Walking New York

West Side Photos

2006-09-07T17:23:00.000-04:00

Even I know the answer to that one, and I went to public school (in Florida, no less). It's 12.

Over on the car-demolishing west side, a cab in ruins.

On Union Square East, somewhere a child is crying.

Block party in the teens between 9th and 10th Avenues.

Any time I see one of those crosswalk light boxes to put my camera on, I feel like a time lapse is mandatory.

Park Avenue Photos: From Top to Almost Bottom

2006-09-07T16:40:00.000-04:00

Accidentally caught some blurred birds in this shot of a big construction project on Park in the 30s.

Pershing Square, best restaurant in the city for car exhaust aficionados, on Park and 41st.

Somewhere under the Met Life building, the seemingly popular Beer Bar.

On Park in the 50s or 60s, I think.

The nicest parts of Park in the 70s and 80s have insanely well-manicured medians with tons of fresh flowers and plants. I don't understand why you still see squirrels struggling with gloom on the Lower East Side when nice space like this is available uptown, but perhaps it's a culture issue.

First sign this neighborhood is about to turn bad: a city bus maintenance warehouse on Park Avenue.

The Metro North comes above ground at about 96th Street, and everything takes a turn for the Harlem. Something about active train tracks just makes most areas seem more run down, even in the suburbs, and up here there's not only an elevated train, there's this huge dark brick wall dividing the north and south lanes on Park, and essentially also dividing scarier Spanish Harlem on the east from still semi-UES and Mount Sinai Hospital area on Madison. Here's a better look at the great wall:

And finally, at my next-to-last block, I spotted further proof that we're not in Kansas anymore:

You just don't see that in midtown.

It's Still August Somewhere

2006-09-07T16:03:00.000-04:00

Due to a crippling bout of late-summer laziness and a pretty not-time-consuming new job, I haven't gotten around to updating this in a while. I actually haven't done a long walk with camera in a couple weeks, but I have 2 from the end of August that I haven't put up. I'm going to combine them into one map post followed by 2 photo posts, then head out today for another walk downtown and hopefully not take 2 weeks to update it.

So for the future, know that if you don't see an update for a while, I haven't given up or abandoned the walking plan. There's a chance that the walking might take a several month hiatus beginning in the fall, but more on that if/when it happens (Am I moving? Youngest hip replacement surgery candidate ever? Limb donor? We'll find out). Whatever happens, I fully intend to walk every street in Manhattan as soon as I can. And now, let's go to the map...

The above walk all the way up Park Avenue was from August 22. I hadn't done much Upper East Side so decided to take out a whole avenue in one shot. I'm not a huge UES fan (something about a bunch of rich old white people seems so Westchester), but up through the 80s it's still pretty nice. I was surprised to find though that around the upper 90s, Park gets really gritty. I looked it up on Wikipedia when I got home and apparently above 96th is Spanish Harlem. You'll see the photos in the next post, but given that I have to walk every block on the east side between 96th and 110th, there will be a lot more photos coming if I survive.

Back on my home planet of downtown, I did this walk a few days later through Chelsea and over to Union Square. The only notably cool thing happening was a block party on 16th or 17th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues, where the two big apartment houses on either side of the street got together for a BBQ on a Saturday evening. Kids threw footballs in the street, they had picnic tables set up, and it felt like a small town, except for the giant apartment buildings and Chelsea Pier driving range nets towering in the background. At least 2 photo posts coming up next.

(Quiz: What 90s after-school TV show was referenced in this post?)

Automat Day

2006-08-29T13:17:00.000-04:00

The long-awaited St. Marks Automat (technical name: BAMN!) opened today and although I was considering trying Philly Slim's for lunch in an effort to stay up to date on city cheesesteak trends, I decided I should be part of BAMN's opening day. I was worried it might be very crowded, but it was actually completely empty, probably for 2 reasons. One, it's raining, and as opposed to the sit-down automats of the old days, this is definitely a walking food place. There are 3 stools at a counter, but they seemingly don't encourage people to hang around inside too long. The second problem is that nobody knows what an automat is anymore. Everyone I told about it had to look it up on Wikipedia. Lots of curious people walking by stopped to check it out though, so maybe it'll catch on.

The place itself is surprisingly small, featuring a wavy wall of tiny toaster ovens and change slots. There's also a counter where they sell drinks, fries, and burgers. The most expensive thing there was fries, which is weird, but everything else comes in snack sizes. I got a mac and cheese croquette, pizza dumplings, and chicken nuggets, coming out to $4.75 total, which is very impressive. The only other reasonable place around there to get lunch for that price is Chickpea, which has a falafel for about $4. Chipotle, 99 Miles to Philly, Blue Nine, and the late Roll-n-Roaster all cost about $10 for a normal lunch. I didn't get a drink at the automat and a cheesesteak with waffle fries and a soda would have been much more filling, but I was satisfied.

The place is more cool than it is tasty, as the food seems like something you could buy frozen and cook in your toaster. That's not to say it's bad, it's just nothing really special. Still, a dollar for 4 chicken nuggets and good bbq sauce is a great deal given that street hot dogs seem to cost $1.50 now. And that's basically who the automat will be competing with, street vendors, not surrounding restaurants. Anybody who wants a lunch or dinner with friends in the area will head to one of the sushi places or Paul's, a greasy but good burger place around the corner. But anybody walking around who wants a cheap snack, or the hundreds of people who stroll St. Marks drunk in the middle of the night, will find this place useful.

I wouldn't get the pizza dumplings again, as they were $2, which is expensive for 4 pizza rolls and tomato sauce (a slice at the horrible Ray's Pizza & Bagels on 3rd/St Marks is under $3 I think). For that $2, I could have got a teriyaki burger or chicken sandwich, grilled cheese ($1.50), or 2 desserts (custard puff things and Japanese bagels). A pork roll was a dollar too I think, as were hot dogs, which they didn't have out. Nuggets were dry but fine for a dollar and the bbq sauce was very good. Mac and cheese croquette was a must-try, as I'll go head to head with anyone on the city's best mac and cheese options (S'Mac=disappointment, fancy French restaurant Artisanal=best). The croquette was basically KFC mac and cheese inside of a larger mozzerella stick casing. It was egg roll sized, a few bites worth, and a solid deal at $1.75.

I hope the place survives, but have a feeling it'll be gone by Christmas and we'll go another few decades without an automat. BAMN is the first one in America since 1991, and probably the first new one to open since the 1960s, when fast food came along and made them obsolete. It's certainly a good alternative to street cart food and overall, a worthy addition to the late night East Village food lineup.

I don't have pics as I was going from work, but Gothamist is on the case.

Day 38 Photos - Fallen Retail

2006-08-22T15:43:00.000-04:00

Sometimes you cheer when a restaurant fails, especially when it's a Blimpies:

And sometimes it's a little sad, even though the place was overpriced and not that good, to know that in a couple months it'll just be another 42nd St. sneaker store:

The great Manhattan Bennigans experiment fails after less than a year:

Not exactly a Bennigans, but probably the saddest of all for fans of old New York (and Home Alone 2): The Plaza Hotel, which will reopen early in 2007 as a half-condo run by a hotel chain. It'll still be somewhat of a hotel, at least, but I remember hearing that they were auctioning off all the furniture and art, so what's going to be in it?

The final dead storefront is this prime retail space from 42nd St between 6th and 7th Avenues. Kind of a weird block, but I predict that just like Times Square is forever creeping up into the low 50s, touristy neon 42nd Street will keep edging east until it meets Grand Central sometime mid-century.

Day 38: There's Nothing Interesting About Midtown (5 miles)

2006-08-22T15:20:00.000-04:00

I've tricked some people into paying me to do work sometimes, so I've gotten pretty busy lately. This walk, weaving through the midtown avenues, is from last Thursday. I have today off, so I'm going to walk soon, but it might not get posted until a few days from now. The process of uploading the photos, shrinking them in Photoshop, and posting them just takes a while sometimes.

Guy with Einstein wig on 34th St

Mattress store Sleepys, which usually occupies the space above hot dog stores, has this amazing showroom on 5th Avenue, with flat screen TVs looping women jumping happily on mattresses, and fancy designs. I'm impressed, but 1-800-MATTRESS still seems easier.

If you're an insomniac drunken college kid or a cab driver, chances are you recognize this spot, on the southwest corner of 53rd and 6th, just outside the blue Hilton monolith. It's the home of Chicken and Rice, amazing and popular street food open from around 8pm to 4am. The guy there in this picture is not the real Chicken and Rice, just some other cart that fills the space during the day, so don't fall for it. You can read more about Chicken and Rice on Wikipedia, and make sure to vote for them in the Vendys, where they got ripped off by the Hallo Berlin guy last year. And if you're ever hungry in the middle of the night and don't mind waiting in line, head to 53rd and 6th.

Food-driven diatribes aside, I passed this on 5th Ave in midtown, a posterboard of the NY papers' coverage of the JonBenet Ramsey case for some kind of Asian news show.

On Sixth Ave in the 50s, an office building has two pretty cool fountains with these globe water-spritzing things.

Did anyone else know there was a subway stop at 53rd and Broadway? I took one of the blue trains up, expecting that after 50th I'd get off at Columbus Circle. But whatever train I was on turned towards Queens and the next stop was this one. Weird.

The only Hooters in Manhattan, on 56th and Broadway, awkwardly crammed in above a parking garage. I've never been there, but obviously want to.

Day 36 Photos - West Side and Midtown

2006-08-18T22:32:00.000-04:00

One of the scarier blocks I've seen in Manhattan, 47th between 11th and 12th. Very industrial and Bronxy with the auto shops.

Train tracks running north out of Penn Station, coming above ground around 47th

Down on 11th in Chelsea, a huge old warehouse probably destined for a fancy loft renovation. Classy European car dealership already in place across the street.

On the east side of 47th, the Trump building

Also on 11th, the Copacabana, complete with sparkly walls. Not what (or where) it used to be.

One of a surprising number of parks I passed in Hell's Kitchen

Who knew that mega-popular midtown lunch cart Daisy May's actually came from a little shack on 11th Avenue? The cart, covered in the link above by the pretty solid Midtown Lunch blog, serves BBQ sandwiches and glass jars of sweet tea (you get to keep the jar) to the midtown office building crowd, and although I've never had it, I always wanted to, if just for those free glass jars.

Couple of 11th Avenue birds

All the time I've spent in NY, and this is the first time I've ever seen the Javitz Center. It's nice and modern-looking from the outside, although the area around it is still pretty run-down, and if they have to bulldoze it to build a new Madison Square Garden or Shea Stadium or Penn Station or whatever the plan is this week, I'm all for it.

Day 36: Finishing 47th (6 miles)

2006-08-18T21:54:00.000-04:00

Walked over to 11th Avenue and up to 47th, then all the way across. I'd been wanting to do the 47th Street walk since I read an interview with one of the other guys in the NY Post article I was in, who said it was one of his favorite walks. It was interesting, for sure, seeing the change from dingy west side to Times Square to the UN area on the east, but I don't know why it's better than, say, 45th Street from river to river.

I did get stopped by some guy in Hell's Kitchen who told me I should take a picture of water falling from a building by the train tracks or something (there are train tracks running north that come in the outdoors around 47th, I assume from Penn Station). He said something about the water actually being from the ground but looking like it was from a building, because of the angle, but I never saw any water. First time I've actually been stopped, I think, and the guy wasn't threatening at all (he said he was a photographer too), just sort of quirky and possibly insane.

Photos from 11th Ave and along 47th coming next post, but for now, some strange ones...

Somewhere in midtown. I guess this has something to do with Haitian writer Edwidge Danticat's 1995 short story collection of the same name, although that seems like a really obscure reference. And even stranger, I've read that book and saw Danticat speak in college once about it. There also a Haitian restaurant uptown with the same name, which I believe is also influenced by the book, which itself is almost definitely influenced by some kind of Haitian folklore. Anyway, next time I pass it I'll look around more, and if you like dense but rich ethnic writing, check out Danticat.

In lighter news, I spotted a bunch of police horses (plorses?) downtown, including this one in front of a playground in Chelsea.

