Containing
walks and detailed maps from throughout the city, Secret
Stairs highlights the charms
and quirks of a unique feature of the Los Angeles landscape, and
chronicles the geographical, architectural, and historical aspects of
the city’s staircases, as well as of the neighborhoods in which
the steps are located.
From
strolling through the classic La Loma neighborhood in Pasadena to
walking the Sunset Junction Loop in Silver Lake, to taking the
Beachwood Canyon hike through “Hollywoodland” to enjoying
the magnificent ocean views from the Castellammare district in
Pacific Palisades, Secret
Stairs takes you on a tour of
the staircases all across the City of Angels.
The
circular walks, rated for duration and difficulty, deliver tales of
historic homes and their fascinating inhabitants, bits of unusual
local trivia, and stories of the neighborhoods surrounding the
stairs: That’s where William Faulkner was living when he wrote
the screenplay for To Have and
Have Not. That house was
designed by Neutra. Over there is a Schindler. That’s where
Woody Guthrie lived, where Anais Nin died, and where Thelma Todd was
murdered. . . .
Despite
the fact that one of these staircases starred in an Oscar-winning
short film—Laurel and Hardy’s The
Music Box, from 1932—these
civic treasures have been virtually unknown to most of the city’s
residents and visitors. Now, Secret
Stairs puts these hidden
stairways back on the map, while introducing urban hikers to exciting
new “trails” all around the city of Los Angeles.
Charles
Fleming is the author
of the national bestseller High
Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess,and
co-author of the New York
Times bestsellers Three
Weeks in October: The Manhunt for the Serial Sniper, A
Goomba's Guide to Life,and My
Lobotomy. A former staff
writer for Newsweek,
Variety, and the Los
Angeles Herald-Examiner, and
a frequent contributor to Vanity
Fair, the New
York Times, the Los
Angeles Times, Los Angeles magazine,
and LA Weekly,Fleming
teaches journalism at USC. He lives with his wife and two daughters
in Silver Lake.
“There’s
something magical about the stair walks. You leave the known city
behind and visit a quiet place built for an entirely different kind
of living. Bungalows, some of them 100 years old, sit amid towering
oaks and wildflowers, no roads or cars in sight. Fleming can point
out the house where Anais Nin died, the house where William Faulkner
wrote To Have and Have Not,
the cabin-hotel where Ernest Hemingway once hung his hat, the place
where Tom Mix’s saloon used to be and where his horse might be
buried (in the vicinity of a Ralphs supermarket). Walking the stairs
is like time travel, and you can picture schoolchildren, homemakers
and bricklayers huffing up and down the flights on their way to
school, to market and to work.” —Steve
Lopez, Los Angeles
Times
