Secret Stairs #2: Eagle Rock, 3.8 miles, 328 steps.

Tucked between Pasadena, Glendale, Glassell Park and the 134, Eagle Rock became a city in 1911, and then part of Los Angeles in 1923 (probably for access to L.A. water rights.) In his Secret Stairs book Fleming calls this walk "gentle," we called the hike behind and above landmark Cindy's Coffee Shop on Colorado Boulevard "meandering"—a neighborhood too diverse to define architecturally or culturally. Clever Thanksgiving displays in some yards, old Halloween skeletons and fangs at others, and a surprising number of Christmas decorations. Very cool Tai Chi staircase on Figueroa, a monumental set of 64 steps pictured below from the street all the way to the white house at the top of the hill. I couldn't resist photographing Tai Chi practitioner Barbara Beck mimicking the pose in the Tai Chi mural at the street level. Our other unusual find was the "sidewalk staircase" on Nolden, a residential street so steep the city engineers built 79 steps INTO the sidewalk for the locals to get to the top without killing their calves or to the bottom without pitching forward. Actually very cool.