- To each their own, but we’ll stick to the non-rat-filled tours.
New York City is famous for a lot of things. There’s the Empire State Building, Times Square, Central Park, Long Island, the Sewer Alligator Statue…
And then there are the rats.
Although NYC officials probably don’t want their city associated with rampaging vermin, the vermin are on a rampage. Rats have taken firm control of New York’s street corners, becoming filthy little celebrities in their own right.
But where others see a significant sanitary issue, one woman saw an opportunity.
Earlier this year, Suzanne Reisman started offering guided walking tours of NYC. Instead of the usual tourist traps, though, she takes people to the worst, most rat-infested parts of the city.
You probably wouldn’t expect that to be an outstanding business idea, but Reisman’s tours have quickly become popular. They offer tourists a look at the grittier, filthier side of NYC.
Yet, Reisman’s ultimate goal isn’t to glorify New York’s rat problem. Instead, she seeks to educate people about rats and their verminous ways in hopes that the city might one day be free of them.
A History of Infestation
Reisman runs an alternative walking tour company in NYC, dubbed the Off the Beaten Subway Track Walking Tours. While she offers other tours as well, by far her most popular tour is the History of Garbage & Rats in NYC tour.
This two-hour vermin extravaganza goes through Manhattan’s financial district. But instead of the gleaming skyscrapers and bustling offices, Reisman takes her guests to the filthiest alleys and most disgusting corners she can find.
She doesn’t promise that the tourists will run into any of New York’s most unpopular residents. They likely will, though, so wearing open-toed shoes or sandals is heartily discouraged.
As she leads her followers around, Reisman — with fuzzy rat ears perched on top of her head — delights and disgusts them with various facts and figures of the Big Apple and its long history of being gnawed.
For instance, Reisman recounts how the Norway rat arrived in NYC in the 1700s on Hessian ships, finding a repulsive paradise in a city with questionably waste management practices. She also immediately notes that “Norway rat” is a misnomer, as the rat originates from Asia.
From here, the discussion moves on to more esoteric topics, such as rats’ ability to cover the land due to their penchant of having sex up to 20 times a day. And some things Reisman says probably just to gross her guests out.
“Rats love to go up to the poop!” she told one tour upon spotting a pile of dog crap. “They’ll kick through it, find the undigested kibble.”
Sold Out Tours
As off-putting as a poop-covered rat tour seems, Reisman is happy to say that the tour has been exceedingly popular. So much so that she’s booked out and her waitlist is chock-full.
“I sold out two tours and filled the waitlists. I wasn’t sure that people would show up for a Sunday night tour in the rain, but they did!” Reisman told the New York Post.
“It’s just incredibly fun to talk about these stories, to share, to hear from other people what their experiences have also been,” she added.
But why are people drawn to this grossest of all tours? Well, part of the reason is just that — it’s gross and people want to see that.
Some tourists are tired of the sanitized, hyper-commercialized New York they find on Times Square and similar places. They want to see the New York they see in movies and TV shows, the one that’s overflowing with trash, roaches, and rats.
Another reason lies the city’s ramped-up efforts to inform and educate people of the rat problem. Additionally, NYC’s bizarre attempts to control the rodents — from birth control to posting a job ad for a rat killer — have piqued people’s curiosity.
Despite the vermin being her bread and butter, Reisman would also like to see a rat-free New York. And that’s part of why she organizes the tours. She wants to tell people what they can do to help, with the number one preventative method being cutting back on trash.
“We really have to address the fact that our city has a lot of litter. We throw trash bags on the street that are easy for rats to rip into,” she explained.
“But if we really cut down on the access, that would help significantly.”