The Skirball Fire was burning nearby, one of several major fires that have scorched more than 100,000 acres in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, closing at least 322 schools and prompting hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate their homes. Fires are not uncommon in Southern California, but they usually affect areas far outside the heart of Los Angeles — a hillside in suburban Rancho Cucamonga, perhaps, or near Calabasas to the north.

“I can’t remember the last time I even smelled a cigarette in this neighborhood,” said Hector Rodriguez, as he ordered a $3.50 taco at a food truck parked near a Mulholland overlook that would normally be swarming with sightseers. Mr. Rodriguez, a gardener who had spent the morning watering agave plants at a nearby estate, cleared his throat and rubbed his eyes. “People are scared,” he said.

In some ways, Mulholland is this city’s signature road. Rodeo Drive and Sunset Boulevard hog the spotlight. But it is Mulholland — named after the civil engineer William Mulholland, who built the infrastructure needed to bring water to Los Angeles — that encompasses the breadth of the city. From its position along the ridge line of the Hollywood Hills, Mulholland winds for several miles and straddles the suburban valley to the north and the more urban cityscape to the south.

So it was, perhaps, appropriate that a much different reality was unfolding on the road, farther down from where Mr. Alvarez was parked. On this eastern edge, near where Hogwarts Castle rises at the Universal Studios theme park, life was going on as if there were no fires at all.

A man in a blue Porsche convertible — top down — waited impatiently at a traffic light. Two men with leaf blowers blew the morning dust off the driveway of a well-to-do home. The air did not smell acrid; it smelled like freshly clipped grass. And a gaggle of tourists, gathered under a blue sky at a scenic lookout, seemed a little disappointed by the normalcy.