{"id":12649,"date":"2020-01-15T04:54:36","date_gmt":"2020-01-15T04:54:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=12649"},"modified":"2020-01-15T04:54:36","modified_gmt":"2020-01-15T04:54:36","slug":"walk-a-mile-in-his-shoes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2020\/01\/15\/walk-a-mile-in-his-shoes\/","title":{"rendered":"Walk A Mile In His Shoes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sun Valley Center Will Present\u00a0 <\/i><\/span>\u2018The World Before Your Feet\u2019<\/i><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

By DANA DUGAN\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Matt Green and director Jeremy Workman on the streets in New York City in \u201cThe World Before Your Feet.\u201d Photo credit: Greenwich Entertainment<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How well do you know your town? For over eight years, Matt Green, 39, has been walking every block of every street in New York City, encompassing five boroughs and more than 8,000 miles. And he\u2019s not done. He figures he\u2019s 98 percent there, with a few random areas yet to cover.<\/p>\n

Hosted by the Sun Valley Center for the Arts, a documentary about Green\u2019s walk, \u201cThe World Before Your Feet,\u201d will be shown at 4:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 9, at the Magic Lantern Cinemas in Ketchum. Green will be in attendance at the screenings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d always been a walker,\u201d he said in a phone interview last week. \u201cI started a walking group; we\u2019d walk on weekends. I\u2019d post and a dozen random people would show up and we\u2019d go for dinner after.\u201d<\/p>\n

The walks became his raison d\u2019\u00eatre; the journey, the purpose. In 2010, he gave up his civil engineering job, his apartment, and most of his possessions and took off on a walk across the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took about five months,\u201d he said. \u201cI was thinking nine months, at about 15 miles a day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once he started going, he got into a groove, and was able to double his mileage to about 30 miles a day.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was so cheap. People let me shower, and camp at their houses,\u201d Green said. \u201cWhen I got to Idaho, I crossed through the skinny part south of Coeur d\u2019Alene.\u201d<\/p>\n

Green found that you can learn about your town or city by simply walking it, talking to people, taking your time. Upon his return to New York, he was inspired to do the same in his own city.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat idea of just going to every block of a place stuck in my head,\u201d he said. \u201cI wondered, could I go to all five boroughs?\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, 39, Green began exploring both on the ground and online. He posted about his walk. He couch-surfed and even now doesn\u2019t have an apartment of his own; he catsits instead.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a normal part of my life now,\u201d he said. \u201cI work on the project every day, though what it consists of has changed over the years. In the early days, every day I was walking a little, plus doing a bit of other stuff, researching all these things I was interested in. The balance has shifted. Now I do catch-up on the writing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
In a scene from \u201cThe World Before Your Feet,\u201d downtown Flushing, Queens, Feb. 4, 2013. Photo credit: Matt Green<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 2014, a friend of Green\u2019s, the director Jeremy Workman, asked if he could walk along with his camera.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere wasn\u2019t a plan to make a movie at first, but he shot about 500 hours, over three and a half years,\u201d Green said.<\/p>\n

The film was selected for countless film festivals, including South By Southwest, where it was picked up by Greenwich Entertainment. Jesse Eisenberg eventually came on as an executive producer.<\/p>\n

I ask if he can conjure up a block just by hearing the address, eager to see if he\u2019d know my block.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne interesting thing is that most of what I remember, I don\u2019t remember where I was. But I\u2019ll remember random details.\u201d Oh well.<\/p>\n

Now he leads walks in which he encourages people to talk about what they\u2019re seeing and experiencing, and he does some teaching.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople will have things to look at, and things to talk about,\u201d Green said. \u201cMostly, you walk with a destination, even if you have no deadline. It\u2019s the act of getting there.\u201d<\/p>\n

While in the Wood River Valley for the film screening, Green will present to students on Friday, and guide a snowshoe walk in the woods at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 18.<\/p>\n

Participants will gather at The Center to carpool to the destination together. The walk will be followed by an optional no-host gathering and chat with Green at Galena Lodge for drinks and snacks.<\/p>\n

To sign up for the walk, or to buy tickets for the two screenings, visit sunvalleycenter.org, or call (208) 726-9491.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sun Valley Center Will Present\u00a0 \u2018The World Before Your Feet\u2019 By DANA DUGAN\u00a0 How well do you know your town? For over eight years, Matt Green, 39, has been walking every block of every street in New York City, encompassing five boroughs and more than 8,000 miles. And he\u2019s not done. He figures he\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12650,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,4,53],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12649","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-calendar-2","8":"category-entertainment","9":"category-calendar-feature"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}