BlacklistLA is a run group that discovers the city every Monday night at 10pm. We run to street art around Los Angeles while enjoying its sights and sounds. Together with our runners, BlacklistLA provides a safe and energetic environment where people feel empowered to discover the streets of this great city in a way that’s never been done before. While the initial idea was to discover street art i
n Los Angeles by riding bikes, Erik Valiente soon found that not as many people owned bikes in the city as he’d hoped. Instead, Erik and a group of friends set out to explore the only way they knew how, by hitting the pavement, on foot. Without a name, in September 2013, the group met for the first time at the LACMA Urban Lights. Street art is typically “blacklisted” from traditional galleries and often viewed as graffiti, or vandalism, no matter how beautiful. For that reason alone, the name BlacklistLA stuck. Since then, BlacklistLA has run around Downtown LA, Hollywood, Koreatown, Culver City, Echo Park and continues to explore many more areas in Los Angeles ripe for discovery. BlacklistLA has also started “MetroRun”, another opportunity for runners to explore the city, this time through Metro’s subway lines. From the beginning, community, art, alternative means of transportation and running have always been rooted in our DNA and for that, BlacklistLA has huge dreams that continue to fuel our passion to inspire lives. We are a group of badass runners who represent the next chapter of the city of Los Angeles. This is only the beginning.
