Lifestyle

L.A. isn't a walking city? The man behind Great Los Angeles Walk would like a word

Published

1 year ago

November 24, 2024

L.A. isn't a walking city? The man behind Great Los Angeles Walk would like a word

The morning I meet Michael Schneider at a quaint coffee shop in Glendale, it quickly becomes clear that he walked here. His sneakers are the first clue — worn, white Nike trainers smudged with dirt. It’s uncharacteristically warm out this morning and his sweat-speckled forehead offers the second clue. His lean, exercised frame cinches my suspicion.

L.A. really is a walking city.
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“I’ve probably walked more than 10,000 steps already today,” he tells me proudly, checking the health data on his phone to be sure — and it’s only 10:30 a.m.

In a city built for cars, Schneider is committed to exploring the city on foot, often heading out from his Adams Hill home at 11 p.m., in the dark, to get his steps in after the day’s work is done. In fact, over the last two decades, Schneider, 51, has traversed the length of Los Angeles on foot 18 times, covering nearly 300 miles in all during those journeys. But he didn’t do it alone.

Schneider is the founder of the Great Los Angeles Walk, an annual citywide event he started in 2006 to mark his 10th anniversary of moving to the city from Chicago. What began as a DIY, mobile celebration of L.A. — with just his wife, a handful of friends and several dozen readers of his blog, Franklin Avenue — has morphed into a local tradition, drawing up to 500 participants every November on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Each walk spans the length of an iconic L.A. boulevard, trekking about 14 to 16 miles and stopping along the way to explore its sun-scorched sidewalks and faded public murals, its high-end furniture boutiques, cheap motels and historic churches, its food carts piled high with fresh fruit and its buzzing freeway overpasses — from below.

The very first Great Walk, inspired by journalist Kevin Roderick’s 2005 book, “Wilshire Boulevard: Grand Concourse of Los Angeles,” had participants hoofing the entire 15-plus miles of Wilshire, from downtown L.A. to the ocean. The only marketing Schneider did for the event was a simple blog post announcing the trek. About 40 people attended.

(Courtesy of Michael Schneider)

“It was almost a lark,” says Schneider, the television editor at trade publication Variety. “I had no idea how many people would show up.”

The second walk, which drew 100 people, took place on Pico Boulevard, inspired by Times food critic Jonathan Gold, who famously ate his way down the street in his early 20s. Gold emailed Schneider food-stop recommendations at the time. The event has since tackled Santa Monica Boulevard, Beverly Boulevard, Melrose Avenue, Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood Boulevard, among many others.

On top of being a terrific pre-holiday workout, the Great Walk debunks the ever-persistent beliefs that L.A. is not a walking city and that its physical sprawl impedes the ability to build community. Scores of individuals have met during the Great Walk, including Westwood residents Cat and Steve Whalen, who ended up getting married in 2023. They still do the walk every year.

“I remember bonding over the architecture of this old Public Storage facility,” Cat Whalen said of meeting her husband in 2016. “It’s an event that combines our love of walking and urban landscapes and architecture — and, of course, there’s the social component.”

Over the years, participants have ranged from stroller-bound babies to residents in their late 80s. Attendees arrive alone or with a community group. Since 2017, long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad has come with members of her EverWalk nonprofit, which encourages walking for health and human connection. Walkers have traveled from as far as Amsterdam and Japan to join the festivities; one man journeys from Santa Fe, N.M., every year to participate — barefoot. He’s become part of the colorful fabric of the event.

“I always run into him about midway through the walk,” Schneider says. “He’s got his camera and he’s barefoot. That’s just what he does.”

Michael Schneider with his dog, Jacks. Schneider founded the Great Los Angeles Walk in 2006.

The Great Walk has been covered by local blogs, television stations and newspapers, including The Times. But less has been written about Schneider himself, who has amassed nearly 20 years’ worth of looky-loo knowledge while strolling through the peaks and valleys of the city.

