Last month marked ten years of living in New York City. A decade. Almost a third of my life. I celebrated, of course, by going on a walk.

I started the day with an hour-long train ride to Fresh Pond Road in Ridgewood, Queens. The cold was already biting at my cheeks when I stepped off the platform and walked a few blocks to a three story row house. This was my second apartment, but the first where I had my own room, a closet, a desk. The stoop marked the edge of a four-and-a-half mile radius that contained the entirety of my New York life. Between there and Sunset Park, where I live now, lay every apartment I had called home. Over the course of seventeen zigzagging miles, I would walk to each of them.

A blizzard had just covered the city in snow, and I spent the morning tiptoeing along narrow desire paths carved through unshoveled sidewalks. I stopped to wipe my nose with my gloves and realized I hadn’t bothered to check the forecast before leaving—the temperature read 20°F. Not unlike the conditions I arrived in ten years ago. Back then, I had a few bags, less than $1,000 to my name, and a freshly issued credit card that I thankfully didn’t have to use.

I walked on to Myrtle Avenue, crossed Malcolm X Boulevard, and made my way down to Monroe Street in Bed Stuy. Standing outside a four story walk up, I wanted to go inside to see the hallways, the old tiles, the ancient decorations. To see if my junk mail still arrived there. I remembered pulling up in a taxi ten years earlier, fresh from JFK Airport. My first apartment.

I was certain my move was only temporary. A relocation, I told myself, after which I’d return to Chicago. Many people I know share this feeling—transplants and born and raised New Yorkers alike—that eventually you will leave, whether by choice or by circumstance.

I walked on toward Marcy Avenue, watching people shovel their cars out from beneath mountains of snow. Children built a snowman outside the bodega. Across the street stood my fourth apartment, the first I ever shared with my girlfriend, Iris. I still recognized the building, though nothing inside looked the way it did when we lived there. Only a month after moving in, the building caught fire and destroyed almost everything we had.

That was 2019. It could have been my cue to pack up and leave the city. Instead, I told myself to wait. Replace my clothes, my furniture, my books. Wait until my fifth anniversary. When that date approached, I pushed it to my thirtieth birthday. By the time I turned thirty, I’d forgotten the deadline entirely. Leaving New York was no longer something I thought about.

Writing this reminded me of learning Spanish. I’ve been at it for two years now, and in trying to understand the process, I’ve read countless accounts of how others have learned a new language. Nearly all of them mention the same thing: at some point, practice stops feeling like practice and becomes part of daily life. Somewhere around the pandemic, the city became part of me. I’d learned the language of being here.

A walk doesn’t let you forget how you got from point A to point B. Each stretch formed a route Google Maps could never chart. “[A] path of the mind’s habit, direction, and turn,” as Wendell Berry writes, “[each] as personal as old shoes.”

I continued on from Bed Stuy to Fort Greene, through Prospect Park, and on to Flatbush and thought about the laundromats where I washed my clothes, the bodegas that fed me, the train stops where I shuffled to and from work, the sidewalks I crossed to meet friends. Each apartment felt like another layer in an onion I’d been slowly peeling.

I moved here, believe it or not, because I thought I wanted to stop making art and become a graphic designer. To follow a relationship. To follow my friends. Because it seemed like the next step. I didn’t think too hard about it then, but New York, difficult as it could be, kept offering another layer to peel back. Each time I thought I was nearing the center, another waited.

It was dark when I reached the hill of Sunset Park. From the top, I looked out at the Manhattan skyline and thought about how the city once felt ungraspable, almost terrifying. Somehow that feeling had evaporated—maybe because I’d walked the hell out of it.

I’d always thought of myself as someone who prioritized mobility, who felt a constant pull to keep moving and never stay long enough to set down roots. Mobility is often sold as a luxury, but I’ve stumbled into another kind, something slower and far less flashy.

I admire people who have stayed long enough in one place for it to become inseparable from who they are, the way a river erodes stone. I never disliked Iowa, where I was born, but I felt the pull to go elsewhere, and for years I carried a disjointed idea of what home might be, one foot in one place, the other somewhere else.

But after ten years, I’ve had the quiet feeling of watching this place—New York City—cohere. Of beginning, at last, to feel a sense of membership in the place I call home.

Thanks for reading,
A.W.
Brooklyn, NY 11220

On the first day of class, I like to start with an exercise based on Joe Brainard’s book, I Remember. Most of my students aren’t consistent writers yet and might have trouble getting started. So I have them start with something simple: write twe sentences, each starting with “I remember…”, encouraging them to write whatever comes to mind.

I’m Alex Wolfe. You’re reading Pedestrian, a monthly newsletter about walking, the built environment, impermanence, memory, attention, among other things.

Any good teacher worth their weight knows they shouldn’t assign students work they would never do themselves. So instead of sharing my best of or comprehensive year in review—something I truly don’t have the patience for—here are my receipts: twelve “I remembers” from the top of my head to commemorate 2025.

1
I remember finding two red-eared sliders in the cold mailbox vestibule of my apartment building. Concerned for their wellbeing, I brought the turtles up to my apartment and left a note to my neighbors, certain there had been a mistake and soon these turtles would be returned to their respective owners. Four months and several hundreds of dollars later, no one answered my message. I was still cleaning out their tank in hopes of one day finding them a new owner. Dangerously invasive, I couldn’t find a sanctuary or shelter that would take them in. Craigslist proved a dead end. A friend suggested I just toss them in the lake at Prospect Park and let them join the small colony of red ear sliders that already lived there and get on with my life. In January, push came to shove: the turtles had outgrown their 20-gallon tank. Either I invest hundreds of more dollars into a proper habitat or find them a new home. I reluctantly donated them to a reputable pet store who promised to find them a good home. They’d brought out some paternal qualities in myself that I didn’t know I had. I never mustered the strength to return to the store to visit them.

2
I remember Chinese bakery coffee. For most of 2025, the first words to come out of my mouth each day were “large coffee, cream, no sugar, please.” I’d fallen into the habit of buying coffee each morning as a reward for getting outside first thing for a walk. I know this practice is wasteful, bad for the environment, and I could have just as easily made coffee at home for much less (though $2.50 for a large coffee is among the cheapest you’ll find in New York City), but I liked the ritual. There are more Chinese bakeries than I can count in my neighborhood, so my coffee consumption quickly became an alternative means of research, cycling through at least ten different bakeries just to see what they were all about, who had the best coffee, where I could find the best pastries, etc. As a result, I tried many different bakery items I would have otherwise never had tried, such as the Italian beef bread (perhaps a play on Chicago’s Italian beef sandwich?) from Fortune Bakery on 8th Avenue, though Choi Yuk Bao remains my steady go-to.

3
I remember pitching a story about the proposed Interborough Express to The New York Times in March and thinking nothing would happen. I walked the 14-mile route with my friend Tom Wilson (who took photos along the way) back in August of 2024 with few expectations. I still didn’t believe the editors at The New York Times when they showed interest in our piece, even though I quickly called off work when they asked us to walk it one more time and send over a first draft of the story as soon as we could. Things move slowly at large publications. The latest political scandal usually takes precedence over stories about much-needed public transportation infrastructure. I hadn’t told anyone, save for very close friends, that I was even working on the piece for fear that it would never be shared. But it wasn’t until four months later that Tom and I officially got the green light. Our piece would be published—and not only published, but featured on the back page of the Sunday Opinion section. If you haven’t already, read it here.

4
I remember waking up on my 33rd birthday and listening to “Fearless” by Pink Floyd. That afternoon, I walked the length of Manhattan, following Broadway the entire way, for the fourth consecutive year. I had a burger and a pint of Guinness at the White Horse Tavern in FiDi at the end. I was grateful to be alive another year.

5
I remember reading Brian by Jeremy Cooper for the first time. Bud Smith recommended it during a workshop I took in November of 2022, but it wasn’t until this May that I finally picked it up. The premise of the book is simple: Brian is a painfully awkward guy without many friends or much family. After work, he began going to see movies every night at the BFI. The book unfolds through the movies he sees (many of which I’ve added to my list). There’s not much going on plot-wise, but what Jeremy Cooper managed to show me is that time is a simple enough engine to move a story forward. I was genuinely sad when this book ended; I’d become so deeply invested in the life of Brian and his thoughts. I committed myself to reading as many books as I could this year (and I did!). Brian might be my favorite of the year, though The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford (another deceptively powerful novel) is a close second.

6
I remember spending the entire month of June in Chicago. I was the artist in residence at Latitude, which entailed a private studio and access to flatbed scanners, large format printers, and free film development. My time in Chicago was unexpectedly healing. I’d not spent more than a week there since moving away almost ten years ago and was able to connect with a much younger version of myself once again. I swam in Lake Michigan, saw some of my closest friends, walked Milwaukee Avenue, took the Ashland bus (a fixture of my life while living in Pilsen), ate good Mexican food, hosted a group walk in the Loop on a 95º day, ate at Oasis, and bought a Lettera 32 typewriter off Craigslist.

7
I remember when Ozzy Osbourne died in July. He’d held a larger-than-life presence throughout my childhood. It was in Des Moines, not far from where I grew up, that he bit off the head of a live bat, thinking it was a fake toy, during a performance at Vets Memorial Auditorium in 1982. I grew up with people who had been there and supposedly saw it with their own eyes. Though it wasn’t until 1996 that I heard the opening chants of “Crazy Train” at a Colorado Rockies game that I had the consciousness to register the power of his music. The rest was history in 2002 when I heard Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” while on a family trip to Chicago. I returned home with OZZY written on my knuckles, pledging my allegiance to the Prince of Darkness. Though I eventually moved on to much heavier stuff—bands like Slayer, Death, and Cannibal Corpse—Ozzy remained a fixture of my youth. I’d begun bracing myself for his death several years ago but was still surprised when he finally passed. I still get chills listening to Randy Rhoads rip through the first verse of “Crazy Train” to this day. RIP Ozzy.

8
I remember all of my students. I launched The Moving School in August as a container for my classes, group walks, and workshops. I’ve described the school’s educational focus as “learning in public space.” This year I had the pleasure of leading three classes, two one-day workshops, and twelve group walks—significantly more than I’ve ever done in a single year. It confirmed that teaching is an integral part of my practice. It also pushed me to take more risks, like hosting my generative writing class, Writing in Public Space, entirely in Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS) across Lower Manhattan instead of using a private classroom. The anxiety was worth it. We only got kicked out of a POPS once, fittingly on the last day of class. My students never ceased to impress me with their enthusiasm, dedication, and thoughtfulness. Thanks for being down for the ride.

9
I remember taking Spanish classes. For almost two years, I’ve taken online classes with a tutor living in Oaxaca, Mexico. Living in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, I’ve had the opportunity to embarrass myself more than a few times, but my Spanish has been put to good use—shopping at la tienda, volunteering with Mixteca, ordering tamales de rajas, making friends with the group of Mexican dudes drinking chelas in the back of my bodega, reading young adult fiction in Spanish, and attending El Grito and the Mexican Independence Day parade.

10
I remember breaking my left ring finger. I wish I had a better story to share, but I managed to hurt myself while catching a football. Such a minor injury was deceptively complicated, and the first time I’d ever broken a bone. I’d naively assumed my finger was jammed, but the swelling persisted, not to mention my finger was noticeably crooked. My girlfriend Iris, rightfully concerned, convinced me to visit the doctor after ten days passed. As she correctly suspected, my finger was broken. I wore a custom splint for ten weeks until I was officially cleared. My finger likely won’t be the same due to scar tissue, though the occasional pain should subside in a few more weeks. I’m proud to share that I’ve regained full mobility and can return to playing Talk Talk’s “It’s My Life” on the bass guitar.

11
I remember walking San Francisco for the very first time over Thanksgiving. I’m well aware, as a walker, just how overdue I was for a visit. As expected, the city was a delight for moving on foot. I learned San Francisco is the second-densest major city in the United States behind New York City, which explains why I felt so at home walking there (I can’t explain it. Some need open space and quiet. I need people and lots of things to look at). I can’t speak to what San Francisco once was. Big Tech is ever present in its ability to make everything feel homogeneous and boring. The cost of living is outrageous, the wealth disparity impossible not to feel, but between those cracks, I sensed the city still had a soul. Special thanks to Graham and Janette of The Last Straw for inviting me to host my first generative writing group walk during my stay. Honorable mention goes to Iris, for walking the Golden Gate Bridge with me twice.

12
I remember saying no. Though 2025 was a full year, I did my best to leave some space on my plate—something I’ve not done well in the past. Turns out I need more time to recharge, so I leaned into my introverted tendencies. I’ve felt this for a long time, but this year I committed to being more intentional with my time—likely a result of devoting most of my creative energy to finishing my first novel (and why I didn’t send many letters this year). So I spent more time reading, tried my best to steer clear of things that left me drained, had more one-on-one hangouts, and cooked a lot. Ironically, this was also the most sedentary year I’ve had in a while. I hope to walk more in 2026.

So tell me, what did you remember in 2025?

Thanks to everyone who’s continued to follow along all these years. Your attention means the world to me. I look forward to sharing more regularly in the coming year.

Happy New Year,
Alex

Published writing and press in 2025:

1. “New York Is Connecting Its Transit Deserts. We Walked All 14 Miles of It”, The New York Times

2. Katie Anania by Alex Wolfe, BOMB Magazine

3. “Asphalt Botany”, Now-Time, Issue 1

4. Phillip Cox, “In Praise of the Pedestrian”, Untapped Journal

As always, this is Pedestrian and I’m Alex Wolfe. If you’d like to support this work, please consider sharing with a friend.

I’m proud to share my first story in The New York Times: New York Is Planning a Train Line to Connect Its Transit Deserts. We Walked All 14 Miles of It.

This project was the idea of my good friend Tom Wilson, who invited me to join him on a walk along the proposed Interborough Express route (IBX). I wrote about what we saw, heard, and felt—paired with his beautiful photographs.

The city plans to build the IBX, a light rail line that would repurpose freight tracks to connect Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, to Jackson Heights, Queens, in about 40 minutes, linking 17 subway lines. Over the course of more than 20 miles, we followed the future route as closely as possible, walking surface roads to see the neighborhoods it would link and meet the people who live in them. The city is optimistic it can finish the project within a decade. Some joke we’ll be waiting until the next millennium.

In New York City, outer Brooklyn and outer Queens might as well be different universes. The idea of connecting them still feels abstract. Current rail options almost always mean a brutal commute, often requiring a detour across the East River and through Manhattan. For people like us, who live at opposite ends of the proposed route, the space between us feels especially unnavigable.

What does it mean to walk a train line that doesn’t exist yet? We set out to find out, knowing the neighborhoods could be forever changed if the project is completed. Along the way, we spoke with people (many of whom didn’t make it into the final piece) and tried to understand how this new route might reshape the communities it touches.

This was a dream project. I’ve been walking and writing in this city for nearly a decade, and seeing that work published in The New York Times alongside my friend feels surreal. It was an honor to walk with Tom and document the experience. I was also so happy to include my favorite bar of all time, Soccer Tavern. Thank you to editors Anna Marks and Eslah Attar, and to everyone we spoke with along the way.

Read the piece here. If you’re into it, I’d be grateful if you shared it.

More soon,
A.W.

As always, this is Pedestrian and I’m Alex Wolfe. You can follow me on Instagram or visit my website. If you’d like to support this work, please consider forwarding it to a friend.

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I’m currently working on my first novel, tentatively titled Repeater. I never meant to write a novel. The project began as a collection of photographs taken over the last five years of walking. Then I started adding vignettes, and those vignettes grew. Before long, I was writing a book of short stories. But eventually, I grew tired of documenting my walks strictly through nonfiction. Over time, the project transformed into something else entirely: a fictionalized account of a man’s walk from Brooklyn to Philadelphia (along with everything else drifting through his head).

Writing a novel takes a lot of energy and doesn’t leave much space for newsletters. So I figured—why not share a chapter draft here? I read this one aloud at a reading last night, after all. The excerpt below is from Chapter 8. In it, a man named M is walking from Metuchen to New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he stops to rest and meets a man named Chris outside his apartment. M listens as Chris shares a story from his past.

I met Chris in real life, but his story is part invention—loosely based on something my girlfriend’s cousin told us while we were visiting her family in Hawaii over Christmas.

Thanks for reading.

Beautiful Day

The walk from Metuchen, through Edison, and on to New Brunswick was about five miles. The route followed a stretch of the old Lincoln Highway, splitting each town in two. When first charted, it was stitched together from foot paths, many long used by Native Americans. It was eventually absorbed into the U.S. Highway System, repurposed to shuttle cars between strip malls, warehouses, and business complexes—many stamped with the Amazon logo. Beyond the trees screening the parking lots, M could see bright blue semi trailers grinning back at him.

Just ahead, tucked between a vacant Pizza Hut and a dim sum restaurant, was a row of motel apartments. A man sat outside in a wicker rocking chair. M waved as he passed.

"Ya want some water?" the man yelled.

"What?"

"Water, ya want some water?"

The man in the wicker chair wore a black paisley bandana pulled low over his brow. Silver sports sunglasses covered his eyes, giving him the look of a fighter pilot. A nasal cannula snaked from the respirator beneath his chair and looped up into his nose. In his left hand, he held a glass of red wine, half full.

"Name's Chris," he said, handing M a water bottle from a cooler. "What's up?"

"I'm walking to Philadelphia."

The respirator hissed.

"What's up with you?"

"Just got out of the hospital. I was there for a month. Covid kicked my ass. I still can't breathe." He sipped from his wine glass. "I was a diesel mechanic. Can't work now. Call it an early retirement."

M couldn't tell if it was a joke.

"So you're walkin' to Philly, huh?"

M opened his mouth, but Chris went on.

"You know, I took a walk once."

"Where to?"

Chris coughed.

"Spent twelve months turning wrenches in Afghanistan. Wasn't infantry or nothin'. Just worked on base. That's where I started working as a mechanic. Never left the wire, but I heard rockets. I was just a kid. My first time really leaving Jersey. The first time I'd ever seen the stars, really. Out there on base you could see the entire Milky Way."

M took a sip from the water bottle, picturing the desert sky. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen the stars like that.

"And somehow in the shit, I found love," Chris continued. "Through her church, Beth found me. She sent me a letter from Wichita Falls, Texas. They sent hundreds of letters trying to boost morale and thank us for fighting for freedom. Something like that. Well, I'd been defending our freedom for two months and was bored out of my mind. Her letter began, 'Dear Serviceman.' So I wrote her back. We kept it cordial. She talked about the weather, the goings around town, her family, but soon things got personal."

Chris paused to gather himself. His voice dropped just slightly when he spoke again.

"We started emailing a few times a week. Back and forth. I'd go to the rec tent after my shift—just a row of old desktops lined up under fluorescent lights. If the connection held, I'd check my email, hoping she wrote back. I asked for her picture, she obliged. When I saw those blue eyes, I knew I was in love. I printed it out and kept it in my locker."

Chris leaned closer to M. He almost couldn't hear him over the respirator.

"She was just eighteen, but I knew I was gonna marry her."

He hung for a second, then continued.

"About four months in, they flew me home on leave. I begged her to meet me in the city for a few days, but she couldn't afford the plane ticket working part-time as a cashier at Tom Thumb. I wasn't getting rich or nothing, but the pay stacked up. Combat zone, no rent to cover. I told her I would pay her ticket. Believe it or not, she said she would come.

"I drove my dad's truck all the way from Edison to pick her up at LaGuardia. I got us a hotel in Midtown. I hadn't been that nervous since flying over for deployment.

"She told me when she'd get in. I waited for her."

"And?" asked M.

"And guess what? She never showed up."

A crow landed on the motorcycle parked in the lot. Chris watched as it flew away.

"So I spent the weekend getting loaded, piss drunk and praying she'd finally show up."

He shook his head, nearly winded.

"But she didn't."

He sat still for a beat, remembering how the rest of it unfolded.

"Two weeks after I returned to base, I got a letter. She said sorry, but her parents wouldn't let her fly across the country to meet a soldier, let alone a stranger. She said she was gonna pray for me, but I told her I didn't need anybody's prayers. I already had enough of those. That was the last I heard from her."

Chris glanced down at his glass.

"When I got back they sent me down to a base called Salerno for a few weeks. They called it Rocket City. Made Bagram feel like the Hilton. I didn't sleep the whole time. You'd hear the sirens, then feel the whole damn tent shake. I wasn't built for that. My love for her only grew. I prayed to God he'd give me the chance to see her."

"So what's all this gotta do with a walk?" asked M. He shifted his weight. The sun was high, and he had an hour left until New Brunswick.

"Hold on, I'm getting to it."

