The Rockford Files on the Old Road

In the 1970s, Southern California felt like a world bathed in perpetual sunshine, and smog. As a kid, Los Angeles was Adam-12, Emergency, CHiP’s, and the LA Dodgers.

The Rockford Files were on the air back then, every Friday night. If my parents let me, I could stay up after bedtime and watch Jim Rockford  with his sweet Pontiac Firebird, always getting into some kind of trouble, navigating those familiar streets of LA.

I recently found the Rockford Files on one of the streaming services. So, I binged episodes watching Jim Rockford navigate a version of Los Angeles that feels more like a memory than reality. Vintage Ford’s, Cadillac’s, Chevy’s, VW Beetles, and city buses cruising wide boulevards of LA, in perfect condition.

Flash forward to now.  I found myself in Los Angeles twice this month.  The spots Jim Rockford visits—Venice Beach, Santa Monica, Pacific Coast Highway - still exist. What might have seemed gritty about “that LA” has mostly been gentrified.  I found myself on PCH driving past buildings on the lookout for traces of architecture “as seen on TV” that might have once housed banks, or restaurants with familiar yet defunct names, while looking for evidence of what they were when Jim Rockford would have driven by in his Pontiac Firebird.

Watching old Rockford Files reruns, Jim’s Firebird roars down streets that are legitimate “Old Roads”, and they’re still there. The air seems a lot clearer—ironic, given the smog then, but now it’s replaced with something else. More buildings. More people. A lot more traffic.

To a kid watching The Rockford Files in the 1970s, Jim Rockford was more than just a private eye on TV—he was a symbol of resilience and independence in a world that wasn’t always fair. He lived in a beat-up trailer on the beach, drove an old Pontiac Firebird, and barely scraped by with his PI gigs. He wasn’t rich, he wasn’t flashy, and he definitely wasn’t invincible.  But that car… now that’s an icon from the “Old Road”.

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