Lifestyle
Need a soundtrack for an L.A. stroll? There's a walking podcast for that
• In April, comedian Allan McLeod launched “Walkin’ About,” a podcast in which he and a guest stroll somewhere in the L.A. region.
• His walking companions have included actor Dan Stevens, Ed. Begley Jr. and comedian Jon Gabrus.
• Through his many adventures on foot, Mcleod has discovered that walking “can be really complex and profound.”
It’s hot when Allan McLeod and I meet up for a walk in Old Pasadena, but thankfully we’ve missed the early September heatwave that blanketed L.A. County with triple-digit temps. He’s no stranger to braving our county’s persistent heat. Since he began making his podcast, “Walkin’ About,” in April, his recording studio is often outdoors.
Even before he launched the series, walking was something McLeod was constantly thinking and talking about.
“I’m very annoying to friends and family,” he admits. “So I decided to put that energy into a podcast.”
Now in its second season, each episode features McLeod and a guest exploring a different L.A. location by foot, something he feels is both simple and profound.
McLeod takes a selfie with Sodaro at the disc golf course at Hahamongna Watershed Park. He uses selfies as cover art for each episode.
Most people might take the act of putting one foot in front of the other over and over again for granted. But for McLeod, walking enhances so many different aspects of life, creatively, mentally, physically.
“It’s great for problem-solving, for clearing your head,” he said. “It also makes me feel like I’m connecting with my community.”
Los Angeles as a whole is not exactly a city built for pedestrians. Our freeways and massive sprawl can sometimes act as a barrier to traveling by sidewalk. But McLeod is convinced that attitudes are slowly changing, and that if you look hard enough, there are communities of people all over who are enthusiastic about creating a pedestrian-friendly environment. And talking about it.
While our walk isn’t for the podcast, I’m excited to get a taste of what recording an episode of “Walkin’ About” might be like, having already powered through most of the 20 episodes available on walks of my own. We start outside Copa Vida Cafe on the corner of Raymond Avenue and Green Street. Old Pasadena is McLeod’s favorite area, given its preserved history and the fact that it just feels like it’s meant to be experienced on foot.
“[Walking is] great for problem-solving, for clearing your head. It also makes me feel like I’m connecting with my community.”
— Allan McLeod, comedian and host of “Walkin’ About”
McLeod, 44, dressed in a short-sleeve button-down shirt and a pair of Hoka Bondi 7s, spends most of our walk pointing out factoids about buildings gleaned from research he’s done ahead of time.
“I believe this is one of the first co-op buildings in California,” he says, stopping in front of the Moorish Colonial-style Castle Green apartment building that was once a long-term hotel for wealthy travelers who used Pasadena as a winter escape.
Across the street we pause at the old Spanish-style train station where major train lines like the Santa Fe used to unload passengers, including wealthy Castle Green guests. It’s now a Metro stop for the A Line heading downtown. The main depot room is a restaurant cleverly called The Luggage Room.
McLeod came up with the concept of “Walkin’ About” after meeting Harry Nelson, executive producer at Adam McKay’s production company, HyperObject Industries, at a party. McLeod was telling Nelson about a passion project he’d been working on, an audio tour guide of Old Pasadena. Nelson was intrigued. The two took the audio guide and reformatted it into “something that was a little broader, a little less site specific.”
Shadows are casts as McLeod walks and talks with Sodaro in Pasadena. Past guests have included Andy Richter and Dan Stevens.
The structure of the podcast is simple: Each episode, McLeod meets up with a guest for a walk through a different part of Los Angeles. While on foot the pair chat about subjects such as the history of the area, what they’re seeing around them or each guest’s personal relationship with walking. So far, McLeod has strolled through Barnsdall Park with Ed Begley, Jr., hiked the Arroyo Seco with actor Dan Stevens and traversed the Bunker Hill Pedway with comedian Jon Gabrus. If McLeod had a dream guest for the podcast, it’d be Rick Steves.
“He’s one of America’s greatest ambassadors,” McLeod says excitedly.
We head across Central Park and up Fair Oaks Avenue toward the One Colorado Shopping Center, stopping in front of the iPic movie theater. Here, McLeod points up to a painted sign advertising the old Clunes Theatre, which was a vaudeville venue in the early 1900s. It also showed an early screening of the 1915 controversial silent film “Birth of a Nation,” which might have led to the formation of the Pasadena chapter of the NAACP.
“There’s a tangential connection there, but I don’t know the exact story,” McLeod caveats. But it’s these kinds of facts and trivia that he likes to pepper into his walks. For him, that’s part of the fun.
A native of Alabama, McLeod has lived in Los Angeles for about 20 years, arriving as a fresh-eyed graduate of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. In college, he’d taken an advanced production class led by the director Tom Cherones, who would later become his mentor.
McLeod and Sodaro on the Devil’s Gate Dam. McLeod enjoys including facts and trivia about the area he’s exploring in each “Walkin’ About” episode.