And outside the Flatiron Building, I ran into this insanely huge dog, which nearly tripped me crossing the intersection, and which may or may not be related to Hercules from The Sandlot.

Coming Soon

2006-08-18T02:51:00.000-04:00

I walked Tuesday and today and haven't had a chance to update them yet. Look for Tuesday's tomorrow, at least. But more importantly, see Snakes on a Plane. Right away.

Day 34 Photos - Changing Houston

2006-08-14T17:08:00.000-04:00

The most interesting part of the walk, aside from the chicken guy mentioned below, was seeing a part of the city still in the process of changing. Parts of Houston are modern and upscale, and parts are still the same as they were over 100 years ago. And it's not an east/west split. The very upscale Avalon Christie Place apartment building (below) is directly across the street from a very old, run-down kind of building (2nd below):

The stores and restaurants are changing too. Of course Katz's is still going strong on the east side of Houston. A little west of it on the same block is Russ & Daughters, a Russian Jewish delicacy store that has two cases when you walk in. On the left are all kinds of smoked fish and spreads. On the right are dozens of different kinds of dried fruit. Makes for an interesting smell, but it's really a cool place, and apparently one of the last of its kind on the Lower East Side:

And of course, it wouldn't be downtown New York without the required hipstery diner:

And finally, back west somewhere, the entrance to the Highline Building, where the highline begins:

Day 34: Houston Oddities [6 miles]

2006-08-14T16:36:00.000-04:00

Walked down the west side, then all the way across Houston and back up the East River. I wanted to cross back over on 22nd but gave up and took a bus back at the end. Still a 6 mile walk, which is decent.

Saw several weird things, but this was the weirdest. I was going to write a long story about this, but it's easier to just sum it up in a sentence. A deputy blogger from Tom Green's website was dragging a frozen chicken down the street and stopped me for an interview:

For the prize of 2nd Weirdest Thing, this oddly threatening no parking sign from the West Village:

Third place in Weirdness was this giant turf soccer/baseball/rugby field in the very-industrial-seeming Pier 54 at Houston and the Hudson River:

And a couple other runners-up in weirdness:

Crazy sky looking south from 23rd and 1st Avenue. The lovable weatherpsycho from this site would surely consider it evidence of a government-controlled weather conspiracy. I always did like Connery in The Avengers movie.

Not particularly weird, but still interesting: the 007 bus.

I consider this pretty weird, a giant factory with smokestacks and all in Manhattan. Here's another view of the smokestacks looking up one of the east Avenues:

Even More Day 30 Photos - Bowery

2006-08-10T01:15:00.000-04:00

There's nothing like a beautiful building covered in spray paint with boarded-up doors and windows. That's the Bowery I know and love and am afraid of.

The Bowery is a gold mine of old store signs, like walking through Forgetten New York, a great website that got me through many internship days last summer. One of my favorite things from them is this page on the KFC imitators around the city. One of the ripoffs, Kennedy Fried Chicken, got popular enough to warrant its own imitator, JFK Fried Chicken. And then even that was imitated by J.F. Kennedy Fried Chicken. There's also a Lincoln Fried Chicken, which may or may not be connected.

I've long talked of buying a slicer on eBay, but it hardly seems financially feasible, unless I started a sandwich shop out of my apartment. The sandwich shop idea is not that far fetched - I can make really good sandwiches, having eaten thousands in my lifetime, and I can buzz up whoever I want to the apartment, at any time. I think there might be a drug dealer living on my floor, because I saw something written in pencil on the garbage room door about it, but if there is, she's not doing a great in-house business, because it's quiet almost all the time. But anyway, my slicer dreams are probably still never going to happen, unless I just buy one for recreational use, which isn't realistic at this point either.

The Bowery Savings Bank

Dismembered Bowery bicycle (good name for a band - Bowery Bicycle at least)

CBGB on Bleecker and the Bowery, which will close next month for good. I'm sure there are more up to date and detailed sites covering the club's demise, but I'm too lazy to look for them. Check out the amazing list of bands who've played there on the same link, ranging from The Ramones and Lou Reed to Elvis Costello and They Might Be Giants.

Looking east on Houston from the Bowery, with that cool boarded-up park on the left (is that a giant Christmas tree?), and the travesty that is the Avalon Chrystie Place on the right. I say travesty because it's a fancy glass monstrosity amidst humble old brick apartment buildings. But it does have a 24-hour concierge and Olympic sized swimming pool. If I made a lot of money while I was still young and wanted a 1-bedroom in a neighborhood I liked, I'd probably look there, admittedly, just because I know it'd be nice. But my main goal is still to one day live in the giant brick towers on the southeast corner of Union Square. The building is perfectly located and seems amazing to me, despite its dorky name of Zeckendorf Towers. An NYT Real Estate listing has some photos of a 1-bedroom, which is going for only $875,000, plus around $1000 a month in combined maintenence and taxes. As crazy as it sounds, that's actually surprisingly low for a building on the park with a gym, pool, roof garden, courtyard, doorman, laundry, and garage. For now, I'll focus on not having to share a 1-bedroom in Brooklyn when my lease ends.

More Day 30 Photos - Really Chinatown

2006-08-10T00:50:00.000-04:00

When most people think of Chinatown, even New Yorkers, they probably think of the area around Centre Street just east of Broadway and south of Canal. That's where the most well known restaurants and dim sum places are, but Chinatown continues to expand in all directions, and it actually runs east really far. It's taken over all of Little Italy except a couple blocks of Mulberry to the north, and the east side, especially the Chatham Square area, make the Centre Street Chinatown look like something out of Epcot. The Bowery area south of Canal is the Chinatownest part of Chinatown I've ever seen, but I suspect it gets even more Chinatowny east of there. Here's a map to help illustrate this:

I've actually been on Essex Street recently for some pickles and it's much more Lower East Side than Chinatown, but Wikipedia says Chinatown continues to at least East Broadway, and so I'll stand behind my map. Today I walked in Really Chinatown. You can tell because instead of Chinese places with signs including English words, American places include Chinese lettering:

The real Chinese places make no attempt to translate their names into English. Even the street signs are subtitled:

This was all around the Chatham Square area, at Mott and the Bowery (below). There will be a lot more about this area when I walk it again, and quite a few Streets You've Never Heard Of.

Along the way, I also spotted a cool Confucius statue, which thankfully had English writing:

The statue stands outside of Confucius Plaza, a 44 story housing project built in the 70s. More about it, and Chinatown in general, in this very interesting and probably mostly true Wikipedia article.

Day 30 Photos - Brooklyn and the Bridge

2006-08-10T00:19:00.000-04:00

View down the street outside Empire Fulton Ferry Park (Maybe Brooklyn Bridge Park? Either way, the area on the water between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges).

The park has a pretty cool playground, with a big pirate ship type thing in the middle.

It also has really ridiculous modern art, like these two enormous severed feet (click for a better view).

On the way to the park from the subway, I walked down Washington Street, a very cool mix of old Brooklyn and the Manhattan Bridge.

A better look at the Manhattan Bridge

The park also has a makeshift beach, which is what these people are standing on. I've never seen anyone actually using it as a beach (it's the East River, come on), but it's a cool place to hang out.

This walkway under the Brooklyn Bridge seems to be where most of those late-night romantic walking movie scenes take place, although Roosevelt Island is also a possibility, and I've never seen the view from Jersey City.

Just north of the bridge is this walking pier with an extremely long seemingly-inspirational sentence etched into the railing. I was looking for MANHATTAN! to get in the foreground of the skyline, but I'll settle for cool inaccuracy.

Also on the pier is the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory. Since I love places with official-sounding names, I go there whenever I'm in the area. Tried peaches and cream flavor this time. Real peaches. I recommend it.

The bridge viewed from the pier, with the River Cafe at the bottom

Lower Manhattan from the bridge

Has anyone ever walked on the Brooklyn Bridge and not taken this exact picture?

The skyline downtown from the end of the bridge in Manhattan

For more Brooklyn, go here.

Day 30: Brooklyn to the Bowery (5.5 miles)

2006-08-09T23:14:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since the last long walk with photos, but I'm back. And since it was a nice day out, I decided to take the subway to Brooklyn, and to walk back over the Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge is not really a part of the project (you could argue that half of it should still count for Manhattan), but I love the area down there in Brooklyn and walking the bridge is always really great.

I tried to do it last month, but I walked from my apartment all the way down there, and was so exhausted by the time I got to the bridge entry in Manhattan, that I just turned around and went home. I didn't want to get stuck on there without water, or to end up in Brooklyn not knowing where the subway is. Also, that was one of those 100 degree days, and today was amazing, around 80 and not too humid. But just to be sure, I took the subway to High Street in Brooklyn and walked back, so I'd be the least tired in the Brooklyn stages of the walk.

I walked around Brooklyn between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, then over the bridge, up the Bowery, and crossing back over west at 20th Street. Tons of interesting stuff along the way, as well as the standard nice skyline/bridge photos from Brooklyn. I usually take about 70 pictures and end up with 10 good ones to post. Today I took about 250 and have 36 to post. So be ready.

Former Manhattan home of famous Brooklyn roast beefery Roll-n-Roaster, now some stupid 3rd Avenue bar. I remember walking around there over two years ago when Roll-n-Roaster was first open, and they were giving away little roast beef sandwiches on the street. I'm usually wary of partaking in free street roast beef, but I tried it and it was pretty solid. I went there once in a while when I lived in the neighborhood last summer, and although I kind of prefer Arby's, I will still miss its presence, and it's $5 12 inch pizzas. The original is still alive in Sheepshead Bay.

More disastrous changes in the neighborhood, a couple blocks south on 3rd. This used to be a pretty awesome Hollywood Video, which looks like it fell victim to some kind of chainsaw attack:

The Hollywood Video was actually really nicely designed inside. It had a walk of fame, old movie wallpaper, and a generally interesting feel as opposed to the sanitary bus-depot-like Blockbusters around the city.

I especially liked the MVP deal, which cost $10 a month and allowed for unlimited rentals, 3 at a time. The only differences between that and Netflix is that they still had return dates and late fees, and you couldn't rent some of the newest, biggest releases. I didn't care about the new movies, because it encouraged me to rent older stuff, which is good. And the late fees weren't a problem because I lived literally directly across the street in an NYU apartment building. When I found an apartment here, one of the first things I looked for was how close the nearest Hollywood Video was. Sadly, this was the last one in Manhattan. At least that Robots poster survived.

In less emotional news, here's a shot of Gramercy Park, where Irving Place magically turns into Lexington at 21st St. It's the city's last private park, meaning only residents of the surrounding buildings get a key to its gates (it's open to the public on Christmas, Yom Kippur, and Gramercy Day, which is different every year). The statue in the center is of Edwin Booth, a former Gramercy resident regarded as one of the best American stage actors ever (specifically the best Hamlet, I believe). He once saved Abraham Lincoln's son from getting hit by a train, and a couple years later, his brother John Wilkes Booth killed the president. I consider this far less disturbing than Roll-n-Roaster being shut down, but I admit that if I lived in the mid 1800s I probably would be more concerned with Lincoln.

Wrapping up this extremely long post (a few more to come tonight), I saw the lowest street sign ever, on Pearl Street between Park Row and the Bowery. Further evidence:

My forearm is not that freakishly huge in real life (I think).

Streets You've Never Heard Of: Lispenard Street Edition

2006-08-05T00:36:00.000-04:00

If you've ever gotten confused between West Broadway and Broadway and wandered around SoHo in a suit for 45 minutes worrying because you're really late for an interview and sweating because it's 5000 degrees but nevertheless buying one of those coconuts with the straws in it from Canal Street (overrated), then you might have been on Lispenard Street without knowing it. In more habitable parts of the city, 45th Street might be helpfully labeled West 45th or East 45th, just to remind stupid people where they are. But downtown, West Broadway, Broadway, and East Broadway are three different streets. Take note.

