• In April, comedian Allan McLeod launched “Walkin’ About,” a podcast in which he and a guest take a walk somewhere in the Los Angeles area.
• His walking companions include actor Dan Stevens, Ed. Begley Jr. and comedian Jon Gabrus.
• Through his many walking adventures, 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 luckily we missed the early September heat wave that blanketed Los Angeles County with triple-digit temperatures. He’s no stranger to braving our county’s persistent heat. Since he started making his podcast, “I’m walking around”, in April, his recording studio is often outdoors.
Even before starting the series, walking was something McLeod constantly thought about and talked about.
“I’m very annoying to my 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 location in Los Angeles on foot, something he considers both simple and profound.
Most people might take for granted putting one foot in front of the other over and over again. But for McLeod, walking improves many different aspects of life, creatively, mentally and physically.
“It’s great for solving problems, for clearing your head,” he said. “It also makes me feel connected to my community.”
Los Angeles as a whole isn’t exactly a city built for pedestrians. Our highways and massive urban sprawl can sometimes be a barrier to traveling on sidewalks. But McLeod is convinced that attitudes are slowly changing and that, if you look closely, there are communities of people everywhere who are enthusiastic about creating a pedestrian-friendly environment. And talk about it.
Although our walk isn’t intended for podcasting, I’m excited to get a taste of what recording an episode of “Walkin’ About” might be like, having already gone through most of the 20 episodes available during my own walks. We start in front of Copa Vida Café, on the corner of Raymond Avenue and Green Street. Old Pasadena is McLeod’s favorite neighborhood, given its preserved history and the fact that it feels like it was meant to be experienced on foot.
“(Walking is) great for solving problems, for clearing your head. It also makes me feel connected to 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 facts about the buildings gleaned from research he did at the advance.
“I think it’s one of the first cooperative buildings in California,” he said, stopping in front of the Moorish Colonial-style Castle Green apartment building, which was once an extended-stay hotel for wealthy travelers who used Pasadena as a winter destination. escape.
Across the street, we stop at the old Spanish-style train station where major train lines like the Santa Fe unloaded passengers, including Castle Green’s wealthy guests. It is now a metro station on the A line towards the city center. The main drop-off room is a restaurant cleverly called The Luggage Room.
McLeod came up with the idea for the concept of “Walkin’ About” after meeting Harry Nelson, executive producer of Adam McKay’s production company, HyperObject Industries, at a party. McLeod was telling Nelson about an exciting project he was working on, an audio tour guide of Old Pasadena. Nelson was intrigued. The two men took the audio guide and reformatted it into “something a little broader, a little less site-specific.”
The structure of the podcast is simple: Each episode, McLeod meets a guest for a walk in a different part of Los Angeles. During their walk, the two men discuss topics such as the history of the area, what they see around them or each guest’s personal relationship with the walk. So far, McLeod has strolled through Barnsdall Park with Ed Begley, Jr., walked the Arroyo Seco with actor Dan Stevens, and walked across the Bunker Hill Pedway with comedian Jon Gabrus. If McLeod had a dream podcast guest, it would be Rick Steves.
“He’s one of America’s greatest ambassadors,” McLeod says enthusiastically.
We cross Central Park and head up Fair Oaks Avenue toward the One Colorado mall, stopping in front of the iPic movie theater. Here, McLeod shows a painted sign advertising the old Clunes Theater, which was a vaudeville hall in the early 1900s. He also showed an early screening of the controversial 1915 silent film “Birth of a Nation,” which may 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. But it’s these kinds of facts and anecdotes that he likes to spice up his walks. For him, that’s part of the fun.
Originally from Alabama, McLeod has lived in Los Angeles for about 20 years, arriving as a new graduate from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. In college, he had taken an advanced production course led by director Tom Cherones, who would later become his mentor.
“Tom said to me, ‘You’re a writer, you should move to Los Angeles,’” McLeod recalls. “So that’s what I did. That’s all it took.
Today, he considers himself more of an actor-writer: “It is in the theater that I have had the most success, professionally. » After years of doing improv comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade, McLeod landed roles on shows like “You’re the Worst” and “Drunk History.” In the Hulu comedy series “Interior, Chinatown,” which premieres in November, he plays Desk Sergeant Felix.
McLeod has a dry, slightly tongue-in-cheek sense of humor and a soft voice that can sometimes get lost in the ambient noise of traffic. If this were an episode of “Walkin’ About,” we’d each have little DJI lavalier mics — a small microphone that records sound remarkably well — clipped to our shirts.
“This is a brand new microphone technology that is pretty amazing,” says McLeod. He wants each episode to be as immersive as possible, which means including surrounding noises like honking buses, a busker singing in an alley, 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 lots of dropped audio segments, to slow down the recording pace while walking. He credits his team of editors at HyperObjects for their help in this department.
Our final stop is at the corner of East Colorado Boulevard and Raymond Avenue, across from another Spanish Colonial-style building. McLeod points out that it is one of the most haunted buildings in Pasadena. Apparently it’s built on an old mission, which is never a good start.
“It was originally a bank, and there are stories of people dying there: the bank manager’s daughter being found dead in the safe, a big robbery gone wrong, things like that.” It’s now an AT&T store; there is an escape room next to it.
By the end of our time together, it becomes clear how much McLeod really enjoys walking. In the 50 minutes and about 1½ miles we spent together, I learned more about Pasadena than I had in the last 10 years of living in Los Angeles. And aside from my desperate need for air conditioning, I almost lament my need to get back in my car to go home.
Would our conversation have made a 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 thing,” he said. “The goal is to get people talking about walking in different ways. Because the subject can be really complex and deep.