David Lynch's L.A.: The landmarks, diners and hideaways that invigorated him

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Set us as preferred When David Lynch moved from Philadelphia to Los Angeles in the summer of 1970, he was stunned by the sunshine that radiated onto the city — the “most beautiful light I’d ever seen in my life,” he wrote with Kristine McKenna in his 2018 memoir “Room to Dream.” In that book, he described his first morning walking out of an apartment on San Vicente Boulevard.“I kept kind of moving around with my arms outstretched and I almost got hit by a car wandering into the street,” he wrote.That light — and Los Angeles itself — continued to inspire and energize the filmmaker and artist throughout his five-plus decades of calling L.A.home, until his death last year at the age of 78.

In “Room to Dream,” he wrote about the “magical street” of Mulholland Drive and all its twists and turns: “It’s really got a history, and if you’re in Los Angeles long enough you start hearing stories about things that have happened on it that get your mind going.” In an interview with the Filmographers, he told the story of how his character in “Twin Peaks” was a name plucked from Billy Wilder’s“Sunset Boulevard,” which very well may have been inspired by Wilder’scommute to Paramount that passed the Hollywood streets Gordon andCole.And the dissolve from Naomi Watts’ face in “Mulholland Drive” to rows of palm trees has become a classic shot for representing his work and his love for the city, hopeful and drenched in his beloved sunlight.Much like L.A., the artistic legacy of Lynch is difficult to encapsulate — trying to describe his work is like attempting to explain a dream.

His films so strongly defied categorization that they necessitated an eponymous term: Lynchian.The Hollywood Sign, as seen from Beachwood Drive.

(Myung J.Chun / Los Angeles Times) Palm trees, which Lynch often use...