Lispenard runs the two blocks from West Broadway to Broadway just south of Canal Street. Crowd-wise, if Canal Street represented New York City, Lispenard would be Barrow, Alaska. I don't have any pictures of Canal yet, so imagine that classic picture of a dozen people in a phone booth, but spread out over about a mile of fish-smelling streets. I hate Canal Street, but somewhere inside of me, I think I'd miss it if it was gone. Like the movie North. Here's what Lispenard looks like:

Notice the theme of dangling fire escape ladders. This continued all the way up the street, at least 4 buildings in a row. I come from a place that when there's a fire, you walk out the front door with your dog and laptop and drive to a hotel to go back to sleep, so I guess I just don't understand these, but I can't really picture how they work. Do they just slam to the ground to make stairs? Is there a release button somewhere? What if someone's underneath it (like in the picture)?

Anyway, there's a post office garage on the block (possibly the back of the Canal Street Post Office, which is a pretty cool building if you're looking to get out of the air conditioning for a while), and the truck in the middle is some kind of super postal transport vehicle that I wish I took a better picture of.

Naturally, there were a lot of mail trucks parked on the block, which ruined the quiet residential feel, but I guess the dull roar of illegal commerce drifting down from Canal Street was already doing that.

Finally, at the Broadway end of Lispenard was another example of When Capitalism Attacks, a nice building that used to be the National City Bank of New York (click the photo and you should be able to see it etched in the building), but that's now home to a Payless Shoes. I guess it fits, because this building is right next to Canal Street, which is basically Payless Everything.

Day 25 - And Boy Are My Feet Tired (10 miles)

2006-08-05T00:14:00.000-04:00

No photos today, but by far my longest walk so far. I don't know if I'm going to count every street on my cumulative map because I'm not totally sure they're all right, but the big stretches I will probably mark down. Not much else to say without any photos, but I'm going to add another Streets You've Never Heard Of in a few minutes. Barring some disastrous rain, I'll do a long walk Monday with pictures. Tuesday I'm going to Providence to watch my mediocre thesis film in an even more mediocre film festival (but one which owns the impressive domain film-festival.org). I was thinking of taking pictures of the train ride and some places around Providence just for a change of scenery, but it means I have to carry my camera all day. And I think I need to take like a 3:30am train to get there for my primetime screening slot of 9:30am on a weekday morning, so I'll be lucky to even get on the right train that early, much less photograph it. Either way I'll bring the small camera, so maybe there will be something. Then, hopefully, Wednesday it's back to normal.

July's Best Pictures

2006-08-01T22:18:00.000-04:00

July will forever be remembered by me and very few other people as the month when it all began. I feel like this may be the best month for pictures I'll ever have, just because the sky is so nice over the summer, and around October we'll start with the several months of flat grayness.

My favorite posts from July were Finally Finding Bryan Murphy and Staten Island Special. My favorite pictures are below, with the date I took them and a link to the post they were in.

July 27

July 26

July 26

July 20

July 20

July 19

July 15

July 14

July 13

July 12

Humidiocy

2006-08-01T17:25:00.000-04:00

I did a short 2.5 mile walk yesterday, from midtown down to 23rd, but I didn't have my camera with me. And it might be a while before the next long walk with photos. It is unbelievably hot and humid today, and tomorrow will only get worse. Then Thursday it's supposed to start getting better, leading up to a reasonable weekend, but I've got my mom in town until Sunday, so I probably won't have time to do a walk with pictures.

I do have some clip show style posts planned, including a recap of the ten best pictures from July, two more Streets You've Never Heard Of that I've been saving, and a post about other walking adventures from around the world. That'll take up 4 of the 5 days that I'll probably be off. I may cover some new ground during these days, but unless it's significant, I probably won't count it if I can't get pictures.

There's always a chance of a late night walk in the next couple days with pictures, but for some reason it only seems to get hotter here at night, so it won't be much. My main concern right now is if it's possible to get ice cream delivered.

Day 20 Photos - Planes, Trains, Automobiles

2006-07-31T01:39:00.000-04:00

Aftermath of some kind of street fair on 25th Street

Madison in midtown

Also off Madison somewhere in the 40s or 50s, was this lobby to a building with two Mini Coopers in it (I think those are Mini Coopers, right?). It seemed open to the public, even at 11pm, but I was afraid of the guy on the phone and so I just took the pictures and left.

Street between Madison and Vanderbilt with Grand Central and the Chrysler Building in the background

The corner of 5th Avenue and 59th Street, outside FAO Schwartz, where there were still a decent amount of people. And yes, that's a giant white Apple logo in a David Blaine-like glass case.

This docking yard for the Long Island Rail Road was a cool find on the walk home along 10th. I forget exactly where it was, but I'd assume somewhere in the mid 30s, a couple blocks west of Penn Station. I used to pass some train yards on the Metro North ride to Westchester, and I always found them pretty interesting for some reason. Not as cool as the airplane graveyard, which I'm still convinced is somehow fake (too perfectly aligned for a junkyard, isn't it?), but fun nonetheless.

Day 20: Where'd Everybody Go? (5.5 miles)

2006-07-31T01:06:00.000-04:00

Admittedly, I took a strange path tonight, up Madison, over 57th, and back down 10th Avenue, but it was pretty quiet out there. Maybe it's a Sunday night thing, or maybe Lucky Louie has a big following amongst the Madison and 10th Avenue crowds, but the lack of anything happening was a surprise. I didn't even take that many pictures, and I managed to do 5.5 miles in well under 2 hours, which is a pretty good pace for me. I'm thinking about taking tomorrow off after doing 5 days in a row, but I'll see what else is going on. Let's do the photos:

Wavy street lights and cars

The big find of the day, and perhaps of the entire project so far: A McDonalds, in Manhattan, with a parking lot and a drive-thru. Unheard of, as far as I knew, but then I found this one on 34th St. and 10th Ave. Two floors, open 24 hours. I'm in my 2nd month of McDonalds Anonymous, but this is as close to a relapse as I've come. I don't see how anyone with a car in Manhattan could possibly resist giving up their spot or taking it out of a garage to drive to a place that's already on every corner. Brilliant but useless, just like those shoes with the lights in them.

Day 19 Photos - Around the Park

2006-07-30T02:52:00.000-04:00

The northeast corner of Central Park, at 110th Street and 5th Avenue, with a stuffed St. Bernard type thing under a tree.

On Central Park South, a fully dressed trojan warrior offering bike rides.

The Museum of the City of New York (which I didn't know existed) on 103rd and 5th

I'm starting to consider myself a semi-expert on street pretzels, and while I still believe that the guy on the southwest corner of 33rd and 6th has the best pretzels around, I think that today I may have found the worst. I took the subway to Columbus Circle to start the walk around the park, and stopped for a pretzel on 59th somewhere around 7th Avenue. The resulting pretzel was cold, bready, and undercooked, which is difficult to pull off, because they come cooked already. But in this case, I don't blame the pretzel distributor, because all the way around the park, the pretzel stands I saw looked like the one above, where the pretzels are housed in spacious glass cases, instead of on top of a heated mound of salt, or preferably, in a steamer drawer. I suspect that the vendors around the park are required to have nicer carts than the ones in other parts of the city, and so the pretzels sit in a cold little box all day. More sanitary? Yes. Tasty? No. I'll take my chances on the ugly germy ones downtown.

A cool castle-like courtyard to a building on 105th and Central Park West. I can't believe it's just a condo, but that's what the sign says. The Google satellite view is pretty interesting too.

Woman dressed like a cheap clown on 5th Avenue somewhere, and apparently not realizing it.

Around 107th Street on the east side of the park seems like a strange place for a knish stand, but the sign says it's been around since 1953.

Globe at Columbus Circle

The Constructionheim

Day 19: Outside Central Park (6.25 miles)

2006-07-29T23:26:00.000-04:00

Finally got around to doing the long-awaited Central Park loop this afternoon. I thought it'd be a pretty cool walk, but it was actually very frustrating to see a lot of interesting stuff in the park and to not be able to go in and look at it. And there weren't too many pictures to take, because it's really just apartments or museums all the way up both sides. Plus, the uneven stone path all the way up 5th Avenue really killed my feet, although I suspect that walking late last night and again this afternoon had something to do with that as well.

I was thinking along the way whether I would need to walk the parts of the streets that go through Central Park to officially consider Manhattan done. I did say I'd walk every street in Manhattan, although obviously the ones in the park that don't have sidewalks wouldn't count. The streets in there are really confusing, so what I've decided is this: I'll finish every street south of 110th not including anything in Central Park. Then, I'm going to do the whole park, streets, sidewalks, and all. This is assuming I can find a map of the sidewalks so I can actually keep track. And I'd need a total distance to figure out if this is even doable. If it's another 500 miles, I'd probably just do the streets. If it's 100 or 200 miles, I could probably handle it. And of course, when the Park is done, I'll start north of 110th. This is all a long way off, but if anybody knows the total distance of every sidewalk and street in Central Park, or knows where I could buy a really detailed map, post a comment here.

Okay, well, after a couple days of food coming first, let's try the 2nd most important thing: dogs. Sorry for the blurriness (they move quickly, the uptown dogs).

This rottweiler had some kind of weird boots on his two left legs that looked like wrestling shoes. I've been trying to think of how a dog could injure its two side legs, as opposed to just the front or just the back or all four, but it seems unlikely. I'd guess that it hurt one foot and walked strangely with only one boot on, so this helps balance it out somehow. Other explanations welcome.

After never seeing this kind of dog in my life, I think I've seen like 5 in the past 2 days. It looks like a cross between a greyhound and a sheep. Anyone know what breed this is? Here's another picture of the same one:

And now that I'm out of dog pictures, how about an Upper East Side squirrel?

Day 18 Photos - Food, St. Marks, Arches, Bikes

2006-07-29T02:25:00.000-04:00

Looking west on St. Marks from where it ends, at Avenue A (Tompkins Square Park)

Tattoo parlor on St. Marks with a name that seems like the result of a miscommunication with the sign company

More exciting times to come when this automat opens in August on St. Marks and 2nd Avenue. For those of you under 80 who haven't seen Dark City, an automat is a big wall of clear windows with little doors, like a stack of mini-dryers. And inside the dryer doors is various food, which according to this place's website, will include mac and cheese, grilled cheese, hot dogs, pizza, chicken strips, and more. You can only open the doors after putting change into a slot next to the one you want. Think of it as a big vending machine with fresher, hot food. My opinion on the idea is that it could work from a convenience standpoint, but there's no way that any of the individual food can be as good as other local options. Like maybe it'll have decent hot dogs, but I can't imagine it being as good as other East Village options. And maybe the mac and cheese will be okay, but there's S'Mac right down the street. And pizza? Come on. So while I'm willing to give it a try just to feel like an old movie character, I don't see it lasting very long. I think it took over the New York Milkshake Company's spot, which may sound disappointing, but the milkshakes were just mediocre and way overpriced. So bring on the change machines, I guess.

Speaking of cheap food, it was garbage day at the healthiest place on earth, the Taco Bell/Pizza Hut/Krispy Kreme on 14th and University Place.

The order of these pictures is working nicely. It's like, you're walking on St. Marks, see the automat, but it's not open yet, so you eat at the Taco Bell/Pizza Hut/Krispy Kreme, getting the combo #1 (2 tacos, 2 pizzas, 2 donuts), and you end up here, a small random graveyard on 21st St. around 6th Ave.

Breaking away from the food theme, I passed this really nice arched entranceway to a building on 5th Avenue around 19th Street.

Down 5th Avenue about 10 blocks is another arch, at the entrance to Washington Square Park.

This sign reminded me of the controversy surrounding the Neistat Brothers after their prank-gone-wrong on some horrible FOX NY morning show caused one of those nice plastic anchorwomen to freak out. The reason they were on the show is this video on how easy it is to steal a bike in New York.

Day 18: East Village and Some Parks (5 miles)

2006-07-29T01:56:00.000-04:00

The combined powers of rain, laziness, and errands resulted in no walk this afternoon, so after sitting around most of the day, I headed out at around 10pm. It's only the 2nd walk I've done at night since starting this, the other being Times Square from a couple days ago. As it starts getting dark earlier and assuming I one day become employed, there will be more nighttime pictures. But for now, the only other place besides Times Square I knew I had to do at night was St. Marks Place in the East Village.

