What is a stair-walk? Stair-walks are urban hikes connecting multiple stairways along public streets, paths and occasionally trails along routes in diverse, usually hilly, areas.
We design and lead groups on stair-walking routes across Southern California (SoCal), to connect roads, bike paths, sidewalks, walkways and stairways into interesting and stair laden walks across the urban landscape. Members are welcome to follow posted routes/Facebook events, or submit routes and lead their own Facebook events. We are volunteer driven, and seek to share our common passion for stair travel. We especially enjoy long fast urban stair-walk events in the 8 to 20+ mile range, with many stair climbs. And we also host some events that have a slower pace and shorter distance options, including regular 4 to 5 mile weekly loops every Tuesday and Thursday evenings at CSULB and in Rustic Canyon respectively. And lately we’ve been designing architecture tours with more architecture and less stairways, but not always, as Hollywood and Silver Lake architecture tours can still have a lot of stairways for us to climb!
To see what a stair-walk looks like, here is a video of our most colorful stair-walk, the 6.7 mile, Painted Stairways Tour, at 10X hyperlapse (sped up by a factor of 10), and set to electro-swing music. Most of the news articles below focus on this tour that went viral back in 2016!
We also seek to catalog every public LA stairway, both stair-streets, and non-stair streets (and even some that are private, but accessible), as well as walkways, pedestrian over-crossings and under-crossings. In other words, pedestrian infrastructure. We do this so anyone, especially the stair-walking community can find the stairs, and other pedestrian infrastructure thought all of LA County. If you wonder what we mean by the term stair-street, or other related terms, please read this stair-walking terminology blog to learn the lingo!
Finally, our premiere route is the Los Angeles Loop, a 310 mile segment walk, where the route is divided into fifteen, 20+ mile segments, that make a large clockwise loop around the county, starting and finishing on Naples Island in Long Beach, visiting the lion’s share of the extant stair-streets, and many excellent non-stair-street stairways, as well as ped bridges and tunnels, and many other attractions. The LA Loop has a little sibling, the 60 mile Long Beach Loop, that circumnavigates Long Beach in four, 15 mile segments.
News and Magazine Articles
2016 LA Weekly article about the 2016 Painted Stairways Tour
2019 LA Times Article about SoCal Stair Climbers featuring the Painted Stairways
2018 Los Angeles Magazine article about the Painted Stairways Mini-Tour
2019 The Acorn Article About SoCal Stair Climbers featuring the Calabasas Loop
2017 CBS Los Angeles article about the Best Painted Stairways
Visit SoCal Stair Climbers on:
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SoCal Stair Climbers Page
SoCal Stair Climbers Group
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SoCal Stair Climbers Profile
YouTube
SoCal Stair Climbers Channel
Hi Dan
I came across an article about the Silver Lake staircase. I work in Silver Lake and would love to contact some of the Artist of the Stair cases. We are featuring the Silver Lake staircases as part of our Artist of the Month program and would love to invite one of the artist to our school. Any way you can connect us? Thank you in advance.
Wow! Sorry Gaby, but I did not see this comment until now. It did not show until today when I updated the page. It might be a bug in the WordPress site. I suggest you join us on one of the tours and meet the artists and talk to them.