New York City surpassed Disney several years ago as the top tourist destination in the United States and I witnessed it because I’ve been a personal & private New York City tourguide for many years.  I do specialty tours of neighborhoods and “step-on” tours (on their buses) for church and school groups, tour & travel agency groups, cruise ship groups, convention & corporate groups. And from time to time, I will give tours to families and individuals who find my website ( www.JimDykesNYC.com ) and sometimes V.I.P.s. I did a private tour for the Royal family of Saudi Arabia! As everyone knows, New York began it’s massive cleanup and re-birth during the administration of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani when he declared war on the smut purveyors who had nearly destroyed Times Square and the Broadway theatre district.  His slogan still rings in my ears: “I promise you a cleaner, brighter, safer New York…starting with Times Square.”  And he did it.  His master pla...

Nearly 30,000 New Yorkers of the last two centuries are currently “residents” of Trinity Church Cemetery on Broadway between W. 153 rd and W. 155 th Streets in Manhattan including famous clergy, soldiers, inventors, statesmen, authors composers, socialites, robber barons— are tucked away here under the plush green landscape of this English style “country garden” cemetery. Trinity Church, world famous as “the big brownstone church” on Broadway at Wall Street, is one of the oldest parishes in the city of New-York, founded in the seventeenth century, when New-York was still hyphenated. Trinity’s two oldest burial grounds in lower Manhattan, have been inactive for centuries. DOWNTOWN BURIALS BARRED By the early 1800s, New Yorkers had grown accustomed to years of living in fear of recurring epidemics (especially the dreaded yellow fever). In October of 1798, for example, 522 deaths were recorded in New York, of which 431 were due to yellow fever. Shallow graves were readied for...

Specialty sightseeing tours are popular in New York…so many different neighborhoods and “themes” to tour. Movie and TV locations are always fun especially since I’ve worked on many of the TV shows and films shot in New York and can add personal stories. For example, the last few years the Sex and the City locations tour has become so popular all over the world, even though the show is no longer airing new episodes.  There’s even a commercial bus tour that leaves daily and tours people around town showing clips and visiting locations used on the show….it was started by a guide I know and the company is On Location Tours. However, as a guide, I’ve done my own version of this for years. Unless you’re a fan of the show, all the tour gossip and chit-chat won’t mean much. This week I’m taking a group of German women on the tour! I’ve done Sex and the City tours and other movie/TV specialty tours to many visitors, groups small and large. Corporate & convention groups love to of...

One of the most talented people I ever met in New York City was costume assistant and apprentice designer Michael Wallace, whom I met when I worked at Radio City Music Hall.  I’ve often thought that if Michael hadn’t died young, his name would be on labels in department stores because he was such a creative force.  He loved the Italian designers…he used to say “Armani designs for the WIVES and Versace designs for the MISTRESSES.” Ha Ha Ha. I remember when Michael turned down a couple offers to design for Calvin Klein, Nolan Miller, Bob Mackie and other big-named designers because his clothes wouldn’t be “his”…the label would have  the other designer’s name. Michael used to say…”I’m waiting for the right offer because some day I want MY name on the label.” It makes me sad when I think about him because I know he would have been a fashion superstar! There is now a hot young British designer named Michael Wallace, but it’s a different person.  I’m still friends w...

La Divina. Prima Donna Extraordinaire, The Golden Voice of the Century. These descriptive terms were all used in reference to the legendary opera star Maria Callas, who spent ten of her formative years growing up as a bright, chubby child in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan. In fact, her initial musical training and first public performances took place in this Northern Manhattan neighborhood. When Callas died at age 53 on Sept. 16, 1977, the world lost one of the greatest singers in history. She had also slimmed down and become not only an opera star, but a fashion star. Without any question, Callas was a celebrity. Even for those who were not opera devotees, she provided front page reading and was a source of gossip due to cancellations in major opera houses, a much-publicized divorce from Italian industrialist Battista Meneghina after she met the infamous Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, and a humiliating rejection when Onassis tossed her aside to marry another cele...

Jean Arthur today is mostly forgotten by modern movie audiences but in the 1930’s and 1940’s she was a BIG movie star…America’s “Girl Next Door” and she was from New York City...specifically Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan. She was known for her croaky-voiced, tough-talking, streetwise blue-eyed blonde with the marshmallow heart from movies of those days, especially Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town . She had a sexy girl-next-door quality (before this became an over-used expression) which made men want to bring her home to meet Mother and made women want to be her best friend. She had an eternally youthful quality, playing ingenues well into her forties. But most of all, it was that wonderfully low, gravelly, distinctive Jean Arthur voice which we remember so well, so unlike the other ingenues of the day. Although she played her share of helpless females early in her silent film career, she did as she was told while she learned the bu...