Walk New York City with FOG
New York is the easiest city in the world to walk and one of the hardest to finish. FOG shows you exactly how much of it you have actually covered.
New York City in FOG, with the fog burned off along a walked route through lower Manhattan.
The grid does most of the work
Above Houston Street, Manhattan is a machine for walking. Avenues run north to south, numbered streets run east to west, and twenty blocks make roughly a mile. You can hold your position in your head without looking at anything. Below Houston it falls apart. The Village bends Fourth Street across Tenth, the Financial District keeps the old Dutch cowpaths, and Broadway cuts a diagonal through all of it from Bowling Green to Inwood.
That diagonal is the obvious spine. Broadway runs the full length of the island, about thirteen miles, and it crosses every neighbourhood character New York has. In FOG it draws a single long line through the middle of the fog, and every side street you take off it widens the cleared band a little more.
An afternoon that clears real ground
Start at Battery Park and take the Hudson River Greenway north. It is flat, it is uninterrupted, and it puts a clean stripe up the west side of the island. Cut inland at Christopher Street into the West Village, wander the crooked part until you lose your bearings, then pick up the grid again at Washington Square. From there Fifth Avenue or University Place will carry you north through Union Square, the Flatiron and up into Midtown.
That is four or five hours of easy walking and it will light up a serious wedge of Manhattan. If you want the more satisfying version, walk the Brooklyn Bridge instead and drop into Dumbo, then follow the water south through Brooklyn Bridge Park to Red Hook.
Why the map is honest here
Manhattan is not New York. The city is about three hundred square miles across five boroughs, and the fog does not care that you have walked Midtown a thousand times. Queens alone will humble you: Astoria, Jackson Heights, Flushing, Forest Hills, all of it real and none of it cleared until you go stand there.
So the city percent climbs slowly and stays low for a long time. That is the point. It rewards the trips you would not otherwise take, the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, the north shore of Staten Island, the long flat blocks of Bushwick and Sunset Park. Watching the fog retreat outward from your own neighbourhood is a better argument for exploring than any list.
Practical notes
Midtown is a canyon. Between the towers on Sixth Avenue and around Grand Central, GPS bounces off glass and your track can wander half a block sideways. It sorts itself out as soon as you get near a park or the water, and it does not stop the walk being recorded, but do not expect surgical edges down there.
Weather sets the season. July and August are humid enough that a long walk becomes a swim, and January wind coming off the Hudson on the west side is genuinely unpleasant. Spring and autumn are when the map moves. Background exploring keeps recording with the phone in your pocket, which matters when it is cold enough that you are not taking your hands out.
Questions people actually ask
Does FOG work on the subway?
Underground there is no GPS, so tunnel sections are not revealed. That is correct behaviour: FOG only clears ground you physically walked. Ride between neighbourhoods, then walk them.
Will tall buildings ruin my track?
In Midtown and the Financial District the signal can drift by a block or so. Everywhere else in the city it is fine, and drift does not stop your walk being recorded.
Can I import walks I already did in New York?
Yes. The one-time 5.99 USD unlock includes history import from Google Timeline exports and GPX files, so old years of walking can be added to the map.
Do I need an account?
No. There is no sign-up, no cloud and no tracking. Your map stays on your phone, and you can export your own data whenever you want.
How does the city percent work here?
It shows the share of New York City you have lit up. Across five boroughs that number moves slowly, which is what makes it worth chasing.
Start with a dark map.
FOG is free to explore. No account, no subscription, and your map never leaves your phone.
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