Some are writing the obituary of New York. That has been done many times. Those obits have always been wrong. New York survives. New York endures. New York has changed. New York will change again.
I came from a family of psychotically competitive know-it-alls, particularly when it came to New York City history. So I have been pretty much doing it my entire life.
A guide can wade through what is and is not important, what you should be looking at and why. Also, point you to the bathrooms which are not always obvious.
I love to show visitors all the 5 boroughs, I feel it’s very important to let them know that NYC is not just 5th Avenue, the Empire state building, and Central Park.
I love to talk with people here, New Yorkers are amazing, they seem tough but they are genuine, to listen to their story is music to my ears. I wish I could go back in time and see how Nyc was in the 80/90’s, before the internet era.
I personally don't do schtick but I do have a very dry, sardonic sense of humor, and it comes through in many of my explanations about things, and people absolutely eat it up.
The recorded bus tours out there are simply awful. They sound mechanical, they tell the most watered-down, stereotypical explanations that nobody remembers the moment they leave the bus.
As Tour guides we do this because we love the city, we love explaining it, and we love that moment when people go, “Oh! Oh Wow” and we see their faces change and we see that reaction. It changes the city for them and they’ll have a new appreciation.
My family were good walkers. Possibly on a Sunday we'd think nothing of walking several miles to Coney Island. Storytelling was part of our life and culture. On our walks downtown in Manhattan my mother would point out things along the way, she was actually giving me a tour as a 3 or 4 year old and I was a curious kid who always asked questions.
At 11 or 12 years old I was adventurous. Instead of spending my nickel on candy, I would ride the subway a long distance to see what was there. I'm still a tourist in my own city discovering different neighborhoods and places.
Joe leading a tour of Grand Central Station
Back then, the oddball was the person who worked a full time job in an office. Everybody was going to acting classes or they were in a band or people were trying to be painters. Now I rarely run into people that say “I’m acting in some little play come see it” that’s does not happen as much.
The challenge about a boat tour is you cannot control your pace, you just have to go with how the captain’s guiding the boat, it takes a little while to get the hang of it, the pacing, also to even remember the facts. We pride ourselves on not having a script and just rarely referring to crib notes.
