September 7, 2005

NYC Soundwalks

I was in New York City for the first time this summer. And I downloaded a couple audio programs from the publisher Soundwalk. Basically these programs are audio walking tours of various sections of New York City that are timed to your footsteps. The narrators are NYC natives that know the ins and outs of the neighborhoods and tell you where to go.

Right now they have 13 programs for New York City, 1 for Paris, and 1 for India. New York City is perfect for these audio tours because the neighborhoods are so dense and there’s so much history and diversity in a small area.

I did the Chinatown walk and the Lower East Side Manhattan walk. Both were excellent. The Lower East Side of Manhattan is incredibly diverse as they take you into delis, into back alleys that were former speakeasies, and into a Jewish temple that is now a place for artists to jam and put up their art work. There was even an acid jazz band playing when I went in to the temple.

The second walk I took was in Chinatown narrated by a guy who was born and raised there. This tour took us off the tourist trap strip of Chinatown and down some very interesting streets. Some of the doors he requested us to enter were locked probably due to too many people doing these walking tours. This one ends in a peaceful Buddhist temple.

If you’re going to New York I definitely recommend doing a few of these. They’re about 45 minutes long. They have great music that keeps you in step. They’re not for the faint of heart as they take you into some potentially dangerous places but nothing too serious and the narrators use some dirty mouth so they might not be for kids. You can buy them as mp3s through the Soundwalk website or on Audible.com or Amazon. So load up your portable digital audio player or CD player and hit the streets with Soundwalk. It’s better and cheaper and less obtrusive than any NYC tour bus.