Chris drew in a breath, then launched back in.

"When I finished my deployment, I booked a flight to Dallas. I'd catch a bus there and make my way to Wichita Falls. I had her address from our letters. And if I couldn't find her, I figured I'd go find her at church.

"But when I landed in Dallas, I couldn't find my wallet. I had no luck tracking it down. Must have left it at the airport in Jersey, I thought. I only had a few bills in my backpack. Maybe twenty bucks. That wasn't nearly enough to buy a ticket. So I tried hitchhiking my way out of town. It was just a two-hour drive.

"But I had no luck. People in Texas don't like hitchhikers, I learned. I had no choice."

"So what happened?" asked M.

"Walked."

"You what?"

"That's right. I walked. Just stopped to eat and sleep. After a while, I gave up on getting a ride. Figured if I made it all the way, it'd prove something. The more I suffered, the more she'd love me.

"I slept in bus shelters, graveyards, and in an abandoned car. Walked along the highway for days. I don't think I spoke a single word for two of them. Cars flew past like I wasn't even real."

Chris paused once more, watching traffic pass. M said nothing.

"I got to town on a Sunday morning—the day before I was supposed to fly back to Jersey. I walked into her church. I didn't recognize anyone, not even myself when I looked into the bathroom mirror. I sat in the back and left for her house before the sermon."

"But when I got to her door, no one answered. I wasn't prepared to wait. After five days of walking, it hadn't even occurred to me that she might not answer. But I waited—and I waited beneath the tree in her yard."

He stared straight ahead, like he was watching it all again.

"After a few hours, I thought about finding her at work, but I was too worn out. The sun was setting. Then she stepped out the front door—looked just as beautiful as I'd imagined, 'cept she had a man beside her, and he put his arm around her."

Chris's mouth tightened.

"I said, 'Beth, it's me, Chris!' and she looked like she'd seen a ghost.

"She goes, 'I know it's you, Chris, but you need to leave.'

"'Beth, how could you do this?' I said. 'I came all this way. I waited for you.'

"She said it like she'd been rehearsing it. Like she knew I might come.

"Then her man says, 'You better get the hell off the property or there's gonna be serious consequences.' And he wasn't about to wait around for the cops."

Chris looked down, cleared his throat.

"You know what, I wasn't scared of him, but I got the hint. I unpacked my bag and threw her gifts across the lawn one by one: dog tags, melted chocolate, a scarf from Kabul. Told him to kiss my ass. It wasn't a tantrum, just my last gesture before I gave up."

Chris stared into the distance, his eyes unreadable behind the silver lenses.

"Some people think I gave it all in Afghanistan," he said. "Truth is, I never even fired my weapon. Not once. Still got discharged as a combat vet. Go figure."

"I walked halfway across Texas for Beth. Thought that had to count for something.”

He let the silence hang. The breeze stirred. Across the road, a plastic bag caught in a bush, fluttering like a flag.

"I walked to the gas station to spend the last of my money—maybe two dollars—when I saw a man wearing a Rutgers hat. Rutgers isn't far from here, you know."

He pointed down the road.

"Said he was from Edison. I told him I was a vet, and he drove me back to Dallas so I could catch my flight. That was almost twenty years ago.

"Haven't done anything like that since."

He smiled, just barely.

"Didn't know what the hell I was doing. But yeah—you could say I went on a walk."

"Weren't you scared?"

"Scared?" Chris shook his head. "Naw. Just crazy."

They sat for a while, watching the steady flow of traffic along the Lincoln Highway. M looked down at the empty water bottle in his hand.

"I haven't told anyone that story," Chris said, swirling the wine in his glass. He nodded at the sky.

"Beautiful day."

As always, this is Pedestrian and I’m Alex Wolfe. If you’d like to support this work, please consider sharing it with a friend.

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A few days before I turned thirty-three, my dad gave me a call. He was starting a will with my mother.

He wasn’t worried about dividing their belongings among my brothers and me. It was all the stuff he hadn’t thought of, like the password to his email, his computer files, or the photos stored on his phone. Digital assets, as the lawyer called them.

My parents aren’t that old. I have faint memories of my father’s Hawaiian-themed thirtieth birthday party. Now, as they approach their sixties, I’m not surprised to learn they’re thinking about what happens when they’re gone. My mother had already asked me, several years ago via text, to be her legacy contact on Facebook in the event she suddenly passed. I might have made a joke of it, begrudgingly, but agreed.

I’m Alex Wolfe, a writer from Iowa living in New York City. You are reading Pedestrian, a monthly newsletter about walking, the built environment, impermanence, memory, attention, among other things.

My father got me thinking. So much of my life exists online. I once prided myself on having many notebooks and sketchbooks, but as the years have passed, only my composition-lined journal remains. I’ve come to understand that what I leave behind would be scattered. Years of photos backed up in the Cloud, half-finished pieces of writing on Google Docs, folders full of random JPEGs and screenshots that, without instruction, would likely be difficult to find or might go completely unfound.

But it’s not only the files. There are things no one would think to look for: the coffee shop I frequent nearly every morning before writing (appropriately named “My Bakery”). Or what about the dead branch that has hung from the tree since I moved into my apartment over three years ago? Who will tell my friends and family about John, the retired glazier next door who talks my ear off, or the daily walks I take down 8th Avenue in Sunset Park’s Chinatown?

A couple of years ago, I was at Soccer Tavern, sitting on a bar stool while the bartender, Drake, recounted the day—the regulars who came through, neighborhood news, bits of gossip he’d picked up, highlights from the Liverpool game. At one point, he mentioned a family from Connecticut who had driven down to Brooklyn just to have a pint.

“Just for a pint? How come?” I asked.

Drake paused for a moment, wiping the bar with a rag, then said in his flat Irish accent, “To remember their son. He passed this year. This was his favorite bar.”

That moment stuck with me. It made me think of all the invisible things—the quiet parts of life—that go without saying and fall through the cracks. Not just the things we own, but the ways we move through the world. The people we interact with. The habits we form throughout the day-to-day. The rhythm that shapes a life.

I recently finished Coming Through Slaughter, a short novel by poet Michael Ondaatje about the life of Buddy Bolden, the supposed “first man of jazz,” as cited by greats like Bunk Johnson and Sidney Bechet. They credited him with fusing ragtime, blues, and improvisation into something new: jazz. Yet no recordings of Bolden’s playing exist. Only one confirmed photograph remains, along with a handful of brief articles and little reliable information about his life. Historians do know that at the age of 30, Bolden was declared mentally ill and institutionalized at the Louisiana State Insane Asylum in Jackson, where he remained until his death in 1931. His legacy lives on through the memories of those who heard him play and passed his name forward.

Ondaatje’s novel reads like jazz itself—fragmented, non-linear, improvisational. At times, it’s hard to tell who the narrator is. When I finished, I wasn’t sure what was fact and what was fiction, what belonged to history and what Ondaatje had imagined to fill the gaps in Bolden’s unknowable life.

Despite my anxiety about documenting my life properly for my future self or loved ones, I’ve loosened my grip on the idea of keeping a neat record. I remind myself that for most of human history, the average person didn’t live that way. They didn’t think in terms of legacy or preservation. They just lived.

The same week I started Coming Through Slaughter, I finished Lauren Markham’s Immemorial, an incredibly moving book about the limits of language in the face of climate catastrophe, and our inability to memorialize things as they’re being lost. In her book, she includes a statement from the American Historical Association:

“To remove a monument, or to change the name of a school or street, is not to erase history, but rather to alter or call attention to a previous interpretation of history.”

Later in the book, Markham shares a conversation she had with Heidi Quante from the Bureau of Linguistic Reality. Quante argues that we might not need any more memorials, or “static temples,” as she put it, that attempt to hold memory and grief. Instead, Quante advocates for the enactment itself, in the power of ritual.

Instead of statues or stones, remembering someone or something could take the form of an action. Something that offers space for reflection not through permanence—for our recollection of things is always rewriting itself—but through presence.

I thought of the Adopt-A-Bench program in Central Park. Since 1986, more than 7,000 benches have been adopted, each adorned with a small plaque containing a sentence or two. Most are purchased to remember someone who once loved to sit there. The fees help maintain the benches and the surrounding greenspace. Bench adoption is a gesture, a memorial built into everyday life and into the lives of others. Often, when I sit on a bench in Central Park, I find myself quietly thinking of someone I never knew.

The other day, while walking along Decatur Street in Ridgewood, I passed the storefront that once housed my old friend Curtis Merkel’s bookshop. He was well into his eighties when we met, and truthfully, he was one of the people who inspired me to begin this Pedestrian work. During COVID, he closed for the sake of his health. He already had respiratory issues from years of smoking that required him to wear a nasal cannula anywhere he went. I moved away and the world began to come alive again, but Curtis never reopened his bookstore. And so, we lost touch—until one day, he liked one of my newsletter posts. I couldn't believe it. I called and left a voicemail. A few weeks later, he returned the favor.

“I am alive,” he said into the telephone. “I did survive and I’m so happy to hear that you called and would like to talk to you for a few seconds.”

Our conversation lasted over an hour once we finally got on the phone. He spoke about his childhood playing at Liberty Park, the moving business he ran with his family, and how proud he was of his daughters. As the call came to a close, he mentioned that his mind was still sharp, but his body was no longer keeping up. He said he might not have much time left. I promised I’d visit him soon.

But time slipped away again. Every now and then I would think of Curt and search Google to see if an obituary had been posted. Each time, the search results came up empty, and I reminded myself to make the trip. After my last visit to Ridgewood, I searched once more and found that the inevitable had happened. Curtis had passed on January 2nd, just as I had feared might happen one day.

I wasn’t exactly surprised. Both Curtis and I knew his death was coming. But there was still a particular shock in knowing he was truly gone. To see his full name printed in a decorative script beside an old photograph. To realize we’d never get the chance to see each other again. I felt a mixture of sadness and relief. At least we still got to have that one last call.

I thought of Quante’s thoughts on the power of ritual once again while reading what Curtis’s family included in his obituary. They asked, instead of mourning, to do one or all of the following in his memory:

I still have the voicemail Curtis left me saved on a hard drive. I’ve kept the map of Chicago he gave me after learning I once lived there. But artist Hamish Fulton once said: An object cannot compete with an experience. And it’s true. Nothing will live up to Saturday mornings spent in his bookshop talking about his love of Lady Gaga (he called her a singer, not a screamer, as he would say), his disdain for Donald Trump, or his memory of farmland in Queens as a young boy. Now Curtis lives on through spaghetti and mustard and music.

Curtis’s obituary made me think about how I might want to be remembered one day. Naturally, I’m drawn to adopting a park bench or creating a walk around my neighborhood to remember all the small memories and unrecorded parts of my own life. All the things that have escaped this digital world we live in, that don’t make it into photos or journals. I already lead walks through the city, but those are for others. This one—this imagined route through the quiet, overlooked parts of my life—is much different.

But I don’t think I will. The poignancy of these lived moments that I wish to share with my friends and loved ones is that they aren’t supposed to be remembered. And if they were, it wouldn’t be the same. The meaning lives in their passing—in the dissonance between their existence and their memory. Some things are meant to disappear.

RIP Curtis. I will gladly have a plate of spaghetti and meatballs in your honor.

Thanks for reading,
A.W.

As always, this is Pedestrian and I’m Alex Wolfe. If you’d like to support this work, please consider sharing with a friend.

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I’m writing to share Asphalt Botany, a short piece I wrote about my time walking Catalpa Avenue in Ridgewood, Queens. It was originally published in last month’s Now-Time. Though I wrote this last year, revisiting it now, I find that it still resonates.

I moved to Ridgewood in 2016 and lived there for only eighteen months, but it was the first place where I truly felt at home in New York City after leaving Chicago. Longtime readers may remember that Ridgewood is where Pedestrian Magazine began—where I first gave myself permission to lean into this practice: walking, taking photos, writing, and talking to strangers—one that continues to unfold to this day.

Thank you to Kevin and the Now-Time crew for the invitation. Enjoy.

Asphalt Botany

I've unintentionally kept my distance from Ridgewood, Queens, since moving away six years ago. The thought of an hour-long train ride across three boroughs made Sunset Park, my current home, feel like the other side of the world. As time passed, my old neighborhood became just another distant file in the Rolodex of my memory.

I had always thought of Ridgewood as a place of metamorphosis, not just for insects, but of my transformation as an artist. It wasn’t until I returned to the neighborhood last June that these memories resurfaced. My visit was largely characterized by kaleidoscopes of Monarch butterflies whose wings fluttered in the periphery of my vision. I wondered if these delicate creatures—likely the great-grandchildren of those who migrated from Mexico—could somehow remember their own transformation too.

Weeks earlier, they had been tucked away in chrysalises, undergoing a dramatic transformation. Inside, the caterpillar dissolved into liquid, reemerging as an adult butterfly several days later. Some believe that during this change, memories of the butterfly's previous life remain.

I’m Alex Wolfe, a writer from Iowa living in New York City. You are reading Pedestrian, a monthly newsletter surveying the people, infrastructure, objects, and history filling the cracks of Elsewhere.

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As I descended from the elevated platform at Forest Avenue and touched the earth, I scanned the horizon and momentarily lost all sense of direction, like waking from a dream and forgetting where you are. After a bout of confusion, I reoriented myself upon spotting the familiar signage of the bodega on the corner. Everything seemed as I had left it, except for the addition of a few new cafes, bars, and restaurants catering to the influx of transplants.

Moving my feet slowly to avoid tripping, I ducked my head and entered a portal. Here, clocks moved slower. Tulips grew year-round. Cats winced from behind sunlit window screens. Old women swept litter from the curb. Leaves swayed in the wind. If you listened carefully, you could hear the call of a mourning dove and the laughter of children playing in the cement lots of Rosemary’s Playground.

Ridgewood’s status as one of the largest historic districts in the nation spared it from the redevelopment that transformed neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Bushwick. As a result, one might assume the storefronts and rowhouses predate time, but its story of rapid construction mirrors the rest of New York City. Beneath the cobblestone, steel, brick, and asphalt lay traces of ponds, forests, and Indigenous trails. Farms sprang forth, the land was tilled, and it was partitioned into tightly spaced plots. A booming transit system laid its tracks, and the population followed. Streets were paved and named Catalpa, Grandview, Fresh Pond, and Palmetto, alluding to the once-rich ecological features that covered the land.

From the train station, I walked south and soon reached Catalpa Avenue, whose sidewalks I remembered from my previous life here. Catalpa was a conduit to elsewhere: its eastern end led to the Fresh Pond freight yard, and at its western end was its mouth, feeding into the congestion of Myrtle Avenue and on to greater Brooklyn. Despite its name, Catalpa had no catalpa trees; instead, I saw countless gingko, maple, linden, oak, and pear.

In the concrete garden of a three-story home, the planters were full of geraniums, dogwood, bergamot, and milkweed. The scent was unmistakably summer. Butterflies feasted on the saffron blossoms, unrolling their proboscises to extract nectar. I massaged a leaf between my fingers and traced its veins with my eyes. On its underside, I found several nearly invisible green orbs—eggs laid by a female butterfly. During migration, she had searched for host plants, tasting the leaves with her feet. Once she found a suitable leaf, she secreted an adhesive to attach each egg. Butterflies laid hundreds of eggs, usually on the underside of leaves to evade predators and bad weather. Milkweed provided nutrition for young caterpillars and influenced their development and behavior.

Observing the eggs, I realized how distant city living had made me feel from the natural world. Growing up in rural Iowa, I regularly played in fields, creeks, and forests. As an adult, I’d become accustomed to the city’s overwhelming crowds, waste, concrete, and sometimes unbearable smells. Nature had become a novelty, relegated to public parks maintained by city employees.

The survival of a Monarch was a miracle. I watched as they flapped their wings, seemingly greeting me. The destruction of their habitats and climate change caused their population to dwindle rapidly. Monarchs and their eggs were highly desired by an array of predators—ants, birds, reptiles, and wasps—and susceptible to parasites. Despite their struggle, few Monarchs lived longer than a month.

For centuries, butterflies have been meticulously cataloged and collected by scientists and enthusiasts alike. Their specimens, often treated like precious jewels, were displayed in cabinets of curiosities or museum collections. The fervor to collect butterflies led to the displacement of entire populations.

But where did this desire to collect come from? Preserving objects—fragments, traces, butterflies—was a way to feel agency and control. I could relate. My metamorphosis in Ridgewood fed on the built environment. The source material I sought for my work existed out in the world—I just had to find it. After years of frustration and uncertainty about how an artist should spend their time, it was in Ridgewood that I gave myself permission. With newfound clarity, I left my studio, went for a walk, and never returned.

My practice has since centered on the movement of my body—walking—through urban landscapes, capturing fleeting moments and the transience of city life. My work has become an archive of photographs, writings, and collected objects—a record of my existence and the world I encounter.

Walking was an effective means of fighting amnesia, but the documentation of my movement was inevitably flawed. The resulting artifacts and fragments initially missed out on valuable sensory details, not unlike when we move with haste towards a specific destination, failing to notice the patterns and textures of our surroundings. Yet I continued walking. It was the most intimate way to engage with my surroundings. It wasn’t until later that I learned how a butterfly sees. Their eyes create images through a mosaic pattern—a multi-directional compounding of pixels rather than a linear movie, as we often perceive life.

Realizing that butterflies perceive the world in fragments, I began to see that my hurried pace was blurring the landscape into a single, unremarkable stretch. Inspired by this new way of seeing, I slowed down. Only then was I able to pick out the pixels of the landscape, creating a patchwork of sensory details, much like the butterfly’s eye. Speed, often in the name of convenience, kept me from fully experiencing the world. The faster I moved, the more I missed. The windshield of a car, for example, became a barrier, isolating me in a bubble.

I thought of countless walks around Ridgewood—going to work, meeting friends, running errands. Returning was a means of retracing my footsteps and recounting a part of my life I’d nearly forgotten. Walking in silence, without music or phone calls, bombarded my senses and deepened my feeling of presence. It was also an act of resistance, a way to be available only to myself and those around me. Paying attention formed a relationship—one society increasingly disregards—with both the landscape and myself. My connection to Ridgewood deepened, revealing a place full of traces and artifacts: peeling paint, weathered concrete keystones, and sun-faded hardwood.

Blinding sunlight interrupted my thoughts as dusk approached. The Monarchs had long since departed in search of other blossoms, signaling it was time for the train ride back to Sunset Park. Ridgewood had evaded the wrecking ball, but the neighborhood wasn’t the only thing that had changed—so had I. I felt the bittersweetness of passing time.

My footsteps retraced the memories of who I used to be. To do so was akin to the migration of Monarch butterflies, whose travels ensure their survival. No single individual completed the whole journey; rather, their great migration, spanning thousands of miles, took place over generations. My walk was an act of preserving my own history to share with a future self, a way to trace the threads that connect my past to my present.

As the train carried me away, I watched the neighborhood dissolve into the trees—a montage of memories and history. These fragments, no matter how insignificant they may seem, were the substance keeping my feet on the ground throughout life. Like the Monarchs, we’re all part of a migration through time, each step a link between who we were, who we are, and who we’re becoming.

Thanks for reading 🦋
—A.W.

As always, this is Pedestrian and I’m Alex Wolfe. If you’d like to support this work, please consider sharing with a friend.

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Last Wednesday’s new moon marked the start of the Lunar New Year. Just past midnight, I woke to the sound of exploding mortar fireworks outside my window, their flashes briefly lighting up the darkness of my bedroom.

The following afternoon, still a bit sleepy, I walked down 8th Avenue in Sunset Park, the heart of Brooklyn’s Chinatown, just a few blocks from home. Children gathered with lit sparklers, tossing snaps onto the pavement, their sharp cracks echoing down the street. Mothers watched with careful eyes, their attention divided between celebration and protection, against a backdrop of businesses closed for the holiday.

I moved into my apartment on Lunar New Year three years ago—the longest I’ve lived in one place since moving out of my childhood home in 2010. Naturally, the occasion invites reflection on both my past and future.

A new moon, I read, marks the start of a new cycle—a fresh beginning. Yet, it cannot be seen with the naked eye; the side facing Earth remains unlit by the sun. For astronomers, this absence of light brings clarity. With less brightness to wash out the sky, the stars emerge more vividly.

During a new moon, telescopes can peer deeper into space, capturing light from the early universe. The farther away an object is, the longer its light takes to reach Earth—meaning that under a dark sky, astronomers are literally looking into the past. To the naked eye, on a clear night, we can see as far as 2.5 million light-years away—the distance to the Andromeda Galaxy. For comparison, the light from the moon takes just 1.3 seconds to reach us.