Sitting at the coffee shop, Schneider looks every bit the suburban dad. He wears a trim salt-and-pepper goatee and a zip-up hoodie, and takes every opportunity to boast about his two sons, 19 and 15, who have joined the walk nearly every year of their lives. His eldest first took part at age 1½ and his youngest at 3 months old.

But Schneider’s normcore exterior belies an undercurrent of intensity: There’s a particular, obsessive mindset required to conceive of and execute such an ambitious public expedition every year over two decades. (The Great Walk even continued during the pandemic.) Not to mention chronicling those journeys in detailed blog posts, which are meticulously archived online. It requires a passion for cities, urban history and, perhaps, cartography; an affinity for architecture and urban design; a love of community; and a knack for numbers. During our interview, Schneider repeatedly referred to stats from his Noom weight-loss app, his cornflower blue eyes glimmering as he spoke of caloric intake versus exercise expenditure in steps and miles.

In sum, he’s a collector. Of miles and health stats, of vinyl records, of books about L.A. — and of people. He first developed the habit as an “Air Force brat” kid growing up, moving with his family between the Philippines, Oklahoma and Hawaii, when he began obsessively accumulating information about the television business.

“I was that kid, at 7, who knew who Ted Turner was,” Schneider says, chuckling. “I collected TV Guides from whatever city we’d travel through on vacation.”

(Courtesy of Michael Schneider)

After college at Northwestern and a year working between Chicago and Washington, D.C., Schneider moved to L.A. in 1996 with the TV trade publication Electronic Media. In ’99, he landed a job as a reporter at Variety and met his wife, Maria. He wasn’t much of an exerciser, but she liked to walk. Their early dates were spent exploring the city on foot, including taking Los Angeles Conservancy walking tours downtown and hiking in Griffith Park. Schneider fell in love with L.A. history and found that walking its concrete stretches helped him feel more rooted in the city.

“When I first came to L.A., I was like: Where is the core?” he says. “I didn’t understand why people didn’t know where to congregate. Now I get it. It’s all these different cores.”

Schneider also has collected handfuls of odd, serendipitous moments from the Great Walk. The event has passed weddings in progress, film crews shooting, even buildings on fire. Once, in 2009, the group streamed past the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center on Washington Boulevard and Magic Johnson appeared in the window to cheer them on. Two years earlier, on Pico Boulevard, a crane holding a billboard toppled over and chaos ensued.

“Traffic stopped, police were everywhere, no one could get through,” Schneider recalls. “But here we were, just walking on by.”

Schneider doesn’t make any money off of the Great Walk; it’s free to participants and he doesn’t pay to advertise the event. In recent years, there have been sponsors, including The Times, who might give him free ads, say, or pass out water in exchange for a mention on the blog.

“But there’s no business model,” Schneider says. “We’re not an official organization. This is just a grassroots group of people getting together to walk.”

Nineteen years of crisscrossing L.A. on foot has given Schneider a rare, bird’s-eye-view of the city, from a boots-on-the-ground perspective. And he’s had to alter the walk as the city around it has morphed.

“In recent years, obviously, there’s been a lot more homelessness on the streets, along with more trash,” he says. “So I’ve been mindful of trying to choose streets where it’s less of an issue.”

The city’s construction boom also has been particularly noticeable, he says.

“Just the amount of change that we’ve seen in recent years in development — that’s a positive. More housing, more buildings. But it’s also sad when you walk by and that historic building, like the Ambassador [Hotel], is no longer there — that’s a negative,” he says.

Schneider kicks off each Great Walk at a landmark, such as Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Shrine Auditorium or the Exposition Park Rose Garden, where there’s typically a guest speaker giving a pep talk. Roderick and Nyad have taken the megaphone, as have performer-urban explorer Charles Phoenix and journalist-historic preservationist Chris Nichols. And there’s always an “afterparty” at a venue near the finish line.

2023 photo of Michael Schneider with long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad.

This year’s walk will pay homage to Schneider’s family. He has one son at UCLA and a nephew at USC. So the walk will start downtown at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in Exposition Park near USC’s campus and end on UCLA’s campus at the Bruin Statue. Between those points, the 14.2-mile trek will traverse parts of Vermont Avenue, Washington Boulevard, Culver Boulevard, Overland Avenue, Pico Boulevard and Westwood Boulevard.

