Brian Wilson Was Los Angeles

Search Brian Wilson’s childhood home on Street View, and you’ll see a freeway. It’s all gone now, the place where Brian and his younger brothers, Carl and Dennis, first became the Beach Boys in 1961 and wrote the almost painfully innocent “Surfin’,” starting the process of reworking the possibilities of pop music. What stands today at 3701 W. 119th Street is a mild brick structure embossed with a depiction of the band made out of cement just like the highway that cuts through the landscape above.