L.A.'s most popular gym is the city itself

New York Times bureau chief Jennifer Steinhauer has some fun with L.A.'s propensity for public exercise, writing in a Los Angeles Journal piece that "Its mild climate, the lack of parks in its more dense areas and the propensity here to treat fitness a bit like performance art combine to make Los Angeles a municipal force in the art of improvised exercise. From the wealthy neighborhoods of Brentwood, where a traffic median is used as a track, to tiny parks in low-income neighborhoods downtown, where picnic benches are used for bench presses, the city often looks like one giant outdoor gym." The stairs in Santa Monica get top billing.

Steinhauer checks out of Los Angeles this summer to cover Washington.

New York Times photo: J. Emilio Flores