The Upcoming Tribeca Film Festival, Reframe, and Introducing a New Blog

Holy WOTBA double blogging! Today, I am happy to announce to Walking Off the Big Apple (WOTBA) readers the launch of a new blog titled "Shoe Leather" over on the website, Reframe. A new project of the Tribeca Film Institute, Reframe will become an intelligent place for film conversation not found elsewhere. TFI, a nonprofit organization designed to broaden and increase support for media artists, engages in many activities based in communities in New York, and it makes a lovely arrangement for us to be working together.

I'm starting the Shoe Leather blog on the occasion of the imminent Tribeca Film Festival, April 23-May 4, and readers are invited to go over to Reframe to read posts about what I'm seeing and doing. The blog will extend beyond May 4.

"But, hey, what will happen to WOTBA?," you might ask. I'll still be here, like always, most every day, as I never seem to run out of things to say. The additional adventure should be a wonderful learning experience. And unlike the Orphan Film Symposium, where I had extra duties of hosting, I don't have the same responsibilities with Tribeca. For example, they'll have to find their own beers after 1 o'clock in the morning.

"Hey," you also might ask, "Who's that woman, the one in the black-and-white picture with the glasses?" That's me! Really! Did you think I look like a Frida Kahlo doll? I wish! I know I've never posted a picture like this on WOTBA, but because there's a similar headshot now of me accompanying the "Shoe Leather" blog on Reframe, I thought I'd go ahead and break the ice here, too. And in the spirit of film festival red carpet events, let me also say that I am wearing UNIQLO, and my hair is by Jason at Oscar Bond Salon in Soho.

Now, my Tribeca excursions of a few weeks ago are becoming a little more clear, eh?

Images: Teri and Frida doll, by Walking Off the Big Apple's magic MacBook IPhoto machine. Frida is looking forward to seeing Portrait of Diego: The Revolutionary Gaze at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Walking Off the Big Apple: A Reader's Guide

With the passing of the 400th post on Walking Off the Big Apple, I thought it an appropriate time to pass along the history of the site and some recent updates.

History: In late May of 2007, after a day at Yankee Stadium eating hotdogs and drinking beer, I woke up, weighed myself, and screamed. I decided to walk out the door and keep walking, and then walk some more until I looked and felt better. I brought along a journal to record my daily walks and to sketch places and things (example here). I started eating real food. By mid-July I had lost 17.5 pounds. My notebook, filled with sketches and commentary, looked good enough to put on the World Wide Web.

In July of 2007 I launched Walking Off the Big Apple as a website to share my walks and experiences in New York. While early posts and many later ones concern walking, diet, and exercise, the later posts evolved into commentaries on just about everything I felt competent to handle. My academic background in American Studies and experience as an art critic led me into the broader territory of the cultural life of New York. I try to balance forays into the city's past with observations on contemporary life. Mostly, I curate thematic walks around the city in much the same way as an art curator would organize an exhibit.

WOTBA: When I started Walking Off the Big Apple, I was too shy to use my first and last names, and so WOTBA became something of a character. WOTBA (short, of course, for Walking Off the Big Apple) is an urban cowgirl with red boots and a slightly wicked sense of humor. WOTBA is a caricature of my real personality. If I am a plain apple, then WOTBA is a candy apple decorated with coconuts and colorful candy. Sometimes, I write like my real self, but at other times I write like a fictional character. Sometimes, WOTBA will take over in mid-sentence.

NEW SIDEBAR ITEMS: Let me point out some new features of Walking Off the Big Apple. The many sidebar items on the right side of the page (list of walks, popular posts, etc., etc.) now include two new links and more items in the Labels list:

• Maps. A link to all the WOTBA Google Maps for the thematic walks.
• Photographs on Flickr. I take too many for the website, so I've started sending the extra ones to a WOTBA photostream on Flickr.
• Slideshows. I've put together several slideshows on various themes. Trippy eye candy for virtual tours of New York, the slideshows are best accompanied by your favorite music. See Slideshow in the Label section of the sidebar.

Like music? I must recommend many of the items in the WOTBA Cinema Magique, always available on the sidebar. Maynard Ferguson's Macarthur Park is my all-time favorite, especially with the band members dressed in wide stripes.

