Night Running

Sometimes while on travel for business one has to take an opportunity to do something a bit different. On Monday evening I participated in the Blacklist LA night run with a couple hundred people I did not know. Blacklist LA is a running group that meets on Monday evenings (and other times during the week for those training for upcoming races), highlighting street art and building community in the process. It is a very cool group and I am a bit jealous of my Angelino friends who have the opportunity to run with the Blacklist LA folks on a regular basis. In any case, I knew the group was meeting at LACMA's Urban Light on Monday evening, so I went to check it out.

Photo from Blacklist LA. 4 Jan 2015.

Photo from Blacklist LA. 4 Jan 2015.

Photo by Patrick Jones. Mural by Hijackart. La Brea & San Vicente in LA.

Photo by Patrick Jones. Urban Light at LACMA.

Photo by Blacklist LA. Urban Lights run 4 Jan 2015.

We did 2 miles to the corner of La Brea and San Vicente, where we saw a mural by street artist Hijack (Jacques Guetta, son of Thierry Guetta. Thierry is also known as Mr. Brainwash and the subject of the award-winning film Exit Through the Gift Shop). Then we ran back, for a very quick 4 miles total.

This was such a great experience, and I hope I have a chance to run with them again on my next visit to LA.

Chris Burden's Urban Light is a Los Angeles icon, using 202 restored cast iron street lamps. I had not seen this at night before, so that was a bonus. The artist recently died in May 2015, and it is worth reading this background article on how the piece became an LA landmark.