One man, Matt Green, has spent nearly seven years walking every block of New York City’s five boroughs—and it’s now a movie called The World Before Your Feet.
The film explores over five years of Green’s journey, but there was still plenty left for him to see after the documentary ended. By the end of the film he walked over 8,000 miles, but his journey has yet to end. As of now, Green has walked over 9,000 and still has roughly 500 left before he completes his mission, which is:
“I am going to walk every block of every public street in all five boroughs of New York City, excluding only the high-speed expressways and parkways that prohibit pedestrian traffic. I will also walk every bridge with pedestrian facilities, as well as many private streets, multi-use greenway paths, pedestrian paths and trails through parks and cemeteries, boardwalks, and accessible stretches of coastline.”
Since 2010, Green has been traveling around the city with a budget of only $15 per day and staying with friends, strangers, and basically anyone willing to host him for a night. In the trailer he mentions that he’s found success staying places by cat-sitting. The 95-minute documentary was filmed by director Jeremy Workman, who followed Green on his adventure. During the editing process, actor Jesse Eisenberg was brought on as a producer for the film.
According to Green’s blog, his route each day is never planned but tracked on a progress map which helps him see where he’s already been. In the process of exploring, he became somewhat of a historian of NYC, learning as much as he could about the history behind various buildings, structures, fences, churches, barber shops—even pointing out things in the film like the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn opened by Margaret Sanger which is now nothing but a graffitied building.
The documentary was released in theaters on November 21. Here’s a look at the movie trailer:
featured image source: The World Before Your Feet