The Romance of Wandering

24 busted fire hydrants. 12 outdoor domino games. 6 NYC ferry rides. 5 outdoor bocce courts. 4 of NYC’s 9 Chinatowns. 3 bodegas with a restaurant in the back. 1 shuttered pizza shop persuaded to reopen for a single slice. 1,002,194 steps in 43 days.

Those were my walking KPIs when the challenge finished.

One of my most beloved movie scenes of all time is the conversation between Sean Maguire and Will Hunting in Good Will Hunting, sitting on a bench in the Boston Public Garden. “Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I’ll bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You’ve never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that.”

Sean’s point isn’t that being book smart is useless. It’s that there’s a difference between knowing the facts and experiencing something firsthand, with all your senses. Will sat there staring at the pond. His problem wasn’t a lack of knowledge, but a lack of lived experience.

In many ways, my generation faces the same problem. We can see more of the world than ever through the ponds in our pockets, yet experience less of it directly.

For example, you can study New York’s financial history voraciously, memorizing the names, fortunes and institutions that built American finance. You can walk Wall Street and stand in line to pose beside the Charging Bull. But that’s different from experiencing the city itself – from stepping beyond landmarks and into the neighborhoods, institutions, traditions and everyday rituals that generations of New Yorkers have woven into its identity.

To trace one of those threads, I walked into J. Pierpont Morgan’s Library and entered another layer entirely: three soaring tiers of walnut bookshelves, gilded ceilings alive with allegorical paintings and the great thinkers of history staring down from portrait medallions. Standing there, I could feel the scale of a New York I had previously understood only in the abstract. Then I stepped into Morgan’s private study – the room where one of the architects of American finance actually thought, read, negotiated and built his world.

Suddenly, I wasn’t just learning about the ambition that shaped New York. I was stepping inside the mind behind it.

That kind of experience is increasingly easy to miss. After a long day at work, amid social pressures and decision fatigue, it’s tempting to retreat to our phones and experience the world from a distance.

But Sean’s lesson has always resonated with me: there is no substitute for experiencing something firsthand. Growing up in New York City, I was raised by a Japanese mother who kept my screen time to a minimum and encouraged me to experience the world through my five senses instead. And there are few better classrooms for that than New York City.

As an adult in the concrete jungle, I still feel like a kid. I pick neighborhoods to explore the way I used to choose candy inside Economy Candy in the Lower East Side: I want that one. And that one, too. No matter how many times I visit a place, I always want another flavor. Another block. Another street I’ve never walked before.

I know the real exploring is about to begin when the subway rises above ground and the city around me begins to feel unfamiliar. That’s the feeling I chase. And this summer, I chased it on foot.

Take Bedford Avenue. Stretching 10.2 miles from Greenpoint to Sheepshead Bay, it’s the longest street in Brooklyn. During Prosek’s annual Steps Challenge, I set out to saunter it from end to end.

I’ve ventured out to Sheepshead Bay dozens of times to fish for bluefish, striped bass, summer flounder and scup in the Atlantic, but I’d never actually walked there. Along the way, I stopped at Di Fara’s, Dom DeMarco’s legendary pizza shop. He’s considered one of the godfathers of New York pizza, influencing a generation of pizzaiolos and places like Lucali, which has since become a destination in its own right, drawing the likes of Jay-Z and Beyoncé for its ultra-thin, crunchy crust, three-cheese blend and fresh basil pie.

I’ve been to Lucali. It’s okay. Maybe after two and a half decades of top-notch pizza consumption, my standards are impossible to satisfy, thanks to my father. Growing up, my dad had one unbreakable household rule: no Domino’s Pizza. It remains in effect today.

But anyone who has spent enough time eating pizza across Staten Island or Bushwick knows how much deeper the soul of New York pizza runs. L’Industrie and Mama’s Too may dominate today’s best-slice conversations, but I’ve always been more interested in what lies beyond the consensus: the neighborhood institution, the unassuming counter, the slice you stumble upon rather than seek out.

Sometimes the most delectable, distinctive and downright unforgettable meals require a little distance from home. They require curiosity. They demand that you wander beyond your algorithm and find romance in places no one would think to romanticize: the run-down restaurant with no customers and an old local behind the counter, the dive bar with a faded awning, the long subway ride, the block without a landmark.

These are rarely the parts of New York that photograph best, but they are often the parts that give you the best stories.

And sometimes, you arrive just in time.

Ironically, Di Fara’s isn’t what it once was. Dom DeMarco passed away in 2022, and when I returned, the pizza wasn’t the same. Maybe that’s part of what makes these neighborhood institutions so worth seeking out while they’re still themselves. Sometimes the soul of a New York institution isn’t the food or even the place – it’s the person behind it.

New York’s character has always been built by gifted, distinctive and endlessly original people. When they disappear, some small pieces of the city they created can disappear with them.

A little farther south I wandered into Midwood. I’d been wanting to try Falafel Tanami forever. I was already stuffed, but when I walked through the door, the smell of freshly fried chickpeas and cilantro dominated my senses.

I like to ask shop owners what their favorite dish is. It gives me a glimpse into what they love and are proud of, and what they believe makes their place special. More importantly, it creates an opening for them to share that pride with me.

The bearded man behind the counter broke into a big smile and told me I had to get the falafel balls – the best in the city, he proudly proclaimed. Three falafel balls for ninety-nine cents. It was the most delicious falafel I have ever consumed. Crisp on the outside, impossibly light inside, with fresh herbs and spices in every bite.

A teenager who came in after me said he forgot his wallet at home and would be right back to pay. The workers waved him off, insisting his food was on the house.

It was a distinctly New York exchange: a small act of neighborly grace, the kind we risk missing when we put on our headphones and tune out the world around us. There was nothing conventionally romantic about the setting. Yet sitting there with a falafel in my hand, tasting a small piece of a world previously unknown to me, I felt completely present and wholly New York.

Walking through Brooklyn also has a way of reminding you just how much the experience of living here has changed. Anyone who’s read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn knows how punishing life in New York could be only a few generations ago. My own grandfather grew up poor in Crown Heights, at a time when simply surviving in the city was difficult.

Today, we have extraordinary public transportation, some of the world’s best doctors and shoes engineered to keep us blister-free. We have remarkably very few excuses not to explore.

One of my favorite recent walks followed Atlantic Avenue eastward towards Jamaica, Queens. Along the way, I stopped at Jackie Robinson’s grave before continuing through Little Guyana and eventually Richmond Hill.

When I reached Cypress Hills Cemetery, I lingered at Jackie’s grave. I was the only one there.

Laid across it were northern white ash bats and Major League baseballs, some pristine, others weathered with age. Old cowhide mitts rested among them, their leather worn and creased. It was clear that generations of visitors had come before me, leaving small tributes to the man who changed baseball, Brooklyn and America.

I closed my eyes for a minute. Around me, the leaves of weeping beeches and towering oaks rustled, and suddenly my imagination carried me six miles southwest and seventy years away.

I was at Ebbets Field.

For a moment, I could almost hear Brooklyn in 1955: the crack of a white ash bat, the thud of a ball disappearing into a leather mitt, the roar cascading from the grandstands. I imagined Jackie taking his lead off first, dancing a few extra feet into the dirt, tormenting the pitcher with the possibility that he might break for second at any instant. I imagined the borough electrified during that historic championship run – the Dodgers finally chasing down the Yankees, an entire generation of Brooklynites hanging onto every pitch. Most of all, I pictured my grandfather, a Brooklyn native, and how, when they finally won the championship, the kid in him came alive again.

Then I opened my eyes.

Ebbets Field was gone. The crowds were gone. Jackie was resting beneath the earth in front of me. But the bats, baseballs and battered mitts remained, and the trees were still rustling overhead.

New York City does not merely preserve its history. If you wander far enough into it, every so often, it lets you step inside.

A few miles east, the city opened another door. In Little Guyana, my senses had to catch up with my surroundings. Inside Apna Bazar, the aromas of achiote, fiery wiri wiri chiles, geera and shadow beni rose from tables crowded with spices and herbs. Along the streets, enormous straw baskets overflowed with karela, yard-long bora beans, bhagi and dasheen – vegetables I had never encountered before, some twisted and ridged, others impossibly long or leafy and abundant.

I found myself stopping to study them. Their shapes and textures were novel to me, but even more exciting were the possibilities they opened in my imagination. How were they cooked? What did they taste like? What family recipe called for them? What combination of those chiles, herbs and spices could transform into something I had never tasted before?

Earlier, I ducked into a tiny ceviche shop in Richmond Hill, where I was the only customer, and ordered the waiter’s favorite dish. What arrived was electric: fresh sea bass glistening in citrus alongside chunks of calamari, octopus and mussels, paired with bright herbs, slivers of onion and chiles that delivered a clean flash of heat before giving way to the briny sweetness of the seafood. Every bite seemed to ricochet between acid, salt, spice and freshness.

In a single afternoon, I had listened for a Brooklyn that was gone, wandered among ingredients I had never seen and tasted something entirely new.

This summer, I’ve been revisiting many of my favorite neighborhoods – not simply to return to them, but to reawaken my senses – while finding new corners of the city to explore along the way.

Oxtail in Spanish Harlem. Garlic naan in Jackson Heights. Spicy Sichuan food in Flushing before a Mets game, where a friend and I sweated our way through a plate of Laziji chicken buried beneath a small mountain of dried red chiles.

In Astoria, I took the ferry to one of my favorite museums, the Noguchi, then wandered toward Steinway Street, past fish markets where the day’s catch sits on ice, waiting for customers to point to exactly what they want before it’s cooked on the spot. My friend’s Greek father taught me to look at its eyeballs to gauge its freshness.

I sat down with a group of friends, and somehow, each of us had a different favorite dish. That’s the beauty of breaking bread: we all have different ideas of what perfection tastes like, and for a meal, we get to share them. We ate family-style, passing everything around so everyone could get a taste. The fish needed almost nothing – lemon, salt and a charcoal grill that let its freshness speak for itself. It was so soft, it melted in my mouth like a snowflake on a February snow day in Central Park.

Farther down Steinway, I passed hookah shops crowded with people packing bowls with fluffy shisha tobacco. Somewhere along the way, I picked up fresh loukoumades, still warm and pillowy, that transported me back to my vacation in Greece and the grandmothers I watched making them by hand.

This summer, as I do every summer, I sought unfamiliarity.

I went to Little Caribbean for buss up shut, a flaky, multi-layered flatbread from Trinidad and Tobago, and to Sunset Park – one of Brooklyn’s three Chinatowns – for Peking chicken and Chinese chicken soup. What fascinated me about Sunset Park was that I was able to find dishes there that were remarkably difficult to encounter in New York’s other Chinatowns: Fuzhou fish ball soups, Yunnan crossing-the-bridge noodles and Hong Kong-style egg tarts.

In a city where it can feel like you can find anything anywhere, here were flavors that still belonged distinctly to a place. As I walked by Eighth Avenue, a lady in a red apron called out to me asking if I wanted a bag of gai lan or choy sum for two dollars.

This summer, I also became obsessed with Red Hook, perhaps because it feels so resolutely like itself. There’s a quietness to it, yes, but also an unmistakable character: cobblestone streets, weathered warehouses and artists’ studios, outrageously colorful characters passing by, snippets of chatter drifting from stoops and bars and the palpable familiarity of a neighborhood where people still seem to know one another.

Its relative isolation from the rest of the city has somehow made everything there feel more concentrated and idiosyncratic, and more innately Brooklyn. Red Hook doesn’t seem particularly interested in performing for New York. It simply is.

One afternoon, I sat outside Strong Rope Brewery drinking a local beer before wandering to watch Red Hook FC play soccer nearby. The brewery even has a collaboration beer with the club, which competes in the Premier Division of the United Premier Soccer League. On our way to the field, we passed elementary-school-aged kids marching toward the match in full Red Hook soccer gear, carrying boomboxes, chanting, grinning and preparing to scream for their neighborhood semi-pro team as it fought to advance to the NYC UPSL final.

Hours later, I found myself in a beer garden surrounded by people wearing Japanese jerseys, all of us rooting for my motherland to advance to the World Cup knockout stage.

That juxtaposition felt quintessentially New York. In the afternoon, you can become an adopted supporter of a neighborhood soccer club you may never have heard of. By night, you can pack an empty bar with your friends to cheer on a country thousands of miles away. Root for almost anyone here and, somehow, you will find a community. For a few hours, we cheered and boasted as though we were at an izakaya in Japan.

Even my routine trips contain surprises. After arriving at Governors Island via ferry, I stumbled upon an experiment by FIT students exploring how waste collected on the island could be repurposed into 3D-printed chairs. Genius.

And then there is the island itself: a place where my friends and I now rent tandem bikes and casually pedal around land that has lived countless lives. It was once home to the Lenape, was later used by British colonial governors and eventually became a major U.S. Army installation. In 1624, settlers sent to establish New Netherland landed there before the colony expanded to Manhattan.

Those are astonishingly unique facts that I would never have sought to learn if I were not a constant visitor. For all its remarkable history, my earliest memory of the island is far less grand: playing Little League baseball on fields littered with goose poop.

That evolution is part of New York’s beauty. The places you think you know are never static. They grow and reinvent themselves alongside you, always offering something new to discover and feel.

And this summer, somewhat involuntarily, I learned to move slowly.

In May, I overdid it. An orthopedic specialist diagnosed me with patellar tendinitis in both knees. No running for three weeks. Physical therapy. I didn’t run a single mile during the entire steps challenge.

Instead, I walked.

Ironically, slowing down allowed me to experience more of New York than I had in years.

