How An Inwood Resident Spreads Neighborhood Love Through Facebook

INWOOD, NY — Marty Morua loves living in Inwood.

The proud Upper Manhattan resident began posting almost-daily videos throughout various community Facebook groups in March 2020 of his walks in the Upper Manhattan neighborhood. His unrelenting positivity quickly began gaining admiration and appreciation for his ability to show off the neighborhood to masses of community members spending the majority of their time indoors.

His short videos highlight anything he might stumble across on his daily walks through Inwood, whether it is a flower bed in Isham Park, a happening in front of a local deli or train station, or an animal that is also making its way through the Upper Manhattan neighborhood.

He'll then post the video in a handful of Inwood community Facebook groups, sometimes just with a small caption, other times asking members to guess where in the neighborhood he is.

He's posted thousands of these videos since March 2020.

Morua's posts get dozens of positive responses each day and have become a near staple for countless people involved in Inwood online groups.

While Morua mentions his wife, Maribel, and teenage daughter, Melissa, in his posts from time to time, he rarely delves into the details of his life or the backstory behind why he began to share his videos.

Patch set out to get to the bottom of it.

The Backstory

Morua moved to Inwood in 1998 and was born in Prague, Czech Republic, where he spent his childhood years before moving to the United States to attend college at the New York Institution of Technology.

After working 13 years on Wall Street, he eventually pivoted to real estate, which pushed him into creating a YouTube account to show off properties for sale.

It wasn't until March 2020, though, when he first got the idea to start sharing videos of his beloved Inwood neighborhood.

"In March, when the city and world shut down, and I didn't have to drive my daughter to school anymore, I said, 'Let me just start walking around the neighborhood, even though I've lived here for 22 years already,'" Morua told Patch. "The very first video was of the marsh on the corner of Indian Road and 218th Street."

Taking videos was not the only inspiration for his walks, however. Morua also was looking to get in better shape.

"I said, 'I'm going to change everything, I completely cut out all the things you should not eat eight days a week, 25 hours a day, and I just started walking,'" he said. Morua successfully lost 50 pounds from March to September.

In terms of what drives Morua to share the neighborhood videos, his overwhelming answer is the Inwood community.

"It is the past and present Inwood, Manhattan, neighbors who inspire me to post," Morua said. "2020 was an unimaginably horrific year, but I made more friends in 2020 than any other year thanks to the Inwood Facebook groups."

Morua's ability to share continuously positive content within Facebook groups that, at times, descend into name-calling and negativity with other subjects is an undoubted reason for people's gravitation toward his videos.

"It's a confusing world, and I just always try to show me. I try to always show the glass is half full," Morua said.

The Inwood resident of over 20 years also mentioned the level-headedness of his father, a Cuban immigrant, and his grandfather, a survivor of a concentration camp during the Holocaust, as influences for his unrelenting ability to look for the good things in life.

His favorite spots in the neighborhood are the forest in Inwood Hill Park, the cliffs overlooking the Hudson River, Swindler's Cove, and Isham Park.

"It just makes me happy to see other people smile at my pictures," Morua told Patch. "I don't want a medal or an interview. I'm just happy, legitimately happy, when people tell me, 'Wow, Marty, I've never been to that part of the forest, or I didn't know the Straus Mansion was there. I enjoy it, and I think other people do, too."