40 Miles. 14 Hours. These Dudes Walked Across Los Angeles In One Day

Tucker O’Neill moved to Los Angeles in 2021. The freelance video editor had lived in Seattle and Chicago — cities that are “more pedestrian friendly, you know, smaller, so walking across the city doesn't seem like [a] whole journey,” O’Neill says.

By comparison, his newly adopted city of Los Angeles is an endless sprawl — so antithetical to being explored on foot that it's forever associated with a new wave song from the 1980s.

That’s what O’Neill thought, too, until he came across a post on Reddit.com. It was “about someone who had taken a walk from basically Pasadena to Marina Del Rey, so across Los Angeles. And that really intrigued me,” he says. “I kept the idea in my mind, [because] I knew I wanted to take it on eventually.”

The route

The route Tucker O'Neill and his friend took to walk from Pasadena to Santa Monica.

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Courtesy Tucker O'Neill

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And that’s what O’Neill and his buddy did this past Sunday. They walked from Pasadena to Santa Monica. A 40-mile-plus journey that took over 14 hours.

O’Neill posted about his exploits on, what else, Reddit.com. The item generated tons of comments, and caught our eyes at LAist, too.

So we decided to seek out O’Neill, and his friend Wes Brumbaugh, and ask them about their epic trek across L.A.

Our questions

Q: So what finally made you take the plunge the past weekend?

O’Neill: When I moved to L.A. originally, I kind of wanted it to be the city that I could treat like any other city that you can just walk wherever you want, take the train — not drive, essentially. And six months in, I was driving everywhere and sort of just accepted that reality.

I [like] the idea of taking on that challenge of making L.A. as walkable as we could for ourselves, and just see what we could see along the way.

Q: How did you two prepare?

Brumbaugh: We brought an extra pair of socks, a bunch of water, a couple energy bars. A money clip with 20 bucks and our IDs so we could grab a beer at the end, but that was about it.

O’Neill: And a phone charger, probably keeping the phone alive was the most important part, so we could track the journey, or if something happened, we could call somebody. But you know, besides that, you're really not doing much except walking. Like, we just talked to each other. That's all we did was talk the whole time.

Q: What communities did you two hit?

O’Neill: We started at Pasadena City Hall, went down to the Arroyo Seco. Then Highland Park. Eagle Rock. Then Glendale, we hit up the Americana because, you know, why not. Then down to Atwater, Silver Lake, Echo Park. That's where we got lunch.

And then Downtown, and we went down Wilshire Blvd. And really stayed there until we hit the museums – LACMA and the Tar Pits. Then we went up to see a friend, kind of by the Grove, and then Beverly Hills, Century City. And this is when we really started going downhill, mentally. And then, Santa Monica.

Brumbaugh: Yeah, towards the end, we were absolutely limping through the finish line (laugh). It was pretty brutal. Our knees were shot. We were pretty much hunched over and in pain by the end of it.

The guys celebrate the end of their journey at the Santa Monica Pier.

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(Courtesy of Tucker O'Neill)

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Q: What was your big takeaway? 

O’Neill: I think the whole journey was kind of surprising. It’s interesting to see all these different neighborhoods on a single walk – to see MacArthur Park and then later see Beverly Hills, [which] feels like two ends of the spectrum, and you don't really associate those two together.

But when you walk from one to the other, and you know, they're actually not that far [from each other], but the disparities are pretty large, just in terms of what kind of neighborhoods they are.

Q: It’s been almost a week, are you physically recovered from the walk? 

O’Neill: I don't know if I'm recovered yet (laugh)...

Brumbaugh: Yeah, ongoing…

O’Neill: That night and the next day were tough, you know, just from being sore.

Q: So, never again, right?

Braumbaugh: So Tucker's already got a second route planned out…

O’Neill: The one I proposed to Wes was starting in where we ended in Santa Monica, then going down to Venice and heading east from there. So Culver City and USC, and different parts of the city.