“It just so happens, in recent years, that Saturday before Thanksgiving is the day of the USC-UCLA game,” Schneider says. “I was like: OK, this is too good. We have to do it.”

Where will the Great Walk take place next year, for its milestone 20th anniversary?

“Back to Wilshire,” Schneider says without pause. “It’s gonna have to be the OG.”

While the Great L.A. Walk may be associated with exercise, Schnieder repeatedly reminds participants that the goal is to go slow.

“It’s about taking your time,” he says. “Go into a store you’ve never seen, take the time to look at a sculpture, stop at that church. The key is to feel like you’ve learned more about Los Angeles. I still learn things. I still see things I’ve never seen before.”

When our conversation ends, Schneider does what he’s always done. He heads out the door and starts walking.

Lifestyle

Doctors says ‘The Pitt’ reflects the gritty realities of medicine today

Published

3 hours ago

January 9, 2026

Press Room

Doctors says ‘The Pitt’ reflects the gritty realities of medicine today

From left: Noah Wyle plays Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, the senior attending physician, and Fiona Dourif plays Dr. Cassie McKay, a third-year resident, in a fictional Pittsburgh emergency department in the HBO Max series The Pitt.

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The first five minutes of the new season of The Pitt instantly capture the state of medicine in the mid-2020s: a hectic emergency department waiting room; a sign warning that aggressive behavior will not be tolerated; a memorial plaque for victims of a mass shooting; and a patient with large Ziploc bags filled to the brink with various supplements and homeopathic remedies.

Scenes from the new installment feel almost too recognizable to many doctors.

The return of the critically acclaimed medical drama streaming on HBO Max offers viewers a surprisingly realistic view of how doctors practice medicine in an age of political division, institutional mistrust and the corporatization of health care.

Each season covers one day in the kinetic, understaffed emergency department of a fictional Pittsburgh hospital, with each episode spanning a single hour of a 15-hour shift. That means there’s no time for romantic plots or far-fetched storylines that typically dominate medical dramas.

Instead, the fast-paced show takes viewers into the real world of the ER, complete with a firehose of medical jargon and the day-to-day struggles of those on the frontlines of the American health care system. It’s a microcosm of medicine — and of a fragmented United States.

Noah Wyle plays Dr. Michael "Robby" Rabinovitch in The Pitt.

Many doctors and health professionals praised season one of the series, and ER docs even invited the show’s star Noah Wyle to their annual conference in September.

So what do doctors think of the new season? As a medical student myself, I appreciated the dig at the “July effect” — the long-held belief that the quality of care decreases in July when newbie doctors start residency — rebranded “first week in July syndrome” by one of the characters.

That insider wink sets the tone for a season that Dr. Alok Patel, a pediatrician at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, says is on point. Patel, who co-hosts the show’s companion podcast, watched the first nine episodes of the new installment and spoke to NPR about his first impressions.

To me, as a medical student, the first few scenes of the new season are pretty striking, and they resemble what modern-day emergency medicine looks and sounds like. From your point of view, how accurate is it?

I’ll say off the bat, when it comes to capturing the full essence of practicing health care — the highs, the lows and the frustrations — The Pitt is by far the most medically accurate show that I think has ever been created. And I’m not the only one to share that opinion. I hear that a lot from my colleagues.

OK, but is every shift really that chaotic?

I mean, obviously, it’s television. And I know a lot of ER doctors who watch the show and are like, “Hey, it’s really good, but not every shift is that crazy.” I’m like, “Come on, relax. It’s TV. You’ve got to take a little bit of liberties.”

As in its last season, The Pitt sheds light on the real — sometimes boring — bureaucratic burdens doctors deal with that often get in the way of good medicine. How does that resonate with real doctors?

There are so many topics that affect patient care that are not glorified. And so The Pitt did this really artful job of inserting these topics with the right characters and the right relatable scenarios. I don’t want to give anything away, but there’s a pretty relatable issue in season two with medical bills.