By the way, anyone who wants to publish a WOTBA Lexicon, please be my guest.

Image: Candied Apples. Walking Off the Big Apple, as a website, is 9 months old.

The Blogging Stress Story, and Manhattan, the Skinnier Borough

I am compelled to comment on two articles published yesterday in The New York Times.

Bloggers Have Health Issues. In an article published in The New York Times on April 6, "In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop," Matt Richtel reports on the untimely death of a couple of high-profile bloggers. In describing the stress-inducing culture of the blogosphere, one in which bloggers feel they need to write timely posts to stay ahead of the game, Richtel suggests a correlation between this new type of exhausting work pressure and the rise of serious health issues.

It's true. Early last summer, before I started Walking Off the Big Apple, I walked around New York with a backpack filled with a notebook, bottled water, granola bars, and art supplies. Over the course of two months, I developed shapely legs and a glowing tan, and I lost 20 pounds. As soon as I decided to share my city experiences with the world in the form of a blog, however, I went downhill. When I started to obsess over whether I was posting enough, I became glued to the chair. Whenever I got up from the chair, it would be to go open the freezer door of the refrigerator to see how much ice cream was left from the day before.

Fortunately, in my blogging case, the content is linked to exercise, i.e. walking, and so I have to walk before I blog. Mostly, however, I have to learn how to balance between walking and writing, because I can not do them at the same time.

Manhattanites, We Are So Special. In another story from the April 6 NYT, "Sveltest Borough Award Goes to...," Sam Roberts reports that Manhattanites are in better position than those in the rest of the city to not get too chubby. While 1 in 4 New Yorkers are overweight, those of us who live on the island of Manhattan tend to walk more to work or up and down subway stairs to get somewhere, a study shows. That's nice, but the way I see it, Manhattanites who blog for themselves at home can order many different types of food for delivery, stay indoors all day long and pack on the pounds. Except those, of course, who blog about walking around Manhattan. With layoffs and buyouts in the print industry, I think it's possible that even more journalists-turned-bloggers will stay inside their apartments, post all day and eventually become the pale overweight versions of their former selves.

Every blogger should get a personal trainer or a dog. I have two dogs, but one of them refuses to cross Sixth Avenue.

Image above: Gandhi statue in Union Square. Gandhi did not write a blog.

Schnabel, WOTBA, and Venetian Masks: Most Popular Search Terms

I like to know the means by which new readers come to this website, and perusing the list of most popular search terms from time to time, I begin to ascertain patterns. I am also curious how well I help new readers find the information they need and how I can better meet the needs of the global audience.

Here is the list of the five most popular search terms from the past month that have directed people to Walking Off the Big Apple. I will follow the list with a brief analysis of these findings:

1. "Julian Schnabel"
2. "Julian Schnabel building"
3. "Walking Off the Big Apple"
4. "Venetian masks"
5. "How to make Venetian masks"

Julian Schnabel: recent Academy Award nominee, major contemporary visual artist, friend of Jean-Michel Basquiat, raised in Brownsville, Texas, interior designer for the Gramercy Park Hotel, mover and shaker. I don't know Julian personally. What else do you need?

Oh. His building in the West Village. I wrote about his "Tower of Pink Power" lo, these many months ago, when WOTBA was just a wee thing, but for each new week this particular post continues to rank high on the visitor's list. Indeed, you MUST come walk the neighborhood and see his building with your own eyes. I have come to love it in every way – its whatever pink-rose-red mottled facade, its brazen Italianate trimmings, its soaring height on the western edges of the Village.

Walking Off the Big Apple: I have high confidence that people have come to the right place when they type in this search term. I imagine it's the result of a conversation involving my far-flung friends. Since 1990, the colonel (the title I give my Kentucky-born spouse on this website) and I have lived in Austin, Texas, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Columbia, South Carolina, and now Greenwich Village, USA. In that order. Beat that with a stick! So, I think the conversation goes like this:

"You hear anything from Teri lately?"
"Naw. Living in New York! Heard she had a popular blog." (Note: I tell people I have a "popular" blog as a PR technique.)
"What's it called?"
"I think it's called..."

