I was curious if “night walking” was actually a dedicated hobby and in my research discovered this guide to NightWalking. I’ve only just begun to skim through it but it seems the intent is to find perpetual calm through peripheral awareness:
To be a surviving pedestrian on the sidewalks of New York City takes special skill and training. The problems are not so much those encountered at busy crossings, when agility and speed and an instinct for avoiding outright death are usually enough to get you through. It is the seemingly simple act of walking along the sidewalk, threading your way through the moving crowds of people coming at you from the opposite direction, that poses the harder puzzle. The worst of possible outcomes is the mutual embarrassment involved in the standoff, when two individuals advancing toward one another try to move quickly out of each other’s way in synchrony, and find themselves either bumping or trapped in a sidewise dance.
