Downtown Brooklyn

In New York City, professional sports is as popular a conversation topic as pizza or the weather. Home to some of the greatest dynasties and underdog stories alike, we'll tackle three boroughs this week to visit their home fields. We start at the Barclays Center to visit the Nets and Islanders, then cross the Manhattan bridge to visit "The World's Most Famous Arena," Madison Square Garden, home to the Knicks and Rangers. Next is a long walk to the Bronx to visit the world's most successful professional sports franchise, the New York Yankees. We conclude with a trip to Queens to visit those lovable losers of Citi Field, the New York Mets.

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.

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.

Few major thoroughfares define its surroundings as strongly as the section of I-278 known as the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. This week we'll follow the entirety of its path, starting at the foot of the RFK bridge in Astoria and concluding at the base of the Verrazzano. Neighborhoods along the way include Woodside, Sunnyside, Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights, Sunset Park, Bay Ridge and more.

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.