Venetian masks: Time for the masked ball, or as a South Carolina friend commented when he saw some Venetian masks in a flower shop, "They must be having an Eyes Wide Shut party!" As I explained in one of the Weekend Frivolities, I visited the shop in Venice that made the masks for the Kubrick film. I stumbled upon the place while strolling the small streets near the Guggenheim Venice. From time to time, I make masks based on molds I made of our two dogs and deceased cat. I'm going to make more this year and will try to sell them to you.

In conclusion, Julian, raised on the Texas-Mexican border, and me, raised in Big D, and both in love with Art, sometimes dream in Italian. Prego, y'all. Welcome to the West Village. Welcome to Walking Off the Big Apple.

The 6th most popular search term is "cupcakes."

Image: Julian Schnabel's Palazzo Chupi, W. 11th Street, with cupcake and coffee from the nearby Magnolia Bakery. Photo from the morning of February 26, 2008. Walking Off the Big Apple –"Giving readers what they want since 2007."

Call for Volunteer Contributors: Attention Far-Flung Flâneurs, Walkers, and Peripatetic Writers

If you have been reading Walking Off the Big Apple, you know that the site has started to receive serious attention. Manhattan User's Guide in October described the site as their favorite pastime, and The New York Times added WOTBA to their City Room Blogroll. Stanley Fish quoted WOTBA in his review of the New Museum. Fancy that!

I think Walking Off the Big Apple would be even ten times more fabulous if it included guest walks from around the globe. The readership has always been international and not just confined to the greater Big Apple area. Plus, I get tired of the sound of my own twangy voice.

I invite interested walkers and flâneurs (see the gift list post for the distinction) to author a guest walk for WOTBA (the silly abbreviation for Walking Off the Big Apple). Maybe you have a favorite street or neighborhood you would like to share with WOTBA's global audience. I will serve as the gentle editor for your post. Feel free to take pictures or make illustrations for your walk. You may use your own name in its entirety, if you wish, or an abbreviated one or a colorful pen name. I don't need more than 500 words. Previously published walks will not be considered. No money will exchange hands. I will sing your praises.

I operate on a whimsical schedule as it is, so I would not hold anyone to a strict deadline. I have previously sent out this call to a handful of global readers who have expressed enthusiasm for this site, but as true flâneurs, they are proudly slow.

Please write walkbigapple@yahoo.com if interested in sharing a walk from your neck of the woods with the worldwide WOTBA audience. Thank you!

Image: Inside the Daily News building. 42nd Street, New York, New York.

Weekend Frivolities: Walking Off the Big Apple's New Wide Open Spaces

Do not adjust your set! Walking Off the Big Apple needed SOME SPACE. For those loyal readers returning for a daily dose of WOTBA, I apologize for the shock of this bold new look. I needed room to stretch - I have long lanky legs, and the tiny font size of the former WOTBA was too hard for me to read, much less write. I redesigned the site yesterday on a total whim. Maybe it's due in part to the images of tall buildings I plan to show you this week or the pretty SoHo chocolates coming up for Valentines Day. In any case, like many Texans in the Big Apple, I need to walk to where I can see the sky.

Image: From The Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, the view of Lower Manhattan.

The Aesthetics of "Slow": Reflections on The Slow Movement and the Arts

I'm a slow poke, as they say. I hate to rush, and as the proponents of the Slow Movement advocate, I like to engage in activities that just creep along and force a break with the frantic rhythms of the city. I like knitting, all sorts of crafts, baking bread, growing plants from seeds, and strolling more than I like race walking.

The Slow Life Picks Up Speed, an article by Penelope Green from the January 31, 2008 issue of The New York Times, calls attention to the emergence of Slow Design as an aspect of the slow movement. One designer, Natalie Chanin, sells crafted items made out of recycled goods. Another group of designers in London have refurbished a cast-out sofa with fictional visualizations about the sofa's past.

Is "slow," with its emphasis on the recycled, repurposed, and handmade, emerging as the cohesive aesthetic in the contemporary visual arts? Perhaps. The New Museum's inaugural exhibit, Unmonumental, is all about the repurposing of both found or cast-off objects and insistent mass media images. Archive Fever-Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art at the International Center of Photography takes as its curatorial point of departure the images of photography's past. In addition, many photographers now prefer the slow-cooked older photographic methods over the digital revolution.

