The New Yorker:

Things I learned by embedding with the tourists: the Ramones loved Yoo-hoo, Peter Stuyvesant was uptight, and how to do “a quick Donald Trump dance.”

By Patricia Marx

I’m a sucker for guided tours. I love a CliffsNotes condensation of a place. All of Rome in ninety minutes gave me a Visigothic sense of accomplishment, untarnished even when my tour bus’s automated audio commentary got out of synch, implying that the Pope lived in the Trevi Fountain. I was once shepherded through Beijing’s Forbidden City by the voice of Roger Moore, coming from a stuttery tape recorder; while visiting the Teotihuacán ruins, outside Mexico City, I was de-toured to a basilica housing the cloak of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which we viewed from a moving sidewalk. It looked like a dry-cleaned blouse still covered in plastic. I was fascinated to learn, therefore, that some consider Herodotus the father of the travel guide. His​ fifth-century-B.C. account of Egypt arguably invented the form, and it even included the obligatory section on public rest rooms: “[The Egyptians] established for themselves manners and customs in a way opposite to other men in almost all matters . . . the women make water standing up and the men crouching down.”

Until recently, though, it never occurred to me to be a tourist in the city where I’ve lived for forty years—namely, New York, which received almost sixty-five million visitors in 2024. So, during a span of a few weeks, I went on seven guided tours. I learned so many factoids that I am practically a walking almanac of New York City, with a useful appendix listing Some Amusing Things You Can Say at Cocktail Parties.

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