“Where is there a restroom around here?”

Before I became a guide I would go get a soda at a bar and use the restroom. But now my work takes me up-and-down Manhattan island and into Brooklyn.  Tour guides have to find toilets for groups of up to 55 people, the full capacity of a large coach bus. Here are many that other tour guides in the Guides Association of NYC have shown or told me about.  And a couple I’ve discovered myself.

Alphabetical order

Battery Park:  Standalone public restrooms on the North side of the park, across the street from the white cube- shaped building seen here:
https://youtu.be/PSFdrVnkrYs  More restrooms are found inside Castle Clinton, the old stone Fort.  Both sets close between 5 and 6 PM.  All the statue of liberty ferries have restrooms.

Castle Clinton

Brooklyn bridge: I was once seriously – seriously – asked, “are there any toilets on the bridge?” No, but there are toilets if you take the staircase down on the Brooklyn side to the hot dog stand. Tell Smiley, the hot dog man, “Tourguide Stan says hi.” Then turn right and go to the park you’ll see ahead of you. In the one building in the park, there are restrooms. I think they close at 5 PM.
If you start on the Brooklyn side, take the A train to High street, the 1st stop in Brooklyn. Then walk across to the park.  The staircase up onto the bridge walkway is just beyond the far left edge of the park.
If you’re crossing toward Manhattan and only have to go when you get to Manhattan, turn left. There’s a Starbucks at the corner of Park Row and Beekman street.
PRO TIP:  Make it an experience. Cross Beekman street and go into Temple Court in the Beekman Hotel.  Relax in a stuffed armchair at a little table and have some coffee. Look straight up to the 60′ skylight 9 stories above you!

Temple Court, Beekman Hotel

Central Park: the stairway restrooms by  Bethesda Fountain are closed in winter. Use the Hecksher playground near the 7th Avenue & 59th Street, or the ones about 30 yards or meters in from the Columbus Circle entrance that’s closest to the big silver globe across 8th Avenue. Cleaner, warmer restrooms are across the circle under the big curved building in the Whole Foods Market.

Bethesda fountain

Chinatown:  Columbus Park has two pairs of restrooms. The park closes at sundown.  There are I don’t know how many hundred restaurants in Chinatown, and each one has a restroom. If the waiter doesn’t speak English, try saying “chee saw.”  That’s my poor attempt at Cantonese, asking where the bathroom is.

Columbus Park restrooms

DUMBO: inside Empire Stores, first floor. It’s near the carousel.

Empire Stores in DUMBO

Financial District: 60 Wall Street is a POPS, a Privately Owned Public Space, with restrooms way in the back on the right side. Recently, in 2022, they have been locked. Maybe they’ll be open now?  They are supposed to be open.

Charging Bull

Fulton Center Subway station, where the green, red and blue trains come together, has lovely bathrooms but they are closed for the duration of covid. More than 180 MTA workers have died of covid, and now there is a shortage of workers, so there’s nobody to clean the restrooms. So they’re closed. Thanks, antivaxxers.

Grand Central: basement, west side, near Chirping Chicken sign.  Escalator back up to the first floor takes you almost straight to the souvenir store of the Subway system and MTA.

Grand Central

Greenwich Village: Again, many little places to eat and some very good restaurants as well. In Washington Square, there are public restrooms across the park from the big white arch.  I think they close at 6 or so.

Washington Arch

Midtown: Trump tower basement. Probably the nicest bathrooms in Midtown.  Trump tower is a ‘POPS’, or Privately Owned Public Space. Here’s an article about POPS that sometimes do and sometimes don’t have bathrooms: https://www.archdaily.com/988099/what-happens-when-public-spaces-are-without-public-restrooms#:~:text=When%20POPS%20are%20greater%20than,typically%20means%20an%20accompanying%20bathroom.

Inside Trump Tower

Rockefeller Center:  2 elevators inside glass bubbles are on the sidewalks of 49th and 50th street, flanking the skating rink. Go down the 50th Street elevator and look beyond a big empty room (in 2022) for restrooms. Women on the left, men on the right.  The status of that room may change over time, but the restrooms will be exactly where they are now. It’s really expensive to move plumbing around.