Slow is a way to deal with our increasing guilt as over-consumers, and I think it's not a coincidence that the slow movement arrives at a time of economic slowdown. What will be interesting is how the American economy, dependent as it is upon consumer spending, will recover if consumers slow down not out of absolute necessity but out of desire. For so long marketing professionals have linked the words "consumer" and "desire," but what happens if we are sick of the pace of our own spending and want to stop or at least slow down?

The slow aesthetic, especially in its collage form, may look like a crazy quilt, or just crazy, and that upsets the minimalists. I think that the reason some people who don't like the artwork in Unmonumental is that they don't like the surface messiness and the funk. They find disorder, randomness, and too many rough edges. The slow aesthetic makes visual the irrefutable fact that we've accumulated too many goods, and for some people, slow art looks too much like the compost heap. On the other hand, slow art, like those handmade items of clothing that bear a "warning" label of their own imperfections, can produce objects of lasting beauty.

What about the fast Internet in the age of Slow? Sometimes I would like to write faster posts so I can be as popular as Gawker. But it's just me here, and I like to take my time. I'm a deliberate slow-poke. I like to think and ponder. I won't write a post just to fill a daily quota. In a way, this website, with its accumulation of eclectic stories of New York cultural history, archival sensibility, and an emphasis on the hand-made, exemplifies the Slow aesthetic. I want readers to think of it as a big homemade cake. Walking Off the Big Apple is a Slow Blog.

Coming Up on Walking Off the Big Apple: SoHo Without Euros, Tour de Bears, Tamale Search, and A Walk to McSorley's

Let me review the busy week before I list the coming attractions. And what a busy week this was.
What are the life lessons learned since Monday?
A list:
• The New Museum likes to mix and match chairs and make visitors comfortable.
• The New Museum likes artwork by young people who find things.
• Museum membership includes not standing in line.
• The New Museum is New but not with respect to its sketching policy. Its sketching policy is eerily like MoMA's.
• Walkers and flâneurs require different gifts.
• Washington Square Park will survive, but I'm glad I took the pictures of the park in pristine snow the week before.
• Michele Asselin's photos of Mike Huckabee for the New York Times make him look hot.
• Robert Henri is a rock star.
• The We Are Ellis Island commercials make me cry.
• I want to recreate Art Ford's TV party in my own place.
• In an uncharacteristic act of website organization, I gathered all the printable maps in one place.
• Cookie cutters are for the cookie-cutter dependent.

Those are some powerful lessons. And come Monday, and for the many days after, look for the following posts:
• Shopping without Euros in SoHo, and A Ho-Ho NoHo Holiday on Ice
• Washington Irving's Solitary Walk Through Christmas
• Ashcan Artists Walk to McSorley's
• A Walking Tour de Bears in Central Park
• The New York Christmas Tamale Search
and many more lessons and carols.

Tickets Already Snapped Up For The New Museum Opening Marathon

Am I going to the opening of the New Museum of Contemporary Art on the Bowery this weekend? I wanted the answer to be "Hell, Yes!,"* but I've learned that all the time-allotted tickets for the Target-sponsored 30-hour opening marathon have officially been given out. According to the New Museum's website, it's possible that some tickets will be returned or unused, so you're free to show up and get lucky.

*Ugo Rondinone's sculptural rainbow, Hell, Yes! is currently installed on the front of the New Museum of Contemporary Art.

Image above: The New Museum of Contemporary Art as seen from behind an industrial mixer at a restaurant supply store across the street. WOTBA.

This Week: Cyber Monday, John Sloan, Art Previews, Wall Street Walk Wrap, and more

Features coming this week on Walking Off the Big Apple include:

• Holiday Reading Guide: Favorite Novels Set in New York and Favorite Novels Set in Texas (for Curious New Yorkers and others)
• The Conclusion of Walking Off the Wall Street Bears
• Walking Off Gramercy Park/Flatiron With 16 Canadian Women (with an interactive maple leaf map)
• For today, a busy shopping day on the Internet, look for unique holiday magic gifts at the new Walking Off the Big Apple Emporium at Café Press, NOW OPEN FOR BUSINESS. The festive NY-themed red boots that grace the shirts, mugs, journal, etc. will last only through the season, so order your favorite gifts today.
• Art this week: So many exhibitions, but on my list - Merlin James, Paintings of Buildings at Sikkema, Jenkins & Co. (Nov. 28 - Jan. 12), Susanna Majuri, Saved With Water, Galerie Adler (Nov. 29-Jan. 19), and Emery Blagdon, Sandhill Healings, Cavin-Morris Gallery (Nov. 29-Jan. 12)
  
