The rise in well-attended get-out-and-know-your-city events like the Big Parade LA, which wends around trails of the eastside, and the Great Los Angeles Walk, which heads from downtown to the ocean the Saturday before Thanksgiving, indicates many things.
One? SoCal is a walker's paradise, contrary to snarky assumptions. Two? We're a city of secrets, as is often said. And three? People are ready to find those urban hiking trails on their own, and not wait for the bigger to-dos to roll around every few months.
Enter a new app from the Interpretive Media Laboratory. The lab is working side-by-side with the city and UCLA to create a full-scale look at all of our area's urban wend-throughs. Gizmodo took a look at the due-in-April app, alongside Mayor Eric Garcetti and Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell.
"(H)istoric and cultural landmarks" will be part of the app, and not simply how many miles or steps it takes to reach point B from point A. Call it the full hiking experience, with a fleshed-out electronic companion to tell you the whys and wheres and whens of where you're walking.
El Pueblo and Los Angeles State Historic Park was the scene of the mayor and company's try-it-out walk, but think if all of the secret stairways of the hills got the same treatment. Will the Music Box stairway of Silver Lake get the Laurel & Hardy factoid love, as it should?
Deep backstory could be coming for all of our more out-of-the-way paths around the city. And while Angelenos can be proudly know-it-all-y, and thank goodness, bet the Interpretive Media Laboratory offering'll have plenty of new surprises for the intrepid backwoods -- er, backcity -- explorer.
