Some places hit you with vibes the second you step out of the airport. The air is different. The energy is different. Even the industrial in-between areas around the airport and the highway have a strong sense of character. Seattle is one of those places. In a happy twist of fate, I unwittingly ended up on the same flight to and from Seattle as one of my buddies in BNA, so I got the express pass into the city riding shotgun in the car that he had rented. Seeing the breathtaking Cascadian landscape unfold before us, I could not stop talking about how cool it all was. The mountainous terrain makes it so you are always either arriving at or leaving from a scenic vista, each of which provides a more gorgeous view than the last. Looking out in any direction, there are always multiple layers of water, city, and evergreen-dominated foothills between you and a background of MUCH larger mountains. And those mountains are always set against an expressive sky, which alternates between a clear, northerly baby-blue color, or a swirling moody mass of clouds.
I’ve gotten to the point with these street art features that I plan my trips around them. If I can get a day to myself, I’m gonna wander around with my camera all day until I find 100 murals I love. And I’m not just doing it “for the ‘gram” anymore! Seriously, these days of wandering are often what makes me feel like I have gotten to know a city at all. That is especially true for a place like Los Angeles.
In a city where most of the time spent between two points is in the back of an Uber, staring at your phone, walking the streets isn’t exactly “normal.” This is a car city. So going through the exercise of walking 10 miles in day, exploring this city street by street, looking in nooks and crannies for murals, poking around small businesses—this can really give you a feel for the DNA of Los Angeles. Of course, whatever I’ve managed to see so far is just a drop in the bucket! But it’s exposed me to a lot. And it helped me internalize the map of this city, so that I started to be able to find my way around without a map.
First off, what I’m defining as “Richmond” here is actually made up of 4 smaller districts: Inner, Central, and Outer Richmond… and a little area to the north called Lake Street. This neighborhood (or group of neighborhoods) is essentially a big grid system, which, despite occupying an extremely urban area of San Francisco, is surrounded on almost all sides by nature.