• Knitting Sweaters for the Holidays in the Far Future
• John Sloan's New York at the Museum of the City of New York.
• How to Make a Venetian mask, just like the kind you've seen on this website.
• and more.
  

The 200th Post: My Own Private New York Marathon

The distance of the contemporary marathon is 26 miles and 385 yards (42.195 kilometres), and I always admire those who line up to participate in the New York Marathon. The race is this coming Sunday, November 4th.

I do walk that far in an average week, sometimes strolling at 3 mph and other times I push it to 4 mph. When I'm out with my dogs, there's a lot of stopping to smell the flowers and other things. When I'm trying to walk off the cupcakes, I try for the 15 minute mile, which is slightly faster than Vincent Van Gogh's walking pace of a 20 minute mile. I lost 20 pounds this year walking off the Big Apple.

Totaling my average weekly mileage since I began WOTBA in the middle of July, I've walked about 364 miles, or roughly the distance between Greenwich Village and the campus of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.

I began WOTBA as a diet and exercise journal, a physical notebook that existed six weeks prior to its debut online. I still write in my journal, but not as often. It didn't take long, however, for the initial physical, artistic and mental pursuits to crack open my imagination. Walking off the Big Apple has evolved into a journey through, art, culture, and society. For me, WOTBA has made me more cultured, more connected, more concerned, more joyful, and more physically fit. In so many ways, I have walked farther than I could have ever imagined.

-Teri, the sole staff of WOTBA (except when I'm sipping absinthe, and then the fairy kingdom comes to help me).

Image:WOTBA's business card. When I'm walking I usually wear a pair of Merrell aqua-colored aquatic all-terrain athletic shoes. When I wear them, I forget that I'm even wearing shoes. You think I walked 364 miles in cowboy boots? Symbolically, yes. Realistically, no.

Upcoming Events of a Charitable Sort

Through a worthy game of blog tag, David of Dig 'N' Share has tagged WOTBA to pass on news of an upcoming charitable event sponsored by the Internet Marketers of New York. On Monday, October 15, from 7 to 10 p.m., the Town Tavern in the Village (3rd St. & 6th Ave.) will serve as the venue for a benefit to support The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Attendees are asked to make a $40 donation at the door.

I'm passing this info on to Kitty at New York Portraits and Mary at Newbie NYC. I like their websites.

Also, Oct. 15 has been designated as Blog Action Day. The idea is that bloggers will raise awareness about a particular subject on one day. This year's topic is the environment. Congrats, Al Gore & the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on winning the Nobel Peace Prize today! Though Walking Off the Big Apple is more of an online destination publication than a blog, I plan to write something on Monday about what parts of NYC will no longer be walkable when the big storm comes.

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.

Weekend Enshrouded in Plagues and Fog

“During my at-bat, I had them in my nose,” he said. “I chased a foul ball after that and I ate about four of them on my way down. It was very strange. Joba had them all over his back and all over his neck and all over everywhere.”
-New York Yankees' Doug Mientkiewicz, commenting on the 8th inning nightmare bug infestation in Cleveland, Ohio during Game 2, AL Playoffs, October 5, 2007, from today's New York Times.

First, it was leaving my dog behind on the elevator Friday morning. Then last evening, on the south shore of Lake Erie, a plague of Canadian soldiers swarmed my beloved New York Yankees. Finally, this morning I woke up in a city enshrouded in fog and with temperatures unseasonably warm for this time of year. Portents of disaster.

WOTBA promises to fight through all the fogs to bring you exciting reportage from NYC this weekend. While other metropolitan websites take time off on the weekend to indulge in 48 hours of brunch, WOTBA cranks up the volume.

