United States’ 250th Anniversary is more of an inauspicious event than celebratory as of this writing.

There are glimmers of hope at margins, but as far as the eye can see, if one cares to look, what’s left of the US is crumbling or actively trying to be erased, both figuratively and literally.

When considering the US in this context, one can’t help but to wonder when exactly the United States was so great?

When pressed, most people point to the post-war era before Vietnam, but one doesn’t have to try too hard to note some glaring issues from that era.

Route 66 has been romanticized in song and immortalized on film and television, but Route 66 was also home to numerous “sundown towns.”

According to the Smithsonian Institute, “Half of the 89 counties on Route 66 were sundown towns, all-white communities that banned the presence of any Black person after dark.”¹

Not all citizens were equal in getting their kicks on Route 66.

South Pasadena, California, a town off Route 66 that I lived in for years, finally introduced a resolution apologizing for its past as a sundown town in 2021. The phrase “better late than never” comes to mind, but this glacial pace of accountability seems more performative than actionable.

It’s hard to look at this regressive moment in our history as anything but a denouement for the US we once believed existed in our hearts and minds.

Can we make it real again?

“It winds from Chicago to L.A
More than two thousand miles all the way”
—Bobby Troup, “(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66”

In 2017, I joined architect Andrew Kovacs as he transported a model his office made for the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Life of a Model, a film I made, documented the process of the model being built and was viewable on the model itself when it was exhibited at the Biennial.

We transported the model in a rented Chevy Suburban from Los Angeles to Chicago via Route 66, stopping at everything interesting along the way.

The photos I took during this trip were some of my first to garner outside attention and were featured in Aesthetica Magazine, Bloomberg CityLab (formerly The Atlantic), and White Lies Magazine.

Since that trip, I haven’t really shot on Route 66 outside of Los Angeles—until November of 2025 during a return trip from Phoenix.

This time, I made a point of driving on some of the old sections of Route 66 in Arizona that were bypassed by the Interstate 40, from Seligman to Oatman.

The Oatman Highway portion of Route 66 stretches 42 miles and is a dreamlike cross between Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner backgrounds and the car chase sequence from One Battle After Another. The road was so small that it felt odd to be in car that wasn’t a Model T.

The viewpoint barely captured how otherworldly, out of time, and treacherous this path truly was.

“And Oklahoma City looks mighty pretty, You'll see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico, Flagstaff”
— Bobby Troup, “(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66”

The first time I ever consciously took photos on Route 66 was in 2007 on a road trip moving my uncle from Maine to Phoenix with my dad.

We connected with Route 66 via Little Rock, Arkansas, to visit Ant Farm’s Cadillac Ranch.

I certainly didn’t view myself as a “photographer” at the time, but I’m struck that, as a young tourist with a digital camera, I was still after the same things.

In 2012, I made a more conscious decision to photograph architecture and various places of interest that I felt were not going to survive our current zero-sum view of progress. I decided to photograph them on film, a medium that I also felt was not long for this world. I called this project “what’s left.”

In many ways this project has never stopped for me, but ironically enough, film has since seen a resurgence, while many of the places I’ve captured now only exist as photographs.

The two buildings from Barstow pictured below both burned down under suspicious circumstances years apart. No one had been held responsible for either fire.

Demolition by neglect is both a circumstance and a tactic, but the idea that history is important seems to be lost on the society we have created.

Taix, a beloved 99-year-old French restaurant in Los Angeles, which sat on the Sunset Boulevard alignment of Route 66 since 1962, was unceremoniously closed recently despite widespread pushback from the community and the building securing landmark status in 2021.

The people we choose to run our communities do not care about the people within them or the history that gives said communities the rich character that make them worth living in.

Many people, once given some semblance of power, seemingly only care about deals and self-preservation to the point that absolutely nothing is sacred.

Taix is sadly one of many 100-year-old institutions to have closed in Los Angeles in recent years. Clifton’s, Pacific Dining Car, Cole’s French Dip, and The Original Pantry are all no longer with us—but the Greater Los Angeles area does have well over 100 Chipotle locations and a Tesla Diner (which itself is on Route 66).

