I met Tucker O’Neill and Wes Brumbaugh on a warm Saturday morning outside Pop’s Bagels in downtown Culver City. Sitting at a small table waiting for their order, the two 28-year-olds were dressed in your typical weekend workout uniform of T-shirts, athletic shorts and three knee braces among the two of them. They looked relieved to be sitting and for good reason. The pair were just about 10 miles into a 40-mile trek across Los Angeles, from Santa Monica to Griffith Park.
As I pulled a chair up next to them, I became hyper-aware of the beads of sweat racing down my face (and back, and … knees?), caused by the walk from my car. Granted, it was almost August and this Saturday was even hotter than the last one, but I couldn’t help but compare my two-block meltdown to the nearly 40 miles these two were about to walk. Voluntarily.
For the record:
9:56 a.m. Aug. 11, 2023A previous version of this article misspelled the first name of Che Diaz, a character on the show “And Just Like That... ,” as Chez.
For all the change that’s happened in this city over the last two decades or so, shedding preconceived ideas that it’s a place without culture, identity, a food scene, etc., there’s a pesky one that still lingers: that no one walks in L.A. And while I don’t think it’s quite as dire as the clunker of a joke Che Diaz delivered in a recent episode of “And Just Like That...” (“No one walks anywhere! Yesterday I took an Uber from my bathroom to my bedroom”), I have to admit that walking more than a few blocks to my local Trader Joe’s is something I rarely ever consider. Today’s trek would be Brumbaugh and O’Neill’s second time crossing the city on foot. The three of us may not be the same.
O’Neill, a video editor who lives in Glendale, was originally inspired by a post he saw on Reddit by two friends who had trekked from Pasadena to Marina Del Rey in 2022. As a recent L.A. transplant, he was feeling a little penned in by everyone’s reliance on cars. “Having lived in places like Seattle and Chicago, it’s a little easier to get around,” he says. “Plus I’ve only lived here for about two years, and I want to get to know the city better.” O’Neill thought walking from one corner of L.A. to another was a great idea.
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Wanting company, O’Neill sent a text to friends to see who was interested. Brumbaugh, a comedy show producer and O’Neill’s childhood friend who’s lived in L.A. for the last seven years, said yes. And so in June, the duo set out on their first walk from Pasadena to Santa Monica with little more than their phones and a backpack with an extra pair of socks in it. “We were a little underprepared last time,” admits O’Neill. “This time we might be a little overprepared.”
The walk at a glance
Miles walked: 40.6
Total steps: 78,942
Hours: About 16.5
Favorite discovery: California Historical State Park. (“Doesn’t feel like you’re downtown!” says Tucker O’Neill.)
Most random stretch: Culver Boulevard, between Marina del Rey and Culver City. (“Very industrial,” Brumbaugh says.)
Number of unexpected concerts attended: 3
Sponsorships obtained: None (yet)
Having a slightly better idea of what to expect, the two geared up. Sort of. “I still have holes in my shoes,” says O’Neill, pointing down to his pair of well-worn Brooks sneakers. On Brumbaugh’s feet were a pair of On running shoes. They also had hats (O’Neill in a full-brimmed sun hat, Brumbaugh in a Billabong cap), an Anker phone charger, and some water packed away in their bag. But the most important piece of gear? “Knee braces are key,” says Brumbaugh. “Yeah, I have the knees of a 40-year-old,” agrees O’Neill. Doing a mental check-in with my now sweaty, almost 41-year-old knees, I knew exactly what they were talking about.
Listing off their gear, the two sounded like a pair of fitness influencers starring in a GRWM video and even joked that they should be trying to get sponsors. A joke that stretched out into several fake #ads posted throughout their journey on the Instagram account, Brumbaugh set up for the walk, extolling the virtues of everything from Billabong (“G’day mate. It’s so hot out here. If only we had Billabong sweat-wicking hats to keep us cool”), to On shoes (“It’s been a long day and my dogs would be barkin’ if I was walking on the ground. But I’m walking on clouds, babeee!”) to Sierra Nevada (“Gosh I’m so parched. If only I had some sort of hazy IPA”). Another idea was to just tag Johnny Walker in all of their posts.
