NYC’s weirdest walking tours: rats, ghosts,…
New Yorkers will stand in line for something — cronuts, cold plunges, chaos — so naturally, town’s walking tours have formally gone off the rails in the best potential manner.
Forget the basic Statue of Liberty selfie circuit. Across the 5 boroughs, vacationers and locals alike are shelling out to stalk superstar hotspots, descend into candlelit catacombs, chase Broadway ghosts and even be taught the intimate intercourse lives of rats.
From mobsters and Marvel heroes to bodega cats and glazed doughnuts, these weird Big Apple excursions are turning NYC itself into the main character.
Here are eight of the weirdest — and most splendidly New York — walking tours prowling town proper now.
Purr-fectly unhinged historical past classes
Cat lovers are clawing their manner through town, thanks to “Cats About Town,” NYC’s first-ever feline-focused historic walking tours created by author and information Peggy Gavan.
Each two-hour tour prices $45 and dives deep into Gotham’s surprisingly cat-filled past.
The Cats About Town tour uncovers town’s forgotten, furry historical past. catsabouttowntours.com
The “Brooklyn Heights Cat Tour” explores America’s first suburb through legendary local felines — including the Brooklyn Bridge’s own cat supervisor and superstar cats beloved by literary elites.
Meanwhile, the Financial District tour digs into town’s gritty waterfront historical past, where ship cats once prowled New York Harbor, and one heroic Wall Street kitty reportedly saved priceless paperwork during the Great Fire of 1835.
Over on the Lower East Side tour, company be taught how immigrant households lived alongside cats in cramped tenements — and how today’s iconic bodega cat custom was born.
For animal lovers with champagne style, the “Dogs & Cats on Fifth Avenue Tour” strolls from Madison Square Park to the Plaza Hotel while unpacking pet gossip from the Gilded Age elite.
Taylor-made for Swifties
Swifties are apparently prepared to flip Manhattan into one giant Easter egg hunt.
For $40, followers can spend two hours retracing Taylor Swift’s NYC period on a walking tour that hits some of the singer-songwriter’s most well-known downtown stomping grounds.
A younger fan appreciated a Taylor Swift shirt she found while taking the walking tour of the favored singer’s NYC haunts. J.C. Rice
“Taylor Swift’s New York: A Walking Tour” kicks off at Cornelia Street in the West Village — yes, that Cornelia Street — before winding through Tribeca and SoHo with stops tied to the Grammy winner’s New York life, lyrics and lore.
Fans will also swing by Electric Lady Studios and browse through spots like Housing Works Bookstore, where the multi-hyphenate filmed “All Too Well: The Short Film.”
It’s mainly a real-life “Welcome to New York” montage.
Trash discuss has never been this fashionable
Turns out one man’s rubbish is another vacationer attraction.
Suzanne Reisman has great enthusiasm as the self-described “rat whisperer” of New York CIty. Stephen Yang
Curious guests are paying $45 to roam FiDi’s filthiest corners on the wildly fashionable “Garbage and Rats in NYC” guided jaunt, led by self-described “rat whisperer” Suzanne Reisman.
The two-and-a-half-hour trek dives into town’s soiled underbelly — actually — overlaying every little thing from rat mating habits and sanitation strikes to corruption scandals, public health crises and the infinite battle between New Yorkers and overflowing trash baggage.
Less “intimacy and the City” — more pests and town.
Fuhgeddaboudit — there’s pasta concerned
True crime junkies are eating this one up — fairly actually.
This mob-themed East Village and Little Italy walking tour, led by retired NYPD detectives, mixes Mafia lore with old-school Italian consolation food for a $79 ticket price.
Guests hear real tales about the Gambino crime household and infamous mob boss John Gotti while wandering Mulberry Street and other former Mafia strongholds.
Luis, a retired NYPD detective, is one of the guides for the mob-themed walking tour.
Stops embrace the Liz Christy Bowery Houston Community Garden, where guides unpack ties to La Cosa Nostra, plus a cannoli pit stop at La Bella Ferrara.
Nothing says organized crime like dessert.
Marvel at the insanity
Superhero followers are assembling across Manhattan for this comic-book-fueled deep dive into town that impressed everybody from Spider-Man to Superman.
For $39, company spend two hours visiting iconic filming places and comic-book landmarks that helped form the superhero universe as half of the “Superheroes in New York Walking Tour.“
A scene from an Avengers installment is positioned over the real New York location where filming occurred.
Stops embrace the famed Daily News Building in Midtown East — recognizable to DC followers as the Daily Planet from Superman movies — along with the Chrysler Building, which has appeared in numerous Marvel diversifications, including Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and Avengers movies.
Basically Comic-Con, but cardio.
NYC’s creepiest basement tour
If candlelit crypts and centuries-old graves sound like a stress-free night, NYC has you coated.
The Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral is the quite spooky setting for “Catacombs by Candlelight.” Chad Rachman/New York Post
The “Catacombs by Candlelight” tour at Nolita’s Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral provides courageous company exclusive access to off-limits catacombs, cemeteries and hidden passageways beneath one of town’s oldest Catholic landmarks.
The eerie, 80-minute expertise begins at $36 and explores the church’s sprawling underground resting locations, where some of New York’s most distinguished households have been buried for more than 200 years.
Part historical past lesson, half horror film set.
Glazed and confused
Forget advantageous eating — vacationers are now carb-loading their manner across Manhattan one doughnut at a time.
You donut need to flip down this tour of town’s prime pastry retailers, including the treats (above) at Moe’s Doughs in Brooklyn. @moesdoughs
The wildly indulgent “Underground Donut Tour“ takes company on sugary strolls through some of NYC’s best pastry spots, with tickets beginning at $60.
The company gives 5 different themed tours, including routes through Downtown Brooklyn and Williamsburg, the East Village, Union Square and Times Square.
There’s even a seasonal Midtown Holiday Donut Tour working during November, December and January for anybody trying to mix festive cheer with a medically regarding quantity of fried dough.
Breakfast of champions!
Broadway’s ghosts are still ready in the wings
The theater district apparently isn’t just packed with understudies — it’s packed with ghosts, too.
They’re smiling now, but these victims … sorry, guests … on the “Haunted Broadway Ghostlight Tour” could not notice the spooky situations that are in store for them. @broadwayupclose
The “Haunted Broadway Ghostlight Tour” explores Times Square’s spookiest stage legends, cursed theaters and paranormal backstage lore during a 1-hour, 45-minute nighttime stroll through the Theater District.
Inspired by the long-running Broadway superstition of leaving a single “ghostlight” glowing onstage in a single day, guides from Green Team Tours share chilling tales of phantom actors, lifeless playwrights, haunted dressing rooms, and eerie sightings still whispered about backstage today.
Using iPads loaded with uncommon pictures, videos and outdated newspaper clippings, the guides carry Broadway’s haunted historical past back to life — or maybe afterlife.
Ultimately, in New York, even a informal stroll now comes with ghosts, gangsters, glazed doughnuts or at least a 50% likelihood of listening to disturbing information about rats.
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