Our penultimate walk has the distinction of being the only one to touch all five boroughs. The same can be said of this week's focus: the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. This route visits memorial sites in all five boroughs - some grand and others understated. Note it is the only route to use transit during the course of the walk (the Staten Island ferry) though the walking distance of 26.2 miles is still maintained.
Our last movie-focused walk is also our first in our home stretch of special walks covering multiple boroughs at a time. Here we draw inspiration from the 2002 Spike Lee film "25th Hour" and the Edward Norton monologue contained within called "F*ck New York." In it, Norton's character Montgomery Brogan rails against the people and neighborhoods that make this city what it is. We'll visit as much as we can of the soliloquy, from Chelsea to Wall Street, Bensonhurst, Alphabet City and everything in between.
We're back in Manhattan and ready to tackle our first and only interior themed walk: museums of Manhattan! We picked five of of our favorites - the MoMA, the Museum of Natural History, the MET, the Guggenheim and the Cloisters - with plans to visit one each day. Baked into the route is 3 reserved for roaming around the various locations.
Our look at NYC cemeteries continues with arguably its most famous: the historic Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Our route accounts for a whopping five miles daily to explore the grounds and visit the most famous residents at rest there. In between, we'll dip down to the bottom of Dyker Heights and work our way up through Borough Park, Kensington and Flatbush.
The Battle of Brooklyn was the largest conflict of the Revolutionary War in terms of troop deployment, taking place over three days in August of 1776. This week we'll visit all the key locations, including the British landing near Fort Hamilton, Greenwood Cemetery, Prospect Park, Fort Greene, and Fulton Ferry where the Americans made their last gasp retreat.
We stay in Brooklyn this week to continue our survey walks of the area, dipping to the southeast to cover such neighborhoods as Sunset Park, Bay Ridge, Fort Hamilton and Gravesend. The trip up takes us through Bensonhurst, Borough Park, Prospect Lefferts Gardens and Brownsville, grazing Greenwood Cemetery and Prospect Park along the way.
Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted literally shaped the landscape of New York, with an influence that touches millions of lives every day. On this walk we take a day to visit experience nearly all of their local contributions, starting at Morningside Park and hanging a right to take in Riverside. Cutting through the lower half of Central Park, we take the Manhattan Bridge over to Fort Greene Park and head for a ramble through Prospect Park. We come out the other side to take a long stroll down the Olmstead designed Ocean Parkway, then up the Prospect Park again before concluding the day on another Olmstead route, Eastern Parkway. Excluded in this walk due to distance is the previously visited Forest Park in Queens.
This week we tackle the most famous Green space in the city and possibly the world: Central Park. We'll cover it from tip to top, with detours to the shores of the Upper East and Upper West Side to see the sights and meet our daily mileage quota.
Our first look at Midtown pays homage to the grid that defines it. From 23rd to 59th Street, we walk up and down 1st to 11th Avenue until we reach our marathon limit. This includes too many sites to mention, from the Chrysler and Empire State buildings; the Theatre District and Times Square; Grand Central Station; Rockefeller Center and so much more.
This high-level sweep of North Brooklyn takes us around the edges of Bushwick, Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights and Red Hook. We do an about face in Sunset Park and head up 5th Avenue through Park Slope. After briefly touching the tip of Fort Greene, we meander through Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights before heading home.