VIDEO/PICS: This Year's Best Takes on the Great Los Angeles Walk, By The People Who Walked It

Thanks to MsGeek703, who took part in the first half of this year's Great Los Angeles Walk on November 17. She shot this video of her experience.

ICYMI, you can read our recap of the seventh annual Great Los Angeles Walk here. But here are a few more recaps of our wet, wonderful day hiking 17 miles from downtown to the ocean, via Melrose:

I couldn't have explained the walk better than Mikki Brisk does in this wonderful post. A first-time GLAW-er, she writes:



A day like that is hard to explain. I guess it takes a bit of crazy to even agree to such a walk. Not everyone understands it or accepts it (“What do you mean it’s not for charity?”). Some people were deterred by the rain. Some people caught a bus to the endpoint. Some people caught rides. Some just hit their max and went home.

That’s all okay. But for me, I needed to do this for no other reason than to prove to myself that I could. There’s no reward in completing a trek like this. There’s no fanfare or to-do. One doesn’t get any special letters after her name for walking the entire 17 miles.

But there is a sense of accomplishment. There is the joy of camaraderie. There is the beauty of the city.

And yes, there is pride. As I sat at the bar at the end of the day and looked around, I was proud of everyone there (including myself). I was so pleased to have spent the day with women I adore. I was glad to have met a cool chick who was willing to maintain a crazy pace for the second half of the route. I was, in short, happy.

Blogger Nick Campbell wrote the other amazing post I read about this year's Walk; check it out here. Having recently moved into a downtown loft, Nick was excited to be so conveniently situated to this year's starting point, the Walt Disney Concert Hall. He also had Scoops ice cream on the brain. An excerpt:



We met up with the rest of the people on the steps of the Hall just after nine to see more people than I remember ever seeing. The requisite human interest reporter was there (not surprising given the event exists in the dearth of non-turkey-related activities the week before Thanksgiving and that the person who started the event, Michael Schneider, is, himself, press) and I saw a lot of the same people I’d seen the past two years: mostly active seniors, some middle-aged Angelenos involved in the community, and a few young people who are both. But this year there were a lot more of everyone. It was surprising and nice. This is an event I really love and get excited about every year. That being said, I’d already picked out some of the people that wouldn’t make it. Sorry, ma’am. Your dog is not going to want to walk 17 miles.

City Council candidate Elson Trinidad (who's running for the CD13 seat) walked part of the route amd wrote this recap. An excerpt:



People were fascinated to see even the most mundane things like holes in the windows in a DWP storage building along 1st Street, visually stunning murals like Eliso Art Silva’s Filipino American history mural, the “Twilight Zone” mural on Beverly and a Cache/Eye One “bicycling chickens” mural across the street from it. The walk also exposed the bad and the ugly, such as the blighted trash heaps and urine-stenched pavement under the 101 Freeway above Melrose, a reminder that there’s much work to do in the community.

Still, my 5.3-mile trek from Downtown to Hollywood enabled me to socialize, enjoy the city, see some things I’ve never seen before (such as the Jack London house off of Van Ness), see things I wish we didn’t have to see, and get to the places I needed to go that day.

Many Angelenos unfortunately have a hindrance to walking, which is purely psychological and socially-reinforced. But once freed from those shackles, walking lends to a wonderful world of discovery and exercise (it’s great for the blood pressure). Other hindrances, like uneven pavement and inconveniently narrow sidewalks (Melrose between Normandie and Serrano, I’m looking at you), are things the City needs to address.

But “Nobody Walks In L.A.” is already an outdated diatribe. Some of our streets and neighborhoods are getting more pedestrian-friendly, either through design or demand. A walkable Los Angeles is a must for our City’s future.

Great LA Walk-er Ron took some beautiful black-and-white photos of this year's Walk, check 'em out here.

Check out Great LA Walk-er Jonathan's pics here.

Check out all the Great Los Angeles Walk photos uploaded to Flickr here.