Walking New York

There's an infinite, fractal, size and complexity to the city, while being constrained on all sides. You always know where you are, but there's a near infinity of places to be. It's both surprisingly old and cutting edge new, and it generates its own history. It's the only city I know of that looks exactly like the photos of it.

You can set out at one river, on a journey across the island, and it feels like a vast quest among the roots of a giant alien steel, stone and glass forest (with massive iron snakes coursing beneath the earth), and before you know it, you're at the other side, looking at the view of somewhere else across a river -- yet entire generations of lives have lived, loved and died without ever seeing the outside of it.

In that short walk you'll cross betwixt a population greater than most towns, encounter nearly every method man has devised to cross the earth, meet poor artists and giants of industry. It can be stunningly hot, or buried in snow and freezing depending on the weather. Rain storms can start and stop in the time it takes to read this sentence. In a few moments, you can be beneath the surface of the earth, or higher than the first aircraft dared to go, without ever taking off your jacket or adjusting your shoes.

Every building you step into captures a moment in history of good ideas and bad, a museum of thought, a classroom of fads and fashion, structure and freedom. It's like a random sample of the whole world was picked up and air dropped onto a carefully organized vessel, a Rama waiting to lift up and go forth on its journey elsewhere.

Furthermore, that ignores the wiggling route I enevitably travel, pushed left by a honking cab and similarly colored stoplight, or nudged right by the inevitable crowded side street filled with movie sets or construction vehicles.

Putting aside the health benefits of human-powered-travel, it's both a refreshing and invigorating way to spool up my mind on the way into the office, and also a way to decompress and release the day's aspirational steam that's best not blown out all at once, just inside your apartment.

Last week, I made my first trip to NYC and, wow, did I walk. In fact, I broke a personal record by walking 14 miles within a 5 hr period around Manhattan.

When I got back to PDX, I gave my shoes a couple days of rest.

Reminds me of my first (and only) trip to NY. I somehow ended up lost walking through Brooklyn and came across a little bookstore. In there I found a book called "N walks in New York" (or similar). It was organized around a single stroll through each neighborhood in each borough, touching on elements of history, food, and typical tourist destinations. The walks would sometimes be point to point, other times a loop, but always took me through interesting streets I would never have thought of going through myself. I ended up doing these walks through every part of Manhattan, and some more in Queens. Was well worth the $15 or so I paid for it!

Recommended (short) book describing NYC: Here Is New York by E.B. White.

Shameless plug: I've been here since January walking and taking photographs on the street almost every day. You can see my work so far in the Notebook section of my site at http://simongriffee.com/notebook/