New York Offbeat Walks

This is NOT your typical guide— this book will show you the quirkier side of Manhattan. See where the slave market was in Colonial Manhattan, learn who the streets were named after, visit the site of Studio 54, CGBGs, William S. Burroughs' Bunker, and John Lennon' s Nutopia, see the locations you' ll recognize from The Godfather (1972), When Harry Met Sally (1989), The Devil Wears Prada (2006), and places where other famous movies were filmed, visit everything from tiny community gardens to skyscrapers beloved by billionaires . . . Each walk covers lesser-known architectural, historical, and cultural highlights. Five reasons to buy this book: a must for native New Yorkers who want to be informed about their city introduces movies that have become an important part of the history of NYC fits in your pocket so it' s easy to start walks anywhere and anytime filled with fascinating anecdotes told with a hint of NYC sarcasm and humor contains 12 walks that will make you feel much fitter and smarter when you finish!

Nearly 600 captivating stories of notable former residents of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, some famous, some forgotten What do Humphrey Bogart and Patty Hill (co-author of “Happy Birthday,” the most popular song of all time) have in common? Both of them once lived in the neighborhood of Morningside Heights and Bloomingdale, a strip of land that runs from the 90s to 125th Street, between the Hudson River and Central Park. Spanning hundreds of years, Notable New Yorkers of Manhattan’s Upper West Side is a compilation of stories of nearly 600 former residents who once called Manhattan’s Upper West Side home. Profiling a rare selection of wildly diverse people who shaped the character of the area, author Jim Mackin introduces readers to its fascinating residents—some famous, such as George and Ira Gershwin and Thurgood Marshall, and some forgotten, such as Harriet Brooks, Augustus Meyers, and Elinor Smith. Brief biographies reveal intriguing facts about this group, which include scientists, explorers, historians, journalists, artists, entertainers, aviators, public officials, lawyers, judges, and some in a category too unique to label. This collection also promotes accomplished women who have been forgotten and spotlights The Old Community, a tight-knit African American enclave that included such talented and accomplished residents as Marcus Garvey, Billie Holiday, and Butterfly McQueen. The book is divided into five geographical sections: the West 90s, the West 100s, the West 110s, the West 120s, and Riverside Drive. Addresses are arranged in ascending order within each section, first by street number and then by street address number. While the focus is on people, the book includes an eclectic collection of interesting facts and colorful stories about the neighborhood itself, including the 9th Avenue El, Little Coney Island, and, notoriously, one of the most dangerous streets in the city, as well as songs and movies that were written and filmed in the neighborhood. Notable New Yorkers of Manhattan’s Upper West Side provides a unique overview of the people who shaped the neighborhood through their presence and serves as a guide to those who deserve to be recognized and remembered.

An intimate portrait of the Big Apple As a child growing up in Manhattan, William Helmreich played a game with his father called "Last Stop." They would pick a subway line, ride it to its final destination, and explore the neighborhood. Decades later, his love for exploring the city is as strong as ever. Putting his feet to the test, he decided that the only way to truly understand New York was to walk virtually every block of all five boroughs—an astonishing 6,000 miles. His journey took him to every corner of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. Helmreich spoke with hundreds of New Yorkers from every part of the globe and all walks of life. He finds that to be a New Yorker is to struggle to understand the place and to make a life that is as highly local as it is dynamically cosmopolitan. Truly unforgettable, The New York Nobody Knows will forever change how you view the world's greatest city.

New York City the perfect place for a boy and his dad to spend the day! Follow them on their walk around Manhattan, from Grand Central Terminal to the top of the Empire State Building, from Greenwich Village to the Statue of Liberty, learning lots of facts and trivia along the way.

Downstate New York Rock Walks is both a hiking guidebook and a history book, calling attention to some of downstate New York's most spectacular and historic rocks: balanced rocks, perched rocks, rock shelters, talus caves, glacial potholes, split rocks, rock profiles, historic rocks, and massive, larger-than-life boulders. Many large glacial erratics have a history going back thousands of years to when they were moved to their present location by advancing glaciers. Many served as points of navigational reference at a time when the landscape was featureless and heavily forested, and still others were ceremonial sites for Native Americans. Rock shelters and talus caves have also been used for thousands of years by Native Americans and Europeans seeking refuge from the elements. It is important that these amazing natural wonders of stone be remembered and recorded before they are lost to collective memory or destroyed by the encroachment of civilization. Providing precise GPS location information along with length and degree of difficulty for each hike, Downstate New York Rock Walks will appeal to casual hikers, serious rock explorers, historians, geologists, and anyone wishing to explore some of nature’s greatest wonders within the reach of the lower Hudson River valley.

Written by New York natives, this guide zeros in on Manhattan, the city's crown jewel, and its world-class museums, restaurants, clubs, and hotels, and then goes on to the rich and diverse outer boroughs, digging up the less obvious charms. 34 maps. of color maps.

Traditional walking tours of New York enshrine the wealthy and war heroes by emphasizing what they’ve left behind. Rarely seen are those buried in their wake—those who fought the power, pushing for a better world. In Radical Walking Tours of New York Bruce Kayton leads us to monuments of those other heroes. Through Kayton’s lens, the history of all hitherto existing neighborhoods is the history of class struggles, civil rights battles, and labor movements; these twelve tours provide as many exciting, provocative, and educational afternoons. You can visit, for instance, Emma Goldman’s long-time home in the East Village, Langston Hughes’s house in Harlem, the site of Mabel Dodge’s salon o the apartment in which John Reed worked on Ten Days That Shook the World, and the site of Margaret Sanger’s first birth control clinic. From Battery Park to Harlem, from the Lower East Side to Central Park, Bruce Kayton’s tours provide a new perspective on the history of both New York City and American radicalism.