The hidden stairs of Silver Lake

People who visit Los Angeles for a week tend to leave convinced the city is impossible on foot. I understand why. The distances are real, the boulevards are wide and the crossings are long. But tucked into the hills on the east side there is a completely different city, one made of narrow lanes, sudden views and public staircases that were built before most people owned a car.

The stairs go back to the era of the old streetcars. Houses were being built on slopes too steep for a sensible road, and the stairways were a shortcut down to the line at the bottom of the hill. The streetcars are long gone, but the stairs stayed. Some are plain concrete with a pipe railing. Others have been painted by neighbours, lined with succulents or framed by a cascade of bougainvillea that drops petals on every step.

How I walk it

I don't follow a fixed route, and I would gently suggest you don't either. I start somewhere near the reservoir, walk the flat path for a while to warm up, then turn uphill at whichever street looks interesting. The rule is simple: when you see a staircase, take it. When you reach the top, look around, catch your breath, and find the next one going down. An hour of this gives you a surprising amount of climbing and almost no traffic.

A paper map helps more than you would think. Phone maps are good at streets but not always at stairways, and more than once I have been told to walk a long way round a hill that had a perfectly good staircase straight up the middle of it.

What you notice up there

The houses are the first thing. Every architectural mood of the last century seems to be represented within a few blocks: little Spanish-style bungalows with tiled steps, glassy mid-century boxes balanced on stilts, wooden cottages half swallowed by trees. Then there are the gardens, which in this climate can be wild. Agave, rosemary, lemon trees, a lot of things I can't name.

Then the views. From certain landings you can see the reservoir glinting below, the hills of Griffith Park in one direction and, on a clear day, the towers of downtown in the other. It is the kind of view that makes the city feel briefly coherent.

The best time is late afternoon, when the light goes amber and every cat in the neighbourhood is sitting on a warm step.

A few practical notes

These are residential streets, so keep your voice down and don't treat anyone's front steps as a picnic spot. Wear shoes with grip; some stairs are steep and a little uneven. Bring water even in winter, because the sun is stronger than the air temperature suggests. And go slowly. The point is not to finish the loop. The point is to realise that this city, which looks so endless from the freeway, is actually full of small, quiet places you can only reach on foot.