Not to say there is not a whole sh!tton of great food in Manhattan, but I have found the best restaurants overall to be in Queens. Queens is where all of those cool "ethnic" groups actually live. Manhattan is just where we work and play.

Mythos, in my home village of Flushing, is one of my favorite Greek restaurants in Queens and all of New York City

The Big Apple is a fashion mecca, but when you don't have a car and driver or VIP access, it helps to be creative and resourceful. The most fashionable people in New York City are those who dress for walking. Even the high-flyers like to walk the streets of New York. Trust me. If they didn't, they'd stay in LA where the weather is nicer. Speaking of which,

here are a few accessories that you can't do without...

... in the winter:

1. A hat. Tell me that's not fashionable!
2. A warm, dry comfy pair of shoes or boots and decent socks.

The Statue of Liberty's Crown is small, and the number of people who want to get inside it is very large. This makes it expensive and time consuming to get there. It is worth something for the bragging rights, but you miss out on a lot to put that little feather in your cap.

No wonder the response has been so low over the past couple of days! I took the site offline for maintenance and forgot to put it back online. Maybe that's a good thing on net. Maybe I was intentionally sabotaging myself from having to walk around in this incorrigible heat.

OK, well, we're back in business. I've rested. Go ahead and contact me if you want a custom tour of New York City!

These are the little details you miss without a guide. There was not a tourist in sight when I discovered the Miracle Vine of St. Francis of Assisi (it grows in the dirt of a church by that name). This thing climbs about nine stories on two sides of a building. How it can grow that big out of a little patch of dirt like that is nothing short of a miracle.

It was beyond perfect today -- temperatures in the 70s, sunshine, a pleasant breeze. By all rights, I should have been out walking around today and showing people the wonders of our great city, such as the Miracle Vine. Alas, it was not to be.

Can't win 'em all, but today was definitely a loss. Why is it that huge groups will sign up for tours on days that it happens to rain, and days like this are un-booked? Clearly, there is no justice in the universe.

... but nobody contacted me today. Oh well. Maybe the weather report scared them off which is really too bad because it turned out to be a lovely day in New York City. I spent the day doing a little research in the East Village. It was nice, but it would have been nice to have had a little company!

What a remarkably beautiful day! I took a couple from Chicago on an art-deco tour of the city today. (Hi Nancy! Hi Bob!) We began in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and admired the Williamsburg Savings Bank, once (still?) the tallest building in Brooklyn. From there we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and over to the Bank of New York building.

You'll notice that the scheduled tours have been postponed. This is because I have been getting such a huge response from the site lately.

Will be posting pics of recent tours soon and a video! Check back.

I still have available time slots on many days, so please contact me today to arrange your free walking tour!

Ken Salazar announced on the Today Show today that the Statue of Liberty's crown will re-open to the public on July 4 this year. That is so cool! The problem will be logistical: Only 30 people per hour can go up there which means a maximum of about 300 people a day. As thousands visit the statue every day, I imagine they'll need some sort of lottery to make it fair as far as who gets to go up.

I will be helping my clients win that lottery, just so you know, but the crown is really not the best part of that tour. The famous inscription in the statue's pedestal reads, in part: