Birmingham Track 19 Lyrics

The SideWalks Of New York

While the tourist with guide book and map in hand is still a common sight on New York City streets, many visitors to the Big Apple today are choosing a more orginized and more intelligent way to get to know the city. Bus, boat and walking tours are now big business in Manhattan, offering forays into parts of the city once nearly inaccessible to outsiders.

No longer a__ociated with only the old or lazy, these tours cater to energetic visitors determined to see as much of the city as possible in the least amount of time. Though the Statue of Liberty, Greenwich Village and Fifth Avenue remain fixed points on any tour, the outer boroughs are now enjoying unprecedented attention.

HARLEM SOUNDS

Harlem Spirituals, for example, is one of New York City's most popular and most colorful sightseeing companies specializing in gospel and jazz tours. With guides that speak any of these five languages French, Spanish, German, Italian and Portuguese.

Harlem Spirituals provides visitors with an inside (and safe) look at an area of New York city long believed to be the crime capital of Manhattan. There is, for example, a weekday walking tour of Harlem, lasting four and a half hours and costing $40 where you'll learn why Harlem, once New York's most fashionable neighborhood, became a symbol of urban decadence.

But perhaps the tour par excellence is "Harlem on Sunday". Three and a half hours long and costing $35, the tour enables participants to spend an unforgettable morning at an authentic church service with soul-stirring gospel music and then enjoy a walk through Harlem's loveliest area, Sugar Hill.

For those with and adventurous spirit and appetite, the "Apolo Theater and Soul Food Tour" is not be missed. The focus of the evening is Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater, famous for being a launching pad for some of today's most famous black performers. (Michael Jackson often attends this show, incognito, of course.) Afterwards, dinner is served at one Harlem's traditional soul food restaurants. The total cost: $80, meal included.

BROOKLYN SIGHTS

Surely one of the mosts unusual and edifying New York sightseeing excursions is the "Hassidic Walking Tour", sponsored by the Hassidic Discovery Center in Brooklyn. Rabbi Beryl Epstein conducts bus tours of Crown Heights, the home of the worldwide Lubavitcher movement, every Sunday for the general public. Known for their openness an religious fervor, the Lubavitchers have created a spiritual homeland in Crown Heights with specialized stores, schools and eateries. The Lubavitcher women are easy to recognize with their long skirts, wigs, and multilpe children in tow (Lubavitcher do not believe in birth control).

The tour gives participants a first hand look at the fascinating daily life of the Lubavitchers, including a visit to a synagogue, where a scribe is writing the Torah with quill and feather, a stop at Hassidic library an Hassidic art gallery. The price, including round trip transportation, tour and launch at a kosher deli, is $36.

HISTORY HIGHLIGHTS

Dedicated history buffs should certainly chech out big Onion Walking Tours, an organization that since 1991 has led innovative jaunts throughout. New York's ethnic neighborhoods and historic districts. Voted New York's best walking tours by NEW YORK MAGAZINE in 1998, The Big Onion employs guides that all have advanced degrees in American history from Columbia or New York universities.

Among the over thirty tours currently being offered are
"Immigrant New York", a visit to Ellis Island and its immigration museum;
"The Financial District", a guided tour of Lower Manhattan, exploring the historic and financial heart of New York;
"Greenwich Village", a walking tour of New York's legendary home to artists, writers and radicals, with special attention paid to the history and architecture of the area;
"Greenwood Cementery" Brooklyn's great Victorian "City of the Dead" where Louis Comfort Tiffany, Samuel F.B. Morse and Horace Greeley (along with 600,000 others) are buried. All Big Onion tours cost a very economical $12.

COOL CRUISES

But if the idea of spending a hot and humid August day walking around the city or sitting inside a bus turns your stomach, there is another option: a ralaxing (and cool) New York sightseeing cruise. Circle Line offers a 3-hour full island cruise, for $24; a 2-hour semi-circle cruise for $20; and a 1-hour seaport liberty cruise, focusing on Ellis Island and Lady Liberty, for $12.