Right. Insurance seems to take center stage at times this season — almost as a character itself — which seems apt for this moment when many Americans are facing a sharp rise in costs. But these mundane — yet heartbreaking — moments don’t usually make their way into medical dramas, right?

I guarantee when people see this, they’re going to nod their head because they know someone who has been affected by a huge hospital bill.

If you’re going to tell a story about an emergency department that is being led by these compassionate health care workers doing everything they can for patients, you’ve got to make sure you insert all of health care into it.

As the characters juggle multiple patients each hour, a familiar motif returns: medical providers grappling with some heavy burdens outside of work.

Yeah, the reality is that if you’re working a busy shift and you have things happening in your personal life, the line between personal life and professional life gets blurred and people have moments.

The Pitt highlights that and it shows that doctors are real people. Nurses are actual human beings. And sometimes things happen, and it spills out into the workplace. It’s time we take a step back and not only recognize it, but also appreciate what people are dealing with.

2025 was another tough year for doctors. Many had to continue to battle misinformation while simultaneously practicing medicine. How does medical misinformation fit into season two?

I wouldn’t say it’s just mistrust of medicine. I mean that theme definitely shows up in The Pitt, but people are also just confused. They don’t know where to get their information from. They don’t know who to trust. They don’t know what the right decision is.

There’s one specific scene in season two that, again, no spoilers here, but involves somebody getting their information from social media. And that again is a very real theme.

In recent years, physical and verbal abuse of healthcare workers has risen, fueling mental health struggles among providers. The Pitt was praised for diving into this reality. Does it return this season?

The new season of The Pitt still has some of that tension between patients and health care professionals — and sometimes it’s completely projected or misdirected. People are frustrated, they get pissed off when they can’t see a doctor in time and they may act out.

The characters who get physically attacked in The Pitt just brush it off. That whole concept of having to suppress this aggression and then the frustration that there’s not enough protection for health care workers, that’s a very real issue.

A new attending physician, Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi, joins the cast this season. Sepideh Moafi plays her, and she works closely with the veteran attending physician, Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, played by Noah Wyle. What are your — and Robby’s — first impressions of her?

Right off the bat in the first episode, people get to meet this brilliant firecracker. Dr. Al-Hashimi, versus Dr. Robby, almost represents two generations of attending physicians. They’re almost on two sides of this coin, and there’s a little bit of clashing.

Sepideh Moafi, fourth from left, as Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi, the new attending physician, huddles with her team around a patient in a fictional Pittsburgh teaching hospital in the HBO Max series The Pitt.

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Part of that clash is her clear-eyed take on artificial intelligence and its role in medicine. And she thinks AI can help doctors document what’s happening with patients — also called charting — right?

Yep, Dr. Al-Hashimi is an advocate for AI tools in the ER because, I swear to God, they make health care workers’ lives more efficient. They make things such as charting faster, which is a theme that shows up in season two.

But then Dr. Robby gives a very interesting rebuttal to the widespread use of AI. The worry is that if we put AI tools everywhere, then all of a sudden, the financial arm of health care would say, “Cool, now you can double how many patients you see. We will not give you any more resources, but with these AI tools, you can generate more money for the system.”

The new installment also continues to touch on the growing corporatization of medicine. In season one we saw how Dr. Robby and his staff were being pushed to see more patients.

Yes, it really helps the audience understand the kind of stressors that people are dealing with while they’re just trying to take care of patients.

In the first season, when Dr. Robby kind of had that back and forth with the hospital administrator, doctors were immediately won over because that is such a big point of frustration — such a massive barrier.

There are so many more themes explored this season. What else should viewers look forward to?

I’m really excited for viewers to dive into the character development. It’s so reflective of how it really goes in residency. So much happens between your first year and second year of residency — not only in terms of your medical skill, but also in terms of your development as a person.

I think what’s also really fascinating is that The Pitt has life lessons buried in every episode. Sometimes you catch it immediately, sometimes it’s at the end, sometimes you catch it when you watch it again.

