Los Angeles Is a Fantastic Walking City. No, Really.

Los Angeles is one of 88 separate but overlapping municipalities in L.A. County. Places we think of as towns (Hollywood) are actually just neighborhoods, while places that sound like neighborhoods are cities (West Hollywood). This is not to be confused with Greater Los Angeles, often called the Southland, five far-flung counties in Southern California jury-rigged into a single cultural unit. Here, the very idea of “place” feels abstract. It may explain why L.A. attracts so many clichés: In a place so immeasurable, so mega, stereotypes are an easy way for people to get a grasp on it, especially if they live somewhere else.

One of those zombie tropes is that Los Angeles isn’t a walking city. Actually, Los Angeles is a fantastic walking city. Exploring it on foot is how I started to make sense of things.

This, about walking the 27 miles of Rosecrans Avenue, reminded me of John Greenfield’s account of walking the approximately 24 miles of Western Avenue in Chicago.

I’m not able to find that Chicago story online now and I don’t remember for sure where it was published, but I did find it mentioned in his account of walking Halsted Street. In my search, I also found Greenfield’s accounts of walking Cermak Road and walking Madison Street as well as more of his accounts of walks.

I also rediscovered Christopher Silber’s 2020 account of walking Western Avenue in four segments over four days and the 2016 story of Steve Mosqueda and Sean Benjamin doing the walk over three days and having “at least one pint at every single bar”—64 of them!—along the way. There’s a documentary of this noble quest:

These longest streets, apparently Western Avenue in particular, hold some special allure. Just last year, Edward McClelland wrote about traveling Western Avenue from north to south by Divvy e-bike for Chicago Magazine.