And given the amount of attention their walks are starting to get from local news outlets, sponsorships might not be out of the question. After their first trek, the two were featured on a Fox 11 news segment, where they almost persuaded anchor Marla Tellez to join them for this second effort. “We got a lot of attention the first time, so we’re going with it,” says O’Neill. “Yeah, we’re holding on to our five minutes of fame!” Brumbaugh adds.
This time around, the duo walked in reverse of their first trek, starting at 6 a.m. at the Santa Monica Pier and ending at the Observatory in Griffith Park around 10 p.m. Their course included some familiar streets (Culver Boulevard, Olympic Boulevard, Broadway) and neighborhoods (DTLA, Marina del Rey). But they were intentional about navigating through parts of the city they’d never seen before. “Kenneth Hahn Park was really cool,” says O’Neill. “It was neat to stand on that overpass looking toward downtown and kind of plot out where we’d be walking.” Brumbaugh was impressed with Baldwin Hills, a neighborhood he knew little about before, and parts of the L.A. River closer to Griffith Park that “actually resembled a river, which was surprising.”
At Mile 19, they walked by the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (“Hoping to make the 2024 Urban Endurance Walking Team,” they joked on Instagram). At Mile 20, they stopped to take in a random heavy metal show happening in a park. At Mile 21, they walked through the USC campus, and at Mile 25, found the energy to stop outside yet another random concert downtown for a quick freestyle dance break.
At Mile 28, while walking near Union Station downtown, the guys passed a small street festival where they were invited to dance to live mariachi music and were given a little pep talk by a stranger. “This guy just kept telling us ‘Live your life, live your life,’” Brumbaugh chuckles. “So that’s what we’re going to do, I guess.”
Their final stretch found them in Griffith Park, tired but in surprisingly good spirits, slowly making their way up the winding road to the observatory. It was perhaps a little misguided, they admitted, to end on a prolonged incline after walking nearly 40 miles at that point. But knowing that the end was in sight seemed inspiration enough to get them over the finish line. “It actually wasn’t as hard as I had thought it would be,” said Brumbaugh. “I think we were both just excited to be done, so that helped.”
But the observatory was, indeed, an ideal destination. Standing along the edge of the observation deck, the two friends looked out over the twinkling lights of the city, retracing the nearly 80,000 steps they had just taken that day. It was a poignant and dramatic end to an adventure few in L.A. would take on.
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So, now that they are veteran pedestrians, are they ready to proselytize the idea that Los Angeles is, in fact, a walkable city?
“No!” they both quip, an answer they seemed to have at the ready. They cited L.A.’s sprawl as its main hindrance. Unlike cities like New York or Chicago, where you have density and different neighborhoods right next to each other, here everything is so spread out. You really have to want to get out of your neighborhood.
“Plus, the city just isn’t really designed for pedestrians,” says Brumbaugh, recounting the many times they had to cross streets to find sidewalks or simply walk in the street when none existed. But at the end of the day, both agreed that this is a unique way to get to know the place they call home. Walking along the streets, you get to see and experience things you’d miss as you speed by in your car, only paying attention (hopefully) to what’s right in front of your dashboard. But while they both seemed to know that these cross-city treks are extreme endeavors, it maybe could motivate someone to try something new.
“Right before our walk, my sister was telling me how inspiring this was, that maybe our walk will get someone else to walk, even if it’s just to the grocery store,” O’Neill says with a laugh. “But I think she was just being a sister.”
“I will say,” Brumbaugh adds, “it is cool to know that adventure is just outside your door.”
Want to take on the walk yourself? Here’s the full map.
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