“Tom said to me, ‘You’re a writer, you should move to L.A.” recalls McLeod. “So that’s what I did. That’s all it took.”
Today he considers himself more of an actor-writer: “Acting is where I’ve had more success, professionally.” After years of doing improv comedy at Upright Citizens Brigade, McLeod has landed roles in shows like “You’re the Worst” and “Drunk History.” In the Hulu comedy series “Interior, Chinatown,” coming out in November, he plays Desk Sergeant Felix.
McLeod has a dry, slightly deadpan sense of humor and a gentle voice that can sometimes get lost in ambient traffic noise. If this were an episode of the “Walkin’ About,” we’d each have small DJI lapel mics — a tiny microphone that records audio remarkably well — clipped to our shirts.
“It’s a newish microphone technology that’s kind of amazing,” says McLeod. He wants each episode to feel as immersive as possible, which means including surrounding noise like buses honking, a busker singing in an alleyway or a volunteer asking if we have time for gay rights.
(As this is his first podcast, he admits it took some trial and error, and a lot of lost audio segments, to get the recording-while-walking rhythm down. He credits his team of editors at HyperObjects for helping in that department.)
Our final stop is the corner of East Colorado Boulevard and Raymond Avenue, across the street from another Spanish Colonial-style building. McLeod points out it’s one of the most haunted buildings in Pasadena. Supposedly it’s built on top of an old mission, which is never a good start.
Allan McLeod, right, with Sodaro, at Hahamongna Watershed Park.
“It was originally a bank, and there are stories of people dying in it — the bank manager’s daughter was found dead in the vault, a big robbery that went wrong, things like that.” Now it’s an AT&T store; there’s an escape room next door.
By the end of our time together, it’s clear just how much McLeod really does love walking. In the 50 minutes and roughly 1½ miles that we’ve spent together, I’ve learned more about Pasadena than I have in the last 10 years of living in L.A. And aside from my desperate need for air conditioning, I almost lament my need to get back in my car to head home.
Would our conversation have made for good tape? For McLeod, the key to a successful episode of “Walkin’ About” is finding guests who enjoy walking as much as he does.
“That’s the trick,” he says. “The goal is to have people talking about walking in different ways. Because the subject can be really complex and profound.”
In the 1998 World War II film “Saving Private Ryan,” Tom Hanks played Captain John H. Miller, a citizen-soldier willing to die for his country. In real life, Mr. Hanks spent years championing veterans and raising money for their families. So it was no surprise when West Point announced it would honor him with the Sylvanus Thayer Award, which goes each year to someone embodying the school’s credo, “Duty, Honor, Country.”
Months after the announcement, the award ceremony was canceled. Mr. Hanks, a Democrat who had backed Kamala Harris, has remained silent on the matter. On Truth Social, President Trump did not hold back: “We don’t need destructive, WOKE recipients getting our cherished American awards!!!”
Keiko Agena likes to create moments of coziness — not just on Sundays, but whenever she possibly can.
“Oh, there’s my rice cooker,” she says when she hears the sound in her Arts District home. “We’re making steel-cut oatmeal in the rice cooker, which by the way, is a game changer. I used to have to baby it and watch it, but now I can just put it in there and forget it.”
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
The 52-year-old actor, who played music-loving bestie Lane Kim in the beloved series “Gilmore Girls,” delights in specific comforts like a bowl of warm oats, talking about Enneagram numbers and watching cooking competitions with her husband, Shin Kawasaki.
“It sounds so simple, but I look forward so much to spending time on the couch,” Agena says with a laugh.
It is time that she’s intentional about protecting, especially amid her kaleidoscope of projects. Over the last couple of years, Agena starred in Lloyd Suh’s moving play “The Chinese Lady” in Atlanta, acted in Netflix’s “The Residence,” showcased her artwork in her first feature exhibit, “Hep Tones” (some of her ink and pencil drawings are still for sale), and performed regularly on the L.A. improv circuit. And her work endures with “Gilmore Girls,” which turns 25 this year. Agena narrated the audiobook for “Meet Me at Luke’s,” a guide that draws life lessons from the series, and is featured in the upcoming “Gilmore Girls” documentary “Drink Coffee, Talk Fast.”
She shares with us her perfect Sunday in L.A., which begins before sunrise.
5 a.m.: Morning solitude
I like to be up early-early, like 5 a.m. I like that feeling of everything being quiet. I’ll go into the other room and do Duolingo on my phone. I am a little addicted to social media, so the Duolingo is not just to learn Japanese, but also to keep me from scrolling. Like, if I’m going to do something on my phone, this is better for me. I think my streak is 146. Shin is Japanese, from Toyama. So I’ve been meaning to learn Japanese for a while. For him and his mom.
Then I’ll do [the writing practice] Morning Pages. I don’t know when I learned about Julia Cameron’s book [“The Artist’s Way”] — probably around 2000. I know a lot of people do it handwritten, but I’m a little paranoid about people, like, finding it after I die. So if I have it on my computer and it’s password protected, I can be really honest.
