MARATHON SUNDAY BY MILE: THE DAY NEW YORK CLOSES ITS STREETS AND SPENDS 40% MORE

Every street closure in this city gets the same complaint. A street fair, a bike lane, a parade: somebody with a storefront tells a reporter it is bad for business, and the line runs unchallenged. Today the city closes 26.2 miles of road through five boroughs for nearly 60,000 runners and more than two million people on the sidewalks, and Mastercard has the receipt on what that does to the register. During the 2023 race, spending at small businesses along the route, restaurants and bars among them, ran nearly 15% above baseline by 10 a.m., about 35% above normal in Brooklyn and Queens between noon and 2, and nearly 40% above baseline in Manhattan between 2 and 3. Each borough's peak landed as the runners came through. The complaint has it backwards. The closed street is the business.

Mastercard published the numbers on October 23, 2024, from card spending during the 2023 TCS New York City Marathon. The race starts on Staten Island at 8 a.m., and by 10 the field is strung out along Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn; spending along the route was already nearly 15% above a normal Sunday. Brooklyn and Queens peaked about 35% above normal between noon and 2 p.m., when the last two waves are on Fourth Avenue, Bedford Avenue and Manhattan Avenue. Manhattan's surge came in waves, by Mastercard's account, and peaked between 2 and 3 p.m. at nearly 40% above baseline, as wave five filled First Avenue.

The limits are real. The data is the 2023 race, by borough, with no neighborhood or category breakdown. Mastercard does not describe its method, its sample or its baseline, and it gives no dollar figures. What it gives is timing: when the money arrives, borough by borough, in step with the start schedule. For a counter on the corner, timing is the whole story.

This year is the 50th running of the five-borough course, first run on October 24, 1976. NYRR expects nearly 60,000 participants; last year's 59,219 finishers made it the largest marathon ever run at the time. The men's wheelchair division starts at 8:00, the women's at 8:02, the professional women at 8:35, the professional men at 9:05, and the five waves at 9:10, 9:45, 10:20, 10:55 and 11:30. The pass times below are our estimates, built from the start times and roughly three-minute miles for the wheelchair leaders, five for the professionals and five and a half for the front of wave one.

Fourth Avenue closes from 94th Street to Flatbush Avenue. Runners come off the Verrazzano at 92nd Street just past mile 2, and the avenue carries them nearly six miles north: mile 3 near 78th Street, mile 4 near 58th, mile 5 near 38th, mile 6 near 18th, mile 7 in Park Slope, mile 8 at Flatbush by the Barclays Center.

Don Paco López Panadería, 4703 Fourth Avenue at 47th Street, Sunset Park, mile 4.5. Open Sunday 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. The bakery has been on this corner since 1991 and bakes from Don Paco López's recipes three generations on; by its own account the conchas, cuernitos, orejas and tamales are shaped, sugared and baked by hand before sunrise. Order a concha, a tamal and a coffee. The wheelchair leaders pass about 8:14, the professional women about 9:00, the front of wave one about 9:35, and waves four and five from about 11:35 until past 1, when Brooklyn's peak lands.

From Flatbush the course turns onto Lafayette Avenue, then Bedford Avenue the length of Williamsburg, then Manhattan Avenue through Greenpoint to Greenpoint Avenue and McGuinness Boulevard, and over the Pulaski Bridge at the halfway mark.

Peter Pan Donut & Pastry Shop, 727 Manhattan Avenue, on the closed stretch between Nassau and Greenpoint Avenues, mile 12. Open Sunday 5:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., family owned and operated for more than 60 years, and the course runs past the door. Order a sour cream glazed or a blueberry buttermilk and take the coffee in the paper cup. The wheelchair leaders pass about 8:36, the professional women about 9:37, the professional men about 10:02, the front of wave one about 10:15.

The course comes down 11th Street off the Pulaski, turns onto 48th Avenue, Vernon Boulevard, 10th Street, 44th Drive, Hunter Street and Crescent Street, crosses Queens Plaza South and climbs the Queensboro Bridge at mile 15, where there are no spectators.

Court Square Diner, 45-30 23rd Street at 45th Avenue, Long Island City, two blocks off the course at mile 14. Open 24 hours, every day. Order two eggs over easy with home fries from a window seat on 23rd Street. The wheelchair leaders pass about 8:42, the professional women about 9:47, the professional men about 10:11, the front of wave one about 10:27.

The Queensboro lands at 59th Street and First Avenue at mile 16, and the avenue runs the field north to 125th. NYRR puts pedestrian crossings at 69th, 72nd, 83rd and 86th Streets, and its own viewing guide credits the avenue's bars and restaurants with the atmosphere.

Gracie Mews Diner, 1550 First Avenue at 81st Street, Yorkville, mile 17. Open Sunday 6 a.m. to midnight. Order the breakfast special, which comes with coffee and toast, or the pancakes, and take the window. The wheelchair leaders pass about 8:51, the professional women about 10:03, the professional men about 10:26, the front of wave one about 10:45. Manhattan's 40% peak comes later, between 2 and 3, when wave five is on this block.

The Willis Avenue Bridge carries the course into the Bronx at mile 20, and this year the Bronx mile is new. For the first time in 15 years NYRR has changed the course: after the bridge, runners turn left onto East 135th Street, right onto Alexander Avenue, run Alexander north to East 141st Street instead of turning at 138th, then left on Third Avenue and right onto East 138th to the Madison Avenue Bridge. NYRR says the change is meant to cut the race's impact on the neighborhood.

Mottley Kitchen, 402 East 140th Street at Willis Avenue, Mott Haven, mile 20. Its site lists weekend hours of 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., which makes it the one counter on this list that opens with the gun. It sits one block east of Alexander Avenue at 140th, a corner that was not on the course last year and is this year. Order the rancheros egg sandwich or the pimento cheese sandwich and the coffee. The wheelchair leaders reach the Bronx about 9:00, the professional women about 10:18, the professional men about 10:40, the front of wave one about 11:00. Bronx Night Market, run by We Eat Here, which publishes this site, sits at 161st and the Grand Concourse, twenty blocks north; today the Bronx mile belongs to Mott Haven.

A closed avenue takes away cars, deliveries, parking and anyone who meant to drive across it. What it leaves is a crowd that stands in one place for three hours and buys what it can hold: coffee, a donut, a bacon, egg and cheese, a beer at the door. That is a counter's day. A window to the sidewalk, a line that never ends, a register that rings until the sweep bus passes at 16 minutes a mile behind the last wave. The spectator does not sit down, and the counter does not need her to.

The sit-down restaurant on the same block has a different Sunday. The avenue out front is a wall of people, the truck with the fish cannot get to the back door, the reservation from across the course does not come, and the crowd disappears the minute the barricades drop. Mastercard's 40% is one number for both: an average of counters that had a huge morning and restaurants that waited for the street to reopen. The chart cannot split them. Anyone who has worked a Fourth Avenue bodega on the first Sunday in November can.

The street closure that storefront owners call bad for business is, on this one day, the single best thing the city does for the corner counter: it delivers two million people on foot, hungry, with nowhere to drive, to the door of a bakery that has been open since six. Brooklyn's peak lands at noon, Manhattan's at two, each one as the runners pass. One Sunday a year, the closed street is the best customer the corner counter has.

SOURCING