Let’s get one thing out of the way: The party line that Oz is not for the squeamish or the easily offended is absolutely true. A character, sometimes several, dies violently in nearly every episode, and I only say “nearly” because my memory of each episode isn’t crystal clear. It’s also very coarse in that lovable HBO way; pretty much every actor on the show had no scruples with letting it all hang out, repeatedly; it’s one of the few instances on premium cable of female nudity being sharply in the minority.

But even my wife, who has a low threshold for violence — she opted out of watching Hostel or I Saw the Devil with me — has found herself drawn in by Oz. And it’s wholly because the show is insane — among the most bizarre series either of us has seen. In the cable/network parade of cop shows, medical dramas, and courtroom dramas, Oz theoretically fits into the less overexposed genre “prison drama,” but that’s reducing it to absurdity. When Oz ushered in the era of the HBO cable drama, there had been nothing like it on television, and there’s still been nothing like it since.

Oz tells the tale of Oswald State Penitentiary, a fictional maximum-security prison in an undisclosed state. Most of the storylines take place in an experimental cell block nicknamed “Emerald City,” the brainchild of ineffectual, hemorrhaging-heart liberal Tim McManus (Terry Kinney), the “man behind the curtain,” if you will. Em City is an open facility in which social and racial groups are tightly regulated but generally allowed to roam free. If this sounds like the worst idea any human being has ever had, you’re not far from the truth. McManus’ vision is compromised almost as a fact of life as prisoners deal and snort narcotics (referred to colloquially as “tits”), shank members of rival gangs, and commit horrifying acts of sexual violence — much of the time with near impunity, since almost the entire staff of correctional officers is corrupt.

The mismanagement perturbed me the first time I watched the show, when I viewed it as a traditional prison drama. But watching it a second time with my wife, who majored in religion and also has a keener eye for absurdity, turned out to be a boon for lively discussion of the show as a coherent thematic entity. Something she caught immediately that I’d never noticed before is that Oswald exists in a sort of warped hyper-reality, where time is immaterial and retribution is instantaneous. In the first season, the state lifts a longstanding moratorium on the death penalty; an Em City inmate who murdered a fellow prisoner is then tried, convicted, sentenced, and executed, all by the end of the episode. Murderous sociopath Simon Adebisi (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) is frequently given control of the prison kitchen, with predictable results, and a faction of Aryans led by Vern Schillinger (J.K. Simmons) runs the mail room, putting the prison’s flow of information into the hands of neo-Nazis.

Creator Tom Fontana was raised Catholic, and he deliberately centered the series on the religion’s foundational themes of retribution and redemption. Notable about Oz compared with other prison dramas — and with actual prisons — is that every inmate is 100 percent guilty; none of the storylines depict the plight of the wrongly accused, and each character is introduced with a flashback depicting the crime and outlaying the perp’s conviction and how long he’ll be spending in Purgatory. And it’s not just a thematic tic; literally the only religion that seems to be recognized by the facility is Catholicism, with Father Ray Mukada (B.D. Wong) acting as chaplain, and a nun, Sister Peter Marie (Rita Moreno), serving as drug counselor and psychiatrist. The only competing sect is a group of Muslim inmates led by convicted arsonist Kareem Said (Eamonn Walker), but they primarily serve the narrative purpose of exposing and exacerbating tension within McManus’ grand democratic vision.

And it’s this vision that throws Oz completely off the rails. McManus attempts to impose a degree of equality and democracy upon Em City in his push for reform, even establishing a “Senate” where representatives from each social and racial group can represent their needs and desires. But what turns this Greek democracy into a full-on Greek tragedy is the presence of — what else? — a Greek god, Governor James Devlin (Željko Ivanek). Early in the series, Devlin directly refers to himself as “Zeus” and tells McManus that he’d best step lightly lest he face the wrath of his thunderbolts. And he deploys these thunderbolts with impunity; elected on a platform of “No Perks for Prisoners,” he gradually strips the inmates of basic human needs such as conjugal visits and smoking, which are predictably replaced by rape and drug trafficking.

Presiding above it all is the show’s Greek chorus, Augustus Hill, an inmate in Em City who rarely stars in plots of his own but frequently breaks the fourth wall via surreal, theatrical interludes in which he lays out the theme of the episode. I used to feel that Hill detracted from the show, but he serves an important purpose — Fontana wrote him in as a means of delivering introspection in an environment where people keep their inner monologues to themselves, lest they face the consequences. Plus now that I’m less stupidly convinced that Oz is a documentary, I find that the monologues enhance the loose, freewheeling, dreamlike feel of the series in general.

