Software developer Robb Briggs made a plan to walk every single street in Long Beach, California. Many people don’t realize that Long Beach is huge. Even some of us locals forget. But Long Beach is named so because of its, well, long beach. The city is home to almost half a million people in its 80+ square miles, most of it urban and suburban. As you can imagine, walking every single street was not a quick or easy feat.
After seeing Robb’s journey on reddit, I asked him if he’d be willing to do an interview, and he said yes. Here’s what he had to say about his journey.
I felt like I didn’t really know the city.”
First of all, how did this start?
I moved to Long Beach from Pasadena in 2019 and felt like I didn’t really *know* the city. Shortly after I moved, the covid shutdown began and I wasn’t able to wander into local businesses or attend events or otherwise do the things that you would normally do to get acquainted with a new city. I decided to start walking because it was one of the only things that was still allowed.
Initially, I was walking around my neighborhood of Bixby Knolls. I have a friend in Hollywood who walks around the city and takes pics and tracks his walks, so after I made it through Bixby, I thought, why don’t I walk every street in Long Beach? I posted to reddit about it in November of 2021 and a lot of people were saying how North Long Beach was too scary to walk. I decided to start with North Long Beach first and I figured if I could do it, I could walk all of Long Beach.
What happened when you started in North Long Beach?
It wasn’t scary at all. It was nice and I had no issues. Everyone was friendly and everyone said hi. I didn’t get any negative reactions.
People were saying how North Long Beach was too scary to walk.
How did you decide where to walk next?
When I started walking North Long Beach, I also started tracking on mapmywalk. Unfortunately, I wasn’t using it when I was walking in Bixby so that area is blank. The completionist in me wants to re-walk Bixby so I can have that area filled in also. But after I walked North Long Beach, I looked at what I had on the map so far. For my own satisfaction, I wanted to fill in a big chunk of it. So I chose the area surrounding the airport. From there, I went back and forth between Westside and Heartwell Park, and filled in all the areas in between.
Before you were tracking, how did you know where you walked?
When I was walking Bixby, I just remembered which streets I had walked and filled it in manually on a map I had on photoshop. That’s why I have no electronic record for the first 5 months. After I switched to mapmywalk, it got easier to track. I also found out that you can import your maps into citystrides and it will show everywhere you’ve walked on mapmywalk, so I did that. But again, the citystride map is missing the Bixby area so I might need to go back and redo that.
Everyone was friendly, and everyone said hi.
What was your favorite street?
It’s hard to say. There were a lot of great streets. I guess my go-to answer would be along Ocean. I liked the Downtown area, Los Alamitos beach, and Bluff Park Area.
What was your least favorite area to walk?
The port was pretty awful. There was no one there and it was hard to get around. There weren’t sidewalks and really no pedestrian infrastructure. You just have this feeling that you aren’t supposed to be there. Also the lower west side, like west of the 710 and south of PCH. It was mostly industrial and it smells bad.
How many miles was it, and how did you find time to do all of this walking?
I don’t know the exact number but it’s around 1050 miles. To fit it in, I just started going for walks after work, 4-5 days a week. I get home around 4 so I had a decent chunk of time before the sun went down. Sometimes in the summer or on weekends I’d fit in a 3-4 hour walk if I had the time. I just fit it in where I could but it wasn’t like I was cancelling other things to walk.
I liked getting to know the little businesses here and there.
What was your favorite part of this experience?
I liked getting to know the little businesses here and there. There’s so many areas of Long Beach you never really hear about and it was nice to see everything.
What are some hidden areas that you enjoyed that people don’t usually think to walk?
Carroll Park was really pretty. I didn’t really how many cute craftsman bungalows there were. Also Willmore neighborhood. I liked all the really old houses.
You started in Bixby (or North Long Beach when you started mapping.) Where did you finish?
I crossed the finish line over by the Queen Mary!
You can read more about his journey on reddit and check out some photos from it below. All photos are property of Robb Briggs.
