Is it hot at Hollywood Walk of Fame?

Walking the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the sun: which side of the street to take

The trick to a comfortable walk here is choosing your sidewalk. The Hollywood Walk of Fame runs along the pavement of Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, lined by storefronts and theater fronts, and the buildings on either side throw a moving band of shade across the sidewalk as the day turns. Learn to follow that band and a hot afternoon becomes tolerable; ignore it and you stand in full sun reading names off the stars.

How the shade moves

This is a street, so the shade behaves like street shade. On a July afternoon the sun is high, about 61 degrees up, and sitting in the west-southwest. Buildings on the south side of the boulevard cast their shadow across the sidewalk in the morning; as the afternoon wears on and the sun swings toward the west-southwest, the taller frontages throw shade onto the opposite walk. The practical result:

• In the morning, the shaded sidewalk is generally the one with the sun behind the buildings; cross to it and stay cool.
• Around midday the sun is nearly overhead and shade shrinks to thin strips at the base of the buildings.
• Through the afternoon the shaded side shifts as the sun moves west-southwest, so be willing to cross the street to follow it.

Because the exact shadow depends on which block and how tall the frontage is, the satellite shadow view is the cleanest way to check the shaded side for the hour you will be there.

Timing and heat

Los Angeles at street level runs warm but not extreme in summer. Walk-of-Fame afternoons reach about 82°F in July and peak near 89°F in August, cooling into the upper 70s in May and October. It is the standing-still-on-open-pavement part that gets you, not the raw temperature.

With sunrise around 5:53 AM and sunset near 8:05 PM, you have a wide, comfortable early window and a pleasant late one. Mornings are cooler, quieter, and easier for photos without crowds. Late afternoon toward evening softens the light and lets the taller buildings shade long stretches of sidewalk. The middle of the day is the part to break up with a stop indoors.

A comfortable plan

Do the Walk of Fame as a morning or evening stroll rather than a midday march. Start on whichever sidewalk the buildings are shading, cross the street when the shade crosses, and duck into a theater lobby or shop during the high-sun hours. Bring water and a hat for the open crosswalks and plaza corners, where no building blocks the sky. Handled this way, Hollywood's most-walked pavement stays comfortable through even a warm Los Angeles afternoon.