For those about to walk (we salute you)

The unlikely celebrity of walking in a place where nobody else is

Most of us have wanted to be a rock star at some point in our lives. For you, maybe that dream involved splintering a bat and sending a baseball soaring out of Dodger Stadium. For me, at the peak of my teen years, the fantasy was writing and directing a star-studded adaptation of Heart Of Darkness set in the 19th Century American West. (An extra grizzled Sean Penn would have played Kurtz.) But around this time last summer, in an extremely toasty part of the American South, I was reminded that in some places, simply going outside for a walk can transform you into a local legend.

The setting was San Antonio. I was there for a few days to do some field research for a book project. The outside temperature was creeping into the triple digits, with 100% humidity, as is common in Texas each July. Dawn and dusk were the prime hours for being outdoors semi-comfortably. The parks and commercial streets were bustling in the softer light of early morning. But by 8:30 AM, most of the joggers, dog walkers, and cyclists had retreated inside, where they would remain until sunset. In the interest of staving off heat exhaustion, I had planned most of my roaming for the beginning and end of the day. But I needed to take some daylit photographs of the San Antonio River Walk; a gorgeous network of canalside walking paths that converge downtown, with sexy placemaking touches like cypress trees, cascades, and public artwork. This meant venturing outside during the worst heat of the day, for no more than an hour.

But the misery of shuffling along pavement under the midsummer Texas sun—coated in SPF 50 lotion and sweating like an extra in a Gatorade commercial—is not the most salient part of this story. Midway through my River Walk foray, when I staggered into a donut store to get an iced coffee, I noticed that the cashier was sizing me up with an odd look. It was the kind of expression that I would make if a Sasquatch boarded the subway that I take to downtown Boston a few times each week, and helped itself to a seat across from me. I took my drink and spent another wretched half hour outdoors taking photos of the River Walk and noting how the waterside paths, which had been alive with pedestrians the prior evening, were near-empty. On some stretches, I was the sole walker in sight. When I finally returned to the air-conditioned sanctum of my hotel, the guy at the front desk offered a debonair nod as I headed for the elevators. But when I got to my room on the ninth floor, I realized that I had forgotten to see if there were still any free cookies in the lobby. (When free amenities are offered, I turn into a hoarder.) I took the elevator back down to the ground floor, and as soon as I stepped out, the front desk receptionist saw me and said, “Fortune favors the bold!”

”Come again?” I asked.

”You’re going back out on another walk, aren’t you?”

”Oh no, I was just—”

I stopped, starting to grasp what was happening here. I was still wearing my sun hat, I had a backpack slung over one shoulder, and I was being pegged as an adventurer.

”Do you…get a lot of midday walkers at the hotel?” I queried.

”On days like this? Rarely. I’d assume that a lot of the guests are sleeping right now.”

”Or clinging to life at the bar, or in the pool.”

”If you don’t mind me asking,” the receptionist said. “You do this kind of thing often?”

”What, walking?”

”Yeah!”

”Sure, I guess. Just seemed like the simplest way of getting around. And the cheapest.”

The receptionist guffawed and slapped his thigh, as if I had just recited a joke worthy of George Carlin. “I love it,” he exclaimed. “Here, take some provisions for the road.” He handed me a fistful of individually wrapped chocolate chip cookies and offered a little salute. Mind you, I had no intention of going back outside for another broiling walk in San Antonio. But now I had this mythic stature to live up to as a mysterious walking man, hitting the sidewalks amidst 100 degree heat. So I stepped out of the hotel, took a right turn, and as soon as I had escaped the view of the lobby, I started searching the back of the building for an entrance to sneak back into; hoping that the receptionist didn’t have access to the security camera monitors behind the front desk.

I made it back up to my room undetected, where I uploaded photos, and read a book for the better part of the afternoon. Around 5:00 PM, with the sun sinking toward the horizon, I suited up for my second night in San Antonio, excited to see the River Walk flush with amblers again. My friend from the front desk had clearly clocked off, and it looked like his night shift replacement was busy checking in a big family with lots of roller bags. But as I passed the desk, she turned to me and went, “Have a nice walk!”

I have to assume that a lot of us have unwittingly found ourselves in this position at least once—promoted to rock star status, by virtue of taking a walk in a place where nobody else is walking. Granted, when I say “rock star,” I’m not talking about stadium filling heavyweights like Springsteen or Shakira. The celebrity of walking where people don’t walk is more like the kind of fame enjoyed by Tilda Swinton or Jim Morrison. The onlookers behold you as they might a visiting creature from another nebula. If you are walking through a particularly car-centric environment that doesn’t see many walkers, like a lonely stretch of sidewalk connecting suburban malls, or the drive-thru ATM at your bank, you might even be perceived like Iggy Pop, rolling around in peanut butter and broken glass before whipping out his dick on stage. On some level, to become a mysterious walking person is to embrace your inner freak. Many folks appreciate this. But the trick to cultivating this, in my experience, is to be passive in your freakishness.

What do I mean by that? Consider the subtle difference between my interactions with the donut shop cashier and the front desk guy at the hotel. Midway through my San Antonio sauntering, I actively walked into that donut store, I headed straight toward the cashier, and I asked for a coffee. I may as well have been a Kodiak bear trudging into somebody’s camp and nodding toward the pot of noodles on their camp stove. But at the hotel—where my mysterious walking ways were received with delight—I was simply strolling through the lobby, like a moose wading through a bog in plain sight of several excited hikers. In other words, getting knighted as a walk star is not something that you can intentionally seek out. It just happens to you, and your odds of becoming a walk star will be higher if you strike that balance between being visible and keeping your distance from the audience. One of the golden rules of fandom is that you never want to get too close to your favorite stars; not just because they will let you down, but because maintaining some distance allows you to stare in wonder.

There’s an air of mystery to stars, and I imagine that a lot of us would like to keep it that way. If I were in a bar and Al Pacino started walking toward me, I would look for the nearest exit. To me, he must always be Vincent Hanna in Heat, and if I have to run to preserve that relationship, I will. If you have become a walk star, after taking a walk someplace where most people see the world through a windshield, chances are you mean something to a handful of those folks; in ways that you will never fully know or understand. I think that’s pretty cool. Maybe it’s even cooler than achieving celebrity status through years or decades of grinding away for it. You never know exactly what you’ll stumble across, when you venture outside for a walk. But it’s also impossible to guess how far the ripples of your walking can travel, or what people might see them.

Who knows? Maybe that front desk receptionist in San Antonio decided to try going for a midday stroll later that week, after our interaction. Perhaps I was a footnote in a story that he told his family at dinner that night, to illustrate how people are losing it these days. Either way, I look forward to hopefully seeing him again. On my next tour.