An Angeleno knows the traffic patterns like a fisherman knows the tides. Back in 2014, driving from my home in Hollywood to Echo Park for a semiregular midday swim, I would often wait out the congestion in nearby Chinatown, parking with my tires turned toward the curb on Alpine Street and walking the neighborhood to enjoy the density and sidewalk life, which are relatively rare in the city. I would also work in the Chinatown Branch Library or at the well-lit and Wi-Fi-less Zen Mei BBQ Seafood Bistro. I was leaving the library, at the corner of Hill and Ord, somewhat hunched from a backpack full of books, when the Google-mobile passed me with about as much grace as a Mars rover. Because the Street View on this corner is a composite, like a David Hockney photo collage, I am only visible from one specific Dutch angle.
It wasn’t my first brush with the all-seeing eye (that happened in 2012, in Vilnius), nor would it be my last. Westside traffic and extortionary parking rates at UCLA, where I attended graduate school, prohibited driving to campus. Instead, I rode the Met…