The passion that many people have for architecture or historical institutions is simply outmatched by apathy and “value creation.”

Do you think an AI algorithm will choose to preserve architectural history?

“Won't you get hip to this timely tip
When you make that California trip”
— Bobby Troup, “(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66”

It only recently dawned on me that I have lived off of Route 66 for nearly two decades and that I am constantly, magnetically pulled to it for both my everyday needs and a sense of connection that I seem to seek by convening with past on the open road.

In Los Angeles, Route 66 has had various segments from Santa Monica to the San Bernardino County line over the years, making it difficult to picture or traverse as a single roadway, when it’s officially many and none at the same time.

Since Route 66 was abandoned for the Interstate (the plot of the 2006 Pixar film Cars), it has become a fragmented mix of freeways, highways, interstates, & neighborhood streets with shifting alignments.

Recently, I decided to take a digital camera to photograph a Days Inn Hotel on Route 66 in Santa Monica—that has always been very quintessentially California to me—in a postmodern, “California Dreams” sense.

As I walked further down the strip, I encountered a woman in distress who asked for my help. She couldn’t find an address and asked if she could use my phone. It was immediately clear to me that the address she had did not exist, something both the person on the phone and I tried to explain to her to no avail.

Helplessness is a feeling all too common in the US nearing its 250th anniversary and this encounter was one of many interactions fraught with it.

In Los Angeles, there are roughly 72,308 people experiencing homelessness. Even after nearly two decades in area, I am still not inured to the lack of humanity our society constantly reflects back to us.

There is also a kind of discordant surrealism that exists in Los Angeles because of the entertainment industry. While happening upon a building so damaged—the living room was exposed to elements—my reflexive reaction was to question whether this was a movie set or not. It was not.

A BMW, traveling over 100 mph, crashed into the “Sir Speedy” building, rendering the apartment above unlivable for the tenants, who subsequently had to start a GoFundMe to survive.

Further down Route 66 in Santa Monica, a homeless man was violently attacking what was left of a pay phone outside of King’s Liquors.

I was about to cross the street when an older woman walking her dog approached the crosswalk. When she noticed the man, without exchanging any words, she quickly locked arms with me to cross the street.

After calmly passing the man without incident, she lamented about how much worse things are getting. That she doesn’t feel safe walking her dogs during the day, let alone at night. I explained what I was doing and what I was trying to capture and bring attention to. She asked me sincerely, to share her sentiments with anyone who would listen.

“Let people know what’s happening here.”

I said I would and am keeping my word.

Everything above all took place in a span of 30 minutes and it was fairly harrowing for what was intended as a pleasant outing.

I couldn’t help to think about what the rest of Route 66 is like on the street level, the main artery of the West, “the mother road,” connecting Hollywood to the Windy City.

If these are the conditions in Santa Monica, how are they in San Bernardino—a town that just recently exited Bankruptcy in 2022?

Only one way to find out.

“Don't forget Winona
Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino”
—Bobby Troup, “(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66”

I recently took an 18-hour Amtrak ride from Los Angeles to Lamy, New Mexico. This train, the Southwest Chief, runs parallel to Route 66. It was fascinating, enlightening, and disheartening to view the route from station to station—to see the “back of house” of Route 66, without the signage. The dereliction is palpable.

At a scheduled “fresh air” stop in Albuquerque, the conductor, over the loudspeaker, recommended a grocery store nearby to grab some food or drink.

Upon my approach, a woman exiting the store was grabbed and thrown to the curb scattering rocks and the contents of her stolen groceries onto the street. I had been in Albuquerque for less than 5 minutes.

As disturbing as this was, I was even more taken aback by the everydayness of it, the way the employees were nonplussed and able to seamlessly move to next moment, reflecting the routineness of the event.

As the 100th anniversary of Route 66 approaches, I feel exhausted, but this exhaustion is in many ways clarifying and life affirming.

Life in the US has always fallen short of the aspirations we project, but the will of the individual has always been a part the American mythos and a driving force for change, be it good or bad.

What kind of change will you bring to world?