One . . . more . . . step. Almost there. Top of the hill. Don't step on the smashed guavas. Step over the giant philodendron. Ignore the snapping dog.
More than 75 years ago, Laurel and Hardy struggled to maneuver a piano up these 131 Silver Lake steps in the classic comedy "The Music Box," cementing the staircase in cinematic history.
Hauling an oversized load up the oxygen-depleting ascent hasn't gotten any easier, but it's worth the trip.
Huff. Puff.
Wheeze a little while sucking a deep breath of eucalyptus into bursting lungs -- and then, there it is: a dazzling string of vintage, eclectic homes at the top of the longest outdoor staircase you've ever scaled.
Looking back down the steps, one feels what early settlers may have felt gazing for the first time at the wilds of the Los Angeles basin: Mine. All mine.
The "Music Box" staircase, which shoots straight up from Vendome Street to Descanso Drive, is one of 52 stairways in 46-year-old writer Dan Koeppel's personal 16.2-mile stair hike -- comprising 4,182 steps, with a 7,445-foot elevation gain.
The walk hopscotches up and down a matrix of city-owned steps around Silver Lake and Echo Park, just north of downtown Los Angeles, and offers up dazzling overlooks of East Los Angeles, Griffith Park Observatory, the Hollywood sign, the Silver Lake Reservoir and downtown Los Angeles. The overall effect is a little like taking a local historical garden tour while going full throttle on a StairMaster.
The city-owned concrete steps scattered across Silver Lake and Echo Park today were built mostly in the mid-1920s as developers began to build upward into the hills, says Bob Herzog, co-chairman of the Silver Lake History Collective and a self-proclaimed "stair nut." They lead down to former transit points for the storied Red Cars of the Pacific Electric Railway, a onetime network of rail lines and streetcars.
Some of the stairs have been removed, but many still remain on steep hillsides, flanked by vintage bungalows housing hardy folks willing to haul trash and groceries up and down as many as 200 steps. Some of the stairs are chronicled in the 1990 book by co-authors Adah Bakalinsky and Los Angeles Times reporter Larry Gordon. The Echo Park Historical Society offers tours of them.