So I walked a weird path down through Union Square, then Washington Square Park, through Astor Place, over to St. Marks, all the way to Tompkins Square Park, up Avenue B to 14th Street, and back over to the real world. Washington Square was surprisingly quiet, but Union Square was crowded and St. Marks of course was very busy. I walked east pretty far because I wanted to see at what point it would get a little scary around midnight. I walked to Avenue D at some point last summer during the day, and was a little worried there, so I made it as far as Avenue B tonight before turning north. Avenue B wasn't particularly bad, but was getting a little too abandoned for comfort.

As always, let's start with the food pictures. I lived on 3rd Avenue and 9th Street last summer, and one of the best late night snacks in the area was Chickpea, a falafel place open until 4am on weekends. I remember the hummus and pitas being solid, and the falafels being very good, although I can't eat falafels as often as I can eat, say, hamburgers. But anything that's like $3 and tastes reasonable is good enough in my book.

Chickpea is on 3rd Avenue between St. Marks and 9th, and as you can see here, the building is under construction, and so they've put a big stupid billboard that blocks the best part about Chickpea: the giant FALAFEL SHAWARMA painted on the side of the building. The restaurant itself also has a pretty cool industrial-style backlit Chickpea sign, visible here, but that's blocked by the scaffolding too.

Anyway, Chickpea is a recommended late night food source, and falafels make decent walking around food, so you can try to wander St. Marks while eating it. But the really big news of the day was something I stumbled upon completely by accident. While walking back on 14th Street, somewhere around 3rd Avenue, I saw this:

Another Chickpea! What?!! I thought maybe some place had just ripped off the Chickpea name, but the website on their sign is the same as the real St. Marks Chickpea. But, the website doesn't acknowledge the 14th Street one. And it's only like 5 blocks from the original. None of this makes any sense. All I know is that Chickpea is creeping closer to my neighborhood, and that's a good thing.

Streets You've Never Heard Of: Gay Street Edition

2006-07-28T00:43:00.000-04:00

Today's street from the heart of Greenwich Village probably had its name made fun of a lot as a kid, but is actually named after a former New York Tribune editor who lived there, according to the occasionally-reliable New York Times.

The street runs one block, from Waverly Place to Christopher Street, and is made up of townhouses and apartment buildings only, no stores or restaurants. The two places on either end were pretty cool, though.

From the corner of Gay and Waverly, this coffee shop type place with a very serious amount of air conditioning.

On the other end of the street, Geppetto's Toy Box, on the corner of Gay and Christopher.

Here are some pictures of the street, looking towards Waverly. It was nice and quiet, looking a little like Boston to me. I've only been to Boston once, so I think my real impression of it is coming from the end of War of the Worlds, when after all the alien monsters eat everybody, the pregnant lady and the feeble old people are perfectly fine in their nice quiet townhouse.

The biggest thing on the street was the entry to this apartment building:

The always vigilant New York Post spotted Philip Seymour Hoffman checking out a $4.8 million apartment on Gay Street in early June. No word on whether he bought it. That's really all The Internet has to say about Gay Street, and so here's to adding one more Google hit to the very short list.

Day 17 Photos - Buildings Old and New

2006-07-28T00:11:00.000-04:00

The best wine store ever on Lafayette on East 4th

Inside the amazing wine store. They also have a cool room, which is like a big walk-in fridge with glass walls so you can see the cold people inside. It's a cool cool room.

Really scary gargoyles outside a Chinese restaurant on Centre Street.

Some kind of public art piece at Lafayette and Kenmore Streets, on display there until early August. Eh, if I want trailers, I go here.

One of the nicest buildings in the city, in my opinion, which now houses a Bed Bath and Beyond, TJ Maxx, and Filene's Basement. Capitalism wins again, at 19th and 6th.

An amazingly old chemist/drug store from 1838. Sadly, it's pretty modern inside, but the sign is still cool.

Basically the opposite of the picture above, the super-modern glass building looming over the button at Astor Place. Sad.

Day 17: Canal Street and Back (5.25 miles)

2006-07-27T23:07:00.000-04:00

Covered a good chunk of 6th Avenue, then came back up Lafayette, walking through Chelsea, the Village, SoHo, Chinatown, the Lower East Side, NoHo, and Gramercy along the way. It was pretty gray and dreary out, so most of the better pictures I got were of actual locations. I also have three new additions to Streets You've Never Heard Of, one of which I'll post tonight. The other two I'll save for the next few days.

If it's nice out tomorrow, I'm going to do the loop around Central Park, which would be about 6 miles. If it's cloudy, I'll probably stay downtown. I'd like to have a big map that I update every day with my overall progress, but haven't figured out a way to do that online yet. If anybody has any suggestions, let me know. Because I'm overlapping some streets each walk, the mileage I'm listing is no longer reliable as a measurement of my progress. I have a foldout map that I'm marking with a Sharpe, but if anyone knows a way to get something like that on here, let me know. Other than that, nothing new to report, so on to the pictures.

First, as always, the food. The only line I remember from Elf is when Santa is warning Will Ferrell about the dangers of New York, saying "there are, like, thirty Ray's Pizzas. They all claim to be the original. But the real one's on 11th." So when I walked by a Ray's on 11th and 6th today, I had to get a picture.

Further research suggests that this was long-considered the first and most famous Ray's in the city, although technically the one on Prince Street started first (and later was used for mafia-run heroin distribution - fun!). There's also something about some people in London ordering pizza from the 11th Street one and coming to get it, but it's from Wikipedia, so who knows.

It may seem like family-farmed organically raised chow is completely at odds with Sparky's tagline: "All-American Food," but I am completely sold on this place just from one picture in a New York Times article from December. If you're not registered for the Times online, you may not be able to see the picture, but trust me, it's worth registering for.

Sparky's opened in November after a successful run in Manhattan's restaurant farm team (Brooklyn), offering burgers, grilled cheese, BLTs, and most importantly, hot dogs. With tons of cheap hot dog options down there like Crif Dogs, Dawgs on Park, and Underdogs, Sparky's would have to be pretty great to survive. The Times story also features two other recently opened Lower East Side hot dog places: Dash Dogs and BroomeDoggs. Sparky's offers Chicago hot dogs, which are surprisingly rare in Manhattan (and the versions that are around, like at Shake Shack, are nothing special), and really incredible looking jalapeno cheese fries (look at the picture, seriously).

I think I've had Dawgs on Park and Underdogs once or twice, but the only hot dog place down there I can really speak for is Crif Dogs on St. Marks around Avenue A, which I think is great. The hot dogs themselves are solid, especially entries from the Cholesterol Hall of Fame like the Good Morning Dog (hot dog wrapped in bacon, covered with a fried egg and cheese), but the real highlight is still the tater tots. Katz's also has excellent hot dogs, although in a very different atmosphere, obviously. So Sparky's seems worth a try, although BroomeDoggs' "fixin bar" seems promising as well. Basically, if you're drunk enough to really need a Lower East Side hot dog at 2am, try all three of these places, then post a comment right after, because you're not going to remember it in the morning.

More Day 16 Photos - Fun with Shutter Speed

2006-07-27T01:45:00.000-04:00

Because of all the lights around the city, my night photos were coming out blurred or too bright. I managed to figure out some decent manual settings to get better balanced pictures, but while I was at it, I figured I'd shoot some intentionally blurred ones too. In order for the backgrounds (buildings, signs) to stay still and the foregrounds (cars, people) to blur, I had to leave the camera shutter open for up to 20 seconds sometimes, meaning I'd have to rest the camera on something so it didn't move at all. So that's why some of these have skewed angles and weird poles in the foreground, but these are the five best. As always, click a photo to see it bigger.

Looking west on 35th and 8th

42nd and 7th

Ghosts

Looking north on 9th Ave at 14th Street

42nd Street again

Day 16 Photos - Times Square

2006-07-27T01:38:00.000-04:00

The answer to this question is, "No, because he is a large talking fictional giraffe."

42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues

Looking south from TRLville around 45th

McDonalds from the future on 42nd Street (notice the size of the crowd - this was around 11pm on a Wednesday night)

It seems like Times Square is the last place Spiderman would go, with the secrecy and all, but he's always there.

From the Last Thing You Want To See Outside Your Apartment Building file

Day 16: Not Much New (5 miles)

2006-07-27T01:08:00.000-04:00

Because today was officially Get Your Life Together Day, I didn't get around to a walk until tonight. But I had been wanting to get some nighttime pictures up here anyway, especially of Times Square. The route is kind of weird and covers a lot of streets I've already done, but I went that way because I wanted to stop by the screening of Jaws on Pier 54.

I'm not someone who throws around "favorite movie ever" loosely, and my top 5 list varies almost daily, depending how long I'm willing to argue with myself, but Jaws is always in there. (Right now I'd say Jaws, The Graduate, and Annie Hall are constantly in the top 5, and the other two spots rotate between a long list, including Goodfellas, Magnolia, Some Like It Hot, Airplane, Back to the Future, A Clockwork Orange, Vertigo, Good Will Hunting, Pulp Fiction, and Hoop Dreams.) Jaws was shown as part of the Bryant Park Film Series a summer or two ago, but I missed it, and so when I read on Gothamist at like 9pm tonight that RiverFlicks was showing it tonight on the pier, I basically ran out the door immediately. Here's really the only decent picture I could get:

The screen was pretty small (much smaller than Bryant Park) and the sound was low, but popcorn was free and the couple hundred people there seemed into it. I got there during the USS Indianapolis scene and stayed for Farewell and Adieu of course. Then I walked east on 14th, up 8th Avenue, and around Times Square for a while. Took a lot of pictures with long exposures to get a motion blur. More on that in a later post though.

I'll do Times Square pictures in a different post too, but for now, a couple from on the way there.

Agreed.

From 22nd and I think 9th Avenue. I don't know if the sarcasm is needed when referring to the quality of the food, but I'd still buy that pre-packaged sushi from there.

I love the Whopper as much as the next guy, but does America really need this right now?

Commenting on Comments

2006-07-25T18:26:00.000-04:00

The comment spam attack has officially begun after I was linked from Curbed. Basically what happens is that the site is flooded with comments, which include links to other sites that you don't want to click. I could make it so you have to log in to post a comment, but it's more fun to see what these crazy illiterate text-generating robots come up with. Here are my favorites so far.

"Super color scheme, I like it!"

"Hallo I absolutely adore your site. You have beautiful graphics I have ever seen."

"Nice colors. Keep up the good work. thnx!"

Each of these was posted several dozen times, along with lots of others. Apparently people are just loving the colors! I've been trying to remove the spam comments from all the posts on the front page, but in the archives there are still a lot left because I don't really have time to get to them all. I'll finish with the scariest one, which was this:

"Hi! Just want to say what a nice site. Bye, see you soon."

See you soon?!! I don't care if these people don't speak English and have no idea what that means. That's creepy.

I haven't had time for long walks with pictures the last couple days, so I'll start up the walking again tomorrow. Look for another big group of photos with a map tomorrow night. I figured it takes about 2-3 days to read that Finding Bryan Murphy post anyway.

Finally, I never mentioned that the blog was featured in the New York Post this Saturday. Nice article, also mentioning Gary and Caleb, whose sites are linked on the right. One of the other guys who I don't know mentioned 49th Street from river to river as being one of his favorite walks, so I'll check that out this week. Stay tuned.

Finally Finding Bryan Murphy

2006-07-22T12:43:00.000-04:00

This is going to be a very long story, with only a few pictures towards the end, so bear with me. I think it'll be good.

I was reading Time Out Magazine yesterday and saw this, an article about a random 30-something guy named Bryan Murphy, who was staging a Manhattan-wide event of epic Where's Waldo proportions. On Saturday, July 22, he was going to walk around Manhattan all day, and anyone who "found" him, would win something. The first person to find him after 9am would get a laptop. The last person to find him before 5pm would get an mp3 player. In between, he has t-shirts and Katz's salami.

