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Walking Off the Big Apple
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Walking journal and art reviews by a Texas-born New York resident with entertaining commentary on the cultural life of the city.
Recent Posts Tagged With 'walking'
Walking to the Cinema (A Slideshow)
I saw several movies at the Tribeca Film Festival this week, and most every day, I walked from my apartment in the Village up Broadway and then east on E. 12th or E. 13th (by mistake, overshooting whe...
E. 13th Street, While Walking a Film Festival (Small Slideshow)
This week I'll be thinking and writing a lot about film, and as previously mentioned on this site, please visit Reframe and learn about that what exciting things they are up to. On Walking Off the Big...
Walking Off the Big Apple's List of Self-Guided Walks (Updated)
Below, please find a freshly updated list of all the themed New York walks I've compiled over the last year. All are Manhattan walks, with many in the lower part of the island. I'm not Manhattan-centr...
A Walk in NoLita, Sometimes Speaking French
To get to the New Museum of Contemporary Art on the Bowery from where I live in the Village I walk through the precious neighborhood of NoLita. I say "precious," because this neighborhood North of Lit...
Classic New York: A Walk, and a Map
The walk described here is based on a series of posts relating to the New York of Auntie Mame (see related posts following). I took the walk myself over several days, rather than all at once. I consid...
University Place: Pedestrian, Yes, But in a Good Way (A Photo Essay)
University Place, a relatively short street in lower Manhattan, links Washington Square Park to the south with Union Square to the north. A thoroughfare frequented by NYU students, neighborhood reside...
Walking Off the Big Apple's Lenten Gelato Diet
While walking on Bleeker Street yesterday and looking at all the food in the windows of the street's foodie blocks, and stopping for awhile to watch the firemen put out a fire above Indian Taj (all of...
WOTBA's Walking News Digest: Walking Stories from the Chinese Snowstorm, Walking for 911-related Illnesses, and the Discovery of Shoes
This just in from the English edition of the People's Daily Online from China: Many individuals, stranded in the recent heavy snowstorms, ended up walking home or setting out on foot in search of love...
Walking Art Video: Mesmerizing Animated Wall Painting by the Artist Blu
I enjoy this animated wall painting from the artist Blu. I also like Blu's website, not only for its clever design but for the sketchbooks.I haven't sketched in a long time. I usually sketch outside, ...
Weekend Frivolities: Cupcakes, Buildings, Obama, Comments Now Open
• After finishing that last self-guided walk, Fifth Avenue and The High Road to Taos, I felt like I had walked from Fifth Avenue to Santa Fe and back. That was a big walk! I'm still putting together...
"Walks Singing": The Selma to Montgomery March, March 21-25, 1965
The distance from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, the state capital, is about 54 miles. When marchers assembled for the third attempt to make the walk in support of voting rights with the Reverend Marti...
"Opium-Eating is Not Congenial to Walking," Says Virginia Woolf's Father
Thumbing through my vintage walking books and reading descriptions of the routine perambulations of the most famous writers in literature, I hang my head in shame over how little I walk. Essays about ...
The Violence of Walking, According to Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Walking, then, is a perpetual falling with a perpetual self-recovery. It is a most complex, violent, and perilous operation, which we divest of its extreme danger only by continual practice from a ve...
"Toes Are Really Short Fingers:" More from A Manual of Walking
(Click to enlarge image: from Elon Jessup's A Manual of Walking from 1936)My copy of Elon Jessup's A Manual of Walking from 1936 once belonged to a couple named Jeanne and Bill Taylor. I acquired the ...
"A Person of Movement:" Elon Jessup's A Manual of Walking, 1936
In the previous post, I quoted an essay from an anthology of walking essays published in the 1930s. I'm enjoying my little collection of vintage walking books so much that I wish to continue sharing t...
Walking Through A Recession
News on Wall Street this week was grim. After a few dramatic sessions on the stock exchange, talk of a looming recession grew louder in the mass media and on the campaign trail. In New York, luxury re...
10,000 Steps: The New York City Version
When I bought a new pedometer last Saturday I decided to try out the 10,000 step daily walking regime. The premise is that most people do not walk enough - mostly from the couch to the kitchen and fro...
The Long Bright Shadows Along Broadway
I walked south on Broadway this afternoon, enjoying the bright, almost blinding afternoon light on an unseasonably warm January day. I stopped at J & R on Park Row to buy a pedometer, and then I ...
Measuring Miles in Manhattan
View Larger MapWalking 20 blocks uptown or downtown in Manhattan is equivalent to one mile. An example then would be that a walk up 5th Ave. from 8th Street to 28th St. would be a mile and from 8th S...
Museums As Gyms: A New Art & Exercise Series From Walking Off the Big Apple
Readers of Walking Off the Big Apple know I like to combine walking and looking at art. They also know I don't like going to the gym and staring at myself in the mirror while walking absolutely nowher...
Two-Mile Walks, Mostly in Manhattan
• THE HARBOR: I often walk south on Broadway to Battery Park, passing by City Hall Park, the Woolworth Building, Trinity Church, and the Customs House (Museum of the American Indian). Sometimes I'll...
Walking Off Winter Weight with Walking Off the Big Apple
I'm bored by the weight loss and fitness stories we're forced to read at this time of year. Exercise more, eat less, park your car at the far end of the parking lot, take the stairs, drink more water,...
2007: The Flâneur's Return
When I started walking the streets of Manhattan in the summer of 2007 I had little idea where the streets would take me. I had recently quit an isolating desk-confining job on the Upper East Side, and...
Gifts for Walkers and for Flâneurs, The Distinction: A Pedometer Versus Champagne
WALKER: GPS device, pedometer, maps, compass, backpack, sports drink bottle, dog, journal, trail mix, down vest, heart rate monitor, MP3 player, walking shoes, pedicure kit, foot balm.FLANEUR: champag...
Walking Off the Big Apple, or Not
To walk off the Big Apple, or not to walk off the Big Apple, that is the question, because I have the option of never leaving the apartment. After reading the Brookings study about walkable communitie...
Brookings Releases Study of Most Walkable Cities
Christopher B. Leinberger, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, ranks the country's most walkable communities in a report released today. New York ranks 10th overall on the list of the 30 l...
Walking in Inclement Weather
New York is currently under a wind advisory, and I can attest that conditions are not ideal for a stroll in the park. I've been out walking anyway, just because I needed to get out, and I took the dog...
Seurat Out Walking and Drawing on an Ordinary Sunday
Many people probably think Georges Seurat looks just like Mandy Patinkin, having become acquainted with the late 19th century French painter through Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George. ...
Standard Time: Adjusting to Life in Greenwich Village at Night
I would describe myself as a "morning person," but with this week's return to standard time, I have become "a middle of the night person." Because of some lifelong habits, ones that stretch back to my...
John Butler Yeats (1839-1922): Painter, Father and Personal Trainer to the Stars
Irish painter John Butler Yeats moved to New York in 1907 at the age of 69 and enjoyed what is sometimes referred to as a second childhood. He befriended the Ashcan painters, or the "Eight" - Robert H...
