{Yarn Along} The New York Nobody Knows

Look, it's the unchanging pairs of socks!

Sometimes I find myself reading books without understanding quite why. A title sounds interesting, so I pick it up. That's how I wound up reading The New York Nobody Knows: Walking 6,000 Miles in the City by William B. Helmreich.

Here's the publisher's description --

As a kid growing up in Manhattan, William Helmreich played a game with his father they called "Last Stop." They would pick a subway line and ride it to its final destination, and explore the neighborhood there. Decades later, Helmreich teaches university courses about New York, and 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 epic journey lasted four years and 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 from every walk of life, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former mayors Rudolph Giuliani, David Dinkins, and Edward Koch. Their stories and his are the subject of this captivating and highly original book.

I've never been to New York and never expect to get there, but I know the feeling of driving through a place and wanting to get out to walk and explore, so I was happy to vicariously experience the city through Mr. Helmreich's observations. I found myself skimming through some of the statistics, but the stories about individual people and neighborhoods were fascinating.

For more pretty knitting projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times and Work in Progress Wednesdays at Tami's Amis.