A journalist and an artist, Niklas Maak and Leanne Shapton, hike for two days from the southern tip of Manhattan to the northern tip of the island at 220th Street. They let chance guide them as they observe the city: the potholes in the streets, the yellow taxis, the old brick facades, the Chinese scrap dealer, millionaires in their Bentleys, surveillance cameras, the Trump Tower, and airplanes in the steel-blue sky. Niklas Maak takes notes while Leanne Shapton paints with watercolors. Gradually, an unusual and very personal picture of New York emerges: our present, captured as a microcosm on an island in the Hudson River.