This influencer is fighting back at bad walkers by secretly filming them — and New Yorkers are thrilled with his sidewalk rage
Hey, he’s walking here!
For the past few months, Matt Bass has acted as Gotham’s very own Batman for a very specific, but sizeable subset of New Yorkers: the easily irritated pedestrian.
His version of the Batsuit, though, is a simple black T-shirt, shorts, sunglasses and a backwards baseball cap — a suitably surreptitious disguise for filming a series of clandestine TikToks he’s dubbed “Bad Walkers.”
“This is just my walking experience,” he explained to The Post about the “quirky characters” he spots on his travels. “These are the people who inconvenience me.”
Typically, he films his videos with his iPhone and a trusty pair of Apple wired earbuds, which act as a microphone, though he says it’s a pretty conspicuous setup — if bad walkers look back, they’ll notice him taking a video.
“It’s like I have a dash cam on my head,” said Bass, 30.
And when he walks, he documents the unique frustrations that the perambulators, traipsers and striders of the city experience — and cause — in a sequence of clips now well over 60 parts long.
It’s enough to trigger any New Yorker.
People trip on metal grates, abruptly stop to point at sights surrounding them, obliviously swing their shopping bags into fellow pedestrians, and, perplexingly, read books.
One time, he even saw a Times Square living statue spray-painting himself gold — and when they stopped to mist a passerby, all Bass could do was hope they knew each other.
Unfortunately, he’s not always able to capture the wackiest moments — he says he wasn’t quite quick enough to snap that golden scene.
But as irritating as some of the city’s slowest and most selfish walkers can be, Bass doesn’t get in their faces. Instead, he critiques their techniques from afar — if two feet to the rear can truly even be considered “far.”
And according to Bass, he’s never even directly confronted anyone.
“I think stuff like ‘Billy on the Street’ or Eric André pouring Fruit Loops milk on his head on the subway, where you’re just getting in people’s faces, is way worse than what I’m doing. I feel like [‘Bad Walkers’] is a pretty calm version of that, so I don’t think it’s creepy.”
While he does get rare critical comments under his social media posts, the majority of New Yorkers in the replies are all for it.
“Please never stop,” one sample commenter wrote under a recent post.
“It’s not like I’m revealing people’s faces … and I’m not trying to put anyone on the map as a bad walker — just provide some commentary,” Bass told The Post.
“I’ve deleted a couple of videos of people who have said, ‘Hey, that was me.’ I’m not hungry for the views and engagement, so I’m not going to [film videos] at the expense of someone else’s happiness.”
Once, while sauntering the mean streets of Soho, Bass got a touch too close to a displeased Aussie tourist, who he said was strolling down the sidewalk in a group five-wide — a classic tourist faux pas — and told him off. According to Bass, the visitor from down under told him, in no uncertain terms, to get out of his face and stop recording him.
That visitor is far from the only trekker who’s heard his commentary from afar. In his videos, viewers can see the odd head or two turn after hearing an in-depth, articulate walking analysis coming from behind them.
Now that he’s begun filming more frequently, Bass says he’s had to diversify his typical route, as his fellow East Villagers have begun to recognize him out and about.
He’s not complaining, though — at least the overall neighborhood walking quality has improved, he declared.
In an attempt to be more hush-hush about his project, he recently made a splashy new spend to deliver top-tier content to his 40,000 and counting followers — Ray-Ban Meta Sunglasses, which ran him about $300 and provide the ability to record video through cameras hidden in the specs.
Despite his big purchase, though, he hasn’t been using them much, he said, thanks to the poor audio quality — and after all, it’s his commentary that keeps viewers coming back, so he’s returned to his obvious but reliable iPhone to capture a particularly reliable area of the Big Apple.
Though the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island have plenty of fascinating sights, sounds and strollers of their own to offer, Bass prefers to stick to lower Manhattan.
“I know it’s controversial, but I’m someone who embraces that ‘I only stay below 14th Street’ mentality,” he told The Post.
“I think it’s the most authentic version of New York. I like that grittiness and grunge, the classic New York character — great restaurants right next to where the rats are eating their dinner. Plus, the nightlife’s good, it has that balance.”
Bass finely honed his New Yorker sensibilities back on Long Island, where he was born and raised, before firmly establishing sub-14th Street Manhattan as his stomping grounds during his NYU days 12 years back.
The TikTokker spends his days optimizing digital strategy at an e-commerce growth agency and building up his energy drink and baseball hat businesses, before lacing up his shoes to patrol the streets.
“Obviously, I don’t just walk around in a circle near my apartment, so East to West downtown has been like my bread and butter,” he explained. “I love the West Village, and I have friends that live west, so I usually just cut through Soho, or go through Washington Square Park.”
Bass says he spends most of his afternoons and evenings walking anyway.
“My friends always ask why I walk so much,” said Bass, who revealed he strode about 10 miles a day during COVID but “probably” does about 10,000 steps daily now.
He admitted that he saunters the sidewalks partly “to keep in shape,” but that’s clearly not the driving force.
“It’s just so freaking entertaining seeing crazy stuff and wandering around,” said Bass, who began filming his daily city walks because sometimes the story simply doesn’t do it justice — you have to see it to believe it.
While Bass has plenty of examples of bad walkers on his page, what exactly makes a “good” one?
“The two pillars of being a good New Yorker, and a good walker, are awareness and consideration. That’s how you get up to a 7.5/10. If you do those, you’re a good walker; that’s all it takes,” the TikTokker told The Post.
“Anything above that is, like, ‘Wow, this person’s moving with some urgency — they’ve got some purpose in those steps,” he said.
“Stay on the right, generally, and go around the light posts if there’s room on the curb – that’s not off limits. If you’re carrying things, don’t wave them around; like, groceries and shopping bags don’t need to take up that much width. Think about the real estate,” he advised.
To be clear, his metric system is not numerical. Rather, it relies on a robust vocabulary, sharp sense of humor and his very own invented walking jargon — pointed terms like “scaffolding hogs,” “chain link fence” and the dreaded “drifter.”
Though he emphasizes awareness, consideration and efficiency, he knows those aren’t hard and fast rules. Compassion and respect are also important, he said.
It’s not all commiseration in Bass’ comment sections, either. According to him, he has some regular haters — but he chalks most of the criticism up to bitter “bad walkers feeling called out.”
As a result of TikTok’s unique algorithm, random users — and more often than not, they appear to be non-New Yorkers — often stumble onto Bass’ page, where they issue wise words of advice on how to get around bad walkers. “Just say excuse me” or “I usually go around” are two of the most popular proposals, and depending on their attitude, sometimes warrant a pithy “Thanks” from Bass.
Not that there’s nothing wrong with being a slow strider, he added. Really, the art of being a good walker is awareness.
“It’s hard to capture with exciting commentary, but slow, good walkers exist. There are people who have good formation strategies when they’re walking with a group,” he said. “I saw this the other day, like, actually the slowest group ever, but they were walking in a single file line under the scaffolding.
“I was going, like, ‘Thank you, you’re the best’ — like, I should have given them flowers.”
TikTok commenters come to Bass’ bad walker series for his quick-witted, amusing commentary, but it seems as though many of them stay for his insights on how etiquette and mutual respect impact the city’s sense of local community — a seemingly rare notion in the contemporary moment in time.
Hundreds of users have asked him to go to cities around the world — Boston, London, San Francisco, Chicago and Venice, to name a few — and even more have requested commentary videos filmed inside stores with notoriously irritating customers like Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods and Costco.
He plans to accommodate at least some of the asks.
If nothing else, Bass is a man of the people — and an excellent walker.
Credit to Nypost AND Peoples
