'I really don't know why I'm doing this' - meet the real 'Forrest Gump' walking every New York City block
Record ID:
1434680
'I really don't know why I'm doing this' - meet the real 'Forrest Gump' walking every New York City block
- Title: 'I really don't know why I'm doing this' - meet the real 'Forrest Gump' walking every New York City block
- Date: 1st October 2019
- Summary: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (RECENT - SEPTEMBER 19, 2019) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) NEW YORK CITY WALKER, MATT GREEN, SAYING: "It took about a year and a half after I finished that walk before I started this one in New York. I had heard of people walking every block of Manhattan, which was just this fascinating idea to me. Like to take this place like New York City, like Manhattan, that's so about, 'make sure you see the best of this and the best of this, what's the best? What's the top thing,' and to just say, 'forget that.' I'm just going to go look at everything. I'm gonna make everything equal and just go look at all of it. Something about that really stuck in my head, and I started to wonder could I do that idea. But do it for all five boroughs." VARIOUS CLOSES OF GREEN'S HEAD AND FACE AS HE WALKS (SOUNDBITE) (English) NEW YORK CITY WALKER, MATT GREEN, SAYING: "And the way I finally figured out how to make it work financially was to just not have an apartment and not pay rent. And so for over the seven-and-a-half years I've been doing this, I've just been in New York City but, you know, sleeping on couches, watching people's cats when they're out of town, watering people's plants when they're gone and just a whole kind of array of ways to find places to live for free." VARIOUS OF GREEN CROSSING STREET AFTER WALKING ACROSS BRIDGE GREEN'S HEAD UNDER BRIDGE AS HE SWITCHES SIDE OF BRIDGE (SOUNDBITE) (English) NEW YORK CITY WALKER, MATT GREEN, SAYING: "This idea that, you know, so much of life is boring, and we're just trying to get through this and get through that, so we get to the few fun things we have to do in life, I think is just a matter of having a bad outlook. Because the nature of this walk, of treating every block the same, and therefore not having any particular destinations, I know I'll get to everywhere eventually and so I'm never really looking forward to any particular part, really just keeps me where I am and it just makes me focus on what's right around me. And when I do that, what I realize is the only reason the people are bored is because they're not focusing on what's around them. It's not a lack of interesting things in the world. It's just a lack of paying attention." GREEN IN NEIGHBORHOOD AFTER WALK ACROSS BRIDGE GREEN LOOKING UP VARIOUS OF GREEN IN FRONT OF HOUSES EMPIRE STATE BUILDING / GREEN
- Embargoed: 15th October 2019 21:48
- Keywords: Matt Green Imjustwalkin.com Forrest Gump walking five boroughs
- Location: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES / INTERNET
- City: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES / INTERNET
- Country: USA
- Topics: Human Interest / Brights / Odd News,Society/Social Issues
- Reuters ID: LVA003AZ9PIS9
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: The desire to avoid the monotony of adult life has led one man to ditch housing and employment and spend his days walking every block of New York City.
Matt Green, 39, graduated as a civil engineer from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. But seven and a half years ago he decided to go off the grid and begin scaling by the foot the five boroughs of New York City - Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island.
Green said he's over 95% done, having walked the some 8,000 miles (13,000 km) of the city. According to Green, doing the job right means walking every street, park and beach. His biggest remaining assignment, as he told Reuters during a recent walk, is to compile all the data and stories for his blog. And as he puts it, his quest is really not much more complicated than the name of the blog, imjustwalkin.com.
"I don't really know why I'm doing this," he told Reuters while walking over the pedestrian path on the newly public Kosciuszko Bridge connecting the Brooklyn and Queens boroughs. "I think a lot of times, we kind of put too much pressure on ourselves to come up with a nice, easily explainable reason for what we want to do in life… After spending a lot of my life just doing things that were easy to explain to people, I decided to try this thing that's hard to explain that I don't really have an explanation for and just see how it goes."
Green said he has had many real-life inspirations who aren't just "Forrest Gump", including Gary Hause, who walked across America.
And after hearing about House's feat, Green decided he too could pull it off too. So about a decade ago he made the trek across America from equally named Rockaway Beaches in New York and Oregon.
Green has also ridden every subway in New York in a 24-hour span.
Ditching the working world for the walking world has come easy to Green, he told Reuters.
"The way I finally figured out how to make it work financially was to just not have an apartment and not pay rent," he told Reuters. "And so for over the seven-and-a-half years I've been doing this, I've just been in New York City but, you know, sleeping on couches, watching people's cats when they're out of town, watering people's plants when they're gone and just a whole kind of array of ways to find places to live for free."
The experience has provided him with an appreciation for living in the moment.
"This idea that, you know, so much of life is boring, and we're just trying to get through this and get through that, so we get to the few fun things we have to do in life, I think is just a matter of having a bad outlook," he said.
"Because the nature of this walk, of treating every block the same, and therefore not having any particular destinations, I know I'll get to everywhere eventually and so I'm never really looking forward to any particular part, really just keeps me where I am and it just makes me focus on what's right around me."
(Production by: Dan Fastenberg, Hussein al Waaile) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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