Sounds random enough, but Bryan somehow got Yahoo to sponsor him, providing not only the laptop and mp3 player, but the ability to liveblog photos from his cell phone, providing clues to his whereabouts, creating a scavenger hunt of sorts with only one thing to find: the guy running it.

I've been a big fan of scavenger hunts since I was a little kid, and Manhattan has always seemed like the perfect place to stage one. I think there's still the opportunity to do something on a huge scale, involving multiple boroughs, teams, the subways, and requiring a really detailed knowledge of NYC, and/or great research abilities. Things like that have probably been done before too, but I've never been around for one. I also love the idea of random games in the city, like PacManhattan. I was discussing this with a friend from Brooklyn the other day, trying to think of ideas, and all of mine (neighborhood-wide tag = too ridiculous, Union Square water balloon fight = too messy) were coming up short. So I was excited to do this, which is like part game, part scavenger hunt, and a good way to see the city. The only problem was, it started at 9am.

My sleep schedule resembles that of an ER doctor/maniacal serial killer right now, so I regularly stay up until 5 or 6am. I knew that if I went to sleep early, I'd just lay there, and that if I actually fell asleep, there's no way I'd wake up to find this guy. So I decided to stay up all night.

I saw the latest movie I could find, Nacho Libre in Times Square at 12:15am. Got out around 2am, walked home, stopping to buy some nachos of course. Any time I see a movie referencing food in the slightest way, I have to eat that food right after. Super Size Me is one of the main reasons why I need to do this walk. So anyway, I ate some nachos, watched some TV, and around 5am, I was feeling tired, so I got into bed to try to sleep for 2 hours. Luckily I didn't fall asleep, because if I did, I would have not woken up for most of the day. So I laid there for an hour, got up around 6, and watched more TV. I left my apartment around 7am.

23rd Street at 7am on a Saturday is pretty awesome. I stepped on 2 metal spoons, saw a pretty nice looking belt, and watched birds pick apart a pile of delicious-looking unsliced panini bread. I took the subway up to 96th Street. Let me go back and explain my plan, before this turns into Memento. I would have done this even without prizes, but if I was going to try, I might as well go for the laptop, meaning I had to be the first one to find him after 9am. Obviously, I couldn't wait for the pictures to start loading, then go out to where he was. So I did what any amateur stalker would do - looked up his domain on WHOIS and found his address on the Upper East Side. My plan was to stake out the building starting around 7:30 and then to follow him after he left and to "find" him at exactly 9.

So I got to his block at about 7:45. I was highly suspicious of everyone else on the block. I just knew they were doing the same thing, and as soon as he'd come out, he'd be rushed by everyone. I felt like I was in a weird spy movie where you never know who's real and who's a spy, but none of these people had those twirly earplug things you can always tell by. So Bryan's apartment is on the same block as a Starbucks, so I got one of the $5 cups of caramel and ice. Tasty but kind of heavy for the morning after not sleeping. I brought a newspaper so I could hide behind it like The Beatles do in A Hard Day's Night, and fidgeted with my iPod and cell phone a lot.

One of the better ideas Bryan had was to wear a plain green shirt with Bryan on the front and Murphy on the back. Should avoid much confusion, although a Thomas Crown Affair scene with multiple Bryan Murphy shirts all over the city could have caused a major panic. So anyway, it quickly became clear to me at 7:45am on a Saturday that there was some kind of contest going on in the Upper East Side to see how many people could wear plain green shirts. Every single one I saw, I jumped a little. I saw a dog with a green collar on and I almost asked it about the laptop. Standing there and waiting was extremely tense, so I decided to relieve the tension by having four heart attacks in a row.

Around 8:15am, the door to the apartment opened and two people came out, one guy and one girl. The guy looked suspiciously like Bryan, but he was wearing a white shirt, and having only known about this for a day, I wasn't 100% sure it was him. But anyway, they walked right into the Starbucks, and I figured they'd get coffee to take back to the apartment before final preparations were made to leave at 9. As they walked from the apartment to Starbucks, I was across the street on the corner, standing there trying to blend in. Blending in was my third attempt at relieving the awkwardness of strolling up and down the same block dozens of times. First, I tried to look lost, but realized that nobody gets lost on the same quiet block for an hour and a half. Then I tried to do the waiting for a friend thing, but again, that only holds up for so long. So when they walked to Starbucks, I hid behind the newspaper, lowering it to peak at them, then raising it again. Then I hid behind a phone booth, thinking if they walked out with their coffee and I was still there, they'd get suspicious.

Remember that I've never spoken to Bryan, and don't know how he would feel about some guy finding out where he lives and waiting there all morning like some weird sniper/obsessed fan. For a brief moment I thought about just sitting on the sidewalk outside the apartment entrance, and when he walked out, looking up dramatically and saying "found you." That seemed too dark, even for me, and I also didn't want to ruin the contest. It's supposed to be walking around and finding him, not utilizing Internet-assisted stalking capabilities. So I debated walking up to him on the block when he came out, or following from afar for a while then going up right at 9. I was also afraid that if I got there before 9, he'd disqualify me, because that early "find" would be my only find allowed. Did I overthink the Find Bryan Murphy project? Enormously. But, a free laptop's a free laptop. I do my homework.

So after realizing that by hiding behind the Talladega Nights phone booth billboard, I wouldn't see them go back into the apartment, I started pacing up and down the block, reverting to previous lost/meeting someone excuses. I even walked by the Starbucks at one point but didn't want to look inside too carefully, for fear of being spotted. So I walked around some more, and after 15 minutes, I figured they must be having their coffee in there, so I took a chance and went in, ready to down another venti caramel syrup. But, much to my dismay, they had escaped. I realized immediately that they walked into the place with two big bags, and Bryan probably wasn't going to put on the green shirt until 9. They weren't going back to the apartment. I had kept pretty good surveillance on the Starbucks entrance, but then I noticed the 2nd door. One door opens onto Bryan's sidestreet, and the other onto the main avenue. They came in on the side street, and while I was walking up and down the block trying not to be noticed, they got out the avenue exit.

So I called previously mentioned Brooklyn friend and woke him up, and he loaded Bryan's page. This was around 8:40am. The picture of the Starbucks cup was already up, mocking me, and so were a few more, including one at 91st Street and 5th Avenue. I was still 10 minutes away from that. I punched myself in the face as best I could emotionally, and took off for the park. I was really worried along the way that if Bryan kept moving away from me, I could possibly never catch him all day. I could take a subway downtown and try to head him off, but I promised myself no cabs. Even if Bryan got into a cab, I would just have to take the subway to wherever they ended up. This comes despite the possibility for a fantastic "follow that cab and step on it" moment.

I entered the park at 90th Street, which I'm really unfamiliar with. On the east side, I rarely go above Dylan's Candy Bar in the low 60s, and although I've been to parts of the park up there, I stay mostly around 72nd. So I entered at 90th and Brooklyn friend described the trail Bryan was on, which I think I found. But I felt so far behind at that point that I took a higher road around the reservoir, which I hoped would let me see more and perhaps catch up quicker. Little did I know that walking clockwise around the reservoir is akin to pushing a hot dog cart up the wrong way of a one way street. I was bumped and crashed into by dozens of vicious joggers, and it wasn't until I finally elbowed an old man into the reservoir that I got the respect I deserved.

Anyway, the first Central Park experience of this morning was an insane blur. My friend on the phone described paths, fences, and lampposts, and I usually found the right path, but felt really far behind. Soon enough, the laptop was given away, somewhere around 9:05 I think on the east side of the park. This is the time when someone who's just in it for the Dell would give up and go home. But I've always been competitive, especially with myself, and I hate giving up on something, so I was determined to find the guy if it took all day.

At this point, I got so turned around in the park that I had absolutely no idea which direction I was heading. I'm not familiar with the buildings up there, so those that I could see didn't help, and usually I could only see trees anyway. I wandered into some kind of area called North End Walk or something, which was actually really amazing, very remote-seeming with a small waterfall and cool bridge to walk under. I was really afraid I would end up lost in the Ramble, which is a windy series of paths that no normal human could ever possibly know their way around. I've been lost in the Ramble for an hour before, and I couldn't afford that today, so I struggled for quite a while, trying to head south as much as I could. I spent probably an hour and a half in the park, trying to walk south after entering at 90th Street. When I finally asked a guy walking his dog which way 5th Avenue was, he told me, chuckled, and said, "Use the buildings." Great idea! Good thing no 2 buildings in upper Manhattan look similar and I'm familiar with the location of all of them. Anyway, when I got out of the park onto 5th, I expected to be in the 60s. I was at 104th Street. In all fairness, I think I hit a wormhole somewhere around the tennis courts, but still, that's crazy.

At this point, with hope of a laptop gone, Brooklyn friend went back to sleep. I was left alone. Luckily I called my mom, who called my aunt and uncle, who used to live in Westchester and know the city pretty well. They were surprisingly receptive to the idea of me staying up all night to follow a random guy I had never met or communicated with, and so they took over phone call duties. Bryan was posting a new picture every couple minutes, with some giving away his location blatantly, and some not. When I was at 104th and 5th, they called to say he was at the Met, down around 79th and 5th. It would have been really easy to take a cab, but I had vowed not to, and the subway was a 10 minute walk each way, plus waiting. I would have to walk.

After nearly stumbling off the planet in Central Park, I was exhausted, dirty from the gravel paths, covered in sweat, and incredibly thirsty. I would have killed someone for a bottle of water. I know people say that, but I really mean it. If there was a pleasant looking old lady reading Salinger on a bench with her adorable grandchildren playing behind her, and she had an unopened bottle of water next to her, she would not have survived. I'm kidding of course. I would have done it for an opened bottle too. Thankfully, I found an ice cream cart and bought a Gatorade, which I drank in a couple seconds while walking. When I got to the Guggenheim, I saw a young guy and girl sitting on a bench eating, and the guy wearing a plain green shirt. I came very close to approaching him, but as I got closer, I saw he didn't have the Bryan or the Murphy on it, and I saved myself potential embarrassment and pepper spray exposure, and kept on walking.

This is somewhere around 10 now, and as I get to the Met, I get a call that he's at a big fountain in Central Park. I know exactly where that is, and it's not far from the Met, so I walked down there. By the time I got there, he was gone of course, having posted a photo of the inside of the bathroom under the steps there. Central Park was pretty crowded today because of some kind of mini-marathon, possibly with the abstract title of Central Park Run. I tried to decide if Bryan would head into the crowd to be noticed, or away from it to save time, and I headed into it. I got a call in the middle of it saying he was at a walkway with benches and lampposts. Sounded like the mall, so I headed back and south. Right as I got to the end of it, I got another call saying he was on a busy street with wood posts along the side, just like the one right in front of me. I got excited, knowing this was the same street, 72nd I believe, but it runs both ways. In the picture, he was standing at a fork in the road, showing no indication which way he would go. As my aunt and uncle copied the picture from the website and tried to zoom in to see what the buildings were like, I knew I'd have to guess, and headed west, thinking he'd try to work Strawberry Fields into the walk.

The road ended up curving south anyway, which seemed fine because west was clearly an incorrect choice. My plan then was to get out of the park onto 59th Street and wait for him there. As I stood on 59th and 6th, the uncle called to say Bryan was by a big red LOVE sign, with the LO on one line and the VE on another. I know I've seen this about a million times, but couldn't think of where it is. Shockingly, the vendors didn't seem to know either, and joyously flaunted their unwillingness to learn the language of the people who buy things from them. I thought it was on Madison somewhere (aunt and uncle thought east side too and there was no median, so not Park). I walked 59th over to Madison, the Madison down a few blocks, but found nothing. Then they called to say he was back in the park. Disaster. I quickly decided not to follow him back into the crazy sociological experiment that is the Central Park sidewalk system, and just to wait in midtown. By this time, it was clear he was heading downtown.