What I’m trying to get at is that Oz has gained a reputation for being a prison drama about gay sex, but it casts a much wider net than that. And don’t get me wrong — the incredibly real romance that develops, almost exclusively out of loneliness, between inmates Tobias Beecher (Lee Tergesen) and Chris Keller (Christopher Meloni) was revolutionary. But it’s really an “all things to all people” type show — even if you’re just a TV junkie, you’ll have a lot of fun playing “spot the actor,” particularly if you’re a fan of The Wire or Lost.

Whether or not you end up adoring or despising Oz is completely up in the air — I’ve had a really poor track record predicting this among my friends — but at least give it a shot, because I assure you there’s no place like it.

Well … yeah, but that’s not even half of the story. Reading on the go isn’t something I preach to people as if it would change their lives. On the contrary, if it became a much more common pastime, it would change a lot of people’s lives, but only in the “removing it from them” sense. After all, it’s exactly what Stephen King was doing before his fateful brush with near-death along Maine State Route 5. But you could throw all of the cautionary tales in the world at me and I wouldn’t change my ways.

Forgive me for wandering around my own brain for a while, but when I experience any piece of culture, the surrounding environment implants itself into my memory almost as firmly as the work of art itself. I don’t just remember reading A Dance with Dragons — I remember reading it on the BART platform and along the Embarcadero waterfront during my breaks at work. I don’t just remember watching the fifth season of The Sopranos for the first time — I remember in which room and at what time of day I watched each episode, whether it was the season premiere, early in the morning in my South Berkeley duplex before rushing to German class, or the season finale, on a summer afternoon in the murky attic of my North Berkeley co-op.

I’m probably doing walk-readers a disservice here by implying that all of them are insane; I’m sure there’s a truckload of reasons one would deliberately obscure one of their key senses in public. But it’s something I’ve done nearly as far back as I can remember — ever since I first grew into a voracious reader — and now that I’ve found myself with a surplus of leisure time, I don’t want my memories of the books I read to be couched in a vivid image of my ass, sitting on an armchair for hours on end.

I also feel a certain affection for authors who write big books about big ideas, and walk-reading is a way to make me feel like I’m matching the author’s ambitions, even if it means carrying out a balancing act with a six-pound tome. For the last week I’ve been lugging Robert Caro’s doorstop-sized The Passage of Power all over the Bay Area, including a 13-mile march from Daly City to San Francisco’s Lower Haight district. I’m not trying to impress you — I’m trying to impress Robert Caro, or Fyodor Dostoevsky, or Walter Moers, whether they realize it or not (they don’t).

My experience with the few walk-readers I’ve met is that if you’re confident enough in your spatial orientation to read on the road in the first place, you probably already know how to stay safe during this potentially dangerous endeavor. But I’m still going to go over the ground rules that I follow, lest I spawn any copycats and wind up with multiple instances of vehicular manslaughter on my conscience.

1. Stick to residential streets whenever possible. I’m sure Stephen King is quite a skilled walk-reader, but when I look at the name “Maine State Route 5,” what jumps out at me is “State Route.” I wouldn’t walk-read on anything called a “State Route.” Try to gravitate toward areas where sidewalks are plentiful and sparsely populated, particularly if you’re exploring an unfamiliar area. If you’re in a city or town where you have a solid sense of where everything is, the rules are a little looser, but safety is still your primary concern.

2. Do not read while crossing an intersection. This one sounds like a no-brainer, but living in Berkeley, one of the most pedestrian-friendly cities in the United States, it’s easy to be lulled into a false sense of security and get blindsided by a car while nose-deep in Mockingjay. Intersections are a border zone where you and (potentially) dozens of people in control of a ton of motorized metal share the same space, and the half a page of progress you’ll lose isn’t worth your life.

3. Look up, stupid! This is where spatial orientation plays a particularly important role, not just because you don’t want to run into a tree, but because you’re a polite member of society who doesn’t want to barrel into another polite member of society and receive a decidedly impolite response. I’ve run into a branch or two in my day, but I’ve never run into a stroller, and I plan to keep it that way. Plus, part of the appeal of walk-reading is taking in the scenery from time to time.

