Two students walk the streets of Manhattan, tip to tip

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What is New York?
To tourists, it’s the Empire State Building, Times Square, Central Park, and Ground Zero. To Columbia students, it’s pricey textbooks, pricier drinks, and free admission to museums. But students all too often explore the broader city only half-heartedly. On Saturday, two roommates took the first step toward eliminating that half-heartedness. We walked from the northernmost tip of Manhattan (225th Street) to the southernmost tip (Battery Park).

11:45 a.m.
Beginning at 225th Street, we embark on a trek totaling 13.4 miles as the crow flies, 15 accounting for crosstown travel. We’re surprised to learn that the borough is not confined to Manhattan Island—a tiny portion is actually on the mainland by the Bronx.

The picturesque, bustling Marble Hill seems more crowded than Morningside Heights even though there are fewer people: so many stores and awnings overlap with bright colors and clashing messages.

The Broadway Bridge takes us over the Harlem River into Inwood, and we stroll down Broadway.

12:20 p.m.
The entrance to Fort Tryon Park appears on our right, and Maggie clambers onto a stone pillar bearing the park’s name. At 175th Street, we stop at a street fair to buy sunglasses for a buck each.

A few blocks further, we spot an incredibly fat cat in the doorway of a corner store and stop to pet it. A Hispanic man comes up and stares at the cat, stunned by its weight. “Cat? You not a cat, you puma,” he says in broken English. “In Peru, where I from, we eat cat!”

Around 150th Street, we stop at a Mister Softee truck. It’s a chocolate cone for Maggie and a fluorescent strawberry shortcake bar for Melanie.

We’ve been walking up a hill for several blocks now. It’s not steep, but it’s long, and our feet are beginning to ache.

1:30 p.m.
We sit down outside a police precinct to rest and reapply sunblock. “When we get to 110th, we’ll be halfway done!” Wisconsinite Melanie says brightly.

But Maggie quickly disabuses her of the notion that Manhattan ends at 1st Street.

Melanie is not pleased: “Can we pretend it does?”

We’re tired and hungry, so we resolve to keep walking until we reach campus and then stop at Pinnacle for lunch. We pass the 100-block mark at 125th Street without even noticing.

2:30 p.m.
We reach 115th Street and collapse into chairs on the overheated upper level of Pinnacle, where we scarf down pizza. At 3, we rise grudgingly from our seats, tighten our shoelaces, and resume walking.

Somehow, when we thought about the trip beforehand, those unfamiliar blocks from 225th to 116th streets blurred to the point that we almost failed to account for them in our anticipation of how long the route would be.

At 110th Street we turn and make our way over to Central Park West where we cut through the northwest corner of the park and discover a sunny, grassy nook near 109th Street. We resolve to return with homework and stake it out as a study spot.

Descending through the Upper West Side, we pass a 30-something man with his six- or seven-year-old daughter.

Snippet of conversation:

Daughter: “Why not?”

Father: “Because I’m going to be really mean and I feel like not giving it to you.”

It’s that time of day. But we doubt the father has the excuse of feet as sore as ours are by now.

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4 p.m.
Just past the American Museum of Natural History, we turn onto 77th Street on our way to the Great Burrito, a hole-in-the-wall Mexican joint on Amsterdam. This particular street is full of little wonders for a road that is so seemingly inconsequential. The blocks are lined with brightly colored brownstones, alternating pink and robin’s egg blue. On our left is PS 87, with an even brighter-colored mural, and just past that is a brownstone with a vine wrapped around the stair railing. Tucked into the branch are a Barbie doll and a Curious George stuffed animal.

We reach the Great Burrito at 4:20 and stuff ourselves with chips, tacos, and burritos. Half an hour later, we head back to Central Park West.

At 72nd Street we stop by Strawberry Fields. Maggie scans the benches surrounding the Imagine Mosaic, looking for Ayrton “Gary” dos Santos, the homeless man and self-proclaimed “Mayor of Strawberry Fields” who she interviewed for her first-ever Spectator story almost exactly two years ago. He’s not there, and neither are the lovingly arranged flowers he put on the mosaic every day.

5:30 p.m.
We reach Columbus Circle and resist the urge to abandon our mission and spend the rest of the day in Borders.

The next leg of our route takes us down 8th Avenue into the heart of Midtown. At 44th Street, Melanie notices a group of four people whom she immediately identifies as Brits. Exhibit A: All wearing gray tweed. Exhibit B: One of them is named Asher. Exhibit C: All smoking thin cigarettes—even the elderly, sick-looking, wheelchair-bound man. No need to listen to their accents for confirmation.