But it represents so much of humanity because humanity doesn’t get put on hold when you get sick — you just go to the hospital with your full self. And so every episode — every patient scenario — there is a lesson to learn.

Michal Ruprecht is a Stanford Global Health Media Fellow and a fourth-year medical student.

Lifestyle

In Beauty, Private Equity Is Hot Again

Published

4 hours ago

January 9, 2026

Press Room

As strategic firms slow down their shopping sprees and venture capital dollars dry up, PE firms’ reputation for asset stripping is a thing of the past. Founders are now often hoping for private equity buyouts, but want to be sure there can be a true partnership.

Lifestyle

10 books we’re looking forward to in early 2026

Published

15 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

10 books we’re looking forward to in early 2026

Two fiction books about good friends coming from different circumstances. Two biographies of people whose influence on American culture is, arguably, still underrated. One Liza Minnelli memoir. These are just a handful of books coming out in the first few months of 2026 that we’ve got our eye on.

Fiction

Autobiography of Cotton, by Cristina Rivera Garza, Feb. 3

Garza, who won a Pulitzer in 2024 for memoir/autobiography, actually first published Autobiography of Cotton back in 2020, but it’s only now getting an English translation. The book blends fiction with the author’s own familial history to tell the story of cotton cultivation along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Crux, by Gabriel Tallent, Jan. 20

Tallent’s last novel, My Absolute Darling, was a harrowing coming of age story about a teenage girl surviving her abusive survivalist father. But it did find pockets of beauty in the outdoors. Tallent’s follow up looks to be similarly awestruck by nature. It’s about two young friends, separated by class and opportunity, but bound together by a love of rock climbing.

Half His Age, by Jennette McCurdy, Jan. 20

The former iCarly actress’ bracing and brutally honest memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, was a huge hit. It spent weeks on bestseller’s lists, and is being adapted into a series for Apple TV+. Now McCurdy’s set to come out with her fiction debut, about a teenage girl who falls for her high school creative writing teacher.

Kin, by Tayari Jones, Feb. 24

Similarly to Crux, Kin also follows two friends across the years as options and opportunities pull them apart. The friends at the center of this book are two women who grew up without moms. Jones’ last novel, 2018’s An American Marriage, was a huge hit with critics.

Seasons of Glass & Iron, by Amal El-Mohtar

Seasons of Glass & Iron: Stories, by Amal El-Mohtar, March 24

El-Mohtar is an acclaimed science-fiction writer, and this book is a collection of previously published short stories and poetry. Many of the works here have been honored by the big science-fiction/fantasy awards, including the titular story, which is a feminist re-telling of two fairy tales.

Nonfiction

A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides, by Gisèle Pelicot, Feb. 17

Pelicot’s story of rape and sexual assault – and her decision to wave anonymity in the trial – turned her into a galvanizing figure for women across the world. Her writing her own story of everything that happened is also a call to action for others to do the same.

Cosmic Music: The Life, Art, and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane, by Andy Beta, March 3

For decades, the life and work of Alice Coltrane has lived in the shadow of her husband, John Coltrane. This deeply researched biography hopes to properly contextualize her as one of the most visionary and influential musicians of her time.

Football, by Chuck Klosterman, Jan. 20

One of our great essaysists and (over?) thinkers turns his sights onto one of the last bits of monoculture we’ve got. But in one of the pieces in this collection, Klosterman wonders, how long until football is no longer the summation of American culture? But until that time comes, there’s plenty to dig into from gambling to debates over the true goat.

Kids, Wait Till You Hear This! by Liza Minnelli, with Michael Feinstein, March 20

Minnelli told People that previous attempts at telling her story “didn’t get it right,” so she’s doing it herself. This new memoir promises to get into her childhood, her marriages, and her struggles with substance abuse.

Tom Paine’s War: The Words that Rallied a Nation and the Founder of Our Time, by Jack Kelly, Jan. 6

If you haven’t heard, it’s a big birthday year for America. And it’s a birthday that might not have happened if not for the words of Thomas Paine. This new book from historian Jack Kelly makes the argument that Paine’s words are just as important and relevant to us today.