• In April, comic Allan McLeod launched “Walkin’ About,” a podcast by which he and a visitor stroll someplace within the L.A. area.• His strolling companions have included actors Dan Stevens and Ed Begley Jr. and comic Jon Gabrus. • By way of his many adventures on foot, Mcleod has found that strolling “can be really complex and profound.”
It’s scorching when Allan McLeod and I meet up for a stroll in Previous Pasadena, however fortunately 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 warmth. Since he started making his podcast, “Walkin’ About,” in April, his recording studio is commonly outside.
L.A. actually is a strolling metropolis. Discover our ground-level information to the individuals and locations maintaining our sidewalks alive.
Even earlier than he launched the sequence, strolling was one thing McLeod was continually pondering and speaking 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, every episode options McLeod and a visitor exploring a special L.A. location by foot, one thing he feels is each easy and profound.
Most individuals may take the act of placing one foot in entrance of the opposite again and again without any consideration. However for McLeod, strolling enhances so many alternative points of life, creatively, mentally and bodily.
McLeod takes a selfie with Sodaro on the disc golf course at Hahamongna Watershed Park. He makes use of selfies as cowl artwork for every episode.
“It’s great for problem-solving, for clearing your head,” he stated. “It also makes me feel like I’m connecting with my community.”
Los Angeles as a complete is just not precisely constructed for pedestrians. Our freeways and large sprawl can generally act as a barrier to touring by sidewalk. However McLeod is satisfied that attitudes are slowly altering, and that in the event you look laborious sufficient, there are communities of individuals throughout who’re obsessed with making a pedestrian-friendly setting. And speaking about it.
Whereas our stroll isn’t for the podcast, I’m excited to get a style of what recording an episode of “Walkin’ About” could be like, having already powered by a lot of the 20 episodes obtainable on walks of my very own. We begin outdoors Copa Vida Cafe on the nook of Raymond Avenue and Inexperienced Avenue. Previous Pasadena is McLeod’s favourite space, given its preserved historical past and the truth that it simply feels prefer it’s meant to be skilled on foot.
McLeod, 44, wearing a short-sleeve button-down shirt and a pair of Hoka Bondi 7 footwear, spends most of our stroll stating factoids about buildings gleaned from analysis he’s achieved forward of time.
[Walking is] nice for problem-solving, for clearing your head. It additionally makes me really feel like I’m connecting with my neighborhood.
— Allan McLeod, comic and host of “Walkin’ About”
“I believe this is one of the first co-op buildings in California,” he says, stopping in entrance of the Moorish Colonial-style Fortress Inexperienced residence constructing, which was as soon as a long-term resort for rich vacationers who used Pasadena as a winter escape.
Throughout the road we pause on the outdated Spanish-style prepare station the place main prepare strains just like the Santa Fe used to unload passengers, together with rich Fortress Inexperienced company. It’s now a Metro cease for the A Line heading downtown. The principle depot room is a restaurant cleverly known as the Baggage Room.
McLeod got here up with the idea of “Walkin’ About” after assembly Harry Nelson, govt producer at Adam McKay’s manufacturing firm, HyperObject Industries, at a celebration. McLeod was telling Nelson a couple of ardour venture he’d been engaged on, an audio tour information of Previous Pasadena. Nelson was intrigued. The 2 took the audio information and reformatted it into “something that was a little broader, a little less site-specific.”
McLeod walks and talks with Sodaro in Pasadena. Previous company have included Andy Richter and Dan Stevens.
The construction of the podcast is straightforward: Every episode, McLeod meets up with a visitor for a stroll by a special a part of Los Angeles. Whereas on foot the pair chat about topics such because the historical past of the world, what they’re seeing round them or the visitor’s private relationship with strolling. Thus far, McLeod has strolled by Barnsdall Park with Ed Begley Jr., hiked the Arroyo Seco with actor Dan Stevens and traversed the Bunker Hill Pedway with comic Jon Gabrus. If McLeod had a dream visitor for the podcast, it’d be Rick Steves.
“He’s one of America’s greatest ambassadors,” McLeod says excitedly.
We head throughout Central Park and up Honest Oaks Avenue towards the One Colorado Procuring Middle, stopping in entrance of the iPic movie show. Right here, McLeod factors as much as a painted signal promoting the outdated Clunes Theatre, which was a vaudeville venue within the early 1900s. It additionally hosted an early screening of the 1915 controversial silent movie “Birth of a Nation,” which could 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 cautions. Nevertheless it’s these sorts of info and trivia that he likes to pepper into his walks. For him, that’s a part of the enjoyable.
A local of Alabama, McLeod has lived in Los Angeles for about 20 years, arriving as a fresh-eyed graduate of the College of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. In school, he’d taken a complicated manufacturing class led by director Tom Cherones, who would later turn into his mentor.
McLeod and Sodaro on the Satan’s Gate Dam. McLeod enjoys together with info and trivia in regards to the space he’s exploring in every “Walkin’ About” episode.
“Tom said to me, ‘You’re a writer, you should move to L.A.,’” recollects McLeod. “So that’s what I did. That’s all it took.”
At this time he considers himself extra of an actor-writer: “Acting is where I’ve had more success, professionally.” After years of doing improv comedy at Upright Residents Brigade, McLeod has landed roles in reveals like “You’re the Worst” and “Drunk History.” Within the Hulu comedy sequence “Interior Chinatown,” popping out in November, he performs Desk Sergeant Felix.
McLeod has a dry, barely deadpan humorousness and a mild voice that may generally get misplaced in ambient visitors noise. If this have been an episode of “Walkin’ About,” we’d every have small DJI lapel mics — a tiny microphone that data audio remarkably effectively — clipped to our shirts.
“It’s a newish microphone technology that’s kind of amazing,” says McLeod. He desires every episode to really feel as immersive as attainable, which suggests together with surrounding noise like buses honking, a busker singing in an alleyway or a volunteer asking if we now have time for homosexual rights.
(As that is his first podcast, he admits it took some trial and error, and plenty of misplaced audio segments, to get the recording-while-walking rhythm down. He credit his staff of editors at HyperObject for serving to in that division.)
Our last cease is the nook of East Colorado Boulevard and Raymond Avenue, throughout the road from one other Spanish Colonial-style constructing. McLeod factors out it’s one of the haunted buildings in Pasadena. Supposedly it’s constructed on prime of an outdated mission, which is rarely a very good begin.
Allan McLeod, proper, 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 retailer; there’s an escape room subsequent door.
By the tip of our time collectively, it’s clear simply how a lot McLeod actually does love strolling. Within the 50 minutes and roughly 1½ miles that we’ve spent collectively, I’ve realized extra about Pasadena than I’ve within the final 10 years of residing in L.A. And except for my determined want for air-con, I nearly lament my must get again in my automobile to move house.
Would our dialog have made for good tape? For McLeod, the important thing to a profitable episode of “Walkin’ About” is discovering company who take pleasure in strolling as a lot 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.”
