Walk This Way

Growing up, I remember that one of the things that my parents often did was to go for walks. Being a somewhat hyperactive child, and a slightly ADD teenager, I never really found too much interest in walking for either enjoyment or exercise until very recently, when the hustle and bustle of life (as well as my desire to engage in more physically demanding activities than driving my car) comes with an intensity and frequency that definitely merits the solitude and peace of an outdoor walk. In fact, my current neighborhood is actually wonderful for walking, especially in the evenings. Some days I wish I lived in a city where owning a car wasn't even necessary to survive!
What's interesting is that today I stumbled upon a website that actually measures how walkable a particular neighborhood is. In collaboration with Google Maps, Walk Score actually calculates a score (from 1-100) on just how walkable your neighborhood is. My current location (in Mid-City, Los Angeles) scores a 68 out of 100, which doesn't seem like much, but it is much greater than other places I've lived, which scored 49 (childhood home), 8 (teenage home), and 49 (college home).
Interested in your neighborhood's walk score? Check it out at www.walkscore.com.

L.A. Neighborhoods: Leimert Park

It's summer, school is out, the temperatures are in the 90s, and I get to do one of the things I love doing the most: exploring the city of Los Angeles and its many different neighborhoods that compose the core of what it means to be an Angeleno.
This evening, I took a short drive down Crenshaw Blvd. to where it crosses King Blvd. Nestled snugly within the confines of what is pejoratively known as "South Central", the community known as Leimert Park exhibits a regional character that is rarely found in other LA neighborhoods I've been in. As I cross 43rd St. and the smell of Phillip's BBQ reaches my nose, I immediately pull over and get in line for an amazing beef rib dinner, complete with macaroni salad and cole slaw. Wow...amazing. Afterward, I walked over to the park (the actual Leimert Park) and sat in the waning hours of sunlight as a djembe ensemble echoed their rhythms and beats in the evening air. As I sat, I observed the sights and sounds of mothers walking their children through the park, bystanders joining in the music of the drummers with dance, at least two entrepreneurs hawking the latest bootleg CDs and DVDs, all with the droning hum and bustle of the busy Crenshaw Blvd. in the background. The park, the neighborhood, remind me that Los Angeles is a city of communities, rather than a city of isolated individuals as it generally feigns itself to be. Yet this is not the first time I've been to Leimert Park. I actually considered moving into this neighborhood three years ago, and if ever forced to move, I would definitely consider it again.