I was well past 2 straight hours of intense, fast-paced walking, and my usually light gray shirt was completely dark with sweat. I had long since given up the iPod and I didn't even take any pictures with the small camera I brought, because I was afraid I'd lose time. So I walked back over to 5th Avenue and then down to about 45th Street. I found an empty bench there just to rest my feet, but right as I sat down, I got another call, saying he was at Radio City Music Hall. I crossed 45th to 6th and walked up to Radio City, around 51st Street, but he was long gone, and had taken another picture already at a place with white benches out front. Looking at it later, I know it was Rockefeller Center, and I even guessed on the phone, but aunt and uncle said no, it looks like more of a terrace outside an office building. So I walked back over to 5th, feeling pretty desperate by now. Along the way, while on the phone, I passed a guy who had made his own green Bryan Murphy shirt. We passed too quickly for me to stop him, and I didn't want to anyway (this was basically a race, mind you, no helping allowed). I thought that Bryan might be really popular in midtown, and maybe this was going to be really big. The homemade shirt was funny though, and in retrospect, I probably should have followed the guy.

My aunt then called to say he'd taken a couple more pictures, but she couldn't really make any locations out of them. She said she'd been reading his site, including the part where he describes the popular locations he'd like to hit, which are as specific as Herald Square and as vague as SoHo. She named all the places on the list that he hadn't hit yet, and it became clear he was heading for 42nd Street: Grand Central, Bryant Park, and Times Square were all on there. I was on 5th walking south, so I decided to head to Bryant Park, which is in the middle, with the most wide open, easily viewed space. It also always has open seats, which was a benefit, because my feet were killing me.

I got to 42nd and 5th, and aunt and uncle called to say he was at the post office on 33rd and 8th. I almost hit scavenger hunt rock bottom at that point, but then they said it could also be the public library (both buildings have similar columns-and-stone architecture). The library was right in front of me, so it sounded like maybe I had finally caught up with him. I crossed the street into Bryant Park and walked in a square around it, looking for him. The park was pretty empty and I saw nothing, and as I headed around the park onto 6th to start walking towards Times Square, my uncle called and said he recognized a building and that he had just uploaded a picture from 42nd and 6th. I was on 41st and 6th, walking their way. I was on the phone with my aunt and uncle when I spotted Bryan and his entourage - the Starbucks-escape lady, three cameramen, and the guy I had seen earlier with the makeshift green Bryan Murphy shirt.

Bryan was arranging for a picture so I waited for a second while he took it, then he turned to me and said something like, "You were at my apartment this morning, weren't you?" I said, "You're a tough man to find" and launched into the story. He was really excited by all of it, and didn't seem to mind the weird looking up of his address. Actually, he said he'd been prepared for it, and that's why he looked at me as they went into Starbucks. But since I didn't follow, he figured I was just standing around.

So we shook hands, took a picture for his site, and I continued the story of how they lost me at Starbucks and the great chase through Central Park, with the help from Brooklyn friend and aunt and uncle. I told him about this site and how I loved scavenger hunts and thought his was a great idea. He told me that had I just walked up to him when they went into Starbucks, I could have followed him until 9, and if I was the only one there, which I would have been, I would have gotten the laptop. So basically I totally blew the stake-out, and let them duck out a back door while I was covering my tracks. Amateur stuff, clearly not the work of someone who's seen hundreds of cop movies, and a true disappointment to myself.

Bryan was so impressed by the 4 hour ordeal (I got off the subway near his apartment at 7:30, started following him at 8:30, and finally found him in Bryant Park at 11:30) that he tried to take back the salami he had just awarded the homemade t-shirt guy to give to me. I said no thanks (although I really would have loved that salami - Katzs, amazing), because the t-shirt guy probably put more time into the overall event than I did, and was really excited and brought his laptop to carry around with them to see how the site was looking. So to make up for it, I got an "I Found Bryan Murphy!" t-shirt and a finger puppet that comes complete with a story. Starbucks-escape lady was very nice and bought me a water (1 liter of Fiji, the fancy stuff) because I looked and was completely exhausted. Bryan told me the story of the finger puppet. Earlier that morning, he had stopped to give one of his t-shirts to a homeless guy. Since this was presumably an Upper East Side homeless guy, the man had a bag full of cash. So to show his gratefulness for the shirt, he gave Bryan and crew 3 dollars. I don't know if the guy is aware of the prices of those I Love NY shirts on Canal Street, but he was being generous, and it's a nice quality shirt anyway, not made of butcher paper like the Canal Street ones are.

So later in the morning, Bryan spent one of the homeless guy's dollars on a finger puppet from a stand somewhere, which was supposed to look like Shrek. Here's a photo from Bryan's site:

Bryan also tried to give me the remaining 2 dollars from the homeless guy, but I turned him down. And homemade t-shirt guy generously offered half the salami, but I said no to that too, he had earned it. So what did I win? A t-shirt, a finger puppet, and a bottle of water. No laptop, no mp3 player, no salami. But as I sit here a couple hours later writing this, getting the feeling back in my feet, I still feel really satisfied, like I accomplished something. Bryan said I was the 5th or 6th person who had found him. I think when he gets down to the Village and SoHo and it gets into the afternoon, he'll be spotted a lot more (although it started raining right after I left, so that might slow things down). At 7pm he'll have a post-party at a bar somewhere (more details at his site - might be a few pages deep after all the photo posts).

My #1 overall feeling from all this is complete physical exhaustion, and the weather while I was out was great. The combination of no sleep and not having eaten anything since the post-Nacho Libre nachos started getting to me towards the end, but I ended up doing what was definitely my longest walk yet. I don't know yet if I'm going to count it for the total walk, because I can't even remember exactly where I went, but I might count parts of it, like 5th Avenue up near the park. Here's a very very rough idea of where I walked today, with paths through the reservoir for your amusement:

I couldn't duplicate how lost I got in Central Park, so I think it's safe to say I walked around 10-12 miles total. Bryan will do a lot more today, although not at such a crazy pace. I feel good about the whole experience, like I got out and did something I can tell (some) people about. I felt very nerdy, standing in Bryant Park in front of the camera people, talking about how I spent 4 hours finding this guy I don't know just because I liked the idea, and also how I found his address online and stayed up all night to try to win. It seems like a crazy way to waste a Saturday morning, but compared to how I usually waste Saturday mornings - by sleeping through them - this was a lot more fun and exciting.

I think I might be on ABC World News Tonight on Monday night, because a cameraman was there for that, and shot a lot with me in it. I was so tired from the walk and from not sleeping that I have absolutely no idea what I said, and I'm sure I'll look really stupid. Luckily nobody I know watches anything but Entourage and Full House, so I'll probably never hear about it. And I'll find a good place in my apartment for the finger puppet, which is a very solid momento of one of the crazier mornings of my life. I'm up for Find Bryan Murphy being a monthly event, or other people staging similar things. Or an all out 5 borough scavenger hunt. I could do it again tomorrow, in fact, if I wake up by then.

City in the Water

2006-07-21T16:46:00.000-04:00

The vigilant weatherfolk at Gothamist explain why it feels hot after it rains, or something. More importantly, it looks like thunderstorms all weekend, and while I think I'll be able to get a few walks in, they'll probably be short and without pictures.

I wanted to do another Streets You've Never Heard Of today but I need my good camera to do that, and I'm not taking it out in any kind of rain. The picture above is from the bad camera I bought for rainy days and casual walking around. Quite a difference.

Anyway, it looks like it'll be nice during the week, then rainy again next weekend, so I'll just do the best I can. I have some other things to talk about, so there probably will be daily updates still, even if I don't walk. I'm also trying to figure out a way to get a map showing my total progress so far, but the Google Maps Pedometer site I use isn't set up for it (everything has to be connected in single lines). I'm keeping my own fold out map updated with a Sharpe, so I could always just take a picture of that, but I'm hoping for something more precise. So far I think I've covered about 40 miles worth of streets, which is over 10% of the total goal, and that's in just over a week. But I've started out fast, and as the weather gets rainier, then hotter, then colder, there will be more and more 2 or 3 mile walks, and less and less of the 6 mile ones. Still, I might as well walk as much as I can in the summer and the fall, because I've never spent more than a week at a time in winter weather (I'm from Florida), and I still don't know how to use a radiator, so who knows if I'll even survive this. And because I think New York looks great in the snow, I'll have to build (buy) some kind of protective casing (ziploc bag) for my camera to keep up with the photos through the winter.

And just to remind us of nicer times weather-wise, here are a couple pictures that didn't make it into yesterday's posts:

Staten Island Special

2006-07-21T01:21:00.000-04:00

That title sounds like an order at a diner or something gross off of Urban Dictionary, doesn't it? Oh well.

I was reading something a couple weeks ago about the Staten Island Ferry, and I was impressed to learn that it runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and is always free. Even in the City That Never Sleeps Except In The Late Summer When Everyone Goes To The Hamptons, that's pretty cool. I don't know if I'm ready to meet the kind of people who ride the Staten Island Ferry at 3am yet, so I got on tonight around 8pm to check it out and take some pictures...

The entry to the station in Battery Park is pretty nice, with big old school neon lettering that reminds me of Spiderman for some reason, but I can't think of why. Something with the ride at Islands of Adventure, I think.

The inside of the ferry station in Manhattan feels like a small airport terminal, with bright lights, lots of seating, and some cafes. I was surprised to see no line or any semblance of order, and the reason for that is because the ships can hold up to 6,000 people, and since I'd imagine there are never that many people wanting to get to Staten Island, they're never full. So everyone just crowds around the door until the ferry comes.

The first ship, the Andrew J. Barberi was nicely designed with lots of seating and three outside decks. There were no views from the front or back of the ship, unless they were on the first deck and I missed them. So I had to try to take pictures from the sides only, meaning my Manhattan skyline pictures didn't come out so great, but my Statue of Liberty ones did.

I really abused my camera as we passed the Statue of Liberty with the sun setting in the background, snapping a ton of pictures in a short time at different shutter speeds. This is the one I liked the best.

It might seem like the station in Manhattan would be nice and the one in Staten Island old, or perhaps full of the city's garbage and corrupt sanitation officials, but they're actually both nice, and the Staten Island one is really futuristic and crazy. It also connects to the Staten Island Railroad, which I found out uses the very same turnstile system the subways in Manhattan do. I don't know why I was surprised by that, because it's like a couple miles away, but it feels like going to another country.

A far away view of Manhattan from outside the station in Staten Island. The stadium for the Staten Island Yankees is right behind there, and looks small but nice. No game tonight, so it was quiet in the area. I'll go back eventually either when it's totally light or totally dark out with a longer lens to get some better pictures of the skyline. Everything was sort of hazy over the water tonight, and the painstaking 4 hour process of day turning to night made it hard to get any decent pictures in. How come everywhere else I've lived, the sun sets and then it's dark out, but in New York, the sun sets, then it stays light for hours?

Back in the station in Staten Island, waiting for the ferry. It was insanely cold in there, and if it wasn't a 25 minute trip each way, it would be the perfect summer sanctuary. The most impressive thing was a map built into the tile on the floor, showing the route of the ferry from Manhattan to Staten Island, with Liberty, Ellis, and Governor's Island also marked. I'm going to look more into Governor's Island, because it's really mysterious-seeming, and I think there's a ferry there for the summer only. And even then, just to a small part of it.

My least blurred shot of the lower Manhattan skyline at night. The 1 train goes right into the ferry terminal, and although it stops about a hundred times between there and midtown (Franklin Street? Sheridan Square? 14th, 18th, and 23rd? Are you serious?), it makes a trip to Staten Island pretty easy. Combine that with the American Indian Museum I mentioned in the last post (a couple blocks from the ferry station), and you've got yourself a free afternoon of lower Manhattan fun. Then immediately find a Starbucks and start wasting money again.

Day 9 Photos - Indians, Peanut Butter, Portholes, and Firetrucks

2006-07-21T00:35:00.000-04:00

Trying to get some actual locations in there today, instead of just nice photos.

I got pretty scared when I passed this place, called Peanut Butter and Jane, because I thought that Peanut Butter & Co. might have a competitor I didn't know about. But upon closer inspection, it just looked like some weird hippie clothing store. This site says it offers "vintage baby and toddler clothes," which ranks among the worst ideas I've ever heard, but vintage clothing in general is cool and it seems like a fun little place around Hudson and 12th.