30 Rock

South Street Seaport, one-story building under the highway. Or any of the many bars and restaurants in the area.

SS Wavertree

Staten Island ferry terminal bathrooms are open all night long. You know this from the Edna Saint Vincent Millay poem:
We were very tired
We were very merry
We’d spent all night going
Back-and-forth on the ferry.
Incidentally, the ferries have restrooms, for when you go to Staten Island and back, 500 feet from Miss Liberty.

Times Square: Port Authority bus terminal near the elevators. The 3rd floor restrooms are cleaner than the 1st and 2nd, with shorter lines.

World Trade Center: under Tower 4. There are signs in the Oculus that send you through a long tunnel from the Oculus, then under tower 3, then under Tower 4. But if you’re near Tower 4 on the surface, you can save a lot of walking by just going downstairs.  The Episcopal chapel of Saint Paul also has three single restrooms, although you’ve got to go through a metal detector to use them.  But definitely look around the chapel. It is awesomely historic to Americans and in the September 11th story.

The Oculus

I hope this directory of tourist-friendly restroom advice helps you, when you visit NYC. Remember, I’m for hire by the hour – at least two hours a day – or by the day or week. Find me at tourguidestan@yahoo.com or go to http://www.isleofnewyorktours.com

Isle Of New York!

Isle Of New York Tours llc

In Chinatown: The Street Of Food And Haircuts

This ‘nice lowfon boy’ has been getting his hair cut on Doyers Street since he arrived here 40 years ago. My 1st wife was Chinese American. Her mother was born and raised in Chinatown. Her mom, my grandmother in law or ‘Po-po’ was born in British Columbia as the daughter of a cherry tree planter. She got a visa to attend nursing school in Chicago in the 1920s. She was allowed to stay in the USA because she was a nurse and therefore a skilled worker.

Po-po’s husband was a professional gambler in a neighborhood where everybody gambled. To this day, buses pull up on Bowery every morning to take people down to Atlantic City for a day of gambling.

My mother in law’s husband ‘Rocky’ had been a bodyguard for a warlord in Shanghai until the Communists took over. This was about 1950. He learned to cook in Taiwan, all that was left of the Republic of China. Then he immigrated to NYC and got a job as a Chinese-food cook in Chinatown.

Rocky found that he could supplement his meager income – no, quadruple his meager income – by becoming a fixer for gamblers.
He would find and rent basements that were safe from the police over on Elizabeth street. He was very proud of his crowning achievement: He bribed someone in the Corrections department to rent jail cells on weekends for his future father-in-law.

The Corrections Department is separate from the Police Department. The police couldn’t break into the jail, which was directly across Columbus Park from Chinatown. Easy commute.

My wife and I met in college upstate. When we graduated we got married and moved down to the family house in Flatbush. I’ve been getting my hair cut in Chinatown ever since. The fee for a haircut has never been as much as ten dollars. People in the know come in from Brooklyn and Queens for a Chinatown haircut. They all know Doyers Street.

Do Your Tours In Clusters!

Manhattan is 13 miles or 21 km long and around 2 miles/3km across. Places are clustered, sort of.

MIDTOWN includes the Public Library main branch, Grand Central, Empire State Building, Macy’s, Bryant Park, Times Square, Rockefeller Center and St. Patrick’s.

CENTRAL PARK is north of Midtown.

THE FINANCIAL DISTRICT is close to the Statue Of Liberty and Staten Island ferries, National September 11 Memorial, Wall Street, South Street Seaport, the Brooklyn Bridge, and it’s fairly close to Chinatown.

My company does walking tours that may go through up to 3 districts in a tour:

SoHo, Little Italy and Chinatown.

Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn Heights, and DUMBO.

Brooklyn Heights, ferry boat to Wall Street, and African Burial Ground.

Grand Central, Saint Patrick’s, Rockefeller Center, and Times Square.

Brooklyn Heights, ferry to Manhattan, Murray Hill, and end at customer’s choice of Grand Central or Empire State Building.

http://www.isleofnewyorktours.com or write Tourguidestan@yahoo.com

Favorite Rooftop Bars

The Knickerbocker Hotel rooftop (actually a setback) bar has a great Times Square view. 100 years ago the bartender’s name was Martini. Not gonna tell you what he invented.

View from Knickerbocker Hotel roof deck

For a quieter vibe, you might try the Library Hotel at 41st and Mad. Not great views, but it’s quiet and sunny.

1 Hotel in Brooklyn near Pier A has a FANTASTIC harbor view. Very impressive.

Great harbor views from 1 Hotel Brooklyn

However, when I last went up in 2020, it had been ‘discovered’ by the DUMBO set, who seemed to require very loud music. I hope that’s changed.

Personal Favorite: 50 Bowery. Music isn’t too loud. Largely young office-worker non-Asian people, though it’s in the heart of Chinatown. I like taking my Chinatown tour customers up, post-tour.

Friday at 6

Nearly a 360° view. That means perfect views of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, as well as Midtown, the Financial District and both rivers. Great views of Canal Street (which is more interesting than you’d think). You can see DUMBO, much of the Lower East Side and Little Italy.

The gem by the Statue of Liberty

Around 7000 to 8000 people visit Battery Park at the South end of Manhattan every day, to visit the Statue Of Liberty. Only very few come to Bowling Green, just across Broadway. It’s our city’s oldest park, here since 1738.

Back in 1770 city officials decided to erect an iron fence, painted gold, around Bowling Green. And to commission and install a 2-ton statue of the the king of England at the time, George III. That statue lasted only 6 years.

The Declaration Of Independence, the document by which Americans date the beginning of our nation, was signed on July 4, 1776.

Here’s my photo of an earlier version that was voted down on July 2, because it guaranteed freedom to enslaved people. If only.

The July 4 version was brought here by horse courier over five days and nights. It was read aloud at City Hall up on Wall Street. Then a troop of Army men went down to Bowling Green and destroyed the king’s statue. Its takedown was for 2 reasons:

One, the Sons of Liberty hated the king.

Two, the statue was made of lead. Bullets are made of lead, too. That lead was later melted down into 40,088 musketballs for the Revolution.

The British Tour, from Isle Of New York Tours, stops at Bowling Green so that guests can have a moment to actually touch history. Look at this!

Here’s a similar iron fence of the same era as Bowling Green’s. It’s at the Palace of Versailles! I photographed it realizing that the Bowling Green fence must have looked very similar in 1770–1776. The thicker fenceposts are topped with royal crowns. All of this has been gilded, painted gold.

Bowling Green fence was also originally gilded. And it was originally topped with crowns of lead. See how the iron legs holding up the oil lamp are bowed outwards? That was to allow room for the crown that was once there.

On the night of July 9, 1776, all the lead crowns were cut down as well, to add into the musketball supply. Lead is a soft metal, so the revolutionaries were able to saw the crowns off, all 100 of them.

Why should YOU visit Bowling Green? For one thing, it has plenty of seats after you’ve spent 4 hours standing in the ferry, standing at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and standing in the boat again. You need to rest.

For another, you are TOTALLY surrounded with American history. Buildings to the west were major ocean liner companies before jetliners replaced them. The building on the east was the oil company that supplied all those ocean liners. The building to the South is the old Customs House named for Alexander Hamilton, and the National Museum of the American Indian is inside.

The fenceposts surrounding the park are available for you to actually feel marks of the saws that worked to take off those crowns back on July 9, 1776!

NYC movie scenes in walking tours

Does this look familiar? Lyra Belaqua, played by Dakota Blue Richards, ran down this Manhattan block in the film The Golden Compass. The block of identical wooden houses is on my Washington Heights tour.

Same block in the movie!

This block is on my Brooklyn Bridge  & Brooklyn Heights tour. Why the studio decided to use the blue Brooklyn house as the Washington, DC home of Kay Graham, played by Meryl Streep as the former owner of The Washington Post in the film The Post, is beyond me.

Riffing off Mystery Science Theatre 3000, I call these posters ‘moviesign.’  Printed by the Mayor’s Office of Film and Television, they warn car owners to stay away on certain days so that movie or tv trucks can park there. It’s a great way to learn what movie or TV show is filmed where and when. This one was for the 4th season of the TV show Power, in 2017.  Watch my @tourguidestan Twitter for #moviesign mentions.

Movie directors love to use icons as backdrops.Washington Arch is a New York City icon. Consider every ‘famous city’ movie you’ve ever seen. Are some scenes within sight of a famous icon in that city? You bet.  Because moviegoers will remember their own experience in that spot. That’s a big selling point, so directors use the icons. Washington Square arch has been used for many films. Here is a link to a short YouTube video of mine. In 20 seconds it shows you the exact locations near the arch where scenes in four films were made: https://youtu.be/8BHhRgjVeeI

McSorley’s Old Ale House was used in an episode of The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. It’s one of my favorite bars in town, for many reasons, one being
MCSORLEY’S DOESN’T BLAST LOUD MUSIC.
I take customers here when we ‘do’ the East Village, and at the end of Mrs Maisel’s Marvelous Greenwich Village. https://youtu.be/zJQtj48uKT4

At the poet’s walk, or the literary walk, in Central Park, film Scenes have been shot here since at least 1979, when Meryl Streep stood by the statue of Robert Burns and Dustin Hoffman took up the opposite spot by Walter Scott. Kramer vs. Kramer.

But that’s only the earliest Literary Walk film scene I can think of. How about some more?

Enchanted

Autumn In New York

Home Alone II: Lost In New York

Icons, baby. It’s all about the icons! And New York holds sooo many icons that it’s the perfect city to shoot in. That’s why as many as 400 movies and TV shows are shot in New York annually. Take some of my tours and stand exactly where the stars stood. Go to http://www.isleofnewyorktours.com or write the email address in this video: https://youtu.be/SKTNhcJRjwQ

We Will Keep Teaching About 9/11

In 2001, September 11 was considered the great tragedy of the modern world. And so it remained right up until 2020.
The 9/11 story has to remain a part of our curriculum, although it pales in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of deaths in the US, and the millions worldwide, this year.

There’s a significant difference. The deaths of Covid destroyed families and ways of life, but not physical things.  September 11 destroyed the neighbourhood around the twin towers. It engendered the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. The upscaling of the US military. Years of anti-Iraq propaganda which led to general anti-Muslim hysteria and bigotry.

American kids assume that the hero worship and veneration of the military that they’ve grown up with are normal. They actually are outgrowths of the buildup of popular military support in the run-up to a war that went on for years.

Towns and cities nationwide have had generations of statues and memorials for military heroes. It was not until 2020 that the heroism of healthcare workers has been recognized and applauded to at least the same degree. It’s time they, as well, are venerated with statues.

Just a few blocks away from the National September 11 Memorial is Fraunces Tavern. It was there that General Washington held a farewell dinner after the Revolution as the military was disbanded. America therefore has gone from a nation that got rid of its military after war, to one that keeps a strong military.

Kids need to have this historical context to make sense of their lives up until this point. And to go forward, soon taking their places as adults in United States culture, and changing the culture by voting at each election.

So yes, New York City tourguides will keep bringing middle- and high-school students to the memorial, and giving them all this necessary background.

Inspiration Point

Inspiration Point originally was just a clifftop overlooking the Hudson in Northern Manhattan, at roughly 190th Street. It was right alongside the northern extension of Riverside Drive. A Greek temple was built at Inspiration Point in 1925. The temple was upstairs at the clifftop.  Below were restrooms.
Inspiration Point is mentioned in the last verse of the song I’ll Take Manhattan. Miss Ella Fitzgerald:

The northern extension of Riverside Drive was replaced by the Henry Hudson Parkway in 1937, cutting off Inspiration Point from almost all visitors.
The Hudson River Greenway, a riverfront park with a bike lane running from Battery Park to Dyckman Street, opened fully in 2010. Once again, people are able to stop at Inspiration Point, but only on foot or by bike. No train, car or bus comes here.
Hope you enjoy my singing!
https://youtu.be/bcu-0r6AuAQ