Go West--West Side that is

If you haven't walked on 9th Avenue recently, start high up on Columbus, say at about 86th Street,  and keep on walking, past Lincoln Center, until it becomes 9th Avenue.

The 9th Avenue El, as it was known, was the oldest elevated railway in New York and operated from 1868 to 1940. When it closed, times being what they were, it was not made into a high-line park.

(Source: new.mta.info)
Today, at the top of your walk, you'll pass old tenements transformed into a gentrified pedestrian walkway with elegant and expensive shops and restaurants.

(Source: nycgo.com)
 Dipping below Lincoln Center, you may hit one of the frequent festivals when Ninth Avenue pays homage to its historic cuisines with slightly better grade street food.

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And if it isn't a festival day, you can see the ethnic restaurants lining both sides of the street, reminding us that new generations of New York immigrants are still doing this.

(Source: michaelminn.net)
Once mostly Greek and Italian, the street now also offers Turkish, Israeli, Middle Eastern, Mexican, French, Indonesian and Asian cuisines.  

Stop in at Gazala Place between 48th and 49th streets for authentic Druze food and order the bourekas of the day for about $8, a baked or fried pastry made from phyllo dough and filled with cheese, meat, fish or vegetables. You won't regret it.

(Source: google.plus.com)
Continue down 9th past the Film Center and then across 42nd Street

(Source: michaelminn.net)
 but duck into a subway and avoid the madness between 6th and 7th Avenues.

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