As I looked up at the sky that evening, I checked my calendar and saw that the last new moon had fallen on December 30th—the day I returned from a seven-day trip to Hawaii with my girlfriend, Iris, to spend Christmas with her family.

It was an unusual moon—a black moon, the rare second new moon in a single month. The opposite of a blue moon, it’s a phenomenon that occurs roughly every twenty-nine months.

I didn’t gain any special clarity about my past or the universe, but I did leave Hawaii with a glimpse of a potential future.

I’m Alex Wolfe, a writer from Iowa living in New York City. You’re reading Pedestrian, an excuse to write about my walks (among other things) every month. Recently, Phil Cox wrote a well-crafted piece about my work and walks through Midtown—you can read it here.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?” Iris asked, as we drove from Honolulu Airport to her parents’ house on the eastern edge of Oahu. Her parents, who immigrated from South Korea long before she was born, had made a home here, thousands of miles from where my own family put down roots in Iowa. This was my first time meeting them.

Prior to takeoff from New York City, the cabin crew requested that all windows be shut for the eleven-hour flight. I spent the journey blanketed in darkness, save for the dim glow of in-flight monitors. Now, five hours behind, riding in the car, I felt my brain rearrange itself—old memories dissolving to make room for this new reality as I looked out the window. I’d been teleported, leaving behind trash and London Plane Trees, obstructed views and asphalt.

Now, there was warmth on my pale skin. Palm trees. Ocean expanse. Rugged mountains. The landscape—lush, sunlit, impossibly green for December—was surreal. And yet, I remained silent.

“What is it?” Iris pressed. I wondered how I had ever convinced her to visit my family in Iowa in the dead of winter—only now realizing what it meant for someone from a place like this.

“I’m just hungry,” I replied, keeping my silence in quiet amazement. When we first started dating in 2018, Iris had invited me to Hawaii, but I never went. Now, after everything—after breaking up and finding our way back to each other three years later—I couldn’t help but wonder why I had waited so long. And yet, as we arrived at her family’s home, I felt an immediate sense of warmth. Her parents welcomed me and we exchanged gifts, not just for Christmas, but as a gesture of welcome, a way of saying, I’m so happy to meet you.

Later, in her childhood bedroom, where I stayed, I kept zooming in and out of Google Maps, fixated on the blue dot anchored in the ocean—adrift in what felt like the middle of nowhere. But the next day, as we drove to Koko Head, highways, homes, and public transit came into view, reminding me that I was still, technically, within the totality of the United States.

I saw all the familiar tenants: McDonald’s—though here they served taro pie. 7-Eleven, but closer to an H-Mart, stocked with spam musubi and squid jerky. Hilton Hotels, Costco, Starbucks. They had Denny’s, too, but I forgot all about it after my first side of chili from Zippy’s—objectively the better restaurant.

At the top of the Koko Head Stairs, we stood beside an artificial Christmas tree, and I traced the coast of Maunalua Bay with my eye, looking toward downtown Honolulu—the direction I had vowed to walk. I cobbled together memories of other cities—Los Angeles, Miami—but nothing made sense. The forecast read 83ºF on my phone. Thick clouds hugged the ridges of the Ko‘olau Range. Playwright Tennessee Williams once said, “America only has three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.

He clearly had never been to Honolulu.

Throughout the trip, Iris led me to increasingly beautiful places—the Makapu‘u Tide Pools and a drive to Waimea Beach on the North Shore with her cousin and her boyfriend—but what stayed with me most were the places tied to her past: Kahala Mall, where she did her homework; Jewel or Juice, one of her favorite açaí bowl spots; Genki Sushi, a conveyor belt sushi restaurant; her high school; and, finally, church with her family—entirely in Korean—and the nursing home where her grandmother lived.

One morning, while eating breakfast, I looked through old family photo albums with Iris. Each photo was a portal to the past—frozen moments of childhood birthdays, family vacations, school portraits. If her family was a novel, I was being introduced to the characters, learning their histories, tracing the narrative I was now becoming intertwined with.

I thought about how photographs are another way of seeing into the past, not unlike looking at the stars. Just as light from distant galaxies shows us the universe as it once was, these images preserved fragments of time, proof that a moment had existed at all. In studying them, I understood Iris’s past more clearly, and in doing so, I felt closer to her.

Three days before December’s black moon, I asked Iris to drop me off in the Kahala Mall parking lot so I could make sense of Honolulu. I planned to walk to Kaimuki, where her father grew up, and, if I was lucky, reach the Bishop Museum, not far from where we had picked up our rental car. Moving my feet—as I have in so many cities—I felt the familiar sensation of refuge in an unfamiliar setting. Like the new moon, walking allowed me a certain clarity—something I’ve written about countless times before. But instead of revisiting the past, I was grounded in the present.

I’d purchased two more disposable cameras during the trip and, given the limited shots, was careful about what I chose to photograph. But this time, I wasn’t just preserving a place—I was preserving a history, a moment I could one day return to, the way I had looked through Iris’s family albums. Proof that I had been here—that this first trip to Honolulu wasn’t just passing through, but the beginning of something still unfolding. I let myself off the hook, knowing that whatever I missed would still be here, waiting, when I returned.

As I walked, I felt a relationship beginning to blossom and grow deeper—not just with this place, but with Iris, too. Staring at Diamond Head—a broad, saucer-shaped volcanic crater—I could imagine myself living here one day, if that was how our lives unfolded. The sun hung directly overhead, drifting closer to the horizon with each step. Somewhere unseen, the moon waited, its light still making its way to me. I walked onward.

Happy Lunar New Year. Thanks for reading.

—A.W.
Brooklyn, NY

As always, this is Pedestrian and I’m Alex Wolfe. If you’d like to support this work, please consider sharing with a friend.

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When I bought the ticket months ago, I told myself the risk was worth it, even if it meant I might never make it home. Among the dozens of passengers whispering silent prayers aboard this 234-seat Boeing 757-200, I am not one of them. In just under five hours, we’ll touch down at Mexico City’s Benito Juarez International Airport—where I’ll meet Ryan for the opening of his painting exhibition.

In my carry-on: a copy of Fahrenheit 451, wired Apple headphones, a college-ruled notebook, and a box of Trident gum for equalizing air pressure. None of these will be of any use because I’m optimistic. Earlier, from behind the glass of John F. Kennedy’s Terminal 2, the aircraft appeared capable, its sleek fuselage glinting in the afternoon sun. I detected nothing suspicious about the ground crew loading luggage, nor about the warmth—though a bit hurried—of the gate agent who checked my boarding pass.

“Welcome.”

I pat the aluminum surface of the airplane—a quiet ritual to reassure myself of its integrity—before stepping inside. The flight attendants greet me with practiced smiles, their presence blocking my view of the pilots preparing for takeoff. As I return their salutations, I’m afforded a brief glimpse of the flight deck: a mustached captain and first officer, both peppered with gray hair, who appear well-suited for the job. My gaze doesn’t linger, however, as the sight of the controls—an overwhelming array of colorful buttons, levers, and dials—stirs substantial doubts about anyone’s ability to actually fly a plane.

I shuffle into my assigned seat, surrendering to the oppressive 31-32 inch seat pitch—the sweet spot where humane design meets commercial interest—and prepare to remain uncomfortably confined for the entirety of the flight.

The flight attendant starts the pre-flight safety instructions, and my attention slips away. “In the unlikely event of an emergency landing and evacuation,” she says, briefly recapturing my focus, “leave your carry-on items behind.” My gaze shifts to the blue-tipped winglets outside my window as she mentions the life raft stowed beneath our seats. I consider texting my family “I love you”—another ritual I’ve never quite understood, as if I’m heading off to war instead of a short vacation. “Safe travels,” they would reply—a platitude that seems to acknowledge some uncertainty about my arrival in Mexico. I switch my phone to airplane mode.

The airplane surges forward, roaring to life as it erupts from the tarmac. I tighten my seatbelt, bracing as we reach rotation speed. My stomach lurches, a fleeting weightlessness taking hold as we lift gracefully from the worn asphalt of runway 31L. On previous flights, I’d be three minutes into Unbroken Chain by the Grateful Dead—a song I once used to soothe my flight anxiety. Back then, I thought, nobody dies listening to the Grateful Dead. But times have changed. Now, I’ve unintentionally embraced the TikTok trend of “rawdogging” flights—foregoing in-flight entertainment, snacks, and other distractions entirely. My aim isn’t credibility, but solace at 575 mph.

Instead, I start my phone’s stopwatch. I’ve read most aviation accidents occur in the first three or last eight minutes of flight, though I allow myself a cautious fifteen before tucking the phone into the seat pocket against my knees. I’ve long been captivated by aviation accidents. My research often brings me to the haunting story of TWA Flight 800. On July 17, 1996, just twelve minutes into its flight from JFK Airport, TWA Flight 800 exploded over the Atlantic, killing all 230 passengers—a tragedy that weighs on my mind with every takeoff.

Climbing at 316 feet per second, the aircraft reaches 10,000 feet, passing over the Romer Shoal Lighthouse in the Lower New York Bay below. I switch the 10-inch display in the seatback ahead to the “My Flight” experience, tracking the plane’s altitude, speed, and position on a 3D map in real time. My jaw tightens as the airplane momentarily feels like it’s falling during the climb. Around me, passengers remain composed, engrossed in noise-canceling headphones, magazines, or movies, oblivious to the subtle shifts that set my nerves on edge.

From row 33, seat C, I’m afforded a commanding view of the main cabin and several rows of Comfort+. The invisible hierarchies of air travel unfold in this long, narrow space: Comfort+ passengers reclining with a little extra legroom, while we in basic economy listen to the slamming of the toilet seat from one of two lavatories located near the exits. Beyond them, the First Class curtain sways slightly, revealing glimpses of a world of complimentary dining options and bottomless bloody marys. If I squint my eyes just right—given the sheer curtain dividing Comfort+ from First Class passengers is drawn, I can make out the pilot’s door.

If I were assigned a window seat, I would spend the majority of this flight watching cloud shadows drift lazily over the patchwork landscape below, painting fields and small towns in fleeting shades of gray. From above, the world takes on a strange clarity—river veins carving their paths through the land, roads imposing their rigid geometry, and tiny homes dotting the intersections. The view reminds me of something both deliberate and chaotic, a map of human intention disrupted by nature's persistence. Up here, matters on the ground seem trivial, weightless, like they belong to someone else entirely.

I can’t help but get emotional—a sensation that seems to strike many during air travel, for reasons I still don’t fully understand. On another flight, three Thanksgivings ago, I remember watching The Iron Giant, a film I hadn’t thought about in years. In the climactic scene, the Giant sacrifices himself to save the town of Rockwell from a nuclear missile. As he soars into the atmosphere, he whispers “Superman” right before the missile detonates. On the ground, it was a movie, but up in the sky, I’m moved to tears. 

Instead, the woman occupying the window seat shut the blind shortly after takeoff, extinguishing the landscape and leaving me to view the backs of heads, the soft glow of screens, and the careful choreography of flight attendants navigating the aisle.

The cabin feels like a pressurized Pringles can, cramped, with the buzzsaw hum of the engines vibrating through the air. I close my eyes, letting the steady vibration seep into my bones. The sound swells and ebbs like a mechanical lullaby—rhythmic, hypnotic—blending with the subtle shudder of the plane and pulling me into a soft haze. Shadows flicker at the edges of my mind, then coalesce into shapes, colors, and the familiar outline of my dear friend Ryan as I drift asleep. 

We’re standing outside a small gallery on a well-shaded street in Mexico City’s Juarez. The air feels cool and carries a faint hint of lavender and car exhaust. Ryan waves me over, his grin wide and familiar, ushering me inside. The walls are alive with his artwork, and it’s as though I’ve stepped into a world belonging entirely to him.

The seven paintings he brought with him in his checked luggage fill the space perfectly. Most depict cropped views of the Seagrams Building in Midtown Manhattan, a woman by the plaza’s reflecting pool, or the amber glass of the lobby. Beside them is a still life of peaches.

I examine each painting closely, moving slowly from one to another until stopping at a picture of a building with thin vertical windows extending beyond the canvas—until I notice the large crater at its center, flames flickering at the edges. I glance at the exhibition checklist for the title: South Tower, 9:03AM.

Ryan has painted buildings for the last several years, but this is the first time he’s chosen to depict destruction—albeit a loaded example—sourced from footage taken by a bystander who witnessed the September 11th attacks. My mind scrambles, and I mutter out the first words that come to mind.

“So, how long did this one take?”

He returns my question with a pensive stare. “Ladies and gentlemen, the pilot has informed us that we are entering an area of possible turbulence,” he says.

I nod with a forced look of understanding. I continue moving from painting to painting.

“Please fasten your seatbelts and secure all loose items as we may experience some bumps ahead,” he continues, tapping me on the shoulder.”

Suddenly, I lose my footing, crashing to the floor as the building shakes uncontrollably, the paintings rattling against the walls. The gallery dissolves amid the chaos, and I’m jolted back into economy class, gripping my armrest to the wail of a young child.

“Sir. Excuse me, sir.”

I awake to the gentle touch of a flight attendant tapping me on the shoulder. “Please make sure your seatbelt is buckled. The captain has turned on the fasten seatbelt sign.”

It was only a dream. Unable to fall back asleep, I glance at the in-flight display. The airplane climbs steadily, several feet a second, though from the comfort of the fuselage, the shift in altitude is imperceptible—felt only in the low, steady roar of the turbine engines. We must be nearing a storm cell, though I can’t confirm it; the woman at the window has kept the blind firmly shut since takeoff.

As the airplane bumps slightly, I remind myself—though with little evidence—that no plane has ever gone down from turbulence. Using the complimentary Wi-Fi, I check the National Weather Service radar. A yellow and green belt of moderate rainfall stretches across Tennessee, with an orange patch above Nashville signaling heavier storms. Harmless enough, just a routine thunderstorm, I think, placing my phone in the seat-back pocket.

January 15, 2009, began like any other day for Captain “Sully” Sullenberger. US Airways Flight 1549, a routine flight from LaGuardia to Charlotte, seemed ordinary—until 100 seconds in, when a flock of geese disabled both engines. “This can’t happen. This doesn’t happen to me,” Sully thought, as the day turned into the worst of his forty-two year career. With no time to reach a nearby airport, he and First Officer Jeffrey Skiles safely ditched the plane on the Hudson River near Midtown Manhattan.

Moments like Sully’s remind me how quickly life can change—how, on any day, anyone’s card could get punched without warning. For thirty-two years, I had avoided death—not by living boldly, but by staying cautious. Stories of random accidents and tragedies I’d stumbled upon online had cultivated a healthy paranoia, quiet reminders of life’s fragility. Yet, over time, I’d grown complacent, keeping mortality at arm’s length. If this plane were to go down, would I have any regrets?

I could think of several candidates, though few left as lasting an impression on my psyche as the loss I experienced at four years old. It was the spring of 1997, and my parents were hosting a garage sale. Lost in my own world, I wandered through piles of folded clothes and neatly arranged objects—my father’s old boombox, my mother’s blow dryer, outgrown clothes from my brothers and me. Somewhere among the clutter, I’d carelessly left Speedy, a Beanie Baby I’d acquired through a McDonald’s Happy Meal promotion, on one of the plastic folding tables. I remember watching helplessly as a little boy, whose parents unknowingly bought Speedy, climbed into their car and drove away.

An eBay search today lists plenty of reproductions, but I could never bring myself to make the purchase. Decades later, I still resist attachment, as if limiting what I care for might protect me from loss. But did I have regrets to bring to the grave? Very few—if any. I was ready for whatever fate might hold.

A gentle bell reverberates throughout the cabin. I’m startled, awaiting an announcement from the captain warning of engine failure. “Ladies and gentlemen,” says the attendant, “the Captain has turned off the fasten seatbelt sign. You may now move around the cabin.”

The woman in the window seat unbuckles her seatbelt with exaggerated care, silently signaling to me and the sleeping passenger in the middle seat, who has slept throughout the entirety of our flight that she needs to use the restroom.

Growing tired of watching the passenger in row 32, seat D—my immediate 2 o’clock—meticulously piece together a digital puzzle of the Taj Mahal on his in-flight entertainment display, I decide it’s time for a change of scenery. For the better half of the flight, I’ve been quietly cheering him on, stealing glances as he scrolls through a gallery of puzzle pieces, carefully choosing each one with precision.

I take this opportunity to open the window blind. Sunlight floods the cabin and I can see the Gulf of Mexico below. Above, the vast blue sky feels endless, indifferent to my small worries. If I squint, I wonder—could God himself be staring back at me?

I lean back in my chair and close my eyes, letting the sun’s glow warm my face. With no music, no book, and no external escape, the vulnerability of being 30,000 feet in the air feels sharper, clearer. I breathe in the recycled air, counting seconds between breaths, and open my eyes to check the inflight display. 

A 3D rendering of an airplane overlaid on the map marks our progress toward Mexico City—a tiny, fragile thing crossing vast, uncharted territory. My stopwatch reads one hundred eighty minutes—long past the danger zone, statistically speaking. The render inches forward, fragile yet steady. In row 31, seat B, the credits of Top Gun: Maverick roll. The woman at the window lowers the blind, extinguishing the view. In the dim cabin light, I sink into my seat, surrendering to the still vastness above and below.

As always, this is Pedestrian and I’m Alex Wolfe. If you’d like to support this work, please consider sharing with a friend.

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Summertime is the slowest season in New York City. Freelance work dries up. Those who can afford to leave often flee for extended vacations in Europe. Summer Fridays are reinstated. The beaches and public pools open. The bounds of urgency synonymous with Big Apple living loosen their grip (albeit slightly). If there was ever a time to relax—given you have the opportunity—summer is the time.

It’s been a moment since I last wrote. Please allow me to reintroduce myself. I’m Alex Wolfe, an artist and writer from Iowa living in New York City. You are reading Pedestrian, a newsletter (typically served monthly) surveying the people, infrastructure, objects, and history filling the cracks of Elsewhere.

Before we continue, take a moment to listen to this radio story by Vivien Schuetz. In July, she interviewed me while we walked through beautiful Hudson County, New Jersey. You can start listening at 13:50!

I did my share of relaxing this summer, yet remained busy (a word that has about as much meaning as the word interesting these days). I’ll explore more—among other things—as this newsletter unfolds. However, I write today primarily to say hello and let you know that I’m still here.

Bookwork

Much of my summer was spent chipping away at the manuscript of my first novel (which partially explains why I’ve taken so long to write). It’s difficult to pinpoint when exactly I started this project, but I began shortly after completing an eight-day walk from Brooklyn to Philadelphia in May 2021. Initially, I planned to release a book of photographs with sprinkles of writing pulled from that journey. Like any worthwhile project, though, the book blossomed, pulling me along and introducing me to the work of many artists, evolving into a full-blown novel peppered with my photographs.

The book is still about my walk from Brooklyn to Philadelphia; however, the journey is merely a vessel to address a number of subjects, other walks, and digressions in true Sebaldian fashion. The writing is mostly factual, but I’ve abandoned the need for strict accuracy in the order and logistics of events, embracing a more imaginative approach in the spirit of Tim O’Brien. I love this quote:

“The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness. Fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth.”

Prior to beginning this book, I would have never described myself as a writer, but today I can confidently say I am one.

I’ll have the manuscript finished this year and I hope to have the book in your hands by 2025. Although it truly depends on whether anyone wants to publish my work, I’m ready to release it myself if needed. That being said, if you work for a publisher and this book sounds of interest to you, please get in touch!

Slow Travel, Montreal

I visited Montreal in June. Not only was this my first visit to the city, but my first time stepping foot in Canada. I’m ashamed to admit I’ve had plenty of chances over the years to visit our neighbors up north. Chalk it up to youthful naivety, but I never felt compelled to visit. However, having a romantic partner you deeply love—who happens to want to visit Montreal—often changes things. I’m so glad we went.

We had hoped to take Amtrak, but the rails connecting New York City to Montreal were inoperable due to ongoing, behind-schedule repairs. We reluctantly bought tickets for a short 45-minute flight out of LaGuardia, but severe weather forced us to rent a car and drive instead. We left at eight in the evening, drove for over six hours—blanketed by night, fueled by cups of 7-Eleven coffees—and arrived, on Canada Day of all days, at our hotel sometime after two in the morning.

I could write an entire letter about the beauty and joys of visiting Montreal. We indulged in our share of poutine (apologies to any Montrealers reading this—I know it’s like visiting Iowa and only talking about corn, or Chicago and mentioning deep-dish pizza). We climbed Mount Royal, designed by Olmsted (who also did Central and Prospect Parks here in New York City), twice. We ate bagels (I refuse to entertain any debates, often fueled by publications lacking anything worth reading, about whether Montreal’s bagels outshine those of New York City, though I’d gladly eat Montreal’s any day of the week). We spent the afternoon in the Grande Bibliothèque—the largest public library in Quebec—and, for the first time ever, I spent the Fourth of July outside of the United States.

What struck me most about visiting Montreal wasn’t the city itself, but the process of traveling there slowly. Air travel abstracts our perception of space and doesn’t allow one to appreciate the distance traveled to arrive at a destination. When you drive (and this is something you also clearly experience when you walk), you understand that the landscape has no borders, nor does it care about the invisible boundaries our governments have established to distinguish between Canada and the United States. Instead, the differences are felt culturally. Montreal may look like an American city, but it feels distinctly different, largely due to the historical influence of the French. Not to mention, the subway trains and buses arrive on time—a concept completely lost on American municipalities.

Group Walking

After returning from Canada, I hosted a series of group walks titled Noticing in collaboration with Index Space here in Chinatown. Over the course of four walks, I led a total of seventy-five people, covering topics ranging from public spaces in Midtown, the use of time and space in the Financial District, the lost ecological features of Lower Manhattan, and the Scandinavian history of Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Though I’ve hosted group walks intermittently over the last couple of years, this was my first time running them on a bi-weekly schedule, and I’ll admit it caused me some anxiety. Each walk required significant time for research, route planning, and preparation. Now that I’m looking back at the series from the rearview mirror, I’m proud to report that it was a massive success.

Group walking is the most direct way to share my work. I often compare it to the oral tradition of storytelling, comedy, or performing music. Each provides an opportunity for direct feedback. These group walks are unusual endeavors in that they tow the line between a traditional walking tour and a collective group experience. Attendees often join without the slightest clue of what to expect, but generally speaking, leave with a deeper understanding of their surroundings—and even a few new friends. To my surprise, the group walks are always highly social events—perhaps because the length, usually between three and four miles, leaves plenty of space for contemplation and discussion over two to three hours. It was such a joy getting to know everyone who attended.

If you missed this series, don’t worry. I will host more in the near future!

Upcoming Class

I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be teaching I Remember, a six-week class at Index Space starting on September 30th, focused on how memory can be used to inspire creative work. This class will only be offered in person, with no remote option for those outside of New York City (though I hope to explore online classes in the future).

This is taken directly from the course website:

Through group walks, lectures, readings, discussions, and artist visits we will survey the ways memory can be used as source material; how it can be documented, archived, accessed, and shaped to produce new bodies of work. Students will study a wide range of artwork, literature, music, film, oral histories, and archives which make distinctive use of memory.

We will supplement our explorations with short exercises and assignments that utilize personal histories, journals, found material, online archives, and self-published publications. We will explore how we can effectively re-contextualize our own memories, construct new meaning, blur the lines between fact and fiction, and develop a broader perspective of one’s lived experience and surroundings.

The premise of the class was developed over the past year, though it had been stewing for quite some time. While attending art school in Chicago, a professor asked us to describe our chicken. The chicken was a reference to the work of Robert Rauschenberg, who—intentionally or not—frequently incorporated chicken imagery into his art throughout his long career. Our professor’s task was for us to identify the recurring element in our own artwork (if possible, at such a young age) when reflecting on our creative output.

While writing this letter, I was reminded of a quote from an artist I can no longer remember that went something like, Artists make only one piece of artwork and spend their entire lives making it over and over again. Does that ring any bells for anyone?

Time has always been my chicken. I’m fascinated with the ways in which it influences our perception of memory and shapes our experiences. I relish work that lets the viewer get close to a memory, a moment in time, or something that no longer exists, yet keeps them separated by a thin pane of glass. Such is the nature of experiences. We can never live them again, but we can revisit them through our memories. Do you ever feel the same way?

Much of the work I’ve completed in the last year—specifically my memory boxes—explores the way in which experience can be reconstructed. I’ve often felt walking is the most immediate way to experience this feeling and explore these concepts, but walking is only one piece of the puzzle. I don’t consider myself a walking artist; rather, walking is simply a tool to speak, gain access, and generate material—often through writing and photographs—for my subject matter.

With all that in mind, you may sign up for my class here!

Patience

According to Starbucks, fall is already here. Pumpkin Spice Lattes are back on the menu—and have been, according to their website, since August 22nd, a full month before summer’s close. Like with most premature seasonal branding (there’s even a term for this—read about 'Christmas creep'), I’m a little saddened. Despite the push from corporate interests, I’m going to bring more patience with me into the fall season. At the time of writing, there are nine days left of summer. Even though I can already feel the air changing, I’m not in any rush to get this year over with.

I’m inherently an impatient person (some are surprised to hear this from someone who walks a lot. Walking might take time, but like drawing, it produces immediate, visible results—I can actively feel and see my body covering distance). Writing my book has been a humbling lesson in patience. Writing asks me to return to the page each day. Slowly but surely, it will get finished. The process of completing a book also asks me to be a dedicated reader in order to become a better writer. Lately, I’ve explored the work of authors I’d overlooked for years—like William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Don DeLillo, Vivian Gornick, Ben Lerner, and Emmanuel Carrère.

Reading is a commitment that requires your full attention, unlike a painting, movie, or music, which can often be quickly glanced over or tuned out as background noise. When I read, I’m forced to be patient if I wish to fully experience the work. David Foster Wallace captures the struggle with patience and the depth required for real engagement in Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, where he says:

"...fiction’s about what it is to be a f—ing human being. And to be a f—ing human being in a way that involves not just some kind of rush for success, the TV moment, the cool moment. But also the slower, harder stuff. That the big stuff that real, real, full human beings care about requires a level of attentiveness and patience and engagement with text that takes time and takes energy and that by definition you have to spend a certain amount of time alone."

I still struggle with patience. Engaging with creative work is often a delicate dance—rooted in the fear that time is slipping away. 

This fear runs deeper, too. If I’m honest, it’s tied to a broader anxiety about not having enough time—not just to finish the things I want, but also of life itself slipping away. Maybe it’s shaped by watching the world change so dramatically or by moments that remind us how fragile time can be. Either way, it makes me wonder if my impatience is really about time—and the unknowns that come with it.

So tell me, how are you faring in your corner of the world? As always, thanks for reading and I’ll see you next season with more regularly scheduled programming.

Until next time,

—A.W.
Brooklyn, NY 11220

As always, this is Pedestrian and I’m Alex Wolfe. If you’d like to support this work, please consider sharing with a friend.

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There was no other street I had combed so thoroughly than Broadway. Its surface spanned the length of Manhattan—cutting through the gridlock like a knife. The street was a spine, and naturally, drew me to follow its arterial course. The street was a rite of passage. One that accompanied me as I ventured further into old age.

This is Pedestrian—a monthly-ish walking newsletter led by artist Alex Wolfe, surveying the people, infrastructure, objects, and forgotten histories filling the cracks of elsewhere.

On a somber morning in May 2021, I stood beside the wrought-iron gates of Bowling Green. There, I stared into the mouth of Broadway, whose current would take me all the way to the George Washington Bridge, over the Hudson River, and into New Jersey. Today I was walking Broadway—just as I had so many times before—not for leisure, but to leave the city. I was walking to Philadelphia.

Getting to Philadelphia was free—if only I didn’t consider the price my body would pay over the next eight days. As I moved, I stepped carefully, avoided all the cracks in the sidewalk and promised to whomever would listen I’d be a better person when I returned home. I took a deep breath and prayed for all the lanternflies I’d ever stepped on, for mice, cockroaches, and dirt. I prayed for forgotten memories.

Somewhere buried beneath my feet was the way of least resistance: the Weckquaesgeek desire path which skirted the swamps and rocky outcrops once covering Manhattan. The pathway predated the arrival of the Dutch in 1609, laying the foundation for Broadway, whose trail I so faithfully trusted. I thought of the hundreds and thousands of footsteps who had walked this path before me.

As European settlement expanded further up the island of Manhattan, so did Broadway, which was no longer a trail, but a muddy road—eighty feet wide—used to transport livestock through the colony of New Amsterdam. The surrounding farmland was cultivated, transformed, and so rapidly built upon until the entire island was a giant geographic pattern to be under a constant state of construction. Broadway remained, becoming a record of the city’s development.

The question is often asked whether New York City would ever be completed. As I continued walking, I certainly didn’t think so. The force of a demolition jack shook the earth so abruptly and shattered the pavement like glass. My thoughts were punctuated by the irregular rhythm of hammers striking steel and the roaring diesel engine of a boom truck.

Across the street, I watched laborers scale the narrow planks of scaffolding, whose deliberate movement reminded me of ants. The city was programmed to function whether I was there to witness it or not. Perpetually in a continuous state of building up and tearing down like the kinetic sculptures of Jean Tinguely, who was commissioned in March 1960 by the Museum of Modern Art to construct his largest masterwork—a self destructing machine titled Homage to New York.

Tinguely spent six weeks building his monstrous structure consisting of electric motors, bicycle wheels, sewing machines, bathtubs, lathes, piano parts, electric fans, trumpets, gongs, radios, saws, and baby carriages culled from New Jersey landfills.

At twenty-three feet long and twenty-seven feet wide, the machine stirred controversy among museum staff. Two years prior, a group of electricians hired to install air conditioning accidentally set the second floor of the museum on fire while on smoke break. One of the workers’ cigarettes fluttered away and landed in a pile of sawdust, which went up in flames, igniting drop clothes and highly flammable cans of paint. One cigarette was the cause of a three-alarm fire, took the life of one electrician and destroyed an eighteen foot Monet painting from the permanent collection.

Instead, Tinguely’s machine was installed outside in the museum garden for an audience of five-hundred. The commotion drew the attention of curious bystanders who peeked over the courtyard fence beside an irate objector passing out leaflets calling the work godless.

Unable to start his machine, Tinguely paced frantically in front of the crowd growing increasingly impatient with the delay. After an hour, the motors erupted and everyone nervously clapped and cheered, unsure whether the machine had actually started.

With a thunderous roar, a series of belt powered saws viciously worked back and forth on the legs of a piano. Bicycle wheels spun faster and faster, while hammers and mallets struck tin cans and oil drums. A giant golden balloon inflated at the very top as smoke pots belted exhaust and choked onlookers.

Hellfire erupted from the machine, drawing the attention of concerned apartment dwellers from across the street. The flames quickly spread as Tinguely tried to smother fire while screaming for the fire department. The audience booed and hissed, urging the artist to let it burn.

After seventeen minutes, the piece buckled under its own weight. Its parts lay smoking on the ground in ruins. Audience members sorted through the rubble for souvenirs as the fire department arrived. Tinguely took a bow before the smoldering remains. The museum was furious, meanwhile Marcel Duchamp praised the artist as a genius.

Tinguely was quoted in papers from all over the work the following day. “What was important for me,” he said, “was that afterwards there would be nothing except what remained in the minds of few people…like a falling star and most importantly, be impossible for museums to reabsorb. Everything would be in garbage bins.”

Presently, fragments of Homage to New York are on view on the fourth floor of the Museum of Modern Art.

At half past twelve, I’d meandered through the construction and took a rest on a granite bench in Times Square. My feet already showed signs of blistering and my stomach growled. I pulled a granola bar from my hip belt, drawing the attention of a house sparrow, whose opportunistic chirps requested I share. What resilience for a bird to adapt to such unnatural settings. Not a tree in view, but a sea of concrete and digital billboards.

Despite the abundance of house sparrows across the United States, I still closely associated them with my childhood in rural Iowa spent playing in open fields beyond the creek running through my backyard—all of which are distant memories now.

The view from my backyard—once fields of corn—was replaced by cookie-cutter housing. The spaces where I played are now strip malls, parking lots, gas stations, and big box stores. No longer are the tree forts, bicycle courses, and provisional baseball diamonds. Instead, they’ve been lost to the indiscriminate blade of a bulldozer. So little remains to suggest there ever was a place for children to play save for the names of the suburban developments that replaced them: Walnut Meadows, Prairie Creek, Timberbrook Point, etc.

Two summers ago, I returned to my hometown. As I pulled off the exit ramp, I felt a jarring feeling pervade my body—I no longer recognized the place I once knew so intimately. The grain silos had been demolished. The railroad ties and train tracks that divided the town in half had been removed. The farmhouses on the edge of town, long thought to be immune from the reaches of suburban sprawl, were surrounded by duplexes and single family homes covered in vinyl siding. Main street was a ghost of the town’s agriculture dependent economy, now replaced by Amazon warehouses and car dealerships.

How to remember those landscapes too insignificant to be saved? I pondered, chewing on my granola bar. The sparrow had already flown away in hopes of finding another meal. If the landscape had a memory, shouldn’t we too?

Artist Alan Sonfist found himself troubled by the same questions. The year was 1965 and he was growing increasingly disturbed by the deforestation of his home in the South Bronx. Concerned that more and more children were growing up without seeing anything but highways and concrete buildings, he proposed a memorial to honor the loss of natural phenomena. He argued public monuments, especially those in the city, should recapture and revitalize the history of the natural environment as war monuments record the life and death of soldiers. His proposal would eventually become a powerful piece of land art titled Time Landscape.

Rather than construct a statue, pillar, or plaque, Sonfist proposed a quieter memorial, if not almost unnoticeable, consisting of plants native to New York City prior to the arrival of European colonists. After over a decade of advocacy, the city awarded him a plot of land at the corner of Houston and LaGuardia, four blocks from Broadway, where a vacant loft once stood.

Sonfist planted his landscape in three different sections to represent the stages of forest growth. The southern plot represents the youngest and consists of birch trees, beaked hazelnut shrubs, and wildflower ground cover. The center features a grove of beech trees—grown from saplings transplanted from Sonfist’s favorite childhood park in the Bronx—among cedar, cherry, witch hazel, and milkweed. The oldest, the northern area, is mature woodland of oaks, scattered with white ash and American elm trees, surrounded by sassafras and sweet-gum. Were it not for the parks and recreation sign, one could easily mistake the artwork for a vacant lot of overgrown bushes or untamed garden. 

Visiting Sonfist’s Time Landscape was to recall a memory long forgotten—one lingering beneath the surface of consciousness. On my last visit, I could not get inside as the piece was sectioned off by chest-high steel bars. Instead, I viewed from the sidewalk while a groundskeeper pruned the branch of a small tree.

The landscape, whether I could recognize it or not, was something of a memory palace. I walked to rid myself of a certain amnesia. My footsteps were a means of pruning—a way of peeling back or combing—to feel a connection with passed time.

At the foot of Columbus Circle, I checked my watch once more—2:34pm. A light mist gathered on the brim of my sunhat. Gray clouds, ripe with precipitation, hung overhead. The spires of office buildings supported them like the upright poles of a tent, preventing them from touching the ground.

I continued through the Upper West Side, through Washington Heights, and off to the George Washington Bridge. With each step, I said goodbye. Goodbye to my home, goodbye to familiar faces, goodbye to all I knew. I sensed significant change awaited, but how it would unfold was between the road and me.

Thanks for reading.
—A.W.
Brooklyn, NY 11220

As always, this is Pedestrian and I’m Alex Wolfe. If you’d like to support this work, please consider sharing with a friend or buying a drawing.

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Of all New York City’s bridges, the Bayonne Bridge is among the most striking. The steel arch begins in Port Richmond, Staten Island and ends over a mile away in Bergen Point at the southwestern tip of Bayonne, New Jersey. The arch commands a powerful presence towering above the residences and industrial lots gathered at its feet. Nothing near stands half as tall. 

The bridge spans the Arthur Kill, a body of water serving as the major navigational channel of the Port of New York and New Jersey. Its road bed carries four lanes of interstate traffic and there is one walkway on its New Jersey bound side, making the bridge one of three ways to reach New Jersey entirely by foot, if leaving from New York City. 

This is Pedestrian—a monthly-ish walking newsletter led by artist Alex Wolfe, surveying the people, infrastructure, objects, and forgotten histories filling the cracks of elsewhere.

On an unusually warm day in early March, the kind of day that torments those yearning for an early Spring, I crossed the Bayonne Bridge for the first time.

I began at the approach in Staten Island and walked the extrados of the bridge’s subtle grade. My body lifted higher and higher until all I could see were blue skies. Thirty minutes later, I reached the crown and paused at the state boundary line painted on concrete. I straddled the marking with my legs so the left side of my body was in New Jersey. The other, still in New York. 

There, I studied the landscape for the first time. Irregular intervals of high-speed traffic narrated my vision and I wondered: could this bridge be the highest point I could reach in the city without paying fifty bucks to stand on top of the One World Trade Center observation deck in Lower Manhattan?

A container ship approached. The name Hapag-Lloyd was painted in massive white letters—at least twenty feet tall—across its hull. Hundreds of tightly packed shipping containers filled its deck. As the ship moved through the Arthur Kill, I followed its wake and watched the waves dissolve into the gentle curves of the shore. I stared for several moments until finding the horizon line and the sky—the color of an aquamarine gemstone—and finally, the skyline of Manhattan. From this distance, the island was a crowded book of matches with the familiar spire of One World Trade sticking out at the very top.

The distance between myself and One World Trade was nearly nine miles. I only understood the distance as it was the same I once traveled on a bus—twice a day—to attend grade school. Sometime before I was born, my town combined public schools with another small town, thus I spent much of my childhood moving between two places. The distance between towns had become an alternative unit of measurement I carried into adulthood. Maybe it was the monotony of watching rolling cornfields unfold from a moving window, but the drive to school felt so much further than the distance I presently stood from One World Trade.

One World Trade Center—the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere—was a tool of measurement. I was always orienting my body in relation to the city and its spire always let me know just how far I had strayed from its perceived center. No matter that the true geographical center of New York City was somewhere in Bushwick—a neighborhood in northern Brooklyn some four or five miles away from One World Trade as the crow flies.

One World Trade was always there, a familiar face in a skyline of revolving strangers. A sense of comfort like an unexpected fondness slowly developed once knowing an acquaintance for a long time. I’d learned to accept the glass facade, even if I preferred the timeless beauty of the Empire State or the Chrysler Building. So often, One World Trade was a reminder of what it was not—the fallen Twin Towers. And as a child of the 90’s and early Aughts, I couldn’t help but wonder how the view may have differed on that morning of September 11th.

Twenty-two Septembers ago, I was over one thousand miles to the west in rural Iowa watching the events unfold on an elementary school television screen. Vividly, I remember confusing the word terrorist for tourist and the strangest mix of fear and relief once learning the Towers were not in downtown Des Moines as I had incorrectly assumed. I was only nine years old, after all. 

Only in the towers’ destruction did I learn of their existence, just as I’d—admittedly—learned of the recently collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. My heart sank for the city’s residents, those who depended on the bridge for work, and the friends and loved ones of the crew working on the bridge at the time of its collapse.

I’d read somewhere that one Baltimore resident had felt that everything he’d ever known had come to a halt once the bridge collapsed: his memories as a high schooler driving around the beltway and crossing the span when he got his license or fishing in the channel beneath the bridge. 

I imagined the uncanny feeling or emptiness one must feel when a piece of infrastructure perceived as permanent—like the Key Bridge or the Twin Towers—had suddenly vanished. I thought of the Verrazzano Bridge, connecting Brooklyn with Staten Island, which had become a staple of my life in recent years. A representation of security and mobility. I kept the curtains from my bedroom window so it could be seen at all times. In the morning, I admired the massive shadows the sun cast on its gray towers. On lazy afternoons, I walked to its foundation in Bay Ridge. On cloudy days I watched it disappear in the fog and emerge once again before a purple sky when the sun set. At nighttime, while lying in bed, I watched the traffic move back and forth. Like the Key Bridge, the Verrazzano was a symbol of home to the residents who lived nearby, including myself.

From the crown of the Bayonne Bridge, I felt the city’s essence as one might feel the personhood of a loved one in a still photograph. My walks were unexpected love letters and each new vantage brought me deeper and deeper into the city’s folds. I wondered what elsewhere had to offer at times, but committing oneself to one place for so long felt like a radical gesture in a world of unlimited choices. I couldn't think of any other place I yearned to be. I would never be a New Yorker, but I could understand the language of the city. 

“Cielo, cielo,” I repeated to myself. “El cielo azul de la gran ciudad”

I'd become preoccupied with language and translating my thoughts into Spanish since beginning classes in January. To learn another language, I often romanticized, was another step towards understanding place and ultimately, freedom. Of New York City’s nine million residents, almost twenty five percent spoke Spanish—the second most spoken language in the city.