4. No music! This is a recent addition to my list, but I’ve changed my tune, literally. Blocking one of your senses is already a tough enough sell; blocking two of them is an invitation to be run over or mugged, and the pop culture echo chamber it creates almost defeats the purpose of going outside in the first place.

I’m sure I still have a lot of you fearing for my life on my behalf, but I at least can rest assured that I have allies. I’m sure this guy would declare me his mortal enemy, but misanthropy is always the funny way out, I guess. Join me in future installments as I discuss: reading while driving!

HBO

As you may have already guessed, the opening credits are my favorite part of Game of Thrones. The rest just can’t compare.

Given the direction of this blog, it was only so long before I weighed in on HBO’s Game of Thrones, thus officially joining the Internet. But how could I not? Look at those opening credits — they’re a fantasy map! A fantasy map, broadcast in loving detail on premium cable alongside breasts, My Cousin Vinny, and vampire breasts.

There are so many things I love about these credits, starting with how they bring the maps from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels to vivid, high-definition life. Martin’s own map of Westeros, a sprawling peninsula roughly the size of South America, is a fine piece of work, featuring a complex network of rivers and coasts that, at least to my untrained eye, appears geographically plausible. But they’re just ink on paper, lacking unfettered access to HBO’s money bin.

The locations on HBO’s Game of Thrones map come to life as the camera sweeps over each Westeros landmark, rising from the ground mechanically, as if constructed out of clockwork parts. It almost feels to me like an open nod to tabletop gaming and its history with the fantasy genre. At the same time, it’s a literal interpretation of the term “world building,” an open message to the viewer: We have a lot to tell you.

Thrones’ map is an absolute necessity for the same reason maps are a necessity in fantasy novels — it helps ground the viewer in this strange new world. At the same time, right from the outset, it distinguishes Thrones as a world of its own, distinct from mediocre historical fiction like Showtime’s The Borgias and Starz’s Spartacus serials — and, honestly, HBO’s own Rome. But enough inside baseball — let’s pick apart the credits!

And that’s not even the best part! The credits change from episode to episode depending on where the action is currently taking place, proof positive that the map gimmick isn’t just flashy spectacle, but an actual primer for potentially confused viewers. Having caught up on the book series myself, I can’t wait to see some of the insane locations to come, presented in clockwork-like detail.

The show itself? It’s pretty cool. Tywin Lannister is the villain from Last Action Hero!

RICH BUNNELL

A now-defunct White Castle was among the destinations on my first Manhattan trip, but kitsch just isn’t worth the taste anymore.

I just popped in Robert Keener’s documentary Food Inc., with no initial intent to write about it, because I figure plenty of people on the Internet are better equipped to cover the politics of the food industry than I am. But I began to think about the number of times I’ve considered a road trip with the express purpose of touring the vast expanses of Americana — along the way, sampling as many local fast food chains as possible. Fast food is a unique, inextricable part of the American landscape, and to tour Middle America is to take in the industry in all of its myriad regional forms.

I’ve actually acted on this impulse in the past. The first time I visited New York City with two of my college pals, we took the subway to the Empire State Building — so we could eat at the White Castle across the street, a fast food novelty unavailable in California outside the frozen food section. When I flew to the South for the first time to visit my then-girlfriend now-wife’s parents in Asheville, N.C., I made sure to stop at Waffle House and Chick-fil-A (before I knew of their less-progressive tendencies).

But after watching Food Inc., and seeing Tyson chicken coops packed wall-to-wall with chickens so fat they can barely walk — because they’ve been bred to have large breasts — I might have to rethink the way I approach the American food crawl. I don’t mean that watching a documentary has turned me into a born-again Slow Foodie; I’m only human, and it’s tough for me to resist the urge to scarf down Jack-in-the-Box after a long run. Plus, I’m fortunate enough to live in an area where locally sourced ingredients are plentiful and cheap. But it might lead me to keep an eye out for regional cuisine when I tour America not just between the coasts, but anywhere and everywhere.

RICH BUNNELL

A jokey treat for a friend’s leaving-the-country party. Not gonna lie, I ate it, enjoyed it, and then went back for seconds.