Minutes later, a snatch of conversation: A woman is boasting to her friend about how she and her family walked from Columbus Circle to Ground Zero and back. We look at each other. “Amateurs!”

When we turn south on Broadway from 42nd Street, we’re taken aback to see the road devoid of cars—we’d forgotten Mayor Michael Bloomberg closed that portion of Broadway to traffic over the summer. There’s even a sidewalk cafe set up in the middle of the street.

Near Herald Square, where Broadway and 6th Avenue converge at 34th Street, we spot a group of performers breakdancing to Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough.” “Michael,” replete with glittering glove and teased hair, comes close and smiles at us while gyrating. Melanie promptly drops a significant portion of her life savings into the collection basket.

As we near 25th Street and the 200-block mark, our feet are in agony. We take a brief pit stop at Starbucks. As we exit, Maggie turns to get photos of the Empire State Building.

The sun is setting now.

7:15 p.m.
We stop to rest in Washington Square, unable to walk further. As our feet throb, we plot our route to Katz’s Delicatessen, site of the infamous orgasm scene in “When Harry Met Sally.” We struggle to our feet, stretch for a couple of minutes, and start walking. Maggie begins to notice a sharp pain in the back of her right calf each time her heel lifts off the ground.
We turn left on West Houston Street and start looking for Katz’s (No. 205), but the addresses are in the 100s and going down. We turn perplexedly for a couple minutes before Maggie realizes the numbers will reach zero and start going up again when West Houston becomes East Houston.

We reach Katz’s around 8:15 and are greeted by a friendly doorman. He notices Melanie’s Kentucky sweatshirt and asks if she’s a Wildcat. Then he asks our majors and tries unsuccessfully to guess our GPAs, erring severely on the low side. We’re too exhausted to be offended.

Standing at the crowded counter, clutching our little yellow tickets, pandemonium ensues. Maggie orders a grilled cheese sandwich and Melanie deadpans, “I’ll have what she’s having.” The harried man behind the counter fails to catch the allusion.

After being shuttled to four different counters to complete our orders, we sit down with our sandwiches, sodas, and giant pickles.

We leave Katz’s at 9:00 and make our way east on Houston to FDR Drive. The half-hour we were sitting down was just enough time for our leg muscles to stiffen, and walking is excruciating. The only thing keeping us going is the knowledge that we’re so close.

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9:15 p.m.
At the intersection of Houston and FDR Drive, we take photos of the Williamsburg Bridge, lit magificently against the black backdrop of the East River.

Walking along the highway, we follow the signs for South Street. The signs disappear, and the street does not materialize.

Confused, we pass signs for the Manhattan Bridge and continue for what seems like forever. We know we’re in the vicinity of Battery Park but have no idea where the subway station is. It’s pitch-black by now, and we’re the only people in sight. Maggie keeps glancing back nervously, and Melanie chides her that looking back conveys fear and thus makes you more of a target. Maggie continues to do so anyway.

By 10 p.m., we’re lost, and by 10:15 we’ve managed to wander a good ways east while searching for the subway. We approach three people from behind: a man, a woman, and a little boy. “Excuse me?” we say to the woman. She looks up and we realize she is not the man’s wife but his teenage daughter, firmly attached to her iPhone. Her father, however, is extraordinarily friendly and walks us several blocks to the Delancey/Essex subway station, where we collapse into seats on the uptown F train.

10:45 p.m.
We take the F to 14th Street and walk down a long tunnel to the 1/2/3 platform, where we board the 3 and listen in dismay to the conductor’s announcement, with no elaboration, that there is “no 1 service.” We stare at each other and our expressions are unmistakable: “He can’t mean we have to walk from 96th Street back to campus.”

A few stops later, the conductor announces the 1 is running after all, but all trains will bypass 96th Street. We get off at 72nd and board the 1, to immense relief. By 11:15, we’re back in our dorm, where we down some Advil.

Post-journey, we ask again: What is New York?

It’s Mister Softee trucks and street fairs, brownstones, hole-in-the-wall burrito joints, and dolls tucked into vines wound around city railings. It’s the smell of exhaust, sewage, French fries, and Indian food. It’s 23 square miles of “all of the above.”

We enjoyed the journey, though more the idea of it than the actual practice. We probably wouldn’t do it again, but we’re glad we did it once. The sore legs were worth it for the deeper, though still woefully superficial, understanding of this city we live in but barely know.

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