On the Tour

This time around, I went to a number of historic houses, after having enjoyed visiting the Merchants House Museum and the Morris-Jumel Mansion for the first book. Having gone to most of the big museums previously, I’ve tried to find many more niche museums that I missed the first time around and I made a concerted effort to hit the zoos, having only gone to the Central Park Zoo for A Walk in the City. Throw in some City parks, disparate theatres and miscellaneous points of interest and what you have is On the Tour: More City Walks. This book was written with the same parameters that the first one had. Each piece would be around 450 words, with the final paragraph dedicated to relaying how to get to each site by train and/or bus. I have again replaced my byline from the original MTA Today releases with a relevant website for each piece and I’ve added a Walking Distance section at the end of each article, to highlight points of interest in the immediate area. This time around, though, I have excluded the dates that each piece appeared on MTA Today, due to the fact that I retired from NYC Transit about 1/3 of the way through the writing of the book and thus lost access to exactly when these internally released pieces would be used. Again, these pieces are just a guide, things I liked about each venue and my way of listing a horde of New York destinations, with the intention of being a catalyst to the reader’s imagination. I don’t get into details, such as the days and times when the places I go to are open or closed or the prices of any particular site. I just highlight what stuck out to me as a New Yorker, which often includes a history of the site. As such, the websites listed are essential, especially for the historic houses, which have very defined and sometimes limited visiting hours. Back in the early 20th Century, when the Edison Company put out the very first moving pictures, they consisted of many shots of traffic in The City, which today would seem mundane. Back then, though, the first people ever to experience moving pictures saw something different. Edison called the clips “Actualities,” and they were received, as you might imagine, with fascination. These two books of mine are my “Actualities,” and though fascination is not what I expect from the audience, I do think that these volumes can be a great entry-level guide to roaming around The City. I have received a number of thank you messages and calls from people who have used A Walk in the City as a way to experience New York, or at least a part of it, so I feel confident this will be the case for On the Tour.