Quote:
Originally Posted by edale
I paid attention to the streetlights while walking my dog last night, and realized that in my neighborhood in Los Angeles, the residential portions are lit with the orange lights, while the commercial strips are lit with the white LEDs. I don't really mind or prefer either one, but the orange lights definitely create a darker street scene. I actually kind of like this hybrid approach, and I think the brighter white lights make sense in commercial areas, as people can better see the businesses as they walk/bike/drive by. I can't recall if this situation is present in other neighborhoods in LA, but I don't get the sense that my neighborhood is transitioning to the white lights. I think the dual lighting system has been in place for several years.
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Yeah there are still some neighborhoods in Los Angeles that have the old high-pressure sodium vapor lamps. Are the ones in your neighborhood on wooden poles? I live in South Pasadena and when I drive into Garvanza/Highland Park, I see some of the sodium vapor lamps on the wooden poles, and when I see the concrete poles they are the LED lamps.
Going back to the topic of the thread, I don't doubt that when incandescent street lamps started disappearing, that people didn't like the greenish mercury vapor lamps or the orangey sodium lights. As recently as the 90s (maybe even into the two-thousand aughts), there were some wealthy neighborhoods of LA, like Holmby Hills and Hancock Park, and even some middle-class neigbhorhoods, that still had incandescent streetlights. They were in the acorn lamp streetlights. And by acorn lamp, I mean this style; I guess it's called an acorn globe:
Someone else posted what they called an acorn lamp but to me that's more gumball or teardrop (probably more like gumball).
Anyway, the incandescents acorn globes gave off a really nice, old-fashioned looking light. Very noirish.