Cielo—Spanish for sky—was among my favorite words I’d learned. I was fascinated how it also meant “heavens”, or “God”, or “sweetheart” when used as a term of endearment. I was only a beginner scratching the surface of the language, but Spanish had already brought new meaning to my walks. With each new word, I felt my world expand, and my movement through the city was a piece of rope. A practice in stringing together bits and pieces of recognizable words and phrases into rudimentary sentences.

In my dreams I spoke fluent Spanish, but in my waking days I stumbled over my words when trying to ask my neighbor about their day, purchasing a bouquet of lilies, or ordering tamales on the corner. Learning a new language was difficult. My heart fluttered each time I spoke. Learning a new language was to understand. To see a word for what it was, just as I’d learned to see the city.

In all time spent walking, the city and its neighboring municipalities had gone from complete abstraction—words and imaginary boundaries overlaid on a map—that I now navigated so easily.

Moving through the city was to speak its language. Among my favorite activities was weaving between passersby on a Midtown sidewalk. If I walked at the right tempo, I could avoid stopping at stop lights—or just jaywalk. A flashing DO NOT WALK sign was only a suggestion, hardly a rule to adhere to. I was always moving and put my trust in strangers who moved across the intersection before me. Their movement, an indication it was safe to proceed, even though I couldn’t tell if traffic was coming. I felt an awkwardness elsewhere—just as I did speaking Spanish—when walking in other cities, like Berlin and Los Angeles. The language of movement was not the same. 

Another container ship approached. I aligned myself in anticipation, deviating almost fifteen yards from my original position. A tugboat accompanied the ship and gently pressed against its hull. As the boat drew near, I felt a sensation rise from the bottom of my stomach, through my spine, and into my shoulders. Goosebumps spread across my arms. The enormous size of the boat was both awesome and overwhelming. I couldn’t comprehend how an object so large could float in the water—let alone exist.

I watched a multi-colored quilt of steel shipping containers move beneath my feet as the ship passed. I waved to the crew moving about its deck, which was promptly returned as they drifted on to the Atlantic Ocean and off to the unknown.

I pulled away once looking directly into the smoking stack of the ship’s exhaust and towards One World Trade once again. Time to move. I wanted to reach Bayonne with plenty of daylight and knew the bridge was deceptively long. I took a picture with my camera and studied the landscape one last time. To my immediate left, Bayonne, and my right, Staten Island, of which I had just walked earlier in the morning. Behind me, in a silent interval of traffic, I heard a woman humming a gentle song of praise. There it occurred to me that I would grow homesick for this view had I ever left New York City.

I picked up my feet and returned to that familiar motion—walking to New Jersey and off to the unknown. 

Thanks for reading. 

—A.W.
Brooklyn, NY 11220

As always, this is Pedestrian and I’m Alex Wolfe. If you’d like to support this work, please consider sharing with a friend.

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Once the dust of holiday festivities had finally settled, I took off south with my face towards the sun. I was back in Des Moines—where I grew up—visiting family and overdue for a long walk. 

Forgetting my sunglasses, I shielded my eyes, and placed my hand perpendicularly to my eyebrows. On occasion, I lowered my arm to meet the eyes of a fellow passerby. The motion could have easily been mistaken for a salute, but I was only saying hello. You see, Des Moines is a hello-town, where to not acknowledge the presence of another—even if you don’t wish to speak—feels rude.

I moved away from Des Moines thirteen years ago, for the big city, where saying hello to strangers wasn’t so common. A sincere hello was a novelty I looked forward to exercising today. I would give many throughout the day.

Alex Wolfe here, and this is Pedestrian—a newsletter for those who like to walk.

From my parent’s blue house in Beaverdale, I continued to the Des Moines Art Center off Grand Avenue where my mother enrolled me in art classes as a young boy. It was inside this limestone structure that I was exposed to works of art I once misunderstood, but learned to appreciate later in life, like the precariously fabricated sculptures of Richard Tuttle or the decaying paintings of Anselm Kiefer. I had not considered for some time that this institution was one of many stepping stones I walked, leading me to the life I live today.

I walked through the parking lot, saw a sidewalk running adjacent to the museum, said hello to a woman and her small dog, and passed the rose garden in the backyard. I carried on until reaching Greenwood Park—a green space I’ve long held dear throughout my years of absence. I paused in front of the Sylvan Amphitheater as my eyes scanned the empty rows of seating. I was alone, not a soul in the park, save for an older gentleman walking the perimeter of the pond. I held my camera to my face and looked through the rangefinder. I felt a space between the image and myself, soon deciding not to press the shutter button. Sometimes to notice is good enough. 

I left my Fujifilm digital camera in my bag and carried an old Canon film camera around my neck. In recent months, I’ve grown to enjoy film, not just for the quality of images, but for the limitations it poses. Each roll allows 36 shots, relieving me of a subtle anxiety I feel when shooting digitally. I can no longer take pictures of everything as I would given my SD card has space. Instead, I must be more intentional. A roll of film has consequences. One photograph isn’t just a captured moment, but one less chance to capture a moment further down the road.

Each photograph poses a question. When I put my eye to the rangefinder, do I like what I see? I approach the image somatically, just as I would interpreting the hexagrams of the I’Ching. I sense the acute difference between wanting a photograph or feeling like I should take the photograph. The best images are those I do not hesitate to capture. 

At one time in my life I would have told you this park was the most peaceful place on Earth. Throughout my twenties, my mind frequently returned in times of discomfort and distress. Greenwood Park was my representation of refuge and to return—I thought—would alleviate me of an existential dread weighing on my shoulders.

The park was a daydream carried just as you would a photo in your wallet. From my apartment in Brooklyn, I imagined myself sitting on a bench beside the pond during a summer’s day watching clouds drift across a cerulean sky while listening to the buzz of cicadas. I could hear the laughter of children playing in nearby Ashworth pool and at that moment—sitting in the untroubled pastures of Greenwood Park—I was carefree.

So quickly I blamed my discomfort on the places I’d chosen to live. Life would be so much easier—I thought—if I just packed my bags, left New York City, and returned to Greenwood Park. However, the dread I felt wasn’t so much a product of the city, but the conditions of being alive. No matter where I went, even if I returned to Des Moines, there I would be—myself—waiting.

Perhaps my quality of life would improve and I’d forget the pressures of big city living, but I’d still have to pay rent, make a living, aspire to be somebody, have unexpected conflicts, watch my family members grow old, and worry about my own health. Instead, I learned refuge was not about looking for something externally, or finding a new place to live, but finding acceptance and solace inside myself. 

From the distant memories of Greenwood, I kept on to the Bill Riley Trail (not unlike the North Bank Trail in Richmond, Virginia for those who are familiar) running parallel to Walnut Creek and it’s eventual confluence with the Raccoon River, a tributary of the Des Moines River and technically part of the watershed of the Mississippi River some 160 miles away—or about eight days of walking—to my immediate east. 

I’d chosen this direction, not for the selection of watercourses to appreciate, but for easy access to a pair of active train tracks operated by the Iowa Interstate Railroad. Having walked Des Moines for many years, I’d grown tired of my usual tricks—I was headed downtown looking for paths I’d never walked.

On the tracks, I was greeted by a fellow drifter. Hello, he mumbled, taking a drag of the cigarette between his fingers. Hey Guy. How do ya do? We continued. I was only sure we’d grown distant when I no longer heard the irregular rhythm of ballast shuffling beneath our feet.

I fixed my gaze to the ground, only stopping until I felt a presence return. Looking up, my eyes met a pair of horses watching from a stable as their tails swished side to side. I tip-toed along the tracks not to raise alarm until concealed by the brush of the forest once again. From behind the trees, I could see the top of the 801 Grand Building, the tallest in all of Iowa at forty-five stories. When completed in 1989, the building was the tallest in the Midwest between Chicago and Denver until surpassed by Omaha’s First National Bank Tower thirteen years later. 

I’d not seen the 801 Grand from this vantage and wondered what the eight-sided pyramid at the very top would look like had the air of Central Iowa carried enough sulfur to cause the copper to turn a shade of verdigris in oxidation—as the architects intended. I pressed further down the tracks, using the edifice as my northern star, until hearing the distant chime of a train’s air horn just as I reached a level crossing.

An unpaved, private road overlapped the tracks and I traced its winding path until meeting the concrete of a residential sidewalk. I walked South of Grand—Des Moines’ most surveilled neighborhood—took a right beside a bush full of chirping sparrows and passed the Iowa Governor’s Mansion.

I followed the course of Grand Avenue, bisected the Pappajohn Sculpture Park, continued down Walnut Avenue, and stopped once reaching the Kirkwood Hotel on 4th Street. I grew up twelve miles away from this very intersection, in a rural suburb on the fringes of the Des Moines metro. Once getting my driver’s license, I escaped to 4th Street any chance I could. There I attended shows at the Vaudeville Mews and drank coffee in between sets at Java Joe’s.

Around the corner, on Court Avenue, was Frank’s Place, filled with the belongings of the late Frank Burnette, a retired attorney and co-owner of the Vaudeville Mews who lived in the back. All of the establishments I previously named are no longer in operation. The bail bonds businesses who relied on the nearby courthouse for their revenue have since moved. The parking lot across the street was redeveloped into a Hy-Vee grocery store and the defunct Randolph Hotel was converted into lavish apartments. 

I watched the sun begin to set from across the Des Moines River. The sun’s rays reflected from the modest skyline’s surfaces, temporarily blinding me as I held the camera to my face once again. I was distracted by the gaggle of geese standing on the bank, knelt down to adjust my tripod, and felt the moisture of wet grass cover my knees. Fitting for a river bank—I thought—only to discover I’d not knelt in wet grass, but a pile of goose feces.

Passing the gold capped dome of the state capitol building, I crossed Martin Luther King Parkway and felt the creep of a certain sadness only felt when knowing something is soon to end. Like many trips home, I’d only felt that I’d arrived just as it was time to go. Another visit’s abrupt close. Tomorrow I would wake up in Des Moines, return to New York by airplane, and walk beneath a different sunset in a different time zone. 

On the corner of SE 7th Street is a little red house built in 1885—discovered while on another walk summers ago. The home appears older than the rest of the neighborhood stock, or perhaps it’s the last to be renovated. I’ve made a habit of checking in, just as I do in Chicago, each time I’m in Des Moines.

The neighborhood—once colloquially known as the Southeast Bottoms—is among the oldest in the city. Isolated by a tangle of railroad tracks to the north and the Des Moines River to the south and east, the neighborhood has long been subjected to municipal neglect and persistent flooding.

Catty-corner from the red house is a large, vacant brick building. From 1906 to 1973, the building was home to the Roadside Settlement. The settlement house provided services to the poor, not unlike many settlement houses of the time (such as the Hull House in Chicago), including community laundry and baths, a nursery school and kindergarten, telephone service, and the city’s first library branch.

The Southeast Bottoms was depicted in a 1932 painting by William C. Palmer, an artist who grew up in Des Moines. Although he studied in Europe and New York City, he made frequent returns to the city, and painted numerous images of the landscape. The land looks much different now. The farmland once surrounding downtown Des Moines has been developed—as foreshadowed by the looming industrial buildings in Palmer’s painting. Many of the old brick buildings lining Grand, Walnut, Locust, and Court have been demolished in favor of new buildings lacking any soul or parking lots. Des Moines has a penchant for destroying its own history.

In nearby Cohen Park lies the Southeast Water Fountain, a relic of Palmer’s time. Since I discovered the fountain’s existence, it’s become a portal—an overlooked landmark transporting me to a Des Moines I never knew, but had only visited in old photographs and textbooks.

The fountain, placed in 1906, was one of the last remaining functional granite drinking fountains distributed by the National Humane Alliance. Hermon Lee Ensign, a philanthropist and animal welfare advocate, left much of his wealth to build the animal drinking fountains for any city that requested after his passing in 1899. The fountains were free of charge, just as long as the city provided water supply and maintenance. Between 1904 and 1912, over one hundred cities across the United States and Mexico took advantage of Ensign’s offer.

The stone used to produce the Ensign fountains was produced in Vinalhaven, Maine by the Bodwell Granite Company—the same quarry which supplied stone blocks for the Brooklyn Bridge; a tie which only strengthened the bond I felt with this relic of Des Moines’ past. I circled the fountain until growing dizzy, placed my hand in the bowl as would a priest before a baptismal font and watched the water slip between my fingers as I brought it to my face.

To the west, the sun approached the horizon. Hues of purple and pink echoed throughout the clouds. My thoughts were filled with the sound of water falling into the fountain’s bowl. Having stood for a long time, I felt the chill against my flush cheeks for the first time all day. I pressed the shutter button of my camera one last time, rewinded the film, and checked my phone. Eleven miles. Enough for today. 

These old relics of mine. The little red house and the water fountain, my own anchors connecting the past with the present. I continue carrying them. At thirty-one I’m of an age where I’ve almost lived elsewhere longer than I’ve called this place home. I feel the elastic of a rubber band grow taut. The person I once was—full of youthful naivety—feels distant, but within reach.

At times, the heart aches knowing it cannot occupy two places at once. As I walk this city I feel the accumulation of time, just as the water collects in the bowl of a fountain. Each of my footsteps is to dip my hands back into the water again and remain in conversation—beneath a purple sky—with all those stepping stones I once touched, sending me down the path I walk today.

See you next summer, Des Moines.

Thanks for reading,

—A.W.

Brooklyn, NY 11220

P.s. thanks for following along in 2023. I have a lot planned for 2024 and look forward to sharing more walks with you. I appreciate all the kind words and support. It really means a lot. I wish you all the best in 2024.

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If you enjoy this newsletter, please consider sharing with a friend. As always, I’m Alex Wolfe and this is Pedestrian.

Hi All,

Alex Wolfe here, and this is Pedestrian—a newsletter for those who like to walk. Today I’m pleased to announce the beginning of an emerging project. More below…

The day was June 11th, 2022. I was walking in Orlando, quickly learning the harsh reality of performing any outdoor activity in Florida on summer's eve. 28 days prior, I started SUN SONG, a 30-day, 10-city walk along the East Coast connected by Amtrak. With palm trees and unpredictable rain, I couldn’t have been further from Boston, where the walk began. 

I don’t remember anything remarkable about walking Orlando on June 11th besides eating a delicious sandwich from Pom Pom’s. I was sunburnt and feeling the exhaustion of walking for days on end. After completing a twelve mile jaunt, I returned to my lodging for the evening when I learned it was my friend Chris’ 36th birthday. 

Living out of my backpack, I had nothing to give Chris, so I sent him a message wishing him a happy birthday and half-jokingly dedicated the day’s walk to him as an appreciation of his existence. I didn’t think much of my gesture then, but something clicked. Returning home to Brooklyn, I started another journey still untangling itself some sixteen months later.

How to distill a walk into a tangible gift?

Gifting a walk appears a slippery proposition—almost as unbelievable as making a business of selling untraceable stars in outer space as gifts despite the International Astronomical Union deeming all transactions invalid—yet I maintained hope.

In a sense, art-making isn’t unlike that of selling stars. Both are an attempt to make something out of nothing. Given its impermanence, a walk is an experience that will never happen again. The only way to truly gift a walk is to share the experience with another, but even so, an experience shared between two people is never the same. And any attempt to share documentation of a walk—whether through writing, photographs, or audio—only represents the movement of a body through space. Thus, all that remains are relics. But how to share relics?

Instinctively, I thought of an archive. Like a gift, an archive is about building a relationship. The result is an invitation for interaction. However, to create an archive, I needed to produce a unit of measurement—a means of collecting my relics.

This means of collecting and maintaining relics already existed digitally. If I plugged in my hard drive, I could access folders of writing, photographs, and even GPS coordinates from June 11th, 2022 and share that material with Chris, but doing so is not the point. In the spirit of a gift, I wanted to produce an object that carried an undeniable materiality—the antithesis of an increasingly Cloud-oriented society. Whatever the result, I had to live with this archive of my walks. I started by constructing a box.

There’s an entire lineage of artists who’ve used boxes in their work—many of whom I’ve borrowed influence to create my boxes. Of those, Joseph Cornell’s influence has always made its way into my work. Cornell is best known for elevating the shadow box to an art form. He drew inspiration from Duchamp’s readymades, American Transcendentalism, the Surrealists, and Hollywood stars, to whom he often dedicated and sent boxes.

An insatiable collector, he filled his boxes with found objects mined from thrift stores, the landscape, bookshops, five-and-dimes, etc. When arranged, the contents are visual poetry rather than assemblage. As poet Charles Simic described, “Somewhere in the city of New York there are four or five still-unknown objects that belong together. Once together, they'll make a work of art. That's Cornell's premise, his metaphysics, and his religion.”

On January 4, 1966, almost seven years before Joseph Cornell’s death, Japanese artist On Kawara began his Today Series, or Date Paintings. Each day for nearly five decades, he produced a monochromatic canvas of red, blue, or gray with the date on which it was made inscribed in white. The composition of the date always followed the language and conventions of where it was made. Kawara would sometimes make two or three on the same day, and if the paintings weren’t finished by midnight, he would destroy them.

After completing his first year of the Today Series, Kawara found no room in his studio to hang his paintings—supposedly leading to nightmares. After a few months, He began constructing storage boxes for his work, including newspaper clippings from when the painting was made. Phrases from the clippings often formed part of the title. He never considered his means of storage as part of the artworks, but the paintings have been shown along their respective boxes in recent years. 

The Today Series draws attention to the minutiae of daily existence, focusing on the experience of the world, our location on the planet, and the passage of time. At the time of Kawara’s death, he produced nearly 3,000 paintings. 

I’m attracted to the seriality of both Cornell and Kawara’s work. Both created a language for themselves that they maintained and explored throughout their lives. I knew if I was potentially going to commit to the practice of archiving walks in boxes for a long time, I needed to find a sustainable means of production without breaking the bank. The result would serve as a roadmap to guide the form of future boxes for future walks.

I assembled the first box with acid-free chipboard for 1) its economy and 2) ease of use with an X-acto knife and compatibility with a Cornervery stapler (the most expensive investment of this project, but worth the money for their customer service alone) for fixing the corners together. Not to mention, the chipboard isn’t overly precious or elevated.

I decided one box would equal one walk. I also chose not to retroactively produce a box for a walk I’d already completed. Instead, I started fresh on September 9th, 2023, and went for a nine-mile walk in beautiful Secaucus, New Jersey, carrying a field recorder and camera. Returning home to my apartment in Brooklyn that evening, I sat at my desk and took stock of my collected materials. Ultimately, I chose the following:

① – PHOTOS

I selected (8) 5x7” photographs from my walk. The quantity was determined by cost efficiency and print minimums imposed by the printer, which I gladly welcomed. I didn’t want these photographs to feel overly considered, which was difficult considering I shoot digitally. I can take as many photos as my SD card will allow. I’ve decided I’ll shoot on film moving forward. Conceptually, I like the limitation a roll of 35mm film imposes. I’ll only have up to 36 shots. Instead of sweating over the best photo selects, I can include every picture on the roll. 

② – USB-C DRIVE

The drive contains (1) field recording and (1) .gpx file. The .gpx file [view here] is generated by Strava (the app I use to track long walks), which, when uploaded to a mapping platform such as Google Maps, shows my exact movement through space. The field recording is the sound of church bells captured outside the Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church on Paterson Plank Road. Listen here.

USB drives aren’t the most sound objects for long-term data storage. If the data is erased, I’ve backed up the .gpx and audio files to the Cloud. I could have just forgotten the drive altogether, instead using a URL or QR code, but I liked the ease of distribution and materiality of a drive.

③ – FOUND OBJECT

I rarely share any ephemera or street detritus I pick up during my walks. In the spirit of artist Yuji Agematsu—another inspiration—I’ve included a pen I found while walking on the shoulder of the road. This pen is from the Satin Dolls Strip Club (aka Bada Bing), made famous by the HBO television show The Sopranos. The pen is quite brittle and has since broken into multiple pieces.

④ –CERTIFICATE

This paper includes the date of the walk location and describes the box's contents (as I have above, albeit concisely). Each certificate is marked with a rubber stamp bearing my name and year. 

The box’s contents don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other besides being collected during the walk. Future renditions are subject to change. I’m not interested in the content making sense right now. The pieces, when combined, create a narrative that leaves interpretation open for the viewer. The remaining parts coalesce to produce a signpost or memory box for a future self—a means of mapping memory.

What will my archived walks mean in 10–25–50 years? This project aims not to fixate on one box but to consider the meaning of producing an archive over time. Unlike a walk with a definite start and end, an archive is a living structure that continues to breathe and grow with each footstep. In time, the space between two boxes will create meaning. What was excluded and included, and how has the archive shifted?

