• 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.”