Image: Bust of Sylvette, Pablo Picasso. Courtyard of Silver Towers (I.M. Pei, architect). Between Bleecker and Houston. Morning of October 6, 2007.

TYRONE
We're in for another night of fog, I'm afraid.

MARY
Oh, well, I won't mind it tonight.

TYRONE
No, I don't imagine you will, Mary.

-from Long Day's Journey Journey Into Night, a play by Eugene O'Neill

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.

Keith Tyson: A Wiz of a Wiz at Pace Wildenstein

I instantly clicked with British artist Keith Tyson's installation extravaganza, Large Field Array, currently on view at Pace Wildenstein. The veritable flea market of diverse squared sculptures, all telegraphing the dominant signs of an omniscient memory - the face of Ronald Reagan, ruby red slippers, a photo cube, the levitating woman, the horn of plenty, the coffee cup from the Friends TV show, to name just a few of the 230 individual pieces that are arranged here on a grid, necessitated walking through it and forming associations this way and that. Some people go both ways.

As a flâneuse I engage in this sort of practice every day, and so upon walking into the installation space I first resisted this uninvited busman's holiday. If you have stumbled across this website, for example, and surveyed it long enough to see that walking in New York leads to topics such as medieval life, Leon Trotsky, inexpensive hotels, Diane Arbus, The Patty Duke Show, Alex Rodriguez, the fairy kingdom, squirrels, Julian Schnabel's residence, vintage Dutch footage of the Monkees, and the Hill Country bbq place, and then realized that the creator thought all of this made sense, then you know exactly how I felt walking through the gallery.

I stuck with Tyson's installation long enough to appreciate his catholic (in the sense of universal) imagination and so didn't have any problem with him winning the Turner Prize back in 2002. You may want to know in advance that Large Field Array derives its title from the Very Large Array, radio telescopes sited in New Mexico that collect data to form interference patterns but function as a single giant telescope.

I felt slightly dizzy after looking at Tyson's sculptures, mainly due to the proliferation of centrifugal imagery. Several of them emit sounds, the most dominant being a ball spinning around a roulette wheel on the back wall to the left. Tyson must need a very large array of munchkins to assist him.

Keith Tyson's Large Field Array is on view at Pace Wildenstein, 545 West 22nd Street, in Chelsea through October 20, 2007.

Image: Tornado, 19 Apr 1977, Valley of the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River near Lakeview, Texas. Photo courtesy of NSSL.

Oh, waiter? Temporary issues with finding Walking Off the Big Apple

I would like to apologize for the frustrations you may have recently encountered in locating this site. Walking Off the Big Apple found herself falling into deep hells of SERVER ERRORS that were beyond her control. I spent much time with technical support, beginning with all the usual Texas Victorian "Thank ya, ma'am" niceties to eventual ancient Greek furies of dramatic proportions. By the end I felt like a royally pissed-off Iphigenia at Aulis trying to stand up to her daddy.

Walking Off the Big Apple Updates: Favorites

In the sidebar to the right, please notice a list of Favorites of Walking Off the Big Apple.

I've added the blog of an influential mentor and friend, Bill Stott, Professor Emeritus of UT Austin. Scholars of the American documentary tradition will recognize him as William Stott, author of Documentary Expression and Thirties America. Fans of good writing cherish Write to the Point, a warm and chatty book that takes the fear out of composition. I would encourage you to read his blog, as he has collected there many of our favorites. I am grateful for his defense of Dorothy Parker, and I was moved by his eloquent personal reflections on the life of William Sloane Coffin, Jr.

Stott pointed the way to my current path decades ago, perhaps on our first or second meeting, when he encouraged me to read Lillian Ross' Talk of the Town essays for The New Yorker. He suggested several essays, among them "Nixon's Walk" from Dec. 7, 1968. In this essay Ross humorously describes what the President-Elect may have seen during the course of the 248 steps from his residence at 810 Fifth Avenue to his office in the Hotel Pierre. I would count "Nixon's Walk" as one of the highlights of contemporary journalism, and I wouldn't have known about it, and many other important things, without Bill Stott.

Walking Off The Big Apple Coming Attractions

• A Virtual Walk through the Prelinger Archives
• East Village: Fact & Fiction from the 1980s
• A Walking Vacation in the New England Countryside