BY HELAINA N. HOVITZ | A paid tour seldom gives visitors a glimpse of the real New York. That’s where Big Apple Greeters come in, if they can spare a few hours a month volunteering for the 20-year-old non-profit that pairs city visitors with locals who accompany them on walks through various New York City neighborhoods.
Headquartered at 1 Centre St., the program boasts volunteers that speak 20 languages, and over 7,000 tourists take advantage of it each year. Volunteers help out-of-towners understand what it’s like to actually live here while developing personal connections with their small group. A typical “walk” lasts about five hours, and volunteers take groups of four-to-six out once every two weeks; handicapped visitors are welcome and accommodated accordingly.
It’s also free.
Rather than reciting from a “dossier of information” and ushering tourists from one attraction to the next, Big Apple Greeters share personal stories and anecdotes along the way as they visit their favorite local spots. Downtown volunteers like Betty Heller, 75, loves to take her group around Tribeca and divulge the neighborhood’s little-known facts.
She once enjoyed taking families with children to pet the horses at the stables at the First Precinct, which have since been shut down. Now, she picks up “New York food” like knishes or bagels, takes her group on a picnic and then over to the Downtown dog runs.
“They can’t believe how elaborate they are,” said Heller.
Now in her tenth year volunteering, the Chambers Street resident said that firemen are still the city’s “best ambassadors,” so a trip to a Downtown firehouse is always mandatory.
Some visitors use the walks as an opportunity to practice their English. Last year, a French-speaking family accidentally checked the wrong language box but insisted on taking the tour with Heller anyway. The group spent the day “acting everything out.”
“It was like we were playing charades while I tried to drag up high school French from the bottoms of my shoes,” said Heller, who also volunteers at Sloan-Kettering and Bideawee.
Big Apple Greeters have been “winging it” since the very beginning. Robert Gould, for instance, simply showed up one day in 1994 and was sent out without any training. Eighteen years ago, Gould, 43, spent most days parked in front of his computer trying to launch a startup from his Hanover Square apartment. Now a judge and a professor, he’s been walking visitors across the Brooklyn Bridge, through Chinatown, and over to Prospect Park ever since.
“They can do the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building on their own,” said Gould. “I want to show them neighborhoods, unfiltered.”
In the past, groups have run into former Mayor Ed Koch, actor Nathan Lane, and others noteworthy New Yorkers on the street…but, sometimes, the celebrities are the ones giving the tours. As part of the organization’s “Celebrity Greeter Program,” random visitors are sometimes paired with politicians like Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and celebrities such as former New York Giants running back Tiki Barber and Dominic Chianese from the Sopranos.
Gould will sometimes, quit literally, go the extra mile: last August, he hosted a “walkathon” on his birthday, getting people to sponsor his “walks” and raising $3,000 for the organization.
When greeters ask their guests what surprised them the most about their visit, most answer that it’s how “friendly” New Yorkers are.
Heller has an explanation for that.
“New York gets an unfair rep as being a cold place, but here’s the thing — in tourist spots, you’ve got more bustling tourists and workers who aren’t originally from NYC themselves,” said Heller. “Most of them came here to ‘make it,’ and a very small number have. That disgruntled lump, for the most part, is in midtown.”
It takes a certain personality to draw out visitors and make that “instant connection,” so an extensive application and one-on-one interview are required for all potential volunteers. Greeters are matched with visitors based on language, availability, and neighborhood knowledge.
The organization is the brainchild of Lynn Brooks, 81. Whenever Brooks traveled, people most often told her that they’d never visit New York because it was “too scary, too big, too dangerous, and too expensive.”
To schedule a tour or learn more about Big Apple Greeters visit their website at www.
