I walked the length of Manhattan today. Much to my legs’ chagrin, the journey was 15+ miles from the southern tip of Manhattan (Battery Park) to the northern tip (Broadway Bridge over the Harlem River). I recorded my route here: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=5688027. For a good chunk of the trip, I walked along Broadway — originally the Wickquasgeck Trail of Manhattan’s original inhabitants, this thoroughfare has a history that predates the Dutch settlers who arrived in the 17th century. From 120th through 155th St, I veered east off Broadway to walk through Harlem.

I started the walk at 7:12am this morning at Battery Park — ordinarily filled with tourists, the park was quiet at this time, just a sailboat and the Statue of Liberty across the water.

Turning north, I started my walk. Castle Clinton straight ahead, and 4 WTC under construction a bit to the north. 

7:20am, Trinity Church:  A small contingent of Occupy protestors sleeping out front. This area is usually filled with people, but at this time of day, the streets are very empty and quiet. It’s surreal.

7:33am, looking north from Leonard and Broadway:

8:06am, facing north at 23rd street:

Looking south at the Flatiron building (around 26th) in the morning light:

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I was a geeky kid in the 1980s; I owned (and loved) a calculator watch. I don’t ever see those anymore; they seem to have fallen out of fashion. Not that they ever *were* in fashion, of course. I also had a Frogger Watch at some point in my childhood; I was obsessed with it.

From age 11 to 13, I kept a dream journal, and many of the dreams referenced gadgets with amazing powers, like this one from Feb. 11, 1987:

The “I” and “S” at the top of the page derive from the categorization system for the journal that I developed on Nov 1, 1985:

• Put N if nightmare! The more scarier the nightmare was (at the time) the more !’s there will be.
• Put I if interesting (at time)
• Put G if good (at time)
• Put S if strange (at time)

Ever the archivist, I loved to categorize and classify as a kid.

New York City is filled with quickly-moving people who are eating quickly. Halal Carts can be found throughout the city; these are a prime source for a meal on the go. I stopped at one the other day, just off Greeley Square on 33rd. Like most carts, this one has a heavenly savory smell suffusing the sidewalk around it, drawing people in. I bought a falafel sandwich with hot sauce ($4) — delicious and filling. Ate it on a bench in Greeley Square park, surrounded by people talking, eating, reading.

The iconic on-the-go meal here is the pizza slice, as memorialized on the show Louie. I remember seeing the show’s opening sequence before I moved to NYC and feeling surprised at how Louie stands there in the middle of the shop, unceremoniously polishing off his slice. But that is the norm here.

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I just encountered this (mandatory) question in an online job application:

Self-guided audio tours are a great way to see New York — or any other walkable urban core, for that matter. In the three weeks that I’ve been living here in NYC, audio tours have helped familiarize me with sections of the city. Surprisingly, I haven’t found a good consolidated list out there of NYC audio tours, so I am going to attempt my own right here! If I’ve missed any, please feel free to augment my list via a comment.

• New York Times audio tours — quite a treasure trove of free audio tour content, with a number of short audio clips organized by neighborhood. Hell’s Kitchen is great — at one point, you’re standing in front of a bar, and the narrator explains how when the bar was under previous ownership in the 70s, it was a hangout for The Westies. They killed and dismembered their enemies in the bar, and supposedly a severed head once rolled down the bar. Not to worry, however; the bar is under new ownership and weekly karaoke nights keep the ghosts at bay.
• New Yorker Goings On app (iOS / Andriod)  —  in the app, select “Critics’ Picks” and then “Audio Tours.”  Currently five tours are available; I’ve only done the one covering the High Line. It’s an excellent tour; you learn a lot about new architecture along the way, and other details of the High Line that I hadn’t noticed on previous visits. An interesting aspect of this tour is the narrator is walking along the path himself, so you hear all the ambient noise (people laughing, kids playing) of whenever he recorded it, at some point in 2011. So there’s this interesting phenomenon of taking a walk with someone else, but you’re doing it at different points in time.
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I moved to NYC a few weeks ago, and I’m currently in an acclimation period. Here are a few initial observations:

• The new World Trade Center tower, 1 WTC, is stunning. Here’s a photo of me a few blocks away, with 1 WTC looking ghostly and surreal in the background.
  
• Bryant Park — I’ve been here a few times, and I plan many more visits. It’s a people-watcher’s paradise. You see random things such as this guy with a typewriter, experiencing public writer’s block:
  

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