At sundown, the windows of its tall office spires, condominiums and hillside homes blaze with reflections.
Mudslides usually make the news only when they take out a neighborhood of expensive hillside homes or bury a major route like the Pacific Coast Highway.
The mill-workers resided north of the river, with the hillside homes of the owners on the other side in the town of Bradford.
Popular approval for the military intervention stretches beyond the "asphalt city" to the favelas, the hillside homes of many of the city's working poor.
Beyond the university, the route passes along the base of Hancock Hill and through a residential neighborhood with off campus apartments and hillside homes.
An earthquake struck Afghanistan's remote northeast on Wednesday, toppling mud-and-brick hillside homes, touching off landslides and killing thousands of people, Afghan officials said.
At hillside homes with sweeping views, artillery shells collapsed the roofs, and looters followed.
Some were stationed in the backyards of hillside homes, flames licking the slopes just a quarter of a mile away.
After passing Mulholland, Beverly Glen Boulevard swerves west and passes through the exclusive hillside homes in Sherman Oaks.
From their hillside homes and well-tended country clubs in the cool air above the fume-choked city, members of the business class now say they sleep with pistols tucked beneath their pillows.