At a forum I post on, a thread took a dark turn in which people started to debate the merits (or lack thereof) of the Denny’s franchise; a member from Europe then wise-assedly remarked that Americans turn any and every discussion into a debate about fast food. That got me thinking about how fast food, despite its rapid crawl to other countries, is a distinctly American concept, and what form of landscape it took for such a concept to turn into a national institution. According to Food Inc., the spread of fast food literally shaped the way Americans ate in the decades to follow, not only at individual chains but in its contact effect on the U.S. (and global!) food industry.

America, for all its global influence, is a really bizarre country. A full half of it was basically unfit for farming as Europe “found” it, but taking advantage of irrigation to an unprecedented extent, this issue turned out to be a piffle. (For a much fuller look at the spread of American irrigation, Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert is unparalleled, and actually quite a page-turner.) The endpoint is that America came to consist largely of farmland serving a few enormous food companies. Co-mingled with light-speed U.S. ingenuity and industry, fast food quickly rose to the forefront of American culinary culture — but you already knew that, because it’s all around you.

I’m simplifying a complex process, but as an explorer of cities with suburbia among my stomping grounds, cheap, crappy food is sometimes the only option. When I was temporarily stranded in Little Falls, N.J., I made a dinner of Combos and mango Naked Juice from 7-Eleven while waiting for an express bus to Manhattan. This was a relatively well-off area of New Jersey, so I didn’t shed any tears for residents, but Food Inc. sheds light on more economically troubled communities where the lack of choice — and relative expensiveness of shopping at grocery stores — makes Burger King and KFC the more affordable meals.

I’ve already admitted that I’m on a pretty cushy throne growing up in the Bay Area, where you stumble over guilt-free food on practically every block, and I’ve never been much of a soapboxer. But Food Inc. was still eye-opening from the perspective of someone interested in the history of American expansion, and the next time I take to a city on foot, I’ll have a rounder view on the meals I meet and eat along the way.

COURTESY

I don’t even know what the hell is supposed to be going on in this bumper sequence, but it’s surreal genius.

I’ve long, long been a fan of Rocky and Bullwinkle, but it’s only been recently where I’ve revisited the show and found myself utterly fascinated. Take a look at the 9-second intermission animation commonly played at least once per episode. The titular moose and flying squirrel climb frantically in silhouette to the top of a crumbling mountain, which is then shattered by lightning, thereon plunging our heroes into the depths, only for them to ultimately be reborn as flowers.

I don’t want to read too deeply into a short bumper segment on a program intended for kids – John K. of Ren and Stimpy already did that for me – but it’s a truly unique, surreal sequence, and one that reflects positively upon the program as a whole. Broadcast from 1959 to 1964 under the names Rocky and His Friends and The Bullwinkle Show, Jay Ward built his animated series out of loose, free-wheeling narratives drawn from the spirit of classic radio dramas. Story arcs could last anywhere from four to 40 installments, which is a ridiculous level of serialization for the time for a program aimed at young viewers.

Rocky depicts a world where the fourth wall was never even built. The show’s narrator is as much of a character as the rest of the ensemble, capable of interacting equally with our heroes and with Cold War-era villains Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale, his omniscient knowledge (and meek countenance) sometimes even altering the course of the plot.

My favorite element of the show’s storytelling is that each individual Bullwinkle segment is as much recap as it is new material, frequently going so far as to present a completely new twist on the same storyline. The resulting effect is that, cumulatively, the viewer is essentially presented with two comic variations on the same storyline over the course of the serial. Unless someone can present me with an earlier example, this is where Arrested Development‘s fake “Next time on …” bumpers were born.

Rocky and Bullwinkle is famous for its low-budget animation, with visual assets notably reused and backgrounds often only vaguely drawn in. Personally, I find the ramshackle production values charming the same way I find Avery Brooks’ hammy acting endearing in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. As in, not great in a technical sense, but the aura it lends to the series is indispensable.

There’s not much more I can say about the show without squandering potential material for later entries, so I’ll just leave it at here and dive into the series. Rocky and Bullwinkle consists of 163 episodes collectively containing 326 actual Rocky and Bullwinkle sequences. I’ll tackle it by story arc, with longer ones probably tackled over the course of more than one post. In the meantime I’ll recount highlights from the show’s endlessly entertaining side segments, the most notable of them being Peabody and Sherman, Aesop and Son, and Fractured Fairy Tales.

… Well, it looks as if our time has just about run out! I’ll be back with my thoughts on the first half of the show’s monstrous debut serial, Jet Fuel Formula, featuring the show’s most charmingly cheap animation of all.

RICH BUNNELL

The Cross-Bronx Expressway divided the Bronx neighborhood of Tremont, displacing 5,000 people — some say, for no reason.

The history of great American cities is the history of great urban planners, and there is none more influential than New York “master builder” Robert Moses. Never once elected to public office, Moses answered to the authority of no one, and for decades essentially operated with free rein to direct mountains of federal dollars toward the shaping of America’s most iconic metropolis.

Robert Caro’s Pulitzer-winning The Power Broker details the story of Moses’ decades of influence, and I can’t recommend it enough. It’s one of the most grippingly written works of non-fiction I’ve read, even if Caro lapses into a couple cartoonish tangents about a “darkness” settling over Moses in his quest for power. But that’s seeing the forest for the trees — Caro excels at telling the stories of powerful Americans whose lives tell the story of 20th-century America, and in successfully telling the story of Moses and New York, Caro paints an unforgettable picture of the American city.

I wasn’t planning on centering any of my New York walks around The Power Broker, as I read it several years ago and the details of the book were hazy. But completely by chance, when I embarked on my second Bronx walk, I realized I was mere miles from Moses’ most controversial project of all: The Cross-Bronx Expressway. The Power Broker chapter “One Mile,” which tells the story of the expressway’s planning and construction, reads almost like a mob saga. In one fell swoop, Moses raised his arms and divided the Bronx in two; despite being told of a more viable option one block south, Moses opted to direct a one-mile stretch of the expressway through the heart of the East Tremont neighborhood, at once displacing 5,000 residents.

Exiting the subway near Pelham Bay Park, I realized I was directly adjacent to the storied expressway, and set out west toward East Tremont. The initial stretch of my trip was fairly residential, snaking through the Westchester Village and Parkchester neighborhoods. I fueled up for the journey by getting over my youthful aversion to ricotta cheese and sampling a white pizza for the first time; appetite satiated, I set out in the direction of Moses’ grand, disputed feat of civic engineering.

The effect of the Cross-Bronx Expressway on the borough is a fascinating microcosm of Moses’ effect on New York — and American urban planning — as a whole. Beyond the forced displacement of 5,000 people, an additional 10,000 fled the area due to the ensuing blight that overtook the neighborhood. The effect wasn’t limited to Tremont — property values lowered throughout the South Bronx, contributing to the spread of urban decay. Interestingly, the expressway’s construction leading to the blight and poverty of the South Bronx makes Moses a sort of foundational figure in the genre of hip-hop — though in the end, I’ll have to give DJ Kool Herc more credit.

Like most of New York, Tremont isn’t really a dangerous neighborhood — just one that had its heart torn out in 1963. Now that the interstate highway system is ever-present, seeing a gigantic highway in the middle of an existing neighborhood isn’t unusual; any Bay Area resident is familiar with the MacArthur Maze, which divides Oakland like a pizza. Likewise, Tremont has adapted to the expressway, with the stretches underneath consigned to junkyards, parking lots and dead space.

RICH BUNNELL

The Triborough Bridge, one of Robert Moses’ many major civic projects, was my conduit from the Bronx to Queens.

The project caused enough of a stir at the time to cause a public outcry against Moses; due to civic protests by urban activists such as Jane Jacobs, future plans such as the Lower Manhattan Expressway, which would have leveled 14 blocks of Little Italy, received the thrashing of a lifetime and came to an early, unceremonious end. And for all of the hoo-ha, the expressway did little to relieve traffic — as was little understood about urban highways at the time, the more options you give drivers, the more drivers are going to arrive en masse to clog them up.

But as I exited the South Bronx across the Triborough Bridge — itself overseen by Robert Moses during the New Deal — I began to have second thoughts about Moses’ legacy. Certainly, he’s a man who had a negative impact on the lives of millions, between slum clearance and the ensuing construction of boxy, unattractive, race-based public housing projects — not to mention the influence his “cars first” policy had on the planning of legions of other American cities. But he also shaped New York as it is today. He laced the city with ugly freeways, but he also added 20,000 acres to the city’s parkland, constructed seven major bridges, and was responsible for the United Nations Plaza and the 1964 World’s Fair site in Flushing Meadows.

And this essay persuasively argues that, in an era when America was flush with cash from World War II debt and outlaying millions upon millions in federal funding for the swift construction of transportation projects, Moses was just a bureaucrat doing his job as efficiently as possible. He made a number of questionable choices along the way, but what he got done in the time it got done would be impossible today.

I wound up in Flushing Meadows at night, and it turns out it’s actually one of the best times to visit. It’s nigh-on deserted but, since it’s touristy, it’s warm, well-lit and safe. Like most boys who were 14 in 1997, I’d seen the Unisphere in the climactic scene of Men in Black, but I had no idea it was so enormous. Moses used bureaucracy as a tool to get what he wanted, when he wanted, at the expense of the urban poor, but it’s apparent that he really wanted New York to be the greatest city on Earth.

RICH BUNNELL

The best part of finishing a long walk is making up the caloric deficit, I’m not gonna lie.

Incidentally, the World’s Fair site is adjacent to both truly excellent carnitas from a decadent torta truck in Elmhurst and out-of-this-world cumin-lamb ribs at Fu Run in Flushing. I would not, however, advise any of you to eat both of these on the same night, particularly if you have a six-hour flight scheduled for the following day.

This is where the recounting of my 100 miles of New York ends; I took a few other walks, including a 2.5-mile stroll from Brooklyn Heights to Park Slope; a 10-mile walk from Midwood to Astoria to visit my long-time friend, Internet viewer Mark Prindle, and a 2-mile trek across the southern end of Central Park en route to Zabar’s, where I stocked up on knishes and cinnamon rugelach as compensation to my wife for leaving her alone in the East Bay for a week. This is the first of what I hope is many city walks, and I hope everyone enjoyed the vicarious experience!

KENJENNINGS.COM

Drawing lines in the sand: Maphead author Ken Jennings demonstrates his not-too-shabby freehand mapmaking skills.

“Because it’s there” is a familiar saying to describe the strange allure of a challenging geographic obstacle, but it’s also kind of a map-obsessive thing to say. It’s difficult to put into words, but to a certain brand of maphead, the mere fact that a location or landmark is marked on a map is enough to justify Close Encounters-level devotion. And I understand the impulse completely — when I was kindergarten age, the shapes of the individual United States fascinated me at such a base level that I would draw maps of our wonderful nation just for the fun of it. It wasn’t quite to Al Franken’s standard of accuracy, but that’s just one of many reasons why I’m not a senator.

The colorful, real-life characters explored by Jennings in Maphead embody this impulse in many, many different ways, every one of them envisioning the Earth — and beyond — as a gigantic playground with a compass rose. We meet Charles Veley, a geographic “collector” who has visited all 319 world locations recognized by the international Travelers’ Century Club. Lusting for wanderlust, he went ahead and founded his own website, MostTraveledPeople.com, where readers expanded the list to a gargantuan 872. As of this writing, Veley himself stands at 827; his most impressive outing, chronicled by Jennings, involved a trip to Rockall, a 90-foot-wide island off the north coast of Great Britain. Unable to dock, he settled for hugging the side wearing a wet suit; he marked it off his list and received an “A” for innovation.

One of my aims in writing this blog is detailing the mapping of fictional journeys, whether set in the real world (The Sopranos) or imaginary ones (every fantasy novel ever). With that in mind, one of my favorite chapters in Maphead details individuals who leave the real world behind and maintain complex logs of imaginary universes. Jennings talks to Isaac Stewart, the artist who produces maps for fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson — and learn that the Southern Islands in Sanderson’s Mistborn: The Final Empire were inspired by the shape of a rust stain. “You wind up doing this seizure thing with your hand, and it doesn’t work sometimes,” Stewart says of attempting to draw a realistic coastline without the aid of a real-life inspiration.

A chapter that rings close to home covers the phenomenon of geocaching, a worldwide scavenger hunt wherein people use smartphones or GPS devices to uncover “caches” — containers ranging in size from a large can to a screw — carefully hidden from the “muggles” of the normal world. My mom is a big fan of geocaching, and I in fact once accompanied her on an FTF — a First to Find — just seconds after the cache was posted online, only to be outwitted by a fellow geocacher just seconds before we got there.

I confess that geocaching isn’t something I would do on my own — as a videogamer, it reminds me a bit too much of games that force you to collect random doodads for naught but a sense of Achievement. But I love the fact that there’s essentially a silent game going on at all times in public, all achieved through a combination of modern technology and the sheer want of the human mind to map its surroundings in any way possible. I guarantee you that there are at least a dozen caches within a one-square-mile radius of the spot you are sitting.

Maphead is legitimately one of the most inspirational books I’ve ever read, and played a huge role in getting me to move this blog from a husk into a reality. Some of Jennings’ jokes fall flat, but it’s all at the service of an enthusiasm for the material that I really hope single-handedly inspires the next wave of budding geographers.

RICH BUNNELL

The third day of my New York-area quest involved a stop at Pizzaland, as seen in the Sopranos credits.

As the absolute waspiest of agnostics, raised in suburbia and educated not far from it, I’ve never really felt a shared religious or cultural heritage. Instead, pop culture has filled that role for me, with The Sopranos sitting proudly at the top of the heap. As a result, I feel like traveling the meadowlands and sidewalks of North Jersey is probably the closest thing to a pilgrimage I will ever get to experience.

I’m not just being coy for the sake of making a funny blog post; one of my favorite characteristics of David Chase’s heralded series is its geographical consistency. It always disappoints me when a show’s identity is firmly rooted in its sense of place, but due to budgetary constraints, another city is hired as a fill-in. NBC’s Parenthood takes place in my adopted hometown of Berkeley, but most of it is filmed in Los Angeles, so I know that, real as the trees are, they’re still just one big soundstage.

The Sopranos, on the other hand, lives and breathes Jersey. The show’s famous title sequence, which I’ve never skipped and never will, depicts crime boss Tony Soprano emerging from New York’s Lincoln Tunnel and taking the New Jersey Turnpike to his suburban palace. Numerous Garden State landmarks zoom by Tony’s window, and what fascinates me about the choice of imagery is that it isn’t scattershot — this is what Tony would see during an actual commute from New York to the Soprano house’s physical location.

So what’s a happy wanderer to do? Obviously, walking the turnpike would be an illegal, suicidal fool’s errand, but I could at least walk what I imagined to be Tony’s commute once it hit the (relative) safety of the Jersey streets. Most of the opening sequence focuses on the Turnpike, but from Googling the locations of a few small businesses, I ascertained that Tony most likely exited at the Belleville Turnpike and took Route 506 to his North Caldwell neighborhood.*

I knew I’d need food to kick off my journey, so I intentionally picked a New Jersey Transit stop that was only a couple of miles from Pizzaland, one of the storefronts on Tony’s hometown tour. I don’t have a foodie’s mind for planning trips, so I don’t have any other Jersey pizza to compare it to, but it’s $1 a slice, and it tastes and feels like the greasy, Platonic ideal of the pies you get at Chuck-E-Cheese.

Route 506 stretched on for miles from there with little variation, but it was never boring — at least, from a Sopranos fanboy’s perspective. The weather was dreary and misty, a tone that several of the series’ best episodes employed skillfully to parallel turbulence within Tony’s mob and family lives. I’m thinking particularly of the season 1 episode “Isabella,” where our erstwhile mob boss, brain fried by a lithium prescription, wanders out to the local newsstand and barely escapes with his life.

Farther inland, in suburban Verona, I took a three-block detour to visit the home of family matriarch Livia Soprano, probably the second most iconic house in the series, mostly because nearly the entire family has lived in it at some point by show’s end. Just around the corner was the home of cuddly mob teddy bear Bobby Baccalieri, but I opted not to take a photo because some kids were playing outside.

Appetizers complete, after a lengthy trek up County Route 527, sweat pouring from my brow, breathing so heavily I might as well have been James Gandolfini himself, I finally, finally reached my destination: Casa Soprano! I didn’t want to move in too close and disturb the residents, possibly earning a beating from Furio Giunta, but I did bring along the Newark Star-Ledger so I could properly enshrine the experience.

This walk really beat the gabagool out of me, but it was worth it for what might turn out to be the defining experience of my 20s, with the possible exception of that time I got married. Join me next time as I pay homage to The Wire by exploring the corners and vacants of West Baltimore!**

* Interestingly enough, Tony’s commute isn’t very efficient, as Google Maps informs me that he could have avoided the Turnpike altogether — as well as a lot of stop-and-go driving — if he’d just taken NJ-3 W. But it certainly would have made for a much less quintessentially Jersey title sequence.
** Trip may or may not be fictional.

RICH BUNNELL

The Hudson Bridge marked a picturesque end to the 30th mile of my trip, but it sadly wasn’t open to pedestrian access.

I decided to split up the Bronx into two walks, because geographically the borough can easily be divided into chunks that connect to other boroughs. This time I took the red line to Van Cortlandt Park, given that it’s a big, prominent, mysterious green spot at the end of a major NYC subway route. The map lover’s mind is fun like that.

One thing I found out quickly about New York is that just because a location is labeled as a “park” on a map doesn’t mean that it’s well-maintained, or even easily accessible. Hey, it’s a huge city — these are the breaks. But Van Cortlandt Park is too big to falter, featuring a running track of a scale I’ve never seen at an East Bay park.

Because this a mostly suburban sliver of the Bronx — I even spent a couple of blocks in Yonkers(!) — I mostly stayed near the trees in the quiet Riverdale neighborhood. My path down to Manhattan zigzagged through Riverdale Park, which runs along most of the western Bronx waterfront. It’s not a particularly nice-looking park, but it’s a serene stretch of land, and to be fair, nothing is in bloom this time of year.

To my dismay, the Henry Hudson Bridge was closed to pedestrian access, so I found a pedestrian stairwell that pointed toward the more accessible Broadway Bridge. From there, my adventures in Manhattan are sadly just a story of “walk forward,” with the occasional pit stop for water or orange juice. I covered a lot of ground, but a lot of what Manhattan has to offer at night is indoors, so I decided to call it a day a couple of hours after the sun set and wrapped up my journey at the 79th and Broadway subway station.

But traversing the endless grid was worth it for the prize at the end: brisket on rye at the 2nd Avenue Deli! I normally go 50/50 on eating the pickles that come with my meal, but these gherkins feel like they’re from a different, better planet. Last time I visited the deli, 1) it was actually on 2nd Avenue (unforeseen circumstances forced the owners to move) and 2) I goyishly ordered the brisket as a “breast of beef” instead of by its proper name. But not this time! Hunger solved!

RICH BUNNELL

The FDR Boardwalk, featuring a view of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, runs down a 2.5-mile stretch of northeastern Staten Island.

Staten Island is the outcast New York borough — so much so, in fact, that it has repeatedly attempted to secede — and it’s true that there really isn’t much to do there. But I chose to kick off my quest there for a few reasons. First, contrarianism. Secondly, to get the most difficult, vertical borough out of the way first. Thirdly, it’s a giant goddamn island!

I actually find it really fun to explore suburbia, and with its rolling hills and frequent patches of wilderness, Staten reminds me a lot of the southern, suburban half of San Francisco. With little to nothing in the way of tourist traps, it’s also the best borough for wandering around on your own, a near-impossible feat during the day in Manhattan.

It’s also known as the birthplace and turf of the Wu-Tang Clan (who famously refer to the island as “Shaolin”), and in their honor I threw on the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version. Sadly, by the time I was smart enough to get this idea, I was well into the island and not exactly on ODB’s turf, but it’s the thought that counts.

I wish that Web 2.0 slang hadn’t sucked all of the fun out of the word “epic,” because this walk was really, truly epic. In fact, at 23.6 miles, it’s easily the longest walk I’ve ever taken, beating out an 18-mile crawl across northern San Francisco that I made in 2009. My calves are begging me to take it easy from here on out, but at least I’m well on the way to my goal.

The first 10 miles of the journey were probably the most isolated. I started out with some delicious potato pancakes from a Polish counter in Tompkinsville, part of the northern Staten business district, and from there on out the residents became scarcer and scarcer.

I eventually wound up at Todt Hill — at a whopping 410 feet, the highest natural point on the Eastern Seaboard south of Maine (how cute) — though my ascent to the summit was blocked by a dense patch of thorny vines. Is this a Legend of Zelda game?!

There isn’t really much to say about my trek back into civilization; if the first 10 miles of Staten resembled southern San Francisco, the remaining 13 resembled neighboring San Mateo County’s long string of strip malls. But it was at least nice and flat after the onslaught of Level 1-1, and KFC Snackers count as nourishment on some abstract level.

My mind was pretty much paste for the last 5 miles or so, but I eventually reached my goal: The Staten Island Tugboat Graveyard! The sun had almost set by 7:15 p.m., so I could barely even see the derelict vessels and their accompanying ghosts, but that’s not the point — I made it! And if there wasn’t a bus right back to the ferry at that exact intersection, I think I would have cried.