Inside one mans coffee-fueled mission to walk every single block in NYC: You can never truly absorb it all

Josh Richards is on a quest to cover every inch of New York City — with nothing more than a cup of coffee and his trusty Hokas.The Bushwick resident has walked and ran across nearly 2,000 miles of the concrete jungle in just two years — getting an up-close-and-personal view of the Big Apple’s neighborhoods that even the most devoted New Yorkers will never get a chance to see.“Every neighborhood has its own distinct charm,” Richards, 46, said.

“For most people, they’re getting little snapshots of different places.I’m very fortunate to be getting this wide-ranging view of this place.”Richards is following in the footsteps — literally and figuratively — of William Helmreich and Matt Green, both of whom had famously chronicled their schleps across the roughly 6,000 miles of Big Apple streets in the last decade.But Richards, a Midtown vegan restaurant general manager, is stepping up the pace: he can more often be seen running, and clocks in as much as a whopping 80 miles per weekend.“I walk at a pace of about 4-miles per hour.

I’m definitely in the 99th percentile of New Yorkers,” he noted.The fast-footed jogger has already checked off most of Brooklyn, the lower half of Manhattan and the trendy western side of Queens — mostly because every walk starts from his front door in Bushwick.“When I leave the house, I usually have no idea where I’m going.I’ll just start walking or running and once I’m going in a certain direction and I know an area I haven’t covered yet I’ll make my way out there,” said Richards.“I’ve gotten to the point where if I leave the house it’s about 4 miles until I hit anything new.”That’s not to say he doesn’t have a methodology: Richards typically sets out down a straightaway avenue for several miles before turning around and weaving his way through the side streets.For coastal areas, like the College Point peninsula and the entirety of Staten Island, the vegan runner prefers to start on the o...