Greenwich meets West Broadway just north of the WTC site, and there's this giant shiny red ball sculpture that I also included a picture of here when I walked West Broadway. When I took that picture on Sunday, there was some crazy-looking female bodybuilder posing for a dude with a video camera. After today, I can say it's official that the shiny red ball sculpture attracts weird events, because this guy was riding his bike through the water, and several other people were standing awestruck and staring, including the very impressed little kid on the right. Appropriately, it's right outside some big federal building.

I think this was at Hudson and Reade, just outside Reade Park, and although the lights were on, it seemed like some kind of training event, not an actual emergency. No smoke, no sense of urgency, and most telling, no gawking crowd of onlookers.

Nice little building on 9th around 22nd Street, with that suburban attic-window feel.

The Maritime Hotel on 9th and 16th Street. Portholes. Lots of portholes.

The elusive Chelsea Market also on 9th and maybe 16th. The only sign outside is blended so perfectly into the building that it's invisible, and even the website doesn't make finding the place easy. You'd think the map, about, or contact sections would tell you how to get there, but you actually have to go the about section, then click the tiny link in the upper right. Anyway, finding it is half the fun, and I'll get more in depth on what's inside (cookies, lobster, and possibly Rachel Ray) when I walk 15th and 16th Streets.

The National Museum of the American Indian occupies this cool building near Battery Park, and since it's part of the Smithsonian, admission is free. The red, white, and blue buffalo on the lower right of the website is pretty awesome too.

Day 9: 99% Done with 9th Avenue (4 miles)

2006-07-20T23:51:00.000-04:00

Short walk today because once I got down to Battery Park, I decided to get on the Staten Island Ferry (I have nothing to do. Somebody give me a job). I'd never been to Staten Island before, and although I just walked around for a few minutes, I got some nice pictures on the ferry that I'll put up in a separate post.

So I walked all the way down 9th Avenue, which splits into Greenwich and Hudson (I took Hudson). At the World Trade Center site I got onto Church St, which becomes Trinity Place, and took that down to the ferry station. Nice walk. I need to walk 9th Avenue between 22nd and 25th Streets, then I'm done with it. I think my plan now is to finish up the avenues as best I can, then focus on the streets and the craziness downtown.

I actually bothered to look at a map of Manhattan today and the area above 110th Street really isn't that much. I'm going to cover south of 110th first, like I said I would, but I definitely plan to do all of Manhattan eventually. I'll probably do south of 110th, then try to do every sidewalk in Central Park (which will be more confusing than it is long), and then start north of 110th. I'm also definitely going to do Roosevelt Island, which is technically part of Manhattan I think, and I'll take the ferries to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty if they're still running. Plus, I'll promise pictures of Manhattan from Jersey City and Brooklyn. None of it technically counts as part of the walk (except Roosevelt Island), but they're nice views and if I'm photographing every part of Manhattan, I might as well get every view of it too. But anyway, all that is a long way off, and we'll how well this works in the winter and after I get a job. I spent four hours today on the walk and the ferry to Staten Island, and I'm not going to have that kind of time forever.

Moving on. The blog was linked from Curbed yesterday, and in a comment below the post somebody mentioned this site, which is the same idea, actually completed, and organized into a great site. I also got an email from the guy who did the walk, Caleb Smith, wishing me well. I'm not surprised it's been done before, and it's cool to see it laid out into a website like that. He made his final block one right outside the Empire State Building and then went up to the roof to take some final pictures, which is a great idea. As this progresses, I'll start taking some suggestions for where to make my final block. It might be cool for it to be random, because that's kind of the whole point of the walk, but I do like the Empire State Building idea too. And like they said on Curbed, let's hope somebody steps up for Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island.

More Day 8 Photos - 9th Ave Through the 30s, 40s, and 50s

2006-07-20T03:15:00.000-04:00

The best laundromat ever, from 55th and 9th Ave. It's like a wonderland of laundry amenities - TVs set in the walls, Internet access. If they had air conditioning, I would move in.

A nice enclosed garden on 25th just east of 9th. I don't know what it's for, but everyone loves some flowers.

At 42nd and 9th, a cool old hotel sign for what seems like a still-functioning hotel. I'll get the name when I walk 42nd and do some further research.

Two good things. Why not combine them? Next up: Sushi and Cream Puffs

Prison grade razor wire surrounding the back of the Time Warner Center (or the apartments on the very end of the block).

Imagine telling your friends you're a postal policeman. "I've got a siren and everything." Then they see you on driving around one day in this.

The most rusted sign I've seen so far, which alternates between wines and liquors. The store didn't look so bad. I think somewhere, there's something more rusted and disgusting looking in the city, and I'm going to find it.

The Time Warner Center as viewed from 58th and 9th.

Looking east on 33rd, past the incredible post office building, which is unfortunately under construction right now.

Day 8 Photos - The 70s and Above

2006-07-19T21:24:00.000-04:00

A castle-type building in Theodore Roosevelt Park on Columbus and 79th Street. I didn't even know this park existed, and it seems really nice. More investigation to follow when I walk the streets up there.

On Columbus around 96th or so, there was a series of big tenement buildings (is tenement politically correct? No offense, tenement dwellers), which you can see here all look the same. They seemed to be in decent shape and had some nice green space, but the surrounding area was more rundown than Broadway is in that area.

This was somewhere around there as well.

I have no recollection of where this was, but it was a big fenced in basketball court and playground behind a school with a nice tiled mural at one end.

A Kosher market on Broadway in the 80s or 90s with Hanukkah-colored baskets.

I guess this is a glasses store, but I have no idea why there were at least a dozen handsaws in the window wearing glasses. My guess is that the store has a pun name like "Sawglass" and they're sticking with that for the design too, but I didn't look up and check.

Day 8: Hangman Path (6.25 miles)

2006-07-19T20:17:00.000-04:00

Made it all the way to 110th for the first time today by walking up 9th Ave/Columbus. Good walk, because I've never seen most of the stuff along the way, aside from Lincoln Center and some of midtown. And because I walked back down Broadway from 110th to 86th, I'm done with Broadway except for the stretch between 50th and 86th. I could have made it to 50th today, but there's a lot to see in there and I wanted to be a little less tired so I could get better pictures.

Here's a shot from the boat sculpture outside Lincoln Center:

Much more impressive as a miracle of knot-tying than as art to me, but I like it nonetheless. A block north, what is either Alice Tully Hall or Julliard is under some fairly significant construction (click on any photo for a bigger version):

Lots more photos coming in the next couple posts. Let's end this one on the copyright infringement of the day, from Broadway and somewhere in the 90s:

How Hot Is It? Fun with Exaggeration

2006-07-18T21:55:00.000-04:00

Walked like three blocks all day today, to buy some peaches. Yesterday I walked Broadway from 50th to 23rd, which I'm not going to make a map for. Tomorrow the heat goes away and normal walking begins again.

I was looking at this webcam of Times Square today, and its temperature readout reminded me just how much I love some good old fashioned American exaggeration. Although I missed my chance to get a screenshot of it, when I looked at this at about 2pm today, it said the "feels like" temperature in Times Square was 109.6 degrees. Fahrenheit too, not even Kelvin. Anyway, for the sake of comparison, I took a screenshot of it around 9:30pm, and another of the mildly more reputable weather.com. Results below.

You may have to click the Earthcam one to see, but I'll summarize: Earthcam says it feels like 97.2 degrees. Weather.com says 88. They're pretty close on the humidity, wind, and actual temperature, so a 10 degree difference in the "feels like" category is a big deal. Is it possible that weather.com, the number one resource for people who want to feel sorry for themselves, is holding out on us? Neither site seems to offer an explanation of how the "feels like" is determined, although I'll assume it's buried in the FAQ of weather.com somewhere. It's just that it's 97 degrees out and I'm too hot to look.

Streets You've Never Heard Of: Albany Street Edition

2006-07-17T16:08:00.000-04:00

I have a feeling almost all of the streets I pick for the Streets You've Never Heard Of posts will come from this area. I've never heard of Albany Street in my life, and I lived in the Financial District for a summer. You can click the maps above to get a better idea of where it's at, and although there are smaller streets down there (Albany runs a few blocks), this one seemed like a good start.

Albany runs from the Esplanade along the Hudson in Battery Park City to Greenwich Street, south of the World Trade Center site.

This is the view from the sidewalk along the water facing east onto Albany. The strange ceramic Stonehenge thing didn't have a plaque anywhere that I could see.

South End is probably not that familiar a street either, but knowing West End and East End, it's not as surprising as some of the other streets down there: Thames St, Maiden Lane, Coenties Alley, Marketfield Street, etc.

The street is basically all modern, nice apartment buildings, with at least one restaurant at the intersection at South End.

I wandered into an alley behind one of the buildings to look around, and found amongst the garbage this pile of fairly impressive books. I was too afraid to take anything from such an upscale area, but anyone who's more daring might want to look on the north side of Albany Street just west of South End.

Summer in the City

2006-07-17T15:49:00.000-04:00

For fear of spontaneously combusting in midtown, I'm cutting back on the walks today and tomorrow. The heat index in Manhattan right now is 102 degrees (heat index is like the opposite of wind chill, it's the temperature it feels like given the actual temperature and the humidity). Tomorrow will be about the same, then it's back into the 80's for the next week.

I will probably chip away at a few blocks around here today and tomorrow, and maybe do a shorter walk at night when it plummets to a frigid 90. It's not that I'm walking too far, because 5 miles isn't that long, but with the time it takes to stop and get good pictures, a 5 mile walk takes about 2 hours. The 7 1/2 mile walk I did the other day without a camera took about 2 1/2 hours. With a camera it would have taken over 3. So that amount of time is just too long to be out in this kind of heat.

I have a bunch of pictures saved up so I'll still post some things the next couple days, and I'll recap the short distances I do walk (probably without photos or maps). Normal walking will resume on Wednesday.

Day 5 Photos - Tribeca and the WTC Site

2006-07-16T23:42:00.000-04:00

Line for a community pool somewhere on 7th Avenue

Daily dose of irony: Little Man sign hovering over the Tribeca Film Festival headquarters

Overlooking Ground Zero

Messages on a post no bills sign (bottom left: "My Dear NY...miss you dearly...you'll get through this...Love ya")

Lobby of the World Financial Center on the west side of the site, which also has a pretty impressive memorial set up

Day 5 Photos - Fulton Street Stuff

2006-07-16T22:01:00.000-04:00

Semi-secret TKTS booth (half-priced theatre tickets, with usually a couple hours shorter line than the highly-visible Times Square one)

How can the same street intersect itself? I must be at the nexus of the universe!

Street performer at South Street Seaport

Retired street clock on Water and John Streets (famous for a cameo in Adam Sandler epic Big Daddy)

Best bookstore in the city, without a doubt, and also one of the most uncomfortable - The Strand on Fulton somewhere around William St.

Day 5: All Around Downtown (5.5 miles)

2006-07-16T21:06:00.000-04:00

Walked down 7th until it ended at West Broadway, then took that south to the World Trade Center site, over through the World Financial Center, back east on Fulton, back West on John St. and into a subway. There, I waited for 20 minutes in intense heat (heat index in Manhattan is 89 degrees at 10pm, so I'd say mid 90's this afternoon downtown) then got onto the crowded subway. After a couple stops, I felt claustrophobic and overheated enough to actually get off the subway, buy a drink, and walk home. Weird.

Anyway, I'm quickly learning that things get very confusing down there, and it's making it very difficult to keep up my map. I have a feeling that as I get closer to the end of the walk, I'm going to be spending a lot of time walking in circles down there to cover every 1-block street and alley.

I'll get into more detail in the photo posts above, but for now, enjoy this picture, taken at West Broadway and Liberty Street, half a block north of the WTC site. No idea what was going on there...

