I spent my first 5 years in New York City living in Brooklyn with friends as roommates, but when they moved out and rando's moved in, the vibe was significantly off.
I decided to move into a place of my own, in Queens, during the first year of the pandemic.
In the 5 years prior I had gotten significantly out of shape, and being on lock down for covid was really causing me to deteriorate. When I got to Queens I needed to explore my new neighborhood so I started doing some long walks. I immediately felt refreshed. I forgot how something simple as just walking with no particular destination in mind can be.
I decided to walk the length of the 7 train from Long Island City to Flushing Queens, and it was really really fun. I decided wanted to start walking the entire NYC subway. I would ride to the last stop on each line, and then walk either under or over the tracks from station to station. It took a few months, but was really really fun. I got to see so much of NYC that I simply never have before - tons of the Bronx, the deep reaches of Queens and Brooklyn, and even the entire Staten Island Railroad.
Interestingly, the weeks after I started this projects, I would close my eyes and see random flashes of scenery from around the 5 boroughs. This massive amount of stimulation and exploration was addicting, but now my mission was complete. So instead I decided to start walking really long roads in NYC. Years prior a friend and I had walked the entire length of Broadway - from the Wall St. Bull all the way up to Inwood & Marble Hill.
At that time I was pretty out of shape and the walk beat me up, but since I had started doing the subway walking, it wasn't uncommon for me to reach 15 to 20 miles per walk.
So now I focused on really long roads like all the Avenues, Nostrand and Bedford in Brooklyn, Northern Boulevard in Queens, and etc.
But those too quickly ran out, so I started focusing on just planning 20 mile walks each weekend, connecting various unexplored parts of the boroughs. Over the years, the miles really started adding up and my map starting filling it.
It has been incredibly fun.
When I was new to the city, most of the boroughs were a mystery. I could see areas on the map I had never been, and had no idea what the areas were like. But the subway walks warmed me up to most of the city, and then exhaustively exploring as much as I can has slowly lifted the "fog of war". Now I can look at the NYC map and imagine all the neighborhoods and remember the random cool things I found there.
While NYC is incredibly big, walking it has shrunk it in my head.
I still haven't walked 100% of every street, but I'm still at it - every weekend I plan a 20 mile walk along streets I haven't been down yet, all boroughs, all neighborhoods, no exceptions.
At the end of last year I put together this video:
The map lights up for all the routes I traveled that year.
At the end of every walk I update a custom Google My-Maps with the route for that day, see screens below:
I posted about my adventures on Reddit a few times, and the last time the New York Times picked up the story and did an interview with me, which you can read here: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/17/nyregion/walking-new-york-city.html
But if that link doesn't work, check the capture below!:
