Central Park: Mapping Walks from Day 2 in the Park

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Today, as part of this week's focus on Central Park, I will shift my attention northward to The Reservoir and to the larger area between 81st and 96th Streets. I plan to again file posts from the Wifi locations in the park, mostly likely from the Shakespeare Garden, the nearest spot at the south end of the area. The garden is pretty enough. The only drawback I've found in taking a laptop to work in the park is the occasional stream of falling cherry blossoms.

The walk yesterday was ideal - from the garden to the Ramble and then the Loeb Boathouse, a modest stroll of perhaps 1.5 to 2 miles inside the park. In getting to the park, walking to the B or C subways that run up and down the west side of the park, climbing the steps inside subway stations, I'm averaging about 4 miles with these excursions. That's part of the master plan, because I'm trying to fit into a slimmer summer. Riding to the park on the subway, I read all the Weight Watchers ads posted inside the trains, the ones that warn against the unhealthy mind games of diet deprivation. I agree that diets don't work, but in blending work and exercise in Central Park, that is, having my cake and eating it, too, I'm trying to cut down on actual cake.

Woah. Who's WOTBA's flâneuring sister from the dark side we see pictured here? She's The Flâneuse* of Death. Whenever a black-clad member of the sisterhood startles me upon my walk, especially one that interrupts the verdant lightness of morning, I am spooked with foreshadowing gloom. I encountered another one during the first hint of spring. This one here walked in high black heels, bobbing up and down much like a carousel animal, as she placed one foot exactly in front of another. It was fairly early, so I assumed she was coming off a fun night.

*Just to be clear, flâneuse is the feminine form of the French word "flâneur," meaning to stroll. There's a lot of cultural baggage associated with the flâneur tradition, but I'm happy to carry it. For more information, please visit my good friends on the other side of the pond at The Flâneur website.

See related posts of walks in Central Park.

Letter to the Editor - Greetings from the Ormskirk Chapter

"Hi.

I, too, have been bestowed an unexpected (and slightly alarming) honour by the SFSF gents; presidency of the local chapter, in my case Ormskirk, a market/university town near Liverpool.

I found your great site via The Flâneur and am enjoying exploring it.

You might enjoy mine: an account of a long, episodic walk I'm doing between two piers and back to my place of birth: http://walkinghometo50.wordpress.com/

I'd like to install a link to yours if that's OK?

All the best,

Roy"


Editor's Note: As Chair of the New York branch, I heartily welcome Roy to La Société des Flâneurs Sans Frontières (SFSF). As Roy indicates, the hono(u)r is thrust upon us by somewhat mysterious gentlemen who dwell within the higher strata of the organization. Part Dan Brown, part La Rochefoucauld, our benefactors uphold the best of the flâneur tradition through an advocacy of strolling, the connoisseurship of absinthe, and the art of procrastination.

The Flâneur, the official website of La Société des Flâneurs Sans Frontières (Liverpool chapter), inspired me during the early days of Walking Off the Big Apple to explore my inner flâneuse and to make the most of each strolling day. Once again, I welcome Roy to our merry group.

Related: Read, if you have all day or a terminal disease, I Choose Flâneuse: The Founding Legend of the New York Branch of La Société des Flâneurs Sans Frontières.

Image: screenshot of Roy's website, Walking Home to 50.

Walking News Week in Review: The Sustainable Flâneur and Other Top Stories

Strolling Device Converts to Electricity and Thusly Saves the Planet from Environmental Destruction (Discovery News)
Mechanical engineers have found that a wearable knee device can turn any flâneur into a self-sustained power house, charging up our cell phone or whatever powered device we may be carrying in our Vuitton bag. So great! And we thought we were only good for drinking absinthe in cafés.

The Mayor of London Wants People Out Cycling and Walking (The City of London)
Ken Livington, the Mayor of London, announced plans to invest 500 million pounds in new expenditures to get folks in London out of their motor vehicles and into the open air. The pedestrian plans call for better signage to help navigate pedestrians from one place to another.

A Guy Who Calls Himself Fellow Human Walks and Eats Sardines (Explorer News)
A guy who calls himself Fellow Human is walking across America wearing a 45-pound backpack and living off sardines.

West Virginia Students Told to Walk More (Marshall Parthenon)
West Virginia is trying to persuade college students to walk to class so they won't be so chubby.

I've signed up for a Google Alert on the topic of walking, and I like to share the best stories from time to time. Most of the news stories, however, involve pedestrians who are injured or harmed in some malicious way while walking, but I don't like to share those types of reports.

Monday Morning Quarterbacking, and The Flâneuse of Death

As I write this post on Monday morning, I see a mixture of large snowflakes and blowing rain coming down hard outside the window. What a contrast from yesterday's bounteous warm sunshine! At least the nasty weather held back until the end of last night's revelries. You may have heard that the NFL home team here, the New York Giants, staged an improbable underdog victory over the New England Patriots in the final minutes of the Super Bowl, and as soon as the game ended, excited fans poured out of the bars and into the streets. I enjoyed falling asleep last night to the noise of so many people whooping and hollering.

Yesterday, as I roamed the West Village, I took several pictures of places and people, more of which I'll share in upcoming posts. I remember taking the image of the woman in the black coat walking past Father Demo Square, the recently renovated space near 6th Avenue, Bleecker and Carmine Streets (and Our Lady of Pompei Church where Father Demo served as pastor). Looking at the photo now, I think she looks ominous in her darkness, a contrast to the bright dispositions of the people sitting in the square. She's the one that puts the kibosh on celebrating in the streets and the one who whips up bad weather for Monday mornings. She is The Flâneuse of Death.

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 all I wanted to do was walk. I started walking everywhere - down Broadway to the Battery and up to Bryant Park, through the museums and Chelsea galleries, up and down the Bowery and through the Ramble of Central Park. As my legs grew stronger, I walked over the bridge to Brooklyn and back. I lost 20 pounds in two months, and I saw beautiful things.

Walking opened up a world that my previous life had shuttered, and at some point I became the flâneuse, one with a twang and some crazy red boots. Walking brought me back to the dusty roads of my identity and kick-started my imagination. Several art exhibits that I saw along the way featured images of my newly discovered flâneur heritage, and I felt part of the world again.

As I look back on the year, 2007 brought good news for walkers of the streets. Studies of walkable cities and of the health benefits of walking made for some powerful arguments. Cities need to replace carbon-emitting vehicles with mass transit, bike lanes, and sidewalks, and for those who cannot walk, we need to demand accessibility. A long look at the work of Jane Jacobs reaffirmed the neighborly goodness of pedestrian-friendly streets. Walking off any street helps fight the war on obesity.

New York makes walking glamorous, hallelujah, and for those of us who live here, it's a great affirmation. I've lived in cities where walking was considered the pitiful last resort of the unfortunate, a shameful sign that your car had broken down. Here, on the other hand, runway models, window shoppers, designers, brokers, writers on strike, and all kinds of differently-dressed pedestrians inhabit our cinematic imagination. Greta Garbo, the most glamorous movie star of her time, chose New York at mid-century to live out her remaining years, and all she wanted to do was walk. Me, too.

In subsequent posts, I will highlight some of my favorite discoveries of 2007. While I do get around - I've walked approximately 500 miles over the course of the past year, I will demur from describing these choices as "Best of." I didn't see everything I planned. There's always next year. I'll also suggest how to lose 20 pounds by the vernal equinox. In the immediate future, a lovely bottle of French absinthe and a little bubbly will come out tonight.

For those new here, welcome to Walking Off the Big Apple. For loyal readers waiting for me to wake up from hibernation, thank you, thank you, thank you. Happy New Year, and I look forward to 2008.

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: champagne, walking cane, flask, pill box, expensive umbrella, hat, sherry, turtle, absinthe, carrying case for cards, passport case, small notebook from Venice, full length Italian cashmere overcoat, Chateau d'Yquem.

Image: Sketch of mannequins in an exhibit by students at F.I.T., 2006.

