Weekend Explorer

I've been enjoying John Strausbaugh's new and (so far) monthly column in the weekend Arts section of the Times: Weekend Explorer.

To date, the author (a past editor of The New York Press and author of books on the aging Rolling Stones and blackface minstrelsy, among other topics) has explored Hell's Kitchen, the East Village, and Brooklyn Heights (specifically its role as a stop on the Underground Railroad). Each installment comes with several multimedia features, including mp3 walking tour downloads. I haven't test driven the walking tours yet but plan to at some point.

The first installment began with this observation --

NEW YORK is a walking city. People walk everywhere: to work, to school, to shop, to worship. And usually we’re in such a hurry, with the whole city rushing headlong around us, that we can miss what we’re walking past.

It’s the past itself — fragments and layers of New York’s history unceremoniously preserved in its streetscapes, in stories told on park benches and bar stools, in ghosts glimpsed in shadowed doorways.

-- which serves as a departure point for Strausbaugh's signature format: He's going to play the role of a meta-tour guide. That is, while he's offering his services as a tour guide for readers (and listeners) of his features, each installment will feature a long-time resident who plays Virgil to Strausbaugh's Dante, taking him through the neighborhood and allowing him to see the rings or layers of sediment by which he can mark that portion of the city's past.

I'll happily post links to future installments as they appear.