Day 4 Photos - Some Buildings Aren't So Nice

2006-07-16T00:08:00.000-04:00

Bryant Park

Looking west on 42nd St from Tudor City

Greeley Square at 32nd and 6th

Half a building, viewed from Tudor City (I think this is the opposite side of where the shredded cab construction site picture came from earlier this week)

One of the first things that comes up when Googling Hotel Cavalier is a hotel in Beirut, and maybe that's fitting. This site has some vague info on the hotel (saying it's now a single room occupancy - I guess meaning a dorm-style setup with shared bathrooms), while this site says lately it's been used to house AIDS patients, and this one provides some history. It's at 34th and 3rd, above the Cinema Cafe. If anybody stays there and survives, send me some pictures of the inside.

Day 4 Photos - Everyone Loves a Building

2006-07-16T00:03:00.000-04:00

42nd and Park

Chrysler Building lobby (only the very front is open to the public)

Flatiron Building and a lot of red lights

Empire State Building

Empire State Building lobby (60-90 minute wait to get to pay $15 to get to the observation deck)

Day 4: Bryant Park, Tudor City, and Some Big Buildings (4.25 miles)

2006-07-15T23:29:00.000-04:00

Shorter walk today because I stopped a lot to take pictures and ran out of time. First, the most important thing: the food cart on the southwest corner of 33rd and 6th Ave has the best pretzels ever. I've been eating a lot of street pretzels lately, because I figure the carbs are good fuel for the walking and they're still moderately healthy. Usually, you get a pretzel from the pile sitting on the cart, which have been soaking up air pollution for most of the day and getting attacked by flies. Then you put mustard on it and walk into somebody at a crosswalk, and you end up with a pretzel-shaped mustard stain on your shirt. But the guy at 33rd and 6th (southwest corner, don't forget), has the solution.

I bought a pretzel, expecting one of the ones sitting out. But he opened a drawer from inside the cart and took out a brown paper bag with a pretzel inside. It was already salted and had been sitting in this heating drawer probably all day, which had slowly steamed it into soft amazingness. Anybody who's ever had a hot dog at a baseball game knows that the hot dog buns pulled from the heater drawer under the spinner are the best you can get anywhere. This is the same concept. Then, I asked for mustard and instead of awkwardly coating the pretzel with it, he put some onto a piece of aluminum foil, folded it up, and I had a big, makeshift mustard packet.

I'm sure other carts in the city do this, but so far, all my pretzel experience has been with the rock-hard, germ-infested variety, which are still good when eaten with enough mustard.

So on to the walk. I headed up 6th Ave, which is fairly boring, even with Herald and Greeley Squares. I always consider that area to be like a big suburban mall, with rows and rows of stores like Foot Locker, Wet Seal, and, obviously, Macy's. All they need is a Sunglasses Hut and a Dippin' Dots in the middle of an intersection.

Bryant Park, on the other hand, is very impressive, and probably the cleanest and nicest park in the city, although I still favor Union Square as far as atmosphere goes. My main reason for walking by there today was that somebody sent me this list from AOL Cityguide, celebrating the 10 best public restrooms in the city. Some are obvious, like Lincoln Center, Saks, or the SoHo Grand, but the one that stands out the most is Bryant Park (also the only one with the entrance outside).

I went into the bathroom with my camera, but due to some rightfully concerned patrons, couldn't get a picture in. It was small, but nicely decorated and very clean. I did get a picture of the outside, with an entrance that has a bouquet of flowers and tall mirror.

I stepped into both the Chrysler Building and Empire State Building lobbies, and I'll put some pictures of those into their own posts. The most interesting part of the walk was Tudor City, a three block strip of apartments that's actually elevated over 42nd Street. I couldn't get a picture that really showed this, so I'll try to get one next time I'm over there to finish 42nd, but you walk up a long flight of stairs on 42nd just before 1st Avenue, and suddenly you're in a tiny piece of 1920s New York, with no chain stores, a nice spacious park and playground, and rows of big apartment buildings. 41st and 43rd streets actually ramp up to Tudor City, but 42nd runs underneath it, so you can actually stand on the street and look down over a railing. 43rd Street is another quaint slice of old New York, but with the United Nations building literally towering over the end of it. It's very surreal, and I had no idea it was there. Definitely the best find yet, I would say, and I will get better pictures of it next time. For now, this picture shows pretty well how the old apartment buildings contrast with the super-modern UN. And the best part is that the UN site used to be a slaughterhouse (irony!), so none of the buildings have what would have been an amazing view of the UN and the East River.

Final note: I'm now saving photos at a much bigger size, and although they'll appear the same on the blog, if you click any one of them, they'll open much larger. They're also saved at 50% quality so they load faster, which is why some of them will have a little bit of a blur or digital feel to them.

Day 3 Photos - On the Hudson

2006-07-15T02:04:00.000-04:00

Soccer field on 24th at the West Side Highway

Where the city's salt hangs out in the summer

Giant bottle on the Hudson in midtown (represents people who took ships here, with a cabin design inside)

Riverside Park has ducks (geese?)

Memorial bicycle (click to enlarge)

Day 3: West Side (5.75 miles)

2006-07-15T01:17:00.000-04:00

Walked west on 24th to the Hudson and all the way up to 91st, then over through Riverside Park and back to the subway. The Hudson, like the East River, has a heliport, but with no signs divulging absurd Hamptons trip prices. There's a giant warship somewhere around 50th Street that I'll explore more in depth when I actually walk that street. It had a museum with cannons and things, and I think the ship was called the Intrepid.

Nothing else that interesting happened, except when I ignored a detour sign in Riverside Park and ended up squeezing my way through a sliver of a dirt path about a foot from the West Side Highway (below).

At least there was a guardrail. I think that's the George Washington Bridge in the background, and I'll make sure to take more pictures of Riverside Park when I walk those streets later on.

The reason I didn't make it back to form the full rectangle is that it was 600 degrees in Manhattan today, and walking on the water, there were no buildings to block the sun. So the left half of me got very overheated and sunburnt, and I ended up taking a subway back downtown from 86th.

I've also noticed that I can walk like 7 miles straight and be okay, but then if I walk up one flight of stairs, I feel dizzy and exhausted. If I walk up one flight normally, without the walking before, I'm okay. There has to be some kind of scientific reason for this, and whatever it is, I know the solution: more escalators.

Day 2 Photos - United Nations and a Mutilated Cab

2006-07-14T02:17:00.000-04:00

United Nations

Guards take down flags outside the UN

I should probably know what this is, but I can't think of it. Anyway, slayed dragons on the UN lawn is fun symbolism, no matter how you look at it.

Under the bridge at 23rd and the FDR

Any ideas as to how a shredded cab would end up in a gravelly construction site? Me neither, but I bet Jimmy Hoffa's under there somewhere too.

Day 2 Photos - 23rd Street and the East River

2006-07-14T02:11:00.000-04:00

Scary guitar man at 23rd and 7th

One of three 7-11's in Manhattan

On the East River

Stacked signs on the FDR

$525 per person? How much does a whole helicopter cost?

Day 2: Big Square (6.5 miles)

2006-07-14T01:52:00.000-04:00

Walked east on 23rd to the river, then up to 59th, back west to 7th, and down to 23rd again. I also got in a little bit of 8th Ave later. The walk on 23rd was pretty uneventful except for the Asser Levy pool, which I'll take better pictures of when I walk that way again. The river was pretty nice but unlike the Hudson, there's no way to walk all the way up. The sidewalk breaks multiple times and at least once, I ended up actually walking on the FDR itself because a sidewalk unexpectedly ended.

I was actually walking sideways on a sliver of sidewalk (above) for part of it, and then that ended too and I was standing on the FDR, facing oncoming traffic. That's why I ended up on 1st Avenue for the rest.

I have a lot more quality pictures than I thought I would, and so I'm going to start doing separate posts for them. Like today, I have about 10 pictures I want up, and so instead of listing the 10 at the bottom of this post, I'll do a couple photo-only posts (with captions) just to break things up.

Thanks to Gary from Runs Brooklyn, who passed along this report from the NY Department of Transportation, and in testing the bumpiness of New York's streets, they determined that the area of Manhattan I'll be walking has about 338 miles of streets. All of Manhattan has just over 500, but I'm going to stay south of 110th Street for now. All of New York City has about 6000 miles of streets, with somewhere around 1700 of them in Brooklyn, so Gary has a much tougher task ahead than I do. Anyway, I'm keeping 500 miles in the subhead for the blog, because it sounds better than 338, and once I finish this, I do plan to cover Harlem next.

Still Day 1: Down Broadway and Up the West Side Highway (7.5 miles)

2006-07-12T23:24:00.000-04:00

Managed to get a walk in this evening between thunderstorms, although I didn't bring a camera. Below are a couple pictures I took earlier this week at places along the walk, including Union Square and City Hall Park.

The walk up the west side was was nice because it was quiet and kind of hazy on the water. The financial district at night though is dark and abandoned like Philadelphia. I missed some great pictures, including a pier that houses the city's garbage trucks, and there was one I especially would have liked to get. In a bus stop on Broadway somewhere in SoHo, a homeless woman had her cart inside the stop and sat on a sheet on the ground as it got dark, with a teddy bear sitting beside her. It was nice, to know that even in homelessness, stuffed animals still provide some comfort at night. So I threw a quarter at her and ran away.

Note: The image above (and the ones I'll be using consistently) come from gmap-pedometer.com, a nice mod of Google Maps to allow multiple entry points. The numbers represent miles. I found the site at this guy's blog, which is basically exactly the same thing I'm doing, but with running instead of walking, and Brooklyn instead of Manhattan. It might look convenient that I started this right after he was featured in the Daily News, but I just found his blog today and it's definitely a coincidence. Also, I wouldn't touch the Daily News if there were bars of gold inside.

Day 1: Rain Delay

2006-07-12T16:53:00.000-04:00

Day 1 might be called by rain. While I could walk without my camera, I refuse to walk without an iPod, and after last week's proof that God hates technology, I think I should wait until it clears up. Maybe I'll get a couple miles in late tonight, but until it stops raining completely, there won't be any pictures.

Some camera details: I have a really nice digital SLR that I use for taking good pictures, but I also just used up a graduation gift Best Buy card to get a cheap, tiny camera that should take decent enough pics to post on here. That way, if it's raining a little or if I don't want to carry the heavy camera, I can keep this one in my pocket. Rain pictures are fun anyway.

Alright, time to bask in this excuse not to exercise. I'll be watching TV for the next 10 hours.

Where to Begin

2006-07-12T00:45:00.000-04:00

I'm 22 years old and most days I do nothing. This is an attempt to do something.

Although I've spent a lot of time in New York in the past, I just moved here officially after graduating college. Every day I spend inside, I get more cynical and sheltered. Time to go outside, get a tan, pull a hamstring, learn something.

I'll be spending the next few months walking around a lot. My goal is to cover every street in Manhattan south of 110th (maybe next year, Harlem). That's every tiny side street and every avenue, from Broadway to Collister, Central Park West to Trimble Place. If it's on Google Maps and it's walkable, I'll do it.

Along the way, I'm going to take some pictures and notes and post them here. My first goal is to actually keep this up and to eventually complete the walk, even if it takes years. My second goal is to make this blog as good as possible, and I see it as being part photoblog, part travelogue (travelblogue?), with maybe some interesting restaurant finds and weird stuff along the way.

The first thing I'd like is if somebody could figure out an estimate of how far I'll be walking. New York is about 2 miles wide from 23rd Street up to 110th, and so to walk each one of those streets would 174 miles. Add in the avenues and it's up to at least 250 miles in that area. Although the area south of 23rd is geographically smaller, it strays from the grid pattern and has lots and lots of small, diagonal, sometimes single-block-long streets. It also becomes wider at 14th Street, then narrow down by Battery Park. All in all, a very rough estimate of the total amount of walking I'll have to do might be somewhere around 500 miles. If somebody has a way of getting a more accurate figure, please post a comment with it.

So if I averaged 5 miles a day, I could do this in a few months. But realistically, with weather conditions, time factors, and the possibility that someday someone might give me a job, I won't be able to do 5 miles every day. I expect it to take all year.

I won't promise daily updates, but I'll come as close as possible, and after I walk I'll post an updated map with how far I've gone, as well as some photos and anything interesting I saw along the way.

Let the walk begin...