Then a lot of times, I’ll go back to bed. Shin, as a musician, works at night, and so he wakes up a lot later. So I’ll fall back asleep and wake up with him.
9 a.m.: Gimme that bread
I don’t do coffee anymore because it’s a little too tough for my system, but I’ll walk with Shin to Eightfold Coffee in the Arts District. It’s tiny but very chill. Then we’re going to Bliss Bakery inside the Little Tokyo Market Place. We get these tapioca bread balls. If you make any kind of sandwich that you would normally make, but use that bread instead, it ups the game. It’s life-changing. The Little Tokyo Market Place is not fancy or anything, but it has everything that you would want. There’s Korean food. They have a little sushi place in there. You can get premade Korean banchan and hot food in their hot food section. They also have a really good nuts section. It’s just one big table with all these nuts, just piles and piles.
10 a.m.: Nature without leaving the city
We’ll go to Los Angeles State Historic Park near Chinatown. I like that place just because it’s very accessible. Like, they have accessible bathrooms and I’m always checking out whether a place has good bathrooms. We call it Flat Park because it’s a great walk. Like, you’re not really out in nature, but there’s a lot of greenery. You can take your shoes off and at least touch grass for a second.
11:30 a.m.: Lunch and TV cooking shows
One of my favorite salad-sandwich combos is at Cafe Dulce in Little Tokyo. A Korean cheesesteak and a kale salad. That’s always like a — bang, bang — good combo. So we might go there or Aloha Cafe, though it’s not fully open on Sundays. But I love it because I grew up in Hawaii. They have this great Chinese chicken salad and spam musubi and other Hawaiian food that is so good.
We’ll bring home food and watch something. Cooking competition shows are my cream of the crop. My favorite right now is “Tournament of Champions” because it’s blind tasting. To me, that’s the best way to do it. “The Great British Bake Off” is Shin’s favorite. He loves the nature and the accents as much as the actual cooking. He just loves the vibe, the slow pace of the whole thing.
I’m such a TV girl. I love spending time on the couch and eating a meal and watching something that’s appetizing with my favorite person in the world. I’m lucky because I get to do that a lot.
2 p.m.: Browse the aisles
I’ll go to this bookstore called Hennessey + Ingalls. I love art and architecture and design, but you can’t always buy these massive books. But you can go into this bookstore and look at them and it’s always chill.
If I have time, I’ll walk around art supply stores. Artist & Craftsman Supply is a good one. I’ll look at pens, pencils, stickers, tape, washi tape, different kinds of paper, charcoals. In my art, I try to find things that aren’t meant for that particular purpose, like little things in a hardware store that I’ll use it in a different way.
5 p.m.: Downtown L.A. in its glory
We really love to walk the Sixth Street Bridge. It’s architecturally beautiful and they’re building a huge park over there, so we’ll walk around and check it out, like, ‘Which trees are they planting? Can you see?’ We sort of dream about how it’s coming together. But the other beautiful thing about that walk is that if you go at sunset and you walk back toward downtown, it’s just gorgeous. Los Angeles doesn’t have the most majestic skyline, but it’s so picturesque in that moment.
6:30 p.m.: Cornbread and Enneagrams
I’ll head to the Park’s Finest in Echo Park. It’s Filipino barbecue. It’s just so savory and rich and a special hang. Their cornbread is really good. Oh, and the coconut beef, but I’m trying to eat less beef. They have a hot link medley. Oh my gosh, just looking at this menu right now, my mouth is watering. OK, I’ll stop.
One of my favorite things to do is ask friends about their Enneagram number. So the idea of sitting with friends over a good meal and asking them a bunch of personal questions about their childhood and what motivates them and what their parents were like and what their greatest fear is and then figure out what their Enneagram number is? That is a top-tier activity for me.
9 p.m.: Rally for improv
Because I get up so early, if 9 o’clock, I’m ready to go to sleep. But I am obsessed with improv, so on my ideal day, there’d be a show to do. There’s this place called World’s Greatest Improv School in Los Feliz. It’s tiny and they just opened a few years ago, but the vibe there is spectacular.
Then there’s another place where my heart is so invested in now called Outside In Theatre in Highland Park. Tamlyn Tomita and Daniel Blinkoff created it together and not only is the space gorgeous — I mean, they built it from scratch — they have interesting programming there all the time. They’re so supportive of communities that are not seen in mainstream art spaces. It’s my favorite place. Sometimes I’ll find myself in their lobby till 12 o’clock at night. The kind of people I like to hang around are the people that hang out in that space.
11 p.m.: Turn on the ASMR and shut down
I am firmly an ASMR girl and I have been for years. I have to find something to watch that will slow my brain down. Then it’s pretty consistent. I don’t last very long once I turn something on. My eyelids get heavy and it chills me out.
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