If there was ever a movie that was right up our alley “The World Before Your Feet” is it. A documentary about Matt Green walking every street in New York City, over 8000 miles, it is just as fresh today as it must have been when it was released in 2018. Matt just completed his journey in September and he was on stage for a Q &A following an afternoon screening of the movie. He is just as warm and cheerful in person as he was in the movie. No wonder he never mugged.
In the movie we get to experience the Brighton Beach bungalows, the gridded streets of torn down houses at the end of Queens, Emma Lazarus’s grave in Greenpoint cemetery. She wrote the poem on the Statue of Liberty. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” How quaint those words sound today. We see the oldest living thing in NY, the 400 year old Queens Giant tree and Seagate, vast expanses of former industrial site in Staten Island and the Coney Island gated community.
Finishing the 8,000 miles was really never really the objective. Each day’s adventure was the point. Along the way he collected funky images of former synagogues that have been converted to churches, barber shops and hair salons with z’s in their name like Cutz or Kutz and 9/11 murals. His ability to stay in the moment was remarkable.
After the Q & A in Rochester Matt plotted a google route for a group walk. We left from the theater and headed over to Grove Place, down Saint Paul, through the Projects to High Falls and then across the river and down an alley behind State Street across Main to the old subway bed on Court Street and then through Washington Square Park. At Clinton Matt turned to us and said “I guess will do one more bridge.” We had been walking for two hours and we planned to catch Joe Tunis performing at Visual Studies Workshop at 4 so we reluctantly left the group. It was as good as the movie.