If I’m lucky, I’ll continue this practice for several decades, given I’m capable, but let's not put the cart before the horse—one step at a time. In my wildest dreams, I would compile an archive as comprehensive as Fugazi, one of my all-time favorite bands. 

Between 1987 and 2003, Fugazi embarked on numerous international and USA tours, resulting in over one thousand shows. Out of posterity, the band fastidiously recorded almost every show without any end goal. After years of sitting on the tapes, the band launched Live Series in 2011, an online archive of downloadable shows for the suggested price of $5.

Unlike most commercial live albums, the recordings vary drastically in audio. The group never used a set list and often improvised, so the tapes partially preserve spontaneous, forgotten moments. “We liked this idea of, ‘Let’s just let it be everything,’” says singer Guy Picciotto. “There doesn’t have to be the idea that this is the great, golden document. It’s all there, and it’s not cleaned up. You get what you get.”

Live Series goes beyond preserving the Fugazi live experience. The site includes data from the concert, like attendance, cost of entry, photos, and flyers when available. To date, over 750 shows have been uploaded. Listeners can leave comments under each performance—most made by those at the show—emphasizing community is just as important as the band. The archive is not about each performance but the particular experience. There’s a certain aura in paying for a Fugazi performance. Each audio file is a record of time and place.

For those exceptionally dedicated to the archive, you can track the group's development as a band. Purchasing a recording is to own a piece of that evolution. Fugazi’s Live Series is a gift to the fans, especially as they haven’t played one show since going on indefinite hiatus in 2003. 

In the spirit of Chris’ birthday, I tried to maintain the ethos of gift-giving in my work. A gift isn’t about a transaction or establishing a price for goods but strengthening a social fabric—to produce work that benefits everyone interested.

This box—the seedling of this emerging project—attempts to use the currency of objects and speak a widely understood language. In short, the project is another entry point for my work—a way of saying, “Hey, look, this is what I’ve done.” I consider these boxes distinct art objects that may eventually be up for sale or literally gifted.

My walks are private gestures, often performed alone, and the box is, first and foremost, a means of sharing that experience with not just my future, forgetful self but a broader audience.

More boxes coming soon. 

Until then,
Alex

Brooklyn, NY 11220

Thanks as always for reading. I’m Alex Wolfe, and this is Pedestrian. If you’d like to support this newsletter and see more of it, please consider sharing with a friend. See you next month~

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Hi all, Alex Wolfe here, and this is Pedestrian, a newsletter on the observations, feelings, people, and experience of moving—often walking—through the built environment. Today, I write with a special edition of the newsletter…

On this day two years ago, I started a nine-day, 158-mile walk across Long Island.

That morning wasn’t unlike most mid-October mornings: the sky was a dismal grey, and the warmth of summer had officially retreated. Starting beneath the Verrazzano Bridge in Brooklyn, I looked out into the choppy waves of the ocean, where a tanker sat anchored in the water. I wanted to stay, too, as I wasn’t particularly excited for the walk. I was going through a breakup and contemplating leaving New York City for good. The prospect of spending nine days with my thoughts walking along congested streets sounded awful. To add to my stress, I had agreed to let two filmmakers, Claire Read and Nora DeLigter, film my journey. Their efforts eventually resulted in a documentary titled The Pedestrian, released this year and has since premiered at multiple film festivals.

My walk across Long Island was not a cakewalk, but I did finish with a sense of resolve, and I’m glad I did it. I felt more in touch with my body, psyche, and place in the world. I spent nine days getting to know Long Island—a place I knew so little—and the people who call it home. Once I reached Montauk Point Lighthouse, I was euphoric and eager for nine more days on the road. The journey forever holds a special place in my heart.

To remember my walk, I’m sharing two in-progress stories from my upcoming book (to be released next year). The first is about my stay at an Airbnb in Levittown, NY on the second night of my nine-day walk. The last, from the fifth day, is about a hairy situation walking along the Montauk Highway. Seeds of these stories first appeared in a pop-up newsletter I shared throughout the walk but have since been expanded and reworked. These are two of my favorites.

Enjoy.

Levittown

America’s first mass-produced suburb does not have a proper main street, that is, unless you consider a busy six-lane turnpike dividing the town into two halves as such. However, where there is no main street, a Dunkin’ Donuts is nearby, ready to fill the void. You might as well call it the town square.

There, I met Mike, a retired NYPD officer. Born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, he’s called Levittown home for the better half of his life. He is friendly, mustached, and holds a large coffee in his left hand. As we speak, he intermittently pauses the conversation to take a sip and finishes with a ‘yep’ or ‘uh huh.’ He gives me the lay of the land, mentioning Levittown is a nice enough place where working-class people can still get their slice of the American Dream.

“Yep. They were buildin’ em every fifteen minutes in the middle of the century. So what if none of ‘em have basements? There was no time!”

Seventeen thousand four hundred sixty-six homes, all built between 1947 and 1951 on land once covered in potato farms—the most significant suburban development in the world for its time. Not much has changed since.

Residential streets named Daffodil, Wheelbarrow, and Bluebonnet Lane wind and curve. The massive water tower looming in the distance is my northern star. The homes are identical with slight variations and sit at an angle to afford residents further privacy. Bay windows, asphalt shingles, vinyl signing, custom dormers, detached garage. Manicured lawns and the smell of fresh-cut sod. Inflatable Halloween decorations. A young boy aimlessly riding a bicycle in the street. 

A sign hangs from the front window of a home sectioned off by a white picket fence: This home is open to God, sunshine, and friends. In the landscaping reads another sign.

Attention! Security camera in use. YOU ARE BEING WATCHED.

I step into the street. Bring my camera to my face, focus the lens, and press the shutter button—textbook suburbia.

“Don’t you take pictures of my house!”

A woman stands on the porch beneath a portico supported by two bastardized doric columns. 

“Don’t you laugh. I’ll call the cops!”

Tonight, I’m staying in Levittown. Walking here is not a coincidence or a convenient place to stay en route to Montauk. This is American history. My lodging for the evening is an original Cape Cod-style home listed on Airbnb by a woman named Gina. The pictures in the listing make my heart sink. I can already tell this won’t be good, but I must stay in one of the original Levitt homes; otherwise, I wouldn’t get the whole Levittown experience. This was the only Cape Cod-style home I could find. A short review exacerbates my suspicions. ‘Be careful,’ it says, but is followed by a raving review. For eighty-five dollars a night, I’ll take my chances.

I knock on the front door, wait a moment, and knock again—nothing. Three minutes pass, and I try again with harder knocks.

  “Be right there!”

Inside, I hear feet rumbling about. I can’t discern the muffled voices, save for someone cursing to themselves—off to a bad start. I wait for ten minutes before a woman greets me at the door. Her name is Gina, but looks nothing like the profile picture in the Airbnb listing. 

“Come inside! Come inside!”

The interior smells faintly of cigarette smoke. A bed sheet hangs from the ceiling in the living room beside a fish tank. A mattress lays on the floor—a makeshift bedroom. Objects and papers fill the cluttered living room, and the furniture does not match. The carpet looks like oatmeal. Above the couch is a mass-produced painting of a Rottweiler.

In the kitchen, I’m greeted by a friendly man named Jimmy, likely in his late thirties or early forties. He has a NOS energy drink logo tattooed on his neck, holds a can of Bud Light, and drinks from a straw. He leads me to my bedroom in the back of the house while taking sips.

“You want a beer, brother?”

The room is surprisingly clean. A twin-size bed sits beneath the window. A television console stands beside the door. Across the room is a dresser and mirror. Fresh towels hang in the closet. I shut the door immediately, realizing there isn’t a lock on the knob, and remove my rucksack from my shoulders. 

My evening routine begins. I order a bowl of pasta from a local Italian restaurant and stretch my sore body. I’m interrupted by a loud knock on the door. It’s Gina. 

“You want some food, hun? I make the best Spanish food.”

I decline the offer as my pasta will arrive shortly, but she continues asking. I don’t want to eat her food. As a guest, I can’t be rude and submit after further persistence. I shut the door again, but another knock follows. It’s Jimmy. 

“Hey brother, have you seen a kitchen knife in there?”

“No. No knives in here.”

He shuffles through the dresser drawers, looks in the closet, and checks beneath the bed. Nothing. Who keeps a kitchen knife in a guest bedroom? 

Another knock on the door shortly after finishing my pasta. It’s Gina with my second course. She hands me a paper plate full of yellow rice, kidney beans, and steak cubes. I place the meal on the dresser. I’m too full and push the food around with a plastic fork to make it seem as though I ate the food anyway. Ten minutes pass. Another knock. It’s Gina, again.

“How is everything, hun?”

“Good. Good.”

“She gestures to the living room. He’s walkin’ to Montauk. Can you believe that?”

Behind her stand five or six men. All are holding beers. Some smile. Another raises his can. Most just stare. I smile, shutting the door. I watch reruns of The Price is Right at a high volume to drown out their voices. Something keeps slamming on the closet wall. Before bed, I move the television console before the door so no one can barge into my room while I’m sleeping. I fall asleep to Drew Carey announcing the Showcase Showdown. 

In the morning, I take a shower. Tampons and hair extensions cover the floor. I make the bed. Gina and Jimmy are still sleeping, and all the men are gone. I depart without saying a word.

You Don’t Have to Go to College

I can’t move any further. Not a step. To do so would risk certain death. Here, the Montauk and Sunrise Highways meet. Traffic accumulates. The shoulder is so tight I must walk on the road's surface. Passing cars grow closer to my body, each one smothering my face in a gust of wind—the speed limit increases. Traffic passes at intervals of five seconds, then three seconds, and now one second. A squealing car horn follows. Exhaust fills my mouth and sinks into my lungs—trouble.

My hat almost blows off my head but is saved by the drawstring snug on my chin.  I adjust, opting for the timber beside the road beyond the steel barrier. Safety, for now, but I’m unaware of my options beneath the brush. Even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to decide. For now, refuge. I fixate on the jet-black asphalt and wait. No answers. It’s midday in early October, and I sit for a long time. These are the situations you forget to mention when your mother calls. 

The horn of the Long Island Railroad taunts me. Yes, that’s it. Follow the steel tracks. I can walk them to Oakdale and reconnect with the Montauk Highway if lucky. For such indecision, I have no hesitation weaving between the timber in search of the tracks. Red Oaks and Sugar Maples grow tighter and tighter until the bark rests on my face. I want to turn back. 

Too late. A piercing pain runs through my side and forearms. I’m caught in an iron maiden of thorns and spines, thick enough to warrant a machete if only I could move. I step three times only to fall back five. Thorns tug on my skin, further tightening their grasp. I can no longer bring my arms back to my sides. My clothes, tattered with holes and tears, hang from my limbs. From afar, I resemble a scarecrow—a warning to those who follow my path.

Walking along high-speed traffic wouldn’t sound so bad if I could retrace my steps. As the crow flies, I’m only half a mile from the roaring hum of the highway, but the thorns have disoriented me. I’m convinced every direction leads to asphalt. Three steps forward, five steps back. More thorns. I move in pain, hobbling slowly until I spot the piercing glow of the sun’s light reflecting from the steel rails between the trees. There’s an opening—salvation.

I pull myself from the brush and hop on the tracks with one final push. I’m caked in the sunshine as the rails draw one clear line through the timber, revealing long, jagged red lines up and down my arms. I walk unobstructed and free but paranoid of the train’s horn. Periodically, I stop and look behind me. No train. Keep moving.

I continue until I see a residential backroad parallel to the tracks—a lucky break. I check my map and find it leads to the Montauk Highway. Oakdale is just a few miles away. The road is so narrow, only allowing one car to pass at a time, but I’m safe. It’s quiet, without any traffic. Instead of trees, I’m surrounded by large homes. Most were built recently, but a handful look like Spanish villas from the nineteenth century. A raft of ducks greet me while swimming in a pond. I’m lost in my thoughts.

“Where ya hiking?”

Three young boys riding PK Ripper bikes park beside me. 

“Montauk. I’m walking to Montauk.”

They don’t believe me, but why would I walk in their neighborhood, covered in dirt and scratches, just for fun? I’m indifferent, given my earlier dance with the thorns. One of the boys presses on, asking where I started. 

“Verrazano Bridge. Five days ago.”

“Get the fuck out.”

Watch your mouth, young man. He cannot believe the words I’m speaking. He gestures with his hands as if to summon a spirit and lets out a big yell. 

“Hey guys!”

Like magic, a blush of boys, no older than thirteen, all on bikes, come barreling down the street.

“GET THIS! HE’S WALKING TO MONTAUK!”

Now I’m surrounded, half believing the event unfolding before me. Are these boys about to kick my ass? What gives? Instead, I’m met with a million questions. 

“Do you have TikTok?”

“How many followers do you have?”

“Can I take a selfie with you?”

“How old are you?”

I disclose my Instagram handle and have fifteen new followers at the drop of a dime. I’m just twenty-nine, but these boys make me feel ancient. Proving my credibility, they are entirely under my spell and continue interrogating me. Instead, I shepherd them together for a big group photo. Whenever I press the shutter, they shout dick jokes and hump the air. I can’t help but laugh. For a moment, I’m thirteen. Before parting ways, I think of the wisdom I wish someone would have left me as a young boy. 

“Follow your dreams. You don’t have to go to college!

Thanks for reading. More soon.
Alex

Brooklyn, NY 11220

As always, this is Pedestrian, a newsletter on the observations, feelings, people, and experiences of walking through the built environment. If you’d like to support this work, please share it with a friend. See you next month.

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Three months after moving to New York City, I got a call from my father. My grandfather was dead. A heavy smoker, he’d succumbed to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease complications at seventy-three years old.

A week later, I was back home in Iowa. Before the visitation, my grandmother called my family to rummage through the remainder of my grandfather’s belongings. Continuing to live in the place my grandparents called home for forty years was hard enough without his presence; living in a house full of his belongings was another story. She was visibly upset. 

“Who will open my jars for me now?” she cried.

My cousins and I spent half an afternoon parsing what belongings remained. I remember sorting through the tools on his workbench, where he made tiny drawers out of exotic wood. In the basement, we discovered the helmet he kept as a souvenir from his days as a United States Marine stationed in Japan or the canes resting beside the front door—even though my grandfather never needed a cane—but jokingly collected as a testament to his old age. Anything we didn’t want would be donated to Goodwill. 

I’m Alex Wolfe, and this is Pedestrian, a newsletter on the observations, feelings, people, and experience of moving—often walking—through the built environment.

Coincidentally, I worked at Goodwill in high school—years before my grandfather’s death—where going through the former belongings of the deceased was not uncommon. I worked nights and weekends as a donation sorter. As such, I was the first point of contact for all donations. My task was to assess the quality of all items coming in and determine whether said items had any resale value. Once inspected and sorted, sellable goods were thrown into large commercial bins, loaded into a semi-truck trailer, and distributed to various Goodwill locations throughout central Iowa. 

Goodwill toed a fine line between a thrift store and a typical dump. I couldn’t believe how many people unloaded bags of trash under the pretense that all donations would be accepted. The job was a tough lesson in managing people’s expectations, but working as a donation sorter had perks—despite making nearly minimum wage—like getting first dibs on valuable objects. The year was 2008, and I was sixteen. Personal demand for Polaroid instant cameras, vinyl records, and vintage 10-speed bicycles was high. Occasionally I’d get lucky while sorting through bags of clothing covered in cat piss and discover a $20 bill inside the pocket of an old suit coat. 

The possibility of finding valuables kept work light and meaningful, pulling me through many boring shifts, but eventually, the novelty wore off. I was no longer hunting for treasure but sorting through once useful objects now relegated to useless junk by their original owners. I never understood why anyone would donate whole albums of family photos or books inscribed with personal messages from loved ones. My heart dropped each time I found the same radio my family owned and valued—a reminder that most objects are mass-produced, not unique—lying in the bottom of a commercial bin. I got distracted when finding clothing with the previous owner’s name written on the label and fixated on McDonald’s receipts from 1995 found in an old purse. I attempted to piece together the life of someone I never knew with each discovery. What prompted these people to discard their belongings? Working at Goodwill was a humbling experience, reminding me that one person’s treasure is just another’s junk. Eventually, my manager stopped giving me shifts, and I found another job. 

Parsing through my grandfather’s belongings was not unlike sorting through Goodwill donations in high school, except these objects didn’t belong to a stranger but someone I knew. Going through his closet was an unexpectedly intimate experience. Inside, the faint smell of aged wood and detergent. I saw the loose threads of his button-downs and the unraveling hems of his pants, likely decades old. I imagined him waking up each morning and selecting a shirt from the neatly folded stack beside his belts. His closet was a space that anyone rarely saw throughout his life (has anyone seen the inside of your closet?). Growing up, we weren’t close; I felt a more intimate connection while looking through his closet. I caught a glimpse of the life he lived.

My grandfather was also a lifelong duck hunter. Leaning in the corner of his closet was a .22 rifle and a 12 gauge shotgun. Above the gun barrels, I saw a collection of metal bands strung up and hanging from a hook. These bands once sat on the ankles of the ducks my grandfather hunted and were used by the state conservation department to track their migration. Instead of returning the bands, my grandfather kept them in his closet. I decided these bands were a proper token of his existence and took them to New York. As a tribute, they have hung from a metal hook in my closet ever since.

I have complicated feelings about the objects I live with. I’m overly sensitive to the amount of things I own and obsess over what I can donate, throw away, or gift to friends at all times. The objects that manage to stick around tend to become more challenging to let go of or impossible to shed. It’s difficult not to grow a sentimental attachment. The frequency of attachments has only increased over the years, having experienced an apartment fire in 2019, destroying most of my belongings. I have very little that has stuck with me throughout my life, save for my social security card and birth certificate. 

Among my oldest objects—aside from my journals—is a lucky rabbit's foot that I won during a summer reading program in the fourth grade. Next, a ceramic jar I made in middle school art class, which has served several functions, such as a flower pot and change jar, but has been my designated pen and pencil holder for a couple of years. On my radiator is a money tree I bought from a bodega eight years ago—when I moved to New York. The purchase felt symbolic at the time, considering I was making little money. Having survived the apartment fire, the tree is among my most prized possessions. 

I must remind myself that these objects I hold dear are just things, and all non-living things eventually deteriorate and break down by the elements, microorganisms, or the ravages of time. Some live in a commercial bin in a Goodwill warehouse. Nothing lasts forever. There’s freedom in knowing that everything I own is not mine. One way or another, my money tree and I will part ways, for it will decompose, and eventually, I will leave this earth.

Decluttering practices have grown increasingly trendy in the last decade, especially with Marie Kondo’s popularity in the United States. Of those trends, I recently learned about the Swedish tradition of döstädning or “death cleaning.” The practice is just as it sounds: get rid of the possessions you no longer need in preparation for the end of life, making it easier for loved ones to manage your belongings once you’re gone. 

Margareta Magnusson, author of The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, writes, “There are a few things that I would like to save for myself only [besides] old love letters, programs, memories from traveling. I have gathered all these personal items in a box [marked] ‘throw away.’ Once I am gone, the box can be destroyed.” Magnusson argues it’s never too early to begin that box.

Can the metaphorical “throw away” box grow too full? Resting on my bookcase is a series of neatly organized binders filled with ephemera of little to no value in acid-free sleeves, a practice I started in high school but has become another way to document my life. Inside these sleeves are receipts, business cards, flyers, and expired MTA cards, among other things. On a hard drive is every photo I’ve taken since 2018—when I bought my first camera. Those same photos, thousands of them, have been uploaded to the cloud for safe measure. Above my kitchen cabinets is a storage bin filled with sketchbooks, notebooks, planners, and letters from friends I’ve managed to hold on to since I was a teen.

The weight of those objects often takes hold of me. I’ll continue saving them. My impulse soothes an anxiety about the passing of time, unsure if I’ll remember what life was like right now when I’m old. Memories often fade. I’m not concerned about what happens to these objects when I’m gone. Bonus points if someone sees the value in them, too. For now, these objects are much like going through my grandfather’s closet—they remind me of my existence and the life lived.

Thanks for reading, 
Alex

Brooklyn, New York, 11220

As always, this is Pedestrian, a newsletter on the observations, feelings, people, and experiences of walking through the built environment. If you’d like to support this work, please share it with a friend. See you next month.

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I’m standing in the middle of Port Authority wondering where I went wrong.

The thermometer outside reads 90ºF, but the inside is even warmer despite the facility’s cavernous qualities. I check my phone. Three minutes. A bead of sweat rolls down the side of my face and explodes beside my shoe. My shirt is damp from sweat. Every which way I move, I’m surrounded by a sea of people all trying to get elsewhere. I stare into the fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling and look for an answer. Two minutes.

Where the hell is the bus? The escalator ahead looks promising. I continue with a pink New Jersey Transit ticket in hand and descend further into the bowels of Port Authority. The numbers '“2-3-4” read at the end of the brick maze. My gate!

Classical music plays from the speakers. I check my watch once more. One minute past the hour. The lack of passengers raises my suspicions. Did I miss the bus? The attendant posted at the gate booth gives a nod. Yup. You missed your bus, alright.

I’m Alex Wolfe and this is Pedestrian, a newsletter on the observations, feelings, people, and experience of moving—often walking—through the built environment.

Today I’m off to Richard W. DeKorte Park in Lyndhurst, located in the heart of the New Jersey Meadowlands. The marshy expanse is located three miles west of New York City. Those living in the New York City metropolitan area have passed through one way or another—either on the New Jersey Turnpike, riding New Jersey Transit, or from an airplane flying in or out of Newark Liberty International Airport. Most residents think of the area as a barren wasteland or a pungent landfill home to the nation’s second-largest shopping mall appropriately named the American Dream, but a visit to the park is far from a visit to the dump.

The next bus won’t arrive for another hour, so I catch a train at nearby Penn Station. We depart on time and the car slowly rocks back and forth inside the darkness of the bore. After passing beneath the Hudson River, the train emerges from the ground and the sudden rush of sunlight blinds my eyes. The train wheels screech along the rails. My vision returns and I see grassy fields bound by heavy industry and exhaust. The asphalt of the turnpike boils. Further along, the haze of the Hudson River Palisades.

For decades this very land was plagued by irresponsible land management and careless pollution, destroying much of the ecosystem. Only a fragment of the Meadowlands remain presently. The destruction began centuries ago with the arrival of early Dutch settlers who drained the land with dikes and cut down native Atlantic Cedar in favor of salt hay farms. Towns and industry followed. As nearby populations grew, the Meadowlands became a convenient location for free-for-all garbage disposal. By the mid-1900s, the land was deemed unsalvageable, and by 1969, was home to nearly 1,900 acres of unregulated landfills, accepting 5,000 tons of garbage per day, for six days a week.

The abuse of the Meadowlands started to wane in the 1970s. Revitalization efforts began with the creation of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission (now the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority). In 1982, DeKorte Park was established.

The estuary park, dubbed an experimental park on a landfill, was one of the first landfill-to-parks projects in the United States. Set against the backdrop of the Manhattan skyline, the park features a landscaped capped landfill, six trails, and the Lyndhurst Nature Reserve, formally an illegal garbage island. All landfills within the Meadowlands district have ceased operations. The surrounding land is still polluted with waste, but slowly the ecosystem is regenerating and becoming an unlikely oasis of wetlands and wildlife.

I finally arrive at the park to find it’s busier than anticipated, although privacy is still afforded to those who walk its trails. I follow a wooden boardwalk resting above the murky water of the Hackensack River mudflats. Tall grass grows on either side of my shoulders—swaying to and fro—ushered by a gentle breeze. I watch an airplane descend from the sky until the horizon swallows its wings. Gulls fly in droves, gliding every which way they please while letting out possessed mews.

Every so often, I hear the sound of ambulance sirens or the roaring Jake break of an eighteen-wheeler barreling down the turnpike. A reminder I’m not far from the city hiding behind the reeds. Only in such placid settings do I realize I have grown so accustomed to living in such a noise-polluted city.

Meanwhile, thunderstorm clouds taunt from the west. Miles away, a faint sheet of rain covers nearby towns in a blanket of precipitation. My phone warns of rain in thirty minutes, although I’m unconvinced. Behind me, the Manhattan skyline, blue skies, and sunshine that makes my eyes water. Which way the weather goes makes no difference. I watch clouds of tens of miles in length drift across the sky.

My entire trip to DeKorte Park is in anticipation of the Saw Mill Creek Trail, the crown jewel of the park. The mile-long path stretches into the middle of the Hackensack River mud flats. The trail once functioned as a service road in the 1920s for the high-tension electrical towers looming overhead, but has since been converted for civilian use.

I am surprised to find fishermen casting their poles into the waters. They search for the undiscerning bites of striped bass and bluefish. Each side of the trail is bound by large boulders covered in mudflat muck produced by high tide. There they rest their belongings and wait.

The wind gives fair warning. I don’t have much time until meeting with the storm. Waves break on the surface of the boulders at ever-increasing speeds. The blue sky vanishes and glows orange from the angle of the sun. Could the water flood the trail, lift my body, and carry me all the way to the Bay of Newark? Excitement is not knowing.

The trail resumes. Despite the rain, intuition pulls me forward—all the assurance I will ever need. I squeeze through the unkempt brush. I’m beyond the limits of the trail and into the unknown. The trail tapers before a ford. My footsteps grow ever so intentional, so as not to fall into the water. I keep going until I can no longer continue. I’m left staring at a hill. Another giant inactive landfill.

I sit with my thoughts, trying to imagine what this land looked like before the completion of the New Jersey Turnpike, before the Statue of Liberty, long before the arrival of Dutch Settlers and European settlements centuries ago. Before heavy industry, unabashed development, excessive waste, and the need for landfills. The snap of lightning draws above, taking me from my imagination. Time to catch the bus on a schedule I never bothered to check.

I retrace my steps, through the grounds parking lot, down Disposal Road (a fitting name), and into the town of North Arlington. Modest homes rest on rolling hills, framing an epic view of the Manhattan skyline or an inactive landfill. A few miles later, the rain finally falls as I wait for my bus beneath my umbrella in Lyndhurst. The town is dead and across the street is the Hillside Cemetery, the final resting place of Joey Ramone, William Carlos Williams, and the artist Robert Smithson.

Coincidentally, the late Smithson and his wife Nancy Holt championed New Jersey and the Meadowlands. The landscape proved a rich blindspot to the center of the guarded integrity of the established art world, provoking both artists to return again and again. Notable works include the film Swamp or Holt’s unfinished Sky Mound. For Smithson and Holt, New Jersey was elsewhere—the defining, if not often forgotten, location on the map of contemporary culture.

The Meadowlands prove to be a living testament to those places deemed undesirable, forgotten, or unworthy of our attention—elsewhere. Although you would never know from behind a steering wheel. Driving on the turnpike or from the seat of a bus, the marshy landscape looks so inaccessible and cold.

The land is the result of dated ways of thinking and being. Powerful proof of nature’s ability to regenerate and flourish despite centuries of environmental carnage. A walk in DeKorte Park reveals the truth of the Meadowlands. A softer side of the landscape, one that begs for preservation and careful attention.

I feel the push and pull of wishing to be both elsewhere and somewhere after walking the Meadowlands. My walks just outside the city are particularly sweet knowing I can return home when I please given public transit is available. New Jersey and the Meadowlands are my middle ground—my cherished elsewhere just right of the center. I look forward to the next visit.

Till then,
Alex

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As always, this is Pedestrian, a newsletter on the observations, feelings, people, and experiences of walking through the built environment. If you’d like to support this work, please consider making a donation.

Three or four times a week, I take the N train to Times Square–42nd Street. Once emerging from the station, a familiar dance begins.

High-rises and skyscrapers stare from above, watching me as I weave between slow moving tourists and office workers filling the sidewalks. I inhale, filling my lungs with that distinct Midtown air—a damp scent often mixed with halal food trucks, sewage, and roasted hot nuts carts.

The familiar jingle of an ice cream truck pierces through honking horns and a sea of vehicles gliding across well worn asphalt. Seven minutes later, I walk through the painfully slow revolving doors of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library, take the elevator to the second or fourth floor, and grab a chair at one of the massive wood tables. I’ve reached my destination.

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library is my provisional office. There, I spend my afternoons writing. I’ve been on a long journey to find such a suitable office, where I can comfortably work, but I’m happy to announce I’ve finally found it. For the last three months, I’ve spent hours at the library, devoting much of my creative energy into a book of writing and photographs from the last three years of walking. This book has been in the works for nearly two years, but is tentatively set to be released later this fall. Stay tuned.

I’m Alex Wolfe and this is Pedestrian, a newsletter on the observations, feelings, people, and experience of moving—often walking—through the built environment.

I write at the library because I’m not the kind of artist who necessarily needs a studio in one place. My work can happen anywhere. I enjoy making use of public services (like public transit) and can’t justify spending more money on rent in the most expensive rental market in the United States. Although—mark my word—I will have my own Midtown office of the Robert Caro ilk (a dreamer can dream). Until that day finally comes, I will continue making use of the library’s facilities, which remain free to the public and don't even require a library card (unless you’re trying to check out a book or laptop).

I don’t have to ride the train all the way to the library—I choose to do so. At home, I have a perfectly fine workspace where I can write, but I don’t enjoy writing from home. I’m too easily distracted and always looking for any excuse to avoid sitting down and getting to work. The unwashed dishes collected in my sink always seem to take precedent. Or was it a phone call to a friend? Did I mail that package the other day? Don’t mention the couch in my living room—always urging me to lay down and float away into the evening (an invitation I accept all too frequently). In my apartment, the boundaries between life’s responsibilities and creative work are too close for comfort. 

Writing at the library has proven beneficial to my practice, otherwise I’d find some other place to call my office. The commute alone proves a forcing function. The forty minute ride up to 42nd street from Sunset Park in Brooklyn validates the work, given I’ve taken such lengths to be there. Once I find a seat at the library, I’m momentarily teleported and relieved from the stresses of everyday demands of both home and work.

The company of my fellow library goers causes me to write far more than I would have if I stayed home and worked alone. Though we rarely speak—only when asking to keep a close eye on valuable belongings while making a trip to the restroom—their presence is felt. They are an audience watching me and I can’t stomach letting them down. Social facilitation 101. 

This isn’t the first time I’ve attempted to make a public space my own office. Since moving to New York City, I’ve made various coffeeshops my home base. Some are more memorable than others.

Prior to declaring the library as my office, I worked at a coffee shop in Chelsea. Despite friendly ownership and late hours, I concluded the space wasn't conducive to writing. New York coffee shops typically occupy small spaces, have limited power outlets for a dying laptop, sometimes play loud music, and run out of seating quickly. This particular coffeeshop was no exception.

Besides, a coffee shop is a place of business trying to make money. I wasn’t patronizing the space as a customer, but as someone mooching free Wi-Fi and working space. Understandably that made me self-conscious, especially when nursing a small cup of coffee—my only purchase—throughout the day.

I’m no longer self-conscious. The New York Public Library doesn’t ask anything of me, other than to keep my voice down. The institution is inherently not about making money (despite a looming $36.2 million budget cut proposed by city hall), but about providing free services to the public. Those who peruse the stacks are welcomed, with no opposition, to linger endlessly, read a book, engage in independent research, and get to work—whatever that may be. I’ve yet to see anyone escorted from the facilities.

Finding the right library to call my office took time. I spent weeks visiting the world famous Stephen A. Schwarzman Building—the flagship of the New York Public Library (NYPL) system. The same library that draws thousands of tourists from all over the world. There, I worked at the incredibly photogenic Rose Main Reading Room—a place that could legitimize even the worst of writing. No matter the time of day, I could always find a place to sit and write in absolute silence at one of many massive tables filling the chamber.

Considered one of the NYPL’s premier research centers, the flagship does not offer a circulating collection, but feels closer to an academic institution (working there often feels as though I’ve returned to college), than a public library. All things fine and dandy, until discovering one small caveat: the Wi-Fi at the Schwarzman Building is absolutely terrible. 

I powered through— spotty Wi-Fi and all—until expressing my discontent to my friend Sandeep. She recommended I visit the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library, conveniently located across the street from the Schwarzman Building. Somehow I overlooked the massive New York Public Library flags hanging from the facade for weeks. The discovery has been nothing short of a revelation. My life has forever changed.

The Stavros isn’t nearly as beautiful as the Schwarzman Building, but for what it lacks aesthetically, is easily made up for in shining personality. The Stavros was originally known as the Mid-Manhattan Library and opened in 1970 to house the circulating collection formerly located in the Schwarzman Building. The branch then moved to its current building, a former department store, in 1981. After a failed attempt to close the Mid-Manhattan Library in the 2010’s (partially thwarted by well organized library patrons), the NYPL instead announced a major renovation of the branch in 2014. Between 2017 and 2020, the branch was closed for renovations funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, and the library was renamed after the foundation.

The library is massive at eight stories tall (the tallest in the entire NYPL system?) and capped by a blue aluminum structure—often called the “wizard hat”—to conceal mechanical equipment. The circulating library has the capacity for approximately 400,000 books, the largest capacity for circulating materials in the entire New York Public Library system. A true powerhouse of wisdom.

A cafe sits on the top floor and is accompanied by a terrace which commands an excellent view of Midtown. Seating can be limited, but I have yet to visit and not find a seat. Most importantly, the Wi-Fi is very, very reliable. I haven’t returned to the Schwarzman Building since.

Working at the Stavros proves more than just a place to write. The Stavros is inherently public—a place for the people. Best described as a third space, as coined by urban sociologist Ray Oldenberg in his book The Great Good Place, in that the library is a social setting separate from home and work. At the library, socioeconomic status does not matter—all are welcome. There are no requirements, save for an easily obtained library card, preventing anyone from using the facilities. No visitors face pretension. Regulars are common. Using the library grants access to a space that is rapidly disappearing in New York City. The library is not a storage space for books, afterall, but about people.

The library remains one of the few remaining public spaces where New Yorkers of all ranks can relax and let their hair down. It’s not unusual to find multiple people napping—faces buried in a book—across multiple floors. The library often feels like a home away from home, or better yet, New York City’s own public office.

The library isn’t always harmonious. Writing in public sometimes comes with a price. By nature of living in New York City, scuffles and arguments are bound to happen. Sometimes patrons speak loudly or take phone calls instead of moving to the stairwell (an unwritten rule among library goers). On occasion, I’ve seen a mouse running around the stacks.

My biggest concern is finding someone to watch my laptop when I need to fill my water bottle or use the restroom. Not a difficult ask, but can feel like a hassle, especially while trying to stay hydrated throughout the day (a problem I would never have at home or in my own office). None of these minor complications are grounds for discontinuing my visits.

Besides, I don’t write at the library because doing so is perfect. I write at the library because I’m inspired by my visits. I want to be among the public. My walks take place in public, why not write an entire book in public too? The library is the appropriate setting.

An ecosystem has blossomed as a result of visiting the library regularly. My lunch breaks spent walking around the neighborhood are just as informative as putting pen to paper.

There is no shortage of people in nearby Bryant Park on any given day, which always makes for good people watching. If I’m lucky, I can catch the Juggling Club, who meet from noon to 1pm, Monday through Friday. 

I’ve also become a familiar face at an adjacent coffee shop. I always look forward to chatting about photography with one of the baristas—spurred by the camera around my neck—while waiting for my macchiato. Sometimes I get a free one.

I would have never discovered Shamas Deli, a sandwich shop located in a former parking garage, if not for my library visits. Johnny, the owner, started the business thirty years ago after immigrating from Pakistan. He is always eager to chat and claims to make the “best sandwiches in NYC” as listed on the sign outside. 

The deli is hardly a secret. Business is always steady. At lunchtime, office workers gather outside while waiting on their orders (the interior only has room to place an order). A laminated picture of David Letterman, supposedly a frequent patron, sits beside the register and below a sign advertising iced coffee. 

My friends love to ask me—often with a chuckle—how my office is treating me. Some have even joined me.

Progress on the book is good. Moving slowly and steadily. Without the library, I would likely be twiddling my thumbs at home or looking for a power outlet in some Chelsea coffee shop. The library remains an inspiration—a vital piece contributing to my place. One of many reasons why I continue to call beautiful New York City home.

I’ll continue dreaming of my own Midtown office, but sometimes—usually while taking a bite of my Shamas Deli sandwich as the Bryant Park Juggling Club passes bowling pins back and forth—I begin to reconsider my own priorities. Maybe the library has everything I’ll ever need in an office. I will let time decide. For the foreseeable future you will find me writing—in public—at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library.

Thanks for reading, 
Alex

Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library
455 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016

SUPPORT THIS NEWSLETTER

As always, this is Pedestrian, a newsletter on the observations, feelings, people and experience of walking through the built environment. If you’d like to support this work, please consider making a donation.

Last month I finished Lotusland, a seven day series of walks around the City of Los Angeles. You can view the entire walk map here.

The series was a first. I’ve never planned consecutive walks all taking place in the same city. Usually I walk from one place to another, sleeping in a different bed each night. Instead, I stayed in one location. Each morning, I left the house, took off in one direction, and saw a different part of the city. 

In the evening, when I was done walking, I relied on public transportation – a combination of light rail, subway, and bus – to bring me back home. I didn’t take a car the entire time. 

Prior to this series, I’d visited Los Angeles maybe four or five times, all experiences spent in a car being shuttled from one private space to another, with little understanding of what goes on in between.

I know Los Angles much better now, although I feel I walked a completely different city. One I’d never visited before. 

I’m Alex Wolfe and this is Pedestrian, a newsletter on the observations, feelings, people and experience of walking through the built environment.

I almost forgot how much I was dreading this walk. Nothing to do with Los Angeles, really. The dread was actually rooted in uncertainty. The uncertainty of not knowing what could happen over seven days or if walking Los Angeles would even be a valuable experience.

These same thoughts and feelings cloud my mind before any long, multi-day walk. Everytime I question my own sanity and sense of judgment, knowing I’m about to enter some kind of self-imposed gauntlet. 

Apprehension signals the walk is worthy of my effort, setting me up for a transformative experience. One that often begins in fear or confusion and ends in an indescribable, but familiar bliss. I feel closer to the world and my own humanity. An overarching sense of gratitude. A new lease on life.

On day one, I quietly forgot all my concerns after I took a few steps. All the worries I projected from the comforts of my couch some 2,800 miles away in Brooklyn dissipated. A certain rhythm emerged. A familiarity in a foreign place. Los Angeles was well worth the turmoil. 

I walked 112.86 miles over a week, averaging about 16.12 miles per day. Lost in thoughts and looking closely at the city with my camera to my eye. No podcasts, audiobooks, or music. I spoke to countless Angelenos and walked for 6–10 hours a day. Each night, I was exhausted. My days were beyond full and I spent the evenings writing newsletters to recap my day. I wrote ~12,000 words.

I covered serious ground, but Los Angeles is a massive, sprawling city. One that requires far more than a week of walking to reach its far edges. Anyways, miles and step counts are irrelevant here. The series was not about seeing as much city as possible (in that case I would have rented a car), but to move through the city at a pace typically not asked of its residents. To walk a city that is often deemed un-walkable. To grind against that tension.

The practice is isolating at times. Not in the sense of loneliness, but how paying attention and moving slowly – the airplanes overhead, the sun moving across the pavement, the shifting demographics of a neighborhood, the plants growing between the cracks, the unanswered love letters beneath the overpass, and a million other details – brought me both closer to the world and further from society. A paradox. Daily life and its tasks requires us to move at an unnatural speed, one that feels entirely foreign after days of walking.

Of course Los Angeles can be walked. I’d argue most American cities can be walked, depending on the level of discomfort you can reasonably manage. The built environment of Los Angeles isn’t necessarily conducive to robust pedestrian activity, but that doesn’t mean the city isn’t enjoyable on two feet. I had a harder time getting around Orlando, Florida or even parts of Long Island. 

I didn’t have to walk highways or balance on the tightrope of a narrow shoulder, as many assumed. The reality on the ground wasn’t unlike most car-dependent American cities: long walkable stretches of arterial roads congested with traffic, sleepy residential streets, strip malls, parking lots, and empty sidewalks.

Such a comparison is a disservice though. Los Angeles is something else – a lesson in contradiction. To walk the city is to intimately engage with its polarities. The city is immeasurable, distorted with Hollywood cliches, and best described as a loose network of suburbs – lacking a true center – nestled beneath the umbrella of imaginary city limits. Walking is a thread that links disparate pieces of a sprawling metropolis, one that is constantly changing and developing. 

Los Angeles is – at times – ugly, with pockets of extreme beauty. Unexpected beauty. The intoxicating smells of colorful flowers mask car exhaust and urine. Palm trees line the streets and shoot from the ground with their fronds exploding in the sky like fireworks. Franciscan Monks introduced them to the ecosystem in the 1700’s, perhaps an unforeseen gesture to soften the blow of an environment that would be oppressively developed and covered in concrete and stucco over the course of 300 years. 

I saw California bungalows furnished with fake concrete animals, trimmed hedges, and fruit bearing trees. Orange peels followed me throughout the entire journey. Wing-ding apartment buildings and even Victorian homes (such as those in Angeleno Heights) were scattered about, often adjacent to a busy ten lane highway supporting a midday traffic jam.

But on that same day, I could just as easily forgo the smog and traffic for nature, as I did while hiking Cahuenga Peak in beautiful Griffith Park, the fruits of my labor revealing an epic vista of the Los Angeles Basin. I walked the chaos of Hollywood Boulevard during the Oscars, navigated the lush, surveilled lawns of Beverly Hills, and ended some miles later at the Santa Monica Pier staring into the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. While walking Sunset Boulevard days before, I snuck away to the peaceful hills of Echo Park and walked the historic staircases tucked between single family homes.

Los Angeles is a friendly town, at least in my own experience. Those I encountered on the sidewalks were quick to smile and say hello, a gesture which caught me off guard.

Los Angeles doesn’t support pedestrian activity akin to older, more densely populated cities lining the east coast, but street life still manages to flourish. The sidewalks are far from empty in certain areas. Koreatown, MacArthur Park, and Chinatown – some of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the entire city – support a consistent buzz of foot traffic

Walking South Los Angeles was another story. More industrial than neighborhoods north of the 10, I spent stretches walking the sidewalk without seeing another person, save for groups of people huddled beneath bus stops, children getting out of school, or hungry workers ordering food at a taco truck. Traffic was the only constant, although those behind the wheel may as well have been invisible.

Maybe I got lucky, but Los Angeles public transit was an overall pleasant experience. I purchased a week pass for only $12.50, granting me unlimited rides on all trains and buses.

Transit was, at times, infrequent, but reliable and easy to navigate. I had no issues once I got my bearings (my biggest mistake, catching the purple line downtown when I meant to get the red to Hollywood – twice). Most of my commutes took no more than an hour. 

Trains and buses were full of passengers during rush hour, but Los Angeles remains a car first city. Public transit is far from the glory days of Pacific Electric. Ridership continues to decline, but the city still has plans to expand the rail system – just over twenty-five years old – extensively. 

I especially enjoyed riding the buses, a feeling I haven’t felt since my day’s living in Chicago. Los Angeles’ bus network is exceptional and actually a viable means of transportation. With a little patience, I could see living in the city without a car. You just need to know the system well, plan your commutes, and tolerate walking on broad streets with little shade. 

I assumed the weather would be nothing but blue skies and sunshine, despite a historically wet winter season, and left my rain jacket in Brooklyn – a rookie mistake. I spent half of the series walking in some level of precipitation. People in Los Angeles make a big deal about the rain. Initially, I brushed their concern and laughed. On day three I caved and purchased an umbrella – an object I hesitate to carry on walks. The rain never seemed to end and I got tired of constantly wiping the rain off my camera lens.

Few stores carried umbrellas (maybe I just had bad luck) and I spent an hour searching for one until I stumbled upon a small, poorly stocked rack in a CVS. I paid far more than what the umbrella was worth, but it saved the walk. I’m a fan of walking with umbrellas now.

Two of those wet days would have kept me inside had I been walking in New York City, but the show had to go on. The strict parameters of a walking series serve as a forcing function, pushing me to contend with whatever weather conditions.

I could have been as easily upset as the college student I met from Tennessee, who traveled to Los Angeles to spend his spring break beneath the sun, expressing his displeasure any chance he could. Initially I too was disappointed with the wet conditions, but soon realized I was having an unusual Los Angeles experience. As I always say, what happens on the walk was meant to happen on the walk. The landscape was unusually lush and green, snow covered the mountains looming behind the skyline, and the Los Angeles River – best described as the city gutter – actually looked something like a river.

Walking Los Angeles, regardless of weather, is an unusual experience. 

Every six months some major publication releases an article celebrating their most recent discovery: the innumerable benefits of walking. Most authors choose to paint an overly picturesque, romanticized version of what it means to walk. Few acknowledge how walking forces one to contend with ugly thoughts, inherent bias, tired stereotypes, and the harsh realities of living in America – especially in a dense urban metropolis.

Walking Los Angeles is no exception. You’d have to be soulless not to feel some level of heartbreak walking its sidewalks. At times, those sidewalks are filled with pain, widespread homelessness, mental illness, a person's entire belongings, drug use, and human waste.

You can try to look the other way, but the realities are impossible to ignore. The homeless are everywhere, only a stone’s throw from multi-million dollar homes made of glass or a $20 Erewhon salad.  

Provisional living spaces – tents, shopping carts, wood, tarps  – line the interstates, the river, strip malls, parks, and grassy medians. Public spaces and businesses are highly surveilled, watched by cameras and a privately hired security team. Public restrooms are few and far between and difficult to access. 

Los Angeles is a sobering look into the mirror of contemporary American society – potentially more of what is to come elsewhere. The issues of Los Angeles – homelessness, affordable housing, a water crisis, exorbitant cost of living, environmental disaster, etc – are not inherently unique to the city, they just aren’t as aggressively swept beneath the rug as they are in New York City, for example. To walk Los Angeles is to feel those issues intimately and in your face. 

Despite all the heartbreak, walking still manages to make me fall in love everytime. Love is the best metric for a walk’s success. I walked 112.86 miles and still feel that I have unfinished business. I yearn for seven more days in the city. 

Los Angeles – despite its issues, contradictions, rain, smog, traffic, trash, whatever – won me over. I fell in love with the city and look forward to navigating those sidewalks once again.

Thanks to all who followed Lotusland. I appreciate your support as always. Until the next series of Los Angeles walks! 

More soon,
—Alex

P.S. For those who ride bikes and live in Los Angeles, go check out the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Infrastructure Inspections (@infrastructure.la).

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Another newsletter. Another [big] walk announcement!

On March 8th, I’m starting a series of seven walks in Los Angeles over seven days. As always, I’m sending a daily newsletter throughout the whole journey. You can sign up here. 

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I’ve entertained this series of Los Angeles walks for a couple years now. Each time I begin tossing the idea around, something else takes precedent and I’m forced to earmark the project for a later time. Los Angeles has always drawn me. Why? You may ask. The answer is simple – curiosity. I’ve visited numerous times over the years, but the city remains a mystery – one of those places that evades definition, supposedly cannot be walked, lacks a true center, and to be frank, holds many qualities that would seemingly make it the antithesis of why I enjoy big city living. As architectural critic Reyner Banham said, “the unique value of Los Angeles – what excites, intrigues and sometimes repels me – is that it offers radical alternatives to almost every urban concept in unquestioned currency.”

Well, the stars finally aligned and I’m pleased to announce it’s time to walk Los Angeles. I’m more than ready and long overdue. Partially because I chose to stick around Brooklyn last fall (I usually do these long, multi-day walks in the fall and spring) to pour my attention into a book (set to come out this year) of photos and text chronicling the last three or four years of my walks (more about that in another newsletter).

I’m Alex Wolfe and this is Pedestrian, a newsletter on the observations, feelings, people and experience of walking through the built environment

Each morning, for seven days, I’ll hit the pavement and walk ten to twelve miles throughout the city. I’m aiming to walk at least seventy-five miles. This is the first time I’ve done a series of walks in the same place, but those who have followed my work for a long time will know the familiar drill.

I’m sharing this walk through a daily newsletter titled Lotusland, which contains dispatches (or better yet, vignettes) and photos from the day’s travels. Each morning you will receive at least 800 words (likely more) and a few photos in your inbox detailing the city landscape, people encountered, history of place, emotions, pain in my knees, etc. The walk begins on March 8th, but you’ll receive the first issue on the morning of the 9th. Once the walk finishes, I’ll delete the mailing list and you’ll automatically be unsubscribed. 

“To understand Los Angeles – the city’s design, architecture, and urbanism –  is to speak the language of movement,” writes Reyner Banham in his seminal book Los Angeles: The Four Ecologies. To Banham, the city cannot possibly be understood by those who “can’t move fluently through its diffuse urban texture or go with the flow of its unprecedented life.” This language, in his eyes, was best spoken behind the wheel of a car. So, Banham learned how to drive – much like the English intellectuals who taught themselves Italian in order to read Dante in the original – to “read Los Angeles in the original.” 

So, what happens to those who aren’t fluent in that language of movement, and instead speak an alternative, slower language?

Los Angeles is notorious for being a city developed in service of cars, the freeway, and horizontal expansion. A boomtown that couldn’t be farther from the walkable streets of New York City. Joan Didion states, “A good part of any day in Los Angeles is spent driving, alone, through streets devoid of mean­ing to the driver, which is one reason the place exhilarates some people, and floods others with an amorphous unease.”

Many claim you can’t walk the city (especially those not living there), but navigating by two feet is possible. Numbers vary, but general consensus agrees there are 9,000–11,000 miles of sidewalk lining the streets of Los Angeles. I am not the first to undertake a project of such nature. Chris Arnade recently spent ten days walking South Los Angeles. In 2011, Nigel Raab walked 72.5 miles from the western edge of Los Angeles to the city of San Bernardino. Three years later Kelley Wiley Lane was the first to finish the final, published version of the Inmann 300, an urban thru-hike covering 218 miles (and 344 public stairways) through Los Angeles. Or how about the photography of Kwasi Boyd-Bouldin? He’s documented the city of Los Angeles on foot for over a decade (thanks for sharing Bryan).

So what is it about walking in Los Angeles? Famous Angeleno Ray Bradbury (who never learned to drive a car) once said, “it’s lack that gives inspiration.”  The very lack of pedestrian infrastructure (and the common belief that the city is unwalkable) produces a certain alluring tension. This tension is not unique to Los Angeles, and can be found throughout the United States, (although I’d argue Los Angeles has its own distinct brand). I felt it while walking the length of Long Island and during a two and a half day walk around Orlando, Florida.

Like most places worth walking, Los Angeles draws various contradictory opinions and few seem to agree. In 1933, Mayo Marrow wrote, “Los Angeles…is not a mere city [but] a commodity; something to be advertised and sold to the people of the United States like automobiles, cigarettes and mouthwash.” Decades later, Journalist Adam Raphael wrote, “LA [is] the noisiest, the smelliest, the most uncomfortable and most uncivilised major city in the United States. In short, a stinking sewer ...” Author Dorothy Parker famously said Los Angeles was “seventy-two suburbs in search of a city.”

The purpose of this walk is not to reinforce tired stereotypes, glamorize, or produce some grand narrative of the city and its inner workings. I’ve no intention of sharing a comprehensive overview of Los Angeles (or determining whether Los Angeles really does have better bagels than New York City…I could care less). To do so would be impossible in the span of seven days, and would require multiple visits (and perhaps relocating to Los Angeles altogether). The city is too large, too spread out. That’s likely what Reyner Banham meant when he said the city is a “scrambled egg”, its business yolk mixed with its domestic white, and everything spread across the landscape, its evenness disturbed only by occasional "specialized sub-centres".

Anyways, I’m not interested in covering as much ground as possible. As I continue to do this work, the more I continue to slow down. For a walk of this nature, it’s not important to walk great distances (although those long hauls have their benefits), but to exist in space, linger a bit, and pay attention. 

Unlike Sun Song (the last long walk series I completed), I’ve loosely determined every walking route in advance. All starting from basically the same location, but I’d bet money the routes will change throughout the week. Instead of walking loops – starting and finishing in the same place – I’m walking in seven different directions. Plan all you like, but the walk always gets the last say. Especially with new information. Things usually change once you’re on the ground. Yet, a loose guide allows me to fall into the rhythm of the walk with more ease, relieves cognitive load, and always allows for more improvisation. Once I finish for the day, I’ll take the train or bus back to my stay. 

Los Angeles, despite common belief, has a robust system of buses, light rail, and subways. While a shell of its former self (in the 1920’s Southern California was home to the largest electric railway system in the world and dismantled by the interests of the auto industry) the transit system continues to grow despite declining ridership. Taking an Uber or Lyft would be easier, but I refuse. Rideshares are a private, singular experience. Being shuttled from one place to another removes us from the world and most things people of the city have to deal with. In other words, riding public transit is another way to get a sense of place. 

A good walk always changes you. Big or small. I’m buzzing in anticipation, like waiting for the starting pistol before a race. I couldn’t tell you how these walks will unfold, but I know I’m going to learn something. Los Angeles was only a matter of time. I look forward to sharing with you.

So please, come join me, as I walk around Los Angeles for seven days.

See you out there, 
Alex

As always, I’m Alex Wolfe and this is Pedestrian. If you enjoyed this newsletter, please consider sharing with a friend. 

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Manhattan looks best from across the Hudson River. The New Jersey side. Especially from Grundy Park in Jersey City. Standing on the pier, my eyes follow the panorama from right to left: the Verrazzano Bridge, 1 World Trade, the Empire State Building, Hudson yards—Hello?

A pair of tourists motion for a picture with their hands. Will you take our picture? Smiling, they pass me an iPhone. They agree. This is the best view they’ve ever seen. The exchange is sweet, but momentarily awkward. My own desire for perfection gets in the way. I ask to move their jackets lying on the bench. I can see them in the corner of my viewfinder—how distracting—but the tourists don’t care. A picture is a picture. Ok, hold steady. One, two, three.

I’m Alex Wolfe and this is Pedestrian, a newsletter on the observations, feelings, people and experience of walking through the built environment

It’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and the sky is as blue as a robin’s egg. I’m walking around Jersey City with hopes of reaching Union City and taking the ferry in Weehawken back to Midtown, Manhattan later this evening. All three municipalities are located in Hudson County, New Jersey, the smallest and most densely populated county in the state. Given the county’s proximity to Manhattan, overly zealous real estate developers occasionally describe the area as the ‘sixth borough’, but to do so would only be a farce. Hudson County is really a thing of its own. 

Jersey City attracts me for several reasons. One being genuine curiosity. I passed through the city during an eighteen mile walk from North Bergen to Newark almost two years ago. The distance didn’t allow time for meandering, especially if I wanted to finish before sundown. I didn’t intend to wait so long to return—especially since getting to New Jersey is so easy. My commute between the World Trade Center and Exchange Place this morning was only five minutes on the PATH train. Better late than never. 

The other reason, to unwind preconceived notions of New Jersey. Chalk it up to being from Iowa, but I’ll forever champion those misunderstood places so easily overlooked or cast as undesirable. New Jersey fits that bill. I like to be surprised. Walking is a way to access our own truth. Each time I walk, I almost always find the redeeming qualities of my surroundings and if I don’t like a place, at least I form an opinion with my feet on the ground.

I’m so happy I don’t have to walk to Newark today, reminding me my world has since changed. My walks are much shorter now. I have more time and I’m in less of a hurry. Instead of twenty mile (or more) epics, I’m walking ten or twelve. I meander more, get off track, rest, and move slower. I have more attention, not just for my surroundings, but for my own body. 

I feel calmer and more comfortable walking in Jersey City. Last time I was here, I walked south down Central Avenue. Today I’m moving north, retracing my steps. Moving in the opposite direction makes everything feel new again. I haven’t thought much about the storefronts, window displays, or signage facing the street in a long time, but I remember everything. Walking has its way of dusting off old memories. I remember eating lunch in the park across from Rizzo’s Bakery, the old firehouse, and the mural of Jesus in the church parking lot. 

My thoughts are interrupted by an alarm ringing in the distance. By the time I register the sound, I realize the alarm has been going off for a long time—I just wasn’t paying attention. The experience is akin to hearing your alarm clock go off in your dreams. You hear the sound the entire time, but only comes into consciousness the moment you wake up. 

Two fire engines park outside a six story apartment building. The alarm comes from inside.  I can hear the sirens of another truck barreling down the street. Once arriving, the operator parks diagonally, blocking traffic, and a company of firefighters spill from the truck doors. I can’t see a fire anywhere. A resident hangs her head out the window, just as confused as I am. The firefighters walk through the front door with little concern. Nothing to worry about here. A routine visit.

Geographically, Jersey City (and the surrounding area) isn’t flat—like much of Hudson County. Most development east of the Hackensack River—where I am walking—is built on a cuesta. North Bergen, just a few miles north of Jersey City, is home to the second most hills per square mile in the country, right behind San Francisco. I’m on high ground. The gaps between buildings offer a glimpse of distant, expansive wetlands covered in salt hay the color of a lion’s mane—the New Jersey Meadowlands. 

The Meadowlands have a complicated history, one I’ve just started to uncover. Four hundred years ago, the land was a vibrant ecosystem full of Atlantic white Cedar with nearby Hackensack River as its lifeblood. Early Dutch settlers drained the nearby land with dikes and cut down the trees to make way for farms of salt hay. Towns and industrial developments soon followed.

The land suffered horribly in the 20th Century becoming a free-for-all dumping zone and one of the largest landfills in the world. Two-thirds of the wetlands were filled as a result. The stench was unbearable and the Hackensack River was highly contaminated, driving out critical wildlife, leaving only the heartiest of species like the mummichog fish. The opening of the New Jersey Turnpike in January 1952 only amplified the continuing environmental decline of the Meadowlands. Conservation efforts began in the seventies, although the land remains highly polluted with civilian and military waste, not to mention high concentrations of Mercury. 

The view is undeniably jarring. 8,400 acres of undeveloped land just a stone's throw from Midtown, Manhattan. All I want is a picture. I forget my determined path in favor of finding a suitable vantage point, leading me to Paterson Plank Road. 

I always find a way to walk along some of the most unfriendly roads for pedestrians, no matter the location. If the roads exist, I will find them. Paterson Plank is no exception, boasting a constant stream of moderately fast moving traffic and a carelessly placed sidewalk hugging the shoulder of the road. To my left is a chain link fence and thick brush. To my right, a steep hill peppered with housing developments. Not ideal. I’ve no choice but to move forward as I’ve walked too far. Turning around in search of a better road would take just as much time to reach the next intersection.

I continue for about half a mile, stopping once I reach a playground beside a parking lot. The grounds are privately owned and only accessible by residents of a nearby housing development called the Hudson Mews. This does not stop me from walking through the chain link gate and climbing the fence to get a proper view of the Meadowlands. Children and their parents play on the equipment behind me, but my presence is not of concern. I take my time, trying to find the right shot, realizing I’d have to find even higher ground for the picture I imagined. My viewfinder can only capture a sliver of the landscape.

I capture the picture, take a right at the next intersection, and follow a street parallel to Route 495. The sidewalk is void of people given the concentration of fast moving traffic. The area is filled with old hotels and big box stores, but the landscape shifts quickly as I move. In a matter of two or three blocks, I reach Bergenline Avenue, the main thoroughfare of Union City—the second most densely populated city in the United States— and longest commercial avenue in the entire state. The shift is palpable, an experience most intimately felt on foot.

Once a predominantly Irish, Italian and Eastern European enclave up until the mid 20th century, Union City has become a haven for Latin American immigrants, most notably Cubans. Gentrification has yet to homogenize this city. Big box stores and retail chains are few and far between. Instead, the streets are lined with small business, mom and pop restaurants, botanicas, and clothing stores.

I could spend an entire day walking in Union City, but it’s getting dark and pushing me to return to Manhattan. Time to catch the ferry if I’m to get home at a decent hour. The walk to the Weehawken ferry terminal doesn’t take long, but does require climbing down the palisades lining the Hudson River via a tall set of stairs. As I descend, I see another panoramic view of Manhattan—better than the view I saw this afternoon with the tourists. The glass surface of the buildings glows orange from the setting sun. The sun retreats by the time I reach the end of the staircase and I am greeted by nightfall.

At the terminal, I purchase my ticket from the counter and take a seat at the bar and wait for the next arrival. I’m pleasantly surprised. For a ferry terminal, the ambiance is soothing. Through the window glass, I see the lights of Midtown standing across the Hudson River. I continue inspecting the bar. Dim lights, neon signs, and fish tanks. Muted monitors play sports TV. There’s a Japanese restaurant in the back. Patrons line the bar table, but keep to themselves—eating sushi—just as they would at an airport terminal. The bar is perfect. Dolly Parton plays, followed by Fleetwood Mac. Noone is here because they want to be. We are passing time waiting to get back home.

I’m hungry after eleven miles of walking. The bartender asks if I’d like a food menu. Instead of catching the next ferry, I order a bento box and miso soup—promptly devoured. An intercom speaker rings shortly after. Now arriving Midtown ferry to west 39th Street. I shuffle into the main deck. The boat speeds through the water and within ten minutes, I’m back in Manhattan looking across the Hudson River. Until next time New Jersey.

Thanks for reading,
Alex

As always, I’m Alex Wolfe and this is Pedestrian. If you enjoyed this newsletter, please consider sharing with a friend.