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 largest metropolitan areas, but the city has more walkable urban areas than other places, according to the study. The walkability factor was determined by counting the number of "regional-serving walkable urban places," meaning places with jobs, shops, and culture that attract people who don't live there.

Washington, D.C. is the overall leader, because the ranking is based on a per-capita basis. Our nation's capital is a lovely place to walk, I can attest, especially around the DuPont Circle neighborhood where the Brookings Institution is located.

Leinberger observes that young professionals are behind this desire, but other factors help with the creation of successful walkable communities. He cites the viability of a city's rail transit system as the most important element in creating these flaneur-friendly cities. A healthy economy and mixed-use development figure in the equation as well. No surprise here, but I'm encouraged by this type of advocacy.

I look forward to reading the study in more detail, especially the 21 places identified in the study as the most walkable in New York City.

Links:

Metropolitan areas ranked for walkability (CNN)

Footloose and Fancy Free: A Field Survey of Walkable Urban Places in the Top 30 U.S. Metropolitan Areas (Brookings)

See also The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream by Christopher B. Leinberger (Island Press, November 2007)

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 dogs with me, because they had their own reasons for getting out. The effort seemed thrilling for the first ten minutes, but then the walk turned frightful. The wind was gusting to 50 mph, and I thought my terrier was going to rise in the air like a Thanksgiving Day parade balloon. We turned around and walked home.

I like to walk every day, but when bad weather arrives, I find little pleasure in the alternative of walking on a treadmill in a gym. I'm a flâneur, not an athlete, and so I need the intellectual stimulation of the street more than I need to watch myself in the gym mirror walking nowhere and squirting water in my mouth from a sports drink bottle.

I don't like to let inclement weather stop me from walking, so I will bundle up in a parka that makes me look like the Michelin Man and then head out into the elements. Walking in inclement weather allows me to pursue my flâneur agenda, but I can actually burn more calories under rough conditions. After a walk in the snow or wind, I may feel exhausted, but at least I will have seen the windows on Fifth Avenue or the comforting fireplace at a cozy West Village café.

I'm not stupid, though. I always bring extra money for a cab.

Image: WOTBA upended at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Washington Square North while walking in the brisk breeze blowing in from the west.

The Astor Family Saga, Abu Dhabi Gives Citigroup Some Spare Change, and the Decline of the New York Empire Within 24 Hours

The Manhattan D.A.'s office, in a script destined for Law & Order, will hold a news briefing today on the indictments of Anthony D. Marshall, 83, the only son of the late great Brooke Astor, and attorney Francis X. Morrissey Jr.* The briefing should reveal more specifics on the pending criminal charges against the two, the result of a grand jury investigation into the mishandling of Mrs. Astor's affairs and will. Philip Marshall, the son of Anthony Marshall, first raised the allegations that his father took advantage of his ailing grandmother and her fortune.

The painting at left, Childe Hassam's Up the Avenue from Thirty-Fourth Street, May 1917, also known as Flags, Fifth Avenue (1917)* plays an important role in the Astor family saga. Andrew Marshall sold the painting, one of his mother's favorites, for $10 million, and collecting a $2 million fee from his mother for all the bother. Personally, I would love to have this painting in my living room, so I would be royally pissed, as we say in my country, if a family member wanted to sell it.

The Hassam painting below, Lower Manhattan (1907, oil on canvas, Cornell University), depicts a crowd gathered in the Financial District. I plan to return there today so I can finish the feature, Walking Off the Wall Streets Bears, and help raise the spirits of the Street.

Yesterday, Citigroup announced that the oil-rich Abu Dhabi Investment Authority has pumped $7.5 billion worth of cash into its tank. The good news may help Wall Street recover some of the dramatic losses from yesterday's trading. A consumer confidence report will be released at 10 a.m. Personally I am feeling confident, not as a consumer, but that I should be exploring my next flâneur career in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

* When I read that Marshall and Morrissey partnered as producers on Broadway, I immediately thought of them as Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom from Mel Brooks's The Producers.

* For additional events from the Spring of 1917, as reported in these pages, please follow the links here and here.

Setting the Weekend Agenda for a Walker of the Streets

I'm going to wrap up the Bowery Walk 2007 with a few more posts today, but my thoughts are already turning to the agenda for the weekend. In looking over the copious amount of cultural activities that interest me, I'm pondering the creation of a strategy to deal with this culture of abundance. In Texas parlance, I'm fixin' to come up with a way to help me decide which exhibits and events I need to see.

Last night I thought about attending some of the 30 art receptions in Chelsea, but I elected to stay home and read Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, a novella from 1893. I believe I made a good decision for myself to stay home with this tale of a beautiful girl from the Bowery who turns to a life of prostitution. Though not a contemporary work, the tale is nevertheless "edgy," in the same way we overuse the term today.

With nervous worries down on Wall Street, I think we need to study the Bowery in some depth.

Often, a day in the life of New York City all seems too much - too many exhibits, concerts, lectures, too many fruits in the produce section of the grocery store and handbags on Canal Street, too many people talking to themselves or standing on the sidewalk impeding the flow of pedestrians, too many festivals, too many loud sounds, and too many ultra rich passing by too many people who spend a higher fraction of their income on rent than anywhere else in the country.

I haven't yet sorted out the weekend, but as I am most fluent in visual culture, I would like to visit Chelsea and/or the Bowery galleries to comment on a few exhibits and/or the Georges Seurat drawing exhibit at MoMA. The Seurat exhibit is a no-brainer - he's a fabulously talented flaneur.

Next on my reading list: Hotel de Dream: A New York Novel by Edmund White (September 2007). The novel imagines the final year of author Stephen Crane, who died from tuberculosis in 1900 at the age of 28, as he dictates a novel he originally planned as a companion to Maggie about a teenage boy prostitute walking the Bowery and nearby streets.

As a professional streetwalker myself...er...uh...that's not exactly what I meant, I'm beginning to see the weekend agenda fall into place.

For WOTBA's developing November agenda wish list, please consult this website's sidebar.

Image: The Burden of Choice. Rough sketch of one season of the "The Four Seasons," a sculpture in Worldwide Plaza near 50th St. and 8th Ave.

Oh! And the poet Billy Collins is reading at The Bowery Poetry Club this Sunday! Now that place is cookin'!

I Left My Blog on the Elevator This Morning

Just kidding. But, today WOTBA (Walking Off the Big Apple) finds herself in need of tidying her spaces, both the physical environment in which she lives and the cyberspace that she increasingly inhabits. The new duvet cover is upon the master bed, the bottles of absinthe are neatly lined up for target practice later, and the books are now arranged according to the Dewey decimal system.

I am spending some time today moving around images and lists on this website. Frequent readers know that I like to re-arrange items. Let me explain a bit about what's here. Along the sidebar you'll first encounter self-guided tours of the city. Next, you'll see the WOTBA agenda for the month. This is my ToDo list, but I don't get around to everything. Who does? Next, there's a relatively new feature - the Cinema Magique. I will soon add some moving images back to this list, like the P. Diddy video I love so much.

Continuing, the feature titled Favorites of Walking Off the Big Apple provides links to fascinating or useful websites. Then, there's an image of a dog skull that I drew at the AMNH. I guess the rest is self-explanatory except for the story, I Choose Flâneuse. That's the founding legend of the New York Branch of La Sociéte des Flâneurs Sans Frontieres. The busiest branch of SFSF is located in Liverpool at The Flâneur website. The story here features three of the fairies that Shakespeare included in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and WOTBA thinks they're real. Titania reminds her of Janis Joplin.

If you are new to this site, I welcome you. You have walked into the definitive outsider's guide to New York City. My name is Teri. I am a flâneuse. This is my card.

Van Gogh, Flâneur, and CSI: Arles 1888

This past Saturday I visited the excellent exhibit Painted with Words: Vincent van Gogh's Letters to Émile Bernard at the Morgan Library & Museum. The exhibit is comprised of previously unseen letters and relevant paintings and drawings by both artists.

I have since lost myself in Van Gogh's letters to Theo and others. Many describe his lifelong passion for walking, from early days in England through his recovery after the famous act of self-mutilation in Arles. In one of those early letters to Theo, Vincent vividly describes a day-long walk from the countryside to London and The Strand, noting that he walked a mile in twenty minutes. That is an excellent pace, neither too fast nor too slow! (See WebExhibits for Van Gogh's letters)

Émile Bernard (1868-1941) was a flâneur's flâneur. In addition to walking all over Normandy and Brittany, Bernard was expelled from school for insubordination, frequented brothels, partied with artist friends, and escaped to Egypt for ten years to avoid the draft. Bernard's artwork influenced Paul Gauguin, but Gauguin never acknowledged this.

I have my doubts, too, about Gauguin after reading a fascinating article, Drama at Arles: New Light on Van Gogh's Self Mutilation, by Martin Bailey (Apollo, September 2005).

Image: Émile Bernard. Buckwheat Harvesters at Pont-Aven, 1888, oil on canvas, Josefowitz collection, Switzerland.

Walking Off ALL the Big Apples

I work hard to establish Walking Off the Big Apple as a major brand in the culture industry. The greater corporate entity that is known at WOTBA, Inc. even envisions a vast global empire of storefront WOTBA franchises to advance the brand.* These stores will be staffed by coquettish overeducated women past their prime in cute outfits reminiscent of the Harvey Girls and will offer aid and sustenance for the weary flâneur in the form of strong coffee, absinthe cocktails and portable bags of Frito Pie. We will, of course, have our own record company, signing our songwriter friends to the WOTBA label.

So anything that involves a dispute over the Apple name interests WOTBA and its sole shareholder:

“We love the Beatles, and it has been painful being at odds with them over these trademarks. It feels great to resolve this in a positive manner, and in a way that should remove the potential of further disagreements in the future.” - Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, February 2007

"The opportunity to head up Apple Corps Ltd is a dream come true! I have been a huge Beatles fan from the moment they appeared on the Ed Sullivan show. The music The Beatles created remains as vital and relevant as the day it was recorded. The multiple opportunities to reach music lovers, both new and old, with The Beatles spectacular body of work makes this position incredibly challenging and exciting." - Jeff Jones, American-born manager of Apple Corps. Jones replaced Neil Aspinall, manager of the Beatles business for 40 years, who left the company in April 2007 after coming to a settlement with Steve Jobs

In March, a month before the change at Apple Corps, Sir Paul McCartney announced his decision to leave EMI after 43 years and join the Starbucks label, Hear Music. One problem for McCartney is that the label is not registered with the Official U.K. Chart Company, so CDs bought in Starbucks UK locations do not count in the top 40 there.

Sorry, girls.

* including Walking Off Big Ben, Walking Off Big Tex, and Walking Off the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

Weekend Frivolities

From WOTBA's Command and Control Center: Mapping the Global Audience

• Thanks to the GWB administration, all Texans now possess sophisticated embedded codes to track the geographical position of the readers of their websites. I don't know who you are, gentle reader, but I do know where you are.* So upon waking this morning, I brushed my teeth, combed my hair, poured a cup of coffee the size of the Friends mug in Keith Tyson's installation at PW, and entered the WOTBA Command and Control Center to analyze the data from this past week. Looking up at the enormous map of the world that fills the wall I could see the "points of light" indicating recent "hits" on this website.

• So where were these points of light? Predictably, indicators showed pinpoints for WOTBA's subscribers and casual readers in central Texas, college towns in the South and Midwest, West Hollywood, western Canada, Ohio, and Wyoming for some reason. Brooklyn, with its young literary romantics full of wanderlust, shines brightly on the map. There's a sprinkle of hits from all over the globe, most of which I assume are people visiting by mistake. Merry Old England, on the other hand, was lit up like a Christmas tree this fine morning.

• Importantly, where are the dark regions indicating lack of interest? Residents of Manhattan rarely visit WOTBA unless the post directly concerns their art career. I don't mind. Furthermore, many residents of Manhattan keep to their own neighborhood, prefer their food delivered to the front door, and hire others to walk the dog for them. They'd sooner travel to the inaccessible town of Marfa, Texas than take the A train to The Cloisters. I understand this, too. After being cooped up in a Gotham apartment, it's good to get out into the vast open spaces, prop the boots up, pop a cold one and chill out on some Donald Judd.

• Based on the information I'm holding in my hand, WOTBA will explore Britain in the Big Apple this weekend. While the BBC and The Guardian work to build their audiences in the U.S.A., WOTBA aspires to be a trailblazer in the reverse direction.

• Furthermore, I will learn more about the home towns of the readers. I see from this morning's printout that we have London here, also Liverpool (Capital of Culture 2008 and home of the Flâneur mother ship), Portsmouth, and Brighton (greetings, Land of Oz!). I need to brush up on Bolton, Wigan, and Kirklees.

Cheerio, for now.

*also the IP address, type of browser and operating system, date and time of the visit, individual pages visited, and referring URLs. I can only infer certain patterns based on this information. I have no idea of your name, what you ate for breakfast or what you are wearing right now. I also don't care. If you were previously unaware that most websites collect this exact sort of information every time you visit and actually make use of it, then I have already been of some service.

Image: MCC, JSC, Courtesy of NASA.

Absinthe: Its Many Uses in Medieval Times

Unfortunately I have never witnessed a vision. Not one of the 12,000 saints has ever said so much as 'Good day' to me, but since I was first at Lourdes ten years ago I have realized that the phenomenon of visions is something that concerns us all. " - Erich Von Däniken, Miracles of the Gods, 1974*

I'll wrap up the visit to The Cloisters with a few observations, because I plan to return to Chelsea today to better contrast medieval and contemporary art. In the near future I'll put all the related Cloisters stories together and post an official walk on the sidebar where it belongs.

When visiting a museum I recommend picking just three or four rooms and then spending quality time with a handful of objects. This focused visit yields more powerful results than the superficial overview. While visiting The Cloisters, for example, I decided I would only care about the Ermengols, the herb garden, and the dogs in the Unicorn Tapestries and then come back for more later.

While the weather is still mild I recommend a visit to the famous gardens of the Cloisters. I zeroed in on the wormwood plant (artemisia absinthium), so happy to find that this favorite of the flâneur played such an important role in medieval life, too. Monks put wormwood in their ink to protect manuscripts from bookworms, nursing women rubbed the herb on their breasts to encourage weaning, and pilgrims stuffed a bit in their pockets to ward off fatigue.

In William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Oberon squeezes "Dian's bud o'er Cupid's flower" (most likely artemisia absinthium) to bring Titania back to her fairy senses.

Oysters Rockeffer is made with absinthe. We're forging a unified field theory, yes?

What Really Happened at The Cloisters, a tale in the same genre as I Choose Flâneuse, will be available on this website later this fall.

*If you would like to communicate with M. Däniken, please find his website, picture, his tastes in wine and food, and email here.

E. 1st Street and Red Velvet Cupcakes (on E. 4th)

(Ed. note: To appreciate this post more fully, please read the post, 1917: Trotsky's Flâneur Boy Wanders Downtown.)

Yes, Seryozha, there really is a First Street, and it's still here in 2007, ninety years after your daddy took you home so he could lead the Red Army. Considering what befell all of you, I wish you had stayed in New York and grown up in the city. I will tell you about First Street in 2007, a charming and humble byway in what we call the East Village.

We'll walk from west to east on First Street, beginning at the Bowery. The famous anarchist Emma Goldman first lived on the Bowery when she arrived in the city, and she came to see your daddy deliver his farewell address in NYC in 1917.

The first block, Seryozha, between the Bowery and 2nd Avenue, has sadly been colonized by bourgeois arrivistes. Breaking the heart of the late Jane Jacobs, developers replaced vibrant street life with overly pricey nondescript condominium developments called Avalon. I visited their website (hard to explain to a boy from 1917, sorry), and I was surprised to see that they tell interested buyers that Washington Square Park is located in the East Village. Is there no end to their bourgeois lies, Seryozha?

You and your daddy would enjoy the blocks further to the east. Right away, on the left at 36 East First Street you'll find the offices of The Catholic Worker. Still publishing! Dorothy Day, who founded the paper, started out with a socialist daily, the Call, and interviewed your daddy for her first assignment. Continuing, we see organic spas, an Australian eatery, a playground, and so much more. First Street peters out at Avenue A, so we'll walk around these avenues also.

For a special end to our walk, Seryozha, I'll treat you to a red velvet cupcake at the family owned Pinisi Café on E. 4th.

By the way, if you had accomplished your walk from 164th Street in the Bronx to First Street, you would have traveled 8 miles. That's far for a little boy to walk!

Check out an entertaining presentation about a Trotsky impersonator showing up in an old Fox Movietone newsreel here.

Finally, your daddy would be amused to know that Frida Kahlo is still really famous, not because she was a Trotskyite but because she lived a colorful life and was in so much pain.

Image: Walking Off the Big Apple's beloved Frida Kahlo doll

1917: Trotsky's Flâneur Boy Wanders Downtown

Leon Trotsky lived with his family in New York for two months in 1917. In his autobiography, the revolutionary tells a charming anecdote about his younger son*:

When I telephoned my wife from the newspaper office that Petrograd was in the midst of revolution, the younger boy was in bed with diphtheria. He was nine years old, but he realized definitely – and had for a long time – that revolution meant an amnesty, a return to Russia and a thousand other blessings. He jumped to his feet and danced on the bed in honor of the revolution. It was a sign of his recovery.

We were anxious to leave by the first boat. I rushed from consulate to consulate for papers and visas. On the eve of our departure the doctor allowed the convalescent boy to go out for a walk. My wife let him go for half an hour, and began to pack. How many times she had gone through that same operation? But there was no sign of the boy. I was at the office. Three anxious hours; then came a telephone-call to my wife. First, an unfamiliar masculine voice, and then Seryozha’s voice:

“I am here.” “Here” meant a police station at the other end of New York. The boy had taken advantage of his first walk to settle a question that had been worrying him for a long time:

Was there really a First Street? (We lived on 164th Street, if I am not mistaken.) But he had lost his way, had begun to make inquiries, and was taken to the police station. Fortunately he remembered our telephone number.

(For the full account of Trotsky's two months in NY see Leon Trotsky. My Life. 1930. Chapter XX. New York )

Please see the follow-up post HERE.

*Trotsky's son, Sergei Sedov (1908-1937), an apolitical engineer, was arrested and shot during the Stalinist purges.

More Breaking News from Today's NYT Feature

Triple faint! Today's aforementioned feature on walking in New York makes room for reader's comments in the online edition, and so I jumped in and added my two cents. The excellent comment after mine is penned by the esteemed art historian Linda Nochlin, a rock star of such stature in my world as to be Grace Slick, Janis Joplin, and Patti Smith rolled into one. With her 1972 ground-breaking essay "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?," a landmark early traveling exhibit of women artists and many subsequent books, Nochlin changed the course of how we view art history. Read her comment. I am humbled and amazed.

Today's NYT is Full of Flanerie

This morning I woke up, brushed my teeth, drank coffee, walked the dogs, came back, drank more coffee, and then opened The New York Times. On finding in The City section an extended feature on walking in New York City and the concept of the flaneur, I nearly fainted. I don't know where The New York Times gets these ideas, but I'm all too happy to play in the zeitgeist.

The Extreme Boulevardier (NYT, August 19, 2007)

The Walk of the Confused Flâneuse

Now that the New York branch of La Société des Flaneurs Sans Frontières is formed, and its founding legend established (something that once took eons), New York tour operators are welcome to add The Walk of the Confused Flâneuse to their itineraries. Based on Part Three of I Choose Flâneuse, the trail follows the sad heroine from her awakening in Central Park to her arrival at the Washington Square Arch in Greenwich Village.

The numbers 1, 2, and 3 on the map indicate the places where the heroine had to sit down and shake water out of her sneakers. Pilgrims following the trail are encouraged to visit a café near these locations. A more annotated map is in development.

Distance: 3.8 mi.; 6115.5 m.
Calorie burn: 410 calories