Walking strips away some of the efficiency we’ve engineered into modern life. When getting from Point A to Point B is no longer the objective, you begin to notice what you would otherwise pass by: a smell escaping from a restaurant, an elevated train rattling overhead, a street you’ve never thought to turn down.

Once, after a Mets game, a friend and I simply started walking toward Brooklyn. We wove through Queens neighborhoods I had never explored, following back roads beneath elevated trains that thundered above us. Dominican and Puerto Rican delis perfumed the blocks. At one, over a plate of mofongo, an unlabeled bottle of sauce on the table caught my eye. I tried it. Sweet at first, then tangy, then a rush of heat that lingered on my tongue just long enough to make me reach for more. When we wandered away from the avenues and train tracks, nature quietly reasserted itself.

Since I was a kid, I have always explored New York this way.

My friends and I used to pick a neighborhood, take the train or walk there and try to explore every block we possibly could – Tom Sawyer, city-boy edition. After soccer practice in Chinatown, we conducted self-guided bubble-tea tours. Other days, we played our own version of Chopped, the TV show: $20, enough ingredients to feed ten people and everything had to be bought in Chinatown after some haggling. That was the criterion – if it wasn’t negotiated for, we couldn’t purchase the ingredient.

And I would be remiss not to mention the countless Japanese festivals I’ve attended in New York, where the smells, sounds and commotion of street food can, for an afternoon, transport me remarkably close to the festivals of small towns in Kanagawa.

This is why I think it’s time we romanticize New York again.

Not by manufacturing romance, but by wandering through it.

Get lost. Let your senses, rather than your algorithm, decide what happens next.

Go eat pierogies in Greenpoint. Take the Roosevelt Island Tram and bring a picnic basket. Wander through Penny Park in Battery Park City, and discover its whimsical bronze sculptures – tiny workers sweeping away, a life-sized pit bull chained beside a water fountain. Go see the light show at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Spend an afternoon on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx and partake in Italian recipes whose histories stretch back centuries. See a concert at the Brooklyn Paramount or Forest Hills Stadium.

Play shuffleboard at Royal Palms or bocce at Union Hall – two of my recent favorites and, in my opinion, nearly unbeatable ways to spend an evening.

Take a pottery class for no particular reason other than that New York gives you the opportunity to learn almost anything. Afterwards, wander into a bodega that is also a cocktail bar – or a train station that, improbably, is also a cocktail bar.

Grab friends and grill Korean barbecue in Koreatown. Go to Sunrise Mart, bring ingredients home and attempt to make your own sushi. Take a matcha-tasting tour through Williamsburg, and then wander into the Gecko Gallery or a museum filled with bones.

Date nights don’t need to be limited to the rigid dinner-then-ice-cream itinerary. Introduce some uncertainty. Share five different dishes at DeKalb Market. Find a board game at Last Place on Earth and stay too long. Take a class to learn how to make pasta with grandmothers on the Upper East Side.

The romantic spark often comes from not knowing exactly what happens next. And part of that uncertainty is each other: put someone in a new setting and you get to watch what they notice, what delights, what confuses them. For a moment, you get to see how they make sense of both themselves and New York.

And sometimes, don’t plan anything at all. Just move.

My friends and I used to walk alongside the Gowanus Canal when its smell announced its presence long before you reached the water. Thankfully, that is far less true today.

Maybe romanticizing New York also means learning to romanticize the unromantic: the pungent, inconvenient, unmanicured parts that will never make an itinerary but somehow become the memories you cherish.

Because the city isn’t only what it advertises. Romanticizing New York isn’t only a sunset over the Brooklyn Bridge or a perfectly plated dinner at a two-star Michelin restaurant.

It’s the fish you point to in Astoria that becomes your dinner. The bowl of Sichuan chiles you foolishly insist you can finish in Flushing. The kids carrying boomboxes to a semi-pro soccer game in Red Hook. The ingredients you haggle over in Chinatown. The experiment you accidentally stumble upon on Governors Island. Stopping to talk to strangers playing dominoes on folding tables outside. The taco restaurant hidden in the back of a Mexican bodega. The street you had no reason to turn down, but did.

Every once in a while, you don’t need to search for anything at all. You just need to stop and take in what’s already around you.

Take a ferry from DUMBO toward Greenpoint around sunset. That ride never fails to make me fall in love with New York all over again. At some point, the skyline catches the evening light, the East River opens beside you and the city you thought you knew rearranges itself again. You stop. You stare. The wind tangles your hair.

I would show you a picture. But I don’t have one.

All I have is the memory – and the goosebumps.

The city has always rewarded curiosity. It still does. You just